Not so Random Encounters. Would it be possible to make a RPG which consisted of two things. 1. You walking across a map of the world. You choose which way to go, but there are no permanent cities. You see the terrain around you and point and click to go there. 2. You then use so called "random encounters" to create a mixture of a plotted story and a player driven story. The computer is told how to interweave different game/story elements together. The player would come across a wide variety of NPCs, and encounters would be generated by the needs of certain plot / themes that were in the game. Any theme that was appropriate to the game could be expressed. The player would have a wide variety of choices to respond to the situations that s/he encountered, and these choices would be reflected later in the game. Ie. How does he respond to encountering a bandit patrol fighting a wandering band of vigilantes. Thus the player would be able to investigate the themes from a different perspective depending on the choices s/he makes

Sounds a bit like Bishop''s post perhaps. Not sure if it is quite the same though.


A CRPG in development...

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

Hey Ketch, you may like this post as well. I talk with folks about the possibility of having "planned random encounters" that work by a sort of influence mapping scheme. The gist is that your behavior during encounters change global variables and trigger other encounters.

I think a system like this actually has a lot of potential in that it seems relatively easy to create and looks very flexible.

The downside, though, would be that it relies heavily on being able to drop you into situations. If you have a more continuous form of adventuring, it seems as though it would be harder to put everything in its proper place. In this way, random encounters are sort of like being able to "close the curtain" and get all the props and actors in their place.


--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

This random-everything stuff, imo, cannot be done due to technology limitations. We are discussing this issue with my team since Dec ''99 but haven''t got anything good for now. You either hit the computing power limit, either get a not-so-random-or-even-not-random-at-all situation.

I''ve read those posts you guys suggested, but didn''t find a solution or a workaround in there. It''s gonna be nice someone with the abilities (and better english that me to summarise the ideas in some sort of article...*hint*


Boby Dimitrov
boby@azholding.com

(I think that this idea is slightly obscure)

The idea (of this thread) is that you divorce the player from a Permanent world , by reducing the social context of the game. Ie. There are no permanent settlements etc. Yet, there is SOCIAL interaction, which can even have permanent effects.

Ie. The NPCs are migratory, but can be reoccuring provided that the player doesn''t shoot them. So the interactions with NPCs does have lasting effects, as they can gossip about the player, send people to interact with the player etc.

The game has an elaborate system to formulate the "encounters".

Thing is that in making the encounters take place in little maps, the game might have to have a different form of gameplay to the commonly occuring types. Ie. How can you implement quests if the in-game buildings / dungeons are not permanent?

How would the player control the experience more. This might be possible, by compromising and making it so that sometimes the player would have a choice of what to do.

IE. the migratory characters would be seen on the map. Maybe by smoke signal communication. The player would see icons of the different characters temporary camps, and have the option of following different characters through the game. Getting the choice between aiding/ confronting the good / bad guys etc.
Seeing a travelling weapons salesman.


The game would need to work on a different system to current games in terms of item collection, etc. Maybe the player would be able to use natural resources to make weapons. = Wood + Flint to make a spear.

The gameplay would probably need to be deepened, as it might be boring and repetitive to just walk into fights. There would need to be a wide variety of different types of encounter, and associated gameplay choices available to the player.

quote: Original post by BobyDimitrov

This random-everything stuff, imo, cannot be done due to technology limitations. We are discussing this issue with my team since Dec ''99 but haven''t got anything good for now. You either hit the computing power limit, either get a not-so-random-or-even-not-random-at-all situation.

I think this depends ENTIRELY on how willing your audience is to use their own imagination. The single most serious tech problem I''ve seen so far has been asset limitations. The more fully realized and detailed your world, the harder you''re going to hit this wall. You can only create so many models, textures, anims, sfx, gfx doodads, whatever (ignoring the promise of procedural gfx and sfx generation, which doesn''t seem practical right now)

But if you take an approach like that of Diablo, Alpha Centauri, Fallout or Starcraft, then you create a limited set of really good looking assets, re-use them creatively, and really polish the gameplay. Then it doesn''t matter as much.

Other than that, I don''t see what you mean. Can you give more detail?

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Wav, the major problem is the amount of graphics, sounds, etc you just got to have. Now don''t tell me you like the Diablo 1/2 world! It sucked. It could be called so-so only because you spend much time looking at the enemies, not the backdrop. And even the monsters lack detail! But Diablo leans to the fast paced action and who has time to look their faces until you slay them 5 or 6 at a time.

The previous Ketchaval post cleared the situation a bit, but anyway, how you gonna manage a 100 000 X 100 000 tiles map with 100 000 active sprites in it, double that events every cycle... I''m not a programmer, but I know that''s hard to do. If you want a truly random world, with TONS of random encounters and events, with at least 1000 key NPCs and ten times that secondary, put the monsters and animals... I don''t know...

Other way to do this is have a rather small world, but how you gonna handle the "coming to the edge of the world" issue, which is about to happen much more likely in a small world. You can have very limited number of active elements like NPCs, monsters, etc and all the intrigue will revolve around them. But I think 50 i.e. is a small number of NPCs. The first time you play the game, you gonna learn their names and behavior, so the replayability value lowers. Maybe if you find a way to create an evolving behavior, or something like that, because the first time you see John the Redneck fighting a Grizzly bear and see him run away, you gonna know he''s a coward and the next time it gets predictable. I''m just ranting now, cuz I''m not sure for myself if such thing can or cannot be acomplished.

I guess one of the reasons the MMOs got so popular is puting the player in a world, where he could interact with the only thing better than AI: the real "I". For me a perfect AI is the way to achive what you''re looking for. That "World in motion", like some nomadic setting, that Ketchaval proposes is just a workaround and I don''t think that someone will ever use this in an actual game, because till you get it to work, you''ll got the computing power for much better AIs and richer game worlds in every aspect.

I''m gonna shut up for now, let you big know-hows discuss that. Hope you get to somewhere, cuz all the similar topics had no visible sucess.


Boby Dimitrov
boby@azholding.com

quote: Original post by BobyDimitrov

Wav, the major problem is the amount of graphics, sounds, etc you just got to have. Now don't tell me you like the Diablo 1/2 world! It sucked. It could be called so-so only because you spend much time looking at the enemies, not the backdrop. And even the monsters lack detail! But Diablo leans to the fast paced action and who has time to look their faces until you slay them 5 or 6 at a time.

I think you maybe missed part of my post above. Everything depends on how "greedy" your players are. If they can't live without FPS style, fully realized worlds made of a bazillion polys, with voice acting by James Earl Jones and Bruce Campell, THEN YOU ARE SCREWED!

But thank the stars, there are gamers who have NO PROBLEM with the isometric view or 2d gfx. These saintly souls care more about gameplay (and/or maybe story), leaving room for games other than those produced by friggin' ACME Multiconglomerate Entertainment, Inc.

It highly depends on WHAT you value in a game.

Sorry, that was a bit of a rant...

quote:
The previous Ketchaval post cleared the situation a bit, but anyway, how you gonna manage a 100 000 X 100 000 tiles map with 100 000 active sprites in it, double that events every cycle... I'm not a programmer, but I know that's hard to do. If you want a truly random world, with TONS of random encounters and events, with at least 1000 key NPCs and ten times that secondary, put the monsters and animals... I don't know...

Though plenty will disagree with me, I honor the time-tested secret method: "Fake it!" You have to adopt the principles of theatre. That's not real lightning you hear, it's a thin sheet of metal being shaken for effect!

In Fallout, were you really interacting with hundreds of characters / monsters across dozens of locations? No, not really. It was all one map. Another example: It's a common trick for space combat games to keep you in one place and move all the enemies around you, while making it appear that you're moving through infinite space. What I'm trying to say is that you don't do everything directly; all that is necessary is the APPEARANCE of grandeur.

quote:
Other way to do this is have a rather small world, but how you gonna handle the "coming to the edge of the world" issue, which is about to happen much more likely in a small world.

Will a player notice patterns? Yes. But an important thing to remember: the player actively desires to be immersed, and will overlook or ignore certain limitations if the main action is good enough. Theatre analogy again: If you're play is awesome, the viewers will ignore the curtains.

There are limits, of course. To continue the analogy, a rat infested, dilapidated building probably won't work (CGA graphics, for example), no matter how good the play.

quote:
I guess one of the reasons the MMOs got so popular is puting the player in a world, where he could interact with the only thing better than AI: the real "I". For me a perfect AI is the way to achive what you're looking for.

I don't disagree that MMO has it's place, but it's by no means the "one size fits all" solution. When I play online with and against other people, I'm filling an entirely different gaming need than when I play single player. It's a bit OT, but single-player games provide situations and elements that MMO games just can't touch. Each has their place.


--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on June 5, 2001 10:10:35 PM

Practical issues aside, THE solution to unlimited map size, coherent and consistent encounters, is...

To NOT instantiate the world unless the player is there. A set is dynamically built with facades all around the player. As the player moves from locale to locale, new sets are constructed and old sets are demolished. Where is the coherency? The program remembers the changes made to the sets the player has visited. Their is only a finite amount of time the player can play, and thus there is a finite amount of sets which need to have their changes saved.

How are external events handled which affect the player? Events are manufactured with the intent of having a collision course with the player. These events are managed and updated throughout the game.

What of actions the player participates in which would have effects to areas which the player hasn''t visited yet? Player caused events are propogated through time and space until a certain dissipation factor determines that propogation is no longer necessary.

Regarding graphics, procedurally generated 3d graphics are the answer, given rules for design of objects drawing from a wealth of materials, pieces, random permutations of features, knowledge of design, etc.

There you have it. The RPG of the future.