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Original post by wodinoneeye You can use the model of the 'random encounter' scenarios used by old RPG systems where you have templates for the different interactions which in turn have a set of precanned possible outcomes which precipitate other encounters scenarios.

You know you give me a possible idea. I don't think I'm going to be able to have TONS of AI actors on the game board at any one time. But what I could be doing is spawning and moving event markers which resolve to actual actors if the player comes with in range of them. A pirate/merchant battle, for instance, might be a marker that I move from a space station to a jump point. If the player is nowhere near it then I resolve the situation with some abstract rules, fatten the pirate faction, and maybe log related missions or news events.

I'd also need to think about going the other way. Ships would need to compress to potential events. Merchants would obviously get pirates and such, but military escorts would get enemy units. So a call for help from merchants might not involve pirates when you got there, but a strike force looking to strategically raid the merchants after they killed the escorts.

It would require a kind of fog of war on the map, almost a magician's curtain behind which I could make things happen. And there'd probably be some roughness going back and forth such that if you resolved a marker to units, waited around, left for a bit and returned things probably wouldn't look exactly like if you'd waited around til the end.

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The interactions have results which themelves change the situation (and spread them across a map) and precipitate further reactions.

Yes. Keeping with the marker idea maybe there are also hidden zones of probability which can vary in size. Pirate attacks, for instance, might be a big invisible square inside an asteroid belt. Convoy markers wander through the zones and trigger possible pirate attacks and the zone enlarges with success until it starts encompassing formerly safe areas. Killing pirates reduces the zone.

So as a player you could actively participate in controlling zones of probability which in turn affect the health of the system. And technically the zones don't have to be invisible-- they could display on the player's map as "Frequent Pirate Attacks - Beware!" or whatever.

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Outside the immeduiate area the macro factions (galactic patrol, merchant guild,underworld later hear about the incident(s) and ajust their operations to compensate.

The highest level of this is probably resource values (something along the lines of "Police Power: 54, Pirate Power: 200") and contention logic. As you point out later there'd also need to be thresholds to clamp so that the whole thing doesn't go off kilter, say with pirates winning fights in every sector and filling the map with nothing but pirate bases.

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Its not a tree of scenario stages but a flatter pattern matching system to create scenario steps and decide consequences and further a local plot

Reminds me of the branching dialog in RPGs or event system for adventure games: If PIR001 "Pirate Victory" randomly choose either REV005 "Revenge Mission" or NEG200 "Negotiate with the Enemy Mission"

I hated QAing this kind of stuff but it's probably one of the easiest ways of doing this.

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The player may encounter this little continuum at any point and could change the results which precipitates further interactions. The player can decide what they want to do (effectively creating their own quest because when they get involed then there are repercussions for the actions they take).

Good point. At some point the player will probably become familiar enough with the range of patterns so that they do this on purpose. As long as it doesn't make the universe dull or look stupid, I think that's good.

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These interesting incidents would have to occur more frequently than you would expect (so that the player has a high chance of blundering in on it -- a boring well run universe doesnt amke a fun/interesting game).

This raises again something I posted about some weeks ago about spawning content in the player's path. I don't think I need to be that drastic (I actually hated this in Freelancer because you couldn't sneak anywhere) but I think I have to decide on a balance-- is it my job to generate events near the player so that they are more likely to take part or show them where they're happening so that they can be responsible for getting to them. The latter takes the philosophy that if you wander aimlessly bored and ignore the flags, it's your own damn fault.

Thanks for the great points.

We had discussions here a few years ago about auto-quest generation for MMORPG and some of the ideas were to have the game world shift somewhat depending on player actions (easier to self balance if players are in opposing factions).

Spawns would shift locations and content as Spheres of Influence shifted in the macro game (boundry, frontiers, core strength areas as concentric zones around faction objects which could shift position and radius (and bump into each other and pushback or move in to fill a void).

Influence mapping could be done for the map (slowly or precipitated by significant actions) with those overlapping influences being the context for the possible scenarios and magnitudes of reactions. Attack a faction on the border where is hold is weak and the risked assests are minor gets an appropriate response, versus attack a faction's core and it throws its maximum assets at the opponent because its power base is threatened... Some areas are held in contention by several factions and other areas by noone. Some factions are just small anomolies others extend great power over large areas.


For an MMORPG there could be game masters who fixed a game world when it got too far out of kilter (because the auto-balancing failed) but on a single player game that couldnt work. Alot of effort would go to 'self righting' patterns
which would always eventually force a rebalancing (ex - one faction gets too strong and beats the crap out of all the others (enabled by the players actions???) which once the faction's size goes past a threshold (or fuzzy threshold) the faction begins to disintergrate due to personality conflicts and shatters into a bunch of new factions -- restarting the cycle.

Similar things happen economically as a high profit niche is destroyed by entrepreneurs swarming to take advantage but they then leave other
markets to be underserved causing them to become opportunities.


The more the player tries to cause a high profit monopoly situtaion, the more rabid NPCs descend (after a while)on the locality to try to make a quick buck - the trends are transitory with normalcy returning -- with the player usually having an opportunity for a short time.

The reactions/behavior adjustments for the NPC situational decision calculations are controlled by reaction charts which could be a escalation graph/function, where preference shifts increasingly (either to handle profit OR loss cases). The outputs of the function could be reactional possibilities which might simplify your AND/OR logic required to generate such modal responses.



One thing I remember from an old game 'Starflight' was the suprising situations you could be dropped into (one of those elements in 'good' games they talk about). The player might come upon something unexpectedly and it was up to them to follow up on it or ignore it (often having to run away from it). Weird things happened and eventually you run into some and you might search for it again but never find it.