>> But ok, we can ask ourselves, "I'm in a paleo holodeck program, what do I want to do?" Me, I'd probably want to find a place no one else was living and build myself a treehouse like Swiss Family Robinson. Then, maybe I could get an impressive fur cloak and make myself some colorful facepaint and put it on. Since you can't learn to do magic in this game, maybe I'd want to become a master of javelins or throwing knives (like the sling in Clan of the Cave Bear). For bonus points I could tame a pet raven or fox or something. Now I'm ready to meet other people, since I can look impressive and defend myself while doing so. I don't have aspirations of being a leader or collecting followers, so the point of meeting people would be to decide if I want to seduce any of them. I guess they might also have interesting information I could learn from them, but I'm not sure what that might be, since there's no magic, no mystery about the world's past or my personal past, no big bad guy trying to destroy the world, etc.

most helpful. gives me some insight as to how folks might play the game. needles to say, the game supports a wide variety of play styles.

well, i have huts, but no tree forts. might i interest you in slightly pre-owned cave or rock shelter? <g>. i was considering adding different types of clocks such as mammoth vs deer. mostly it would just affect value and graphics. no custom face paint - have't figured out how to make it easy enough for the player without a lot of trial and error. animal domestication is limited to dire wolf at the moment - although semi-tame pets like foxes and ravens are doable. no romance or mating yet, it may or may not make the v3.0 cut. it may wait for v3.1.

>> "no magic, no mystery about the world's past or my personal past, no big bad guy trying to destroy the world, etc."

yes. in that sense, the setting itself is somewhat "non-epic". OTOH, "Children of the Sea" is rather epic while being stone age and pretty realistic. same idea for "Clan of the Cave Bear". Perhaps as creators we're just spoiled. we're used to being able to use scifi and fantasy fiction, which always makes the epic and fantastic easier. however - there's no reason a plot reveal story engine as i described couldn't add those as gameplay options. nothing says the game can't support multiple gametypes - like regular vs hardcore mode in new vegas. so you could play either the open world simulation game, or one (or more) storyline driven campaign games. that is, assuming a plot point reveal engine is a viable concept. it might be time to start thinking about how to build one of those. i'd be very interested in your thoughts on the subject. specifically, what capabilities you as a writer would need in such a system.

Themeparks vs sandparks - I actually had written a blog entry about this last year, but it never got uploaded due to some bureaucratic confusion. So I uploaded it today, and thanks for the accidental reminder. :cool:
http://www.gamedev.net/blog/90/entry-2262015-mmo-spectrum-of-design-part-3-does-this-rollercoaster-have-sand/
tldr: A themepark is a linear or at most branching game structure with a precreated world, and is usually the most heavily story-based and NPC-populated type of game. Themeparks are like a guided tour that takes the player through a variety of adventures and challenges. A sandbox is the opposite, a generated world that usually lacks story and NPCs entirely, but instead allows the player to do things like altering the terrain and building houses which are not possible in the main world of a themepark (though some themeparks give the player a pocket space for their house). A sandpark is a hybrid of the two, combining precreated story content and the ability for the player to wander freely and alter the game world. There are different ways to accomplish this hybridization, such as by different geographic regions within the game or by putting the precreated content into the UI rather than the main game world or by allowing players to disrupt precreated content then repairing this disruption by respawning or moving the precreated content.

>> But ok, we can ask ourselves, "I'm in a paleo holodeck program, what do I want to do?" Me, I'd probably want to find a place no one else was living and build myself a treehouse like Swiss Family Robinson. Then, maybe I could get an impressive fur cloak and make myself some colorful facepaint and put it on. Since you can't learn to do magic in this game, maybe I'd want to become a master of javelins or throwing knives (like the sling in Clan of the Cave Bear). For bonus points I could tame a pet raven or fox or something. Now I'm ready to meet other people, since I can look impressive and defend myself while doing so. I don't have aspirations of being a leader or collecting followers, so the point of meeting people would be to decide if I want to seduce any of them. I guess they might also have interesting information I could learn from them, but I'm not sure what that might be, since there's no magic, no mystery about the world's past or my personal past, no big bad guy trying to destroy the world, etc.

most helpful. gives me some insight as to how folks might play the game. needles to say, the game supports a wide variety of play styles.

well, i have huts, but no tree forts. might i interest you in slightly pre-owned cave or rock shelter? <g>. i was considering adding different types of clocks such as mammoth vs deer. mostly it would just affect value and graphics. no custom face paint - have't figured out how to make it easy enough for the player without a lot of trial and error. animal domestication is limited to dire wolf at the moment - although semi-tame pets like foxes and ravens are doable. no romance or mating yet, it may or may not make the v3.0 cut. it may wait for v3.1.

>> "no magic, no mystery about the world's past or my personal past, no big bad guy trying to destroy the world, etc."

yes. in that sense, the setting itself is somewhat "non-epic". OTOH, "Children of the Sea" is rather epic while being stone age and pretty realistic. same idea for "Clan of the Cave Bear". Perhaps as creators we're just spoiled. we're used to being able to use scifi and fantasy fiction, which always makes the epic and fantastic easier. however - there's no reason a plot reveal story engine as i described couldn't add those as gameplay options. nothing says the game can't support multiple gametypes - like regular vs hardcore mode in new vegas. so you could play either the open world simulation game, or one (or more) storyline driven campaign games. that is, assuming a plot point reveal engine is a viable concept. it might be time to start thinking about how to build one of those. i'd be very interested in your thoughts on the subject. specifically, what capabilities you as a writer would need in such a system.

Here's how I would do facepaint: Create a library of geometric shapes, like squares, circles, spirals, zig-zags, stars, etc. The same way games that let players create a custom heraldic shield do. Now give the player a facepaint planning window which shows their character's face texture as the background. (Also, reuse the same system to paint cloak backs and maybe cave walls!) This should have a left-right mirrored mode that the player can turn off. Now allow the player to place shapes in any of the game's dye/paint color palette. Once the player is done, flatten the placed shapes (with Image Magick or whatever people are using instead these days) to make a new painted face texture. tell them they need to use up 1 unit of dye/paint for each color used. Dye/paint recipes should fit right into the regular crafting system.

As far as fantasy and sci-fi, I don't think it's being spoiled as much as it is a matter of taste - I personally just don't like realistic settings and mechanics as much as fantasy ones *shrug*. The audience which goes for historically accurate wargames and that kind of thing is a different group of people from the ones like me who like Final Fantasy and Skyrim, which is again a different group of people from those who want future games about soldiers with high-tech armor and laser rifles.

>> Here's how I would do facepaint:

hmm... make a little paint program, eh?

for player customization of graphics, i'l like to be able to do hair styles, different types of hides for clothes and gear, and custom pained graphics for tents, clothes, gear, cave paintings, painted hides, etc. IE the ability to custom decorate everything that makes sense. it not hard, just use a different or additional texture or mesh when drawing. i probably need a generic built-in tool that lets the player set textures and assign custom graphics to game objects.

but see then, if you want a giant elk cloak, you have to kill a giant elk, and the game has to track what kind of hide, tanned hide, and cloak it is. actually not hard. game objects have generic variables for such things. just set data[whatever] to the animal type when the hide is gathered, set it when the hide is tanned, and set it when the cloak is made from the tanned hide. use it to determine the hide texture to draw for the object (t = animal type. m = animaltype[t].modelID. texID = model[m].bodytex). add it in when you calculate the trade value (value += animaltype[t].hp or whatever). so what - five lines of code to add that feature?

i'm trying to stay away from custom mesh editing of faces, hair and such. but of course, as soon as i got skinned meshes going, my buddy suggested i should support multiple body styles (tall / short, stocky / lean, etc).

>> As far as fantasy and sci-fi, I don't think it's being spoiled as much as it is a matter of taste

there's probably a difference between "epic" and "fantastic". fantastic (compared to real life) is probably easier in a fantasy or sci-fi setting. "epic" may be more equally doable regardless of setting - it's more of a "plot" thing. i probably should have taken more writing classes in college. not much call for it in traditional engineering though. and i never dreamed i'd end up making games - i went to school to learn how to build fighter planes - not games! <g>. but i was always a gamer and designing games - even as a kid. so maybe it was my "Density". <g>.

>> Here's how I would do facepaint:

hmm... make a little paint program, eh?

for player customization of graphics, i'l like to be able to do hair styles, different types of hides for clothes and gear, and custom pained graphics for tents, clothes, gear, cave paintings, painted hides, etc. IE the ability to custom decorate everything that makes sense. it not hard, just use a different or additional texture or mesh when drawing. i probably need a generic built-in tool that lets the player set textures and assign custom graphics to game objects.

but see then, if you want a giant elk cloak, you have to kill a giant elk, and the game has to track what kind of hide, tanned hide, and cloak it is. actually not hard. game objects have generic variables for such things. just set data[whatever] to the animal type when the hide is gathered, set it when the hide is tanned, and set it when the cloak is made from the tanned hide. use it to determine the hide texture to draw for the object (t = animal type. m = animaltype[t].modelID. texID = model[m].bodytex). add it in when you calculate the trade value (value += animaltype[t].hp or whatever). so what - five lines of code to add that feature?

i'm trying to stay away from custom mesh editing of faces, hair and such. but of course, as soon as i got skinned meshes going, my buddy suggested i should support multiple body styles (tall / short, stocky / lean, etc).

>> As far as fantasy and sci-fi, I don't think it's being spoiled as much as it is a matter of taste

there's probably a difference between "epic" and "fantastic". fantastic (compared to real life) is probably easier in a fantasy or sci-fi setting. "epic" may be more equally doable regardless of setting - it's more of a "plot" thing. i probably should have taken more writing classes in college. not much call for it in traditional engineering though. and i never dreamed i'd end up making games - i went to school to learn how to build fighter planes - not games! <g>. but i was always a gamer and designing games - even as a kid. so maybe it was my "Density". <g>.

Yeah, a little paint program. The Rock Band series of games has a tattoo editor that works slightly differently if you want a more 3D approach. They didn't design it very well - at least in rock band 2 the way colors are applied procedurally to tattoos, hair, clothing, and instruments is quite inconsistent and makes it very hard to create matching outfits. I'm not sure if it improved in 3 or 4. But the same system, thought out well before application, would work fine for color and texture customizations of items in any 3D game. It could also be used by the designer to do recolors of trees and animals and stuff. (In my holodeck adventure I totally want to find that one white mammoth or tiger or whatever and use the fur for something decorative.)

And I agree that epic and fantastic are different. I'm not sure epic is related to plot, though I guess epic and dramatic are concepts that usually go together, and drama is a plot thing. But I've seen epic described in terms of scope. Like, Skyrim is epic because you have one person changing basically a whole continent, as well as becoming richer than kings, seeing places that no one has seen in a thousand years, killing dragons 20x your size, exterminating whole species... The contrast in scope between the individual and the setting/actions is where the idea of epicness comes from, probably. I'm actually surprised it didn't do more with recognizing your kill count by species, like Spore did. But maybe that would have distracted from what they wanted to focus on.

>> But I've seen epic described in terms of scope.

i haven't looked it up in a dictionary yet. but i'm coming to the conclusion that epic = BIG.