This was inspired by another thread posted earlier this week, I believe, in an idea was proposed of enemies tracking you down by communication to NPC''s who may have seen you, etc. I''d like to expand upon that idea and change the context. What I''m proposing sounds like it could be a great game, if done correctly, but I''d like your guys feedback on it. Now. What I am thinking of is game in which you''re a bounty hunter, (or hitman), who is assigned various missions to track down and assassinate/collect money/what have you, from various targetted persons in the game. What would make this interesting is you have absolutely no idea where the target could be in the huge world. As a bounty hunter, you would need every resource in tracking the person down.. Here''s where the NPC communication comes in to play.. For vision''s sake, let''s pretend we''re in a setting similar to the sprawling city Corascent (sp?) from Episode: 2. You start off at a random position in the city, with little knowledge on the target other than physical attributes, a name, and maybe some other small information. You would have to rely on visiting hot spot areas, bars, clubs, high-crime areas, criminal "hangouts", prisons, or even the bare streets to get information. You can talk to any NPC in the world, trade information, maybe even force it out of the person. NPC''s would have somewhat of a rank based system, in which normal civilians would usually no nothing of the target, but someone like the bartender of a popular bar for rebels/criminals might have some info to share.. This information could lead you to other persons, other places, other events, so on and so forth. The key to the system would be complete non-linearity. The game would avoid a linear, or fabricated, method to complete each mission. This game idea could even be applied to an environment like GTA3''s. Imagine walking in the streets of a large fictional city, in which everything is at your disposal...weapons, vehicles, money.. But there would be no little radar on the bottom of the screen with purple dots indicating exactly where to go. It would be your job to find the target on your own. The possibilities could be endless. Say you get assigned a mission from some monopolistic corporation which would like to see a certain someone killed for knowing too much (this is a rough mission idea, just an example). They tell you the target''s name is ''Janon Kwinon'', is a somewhat beefy man with several unique attributes, and maybe even a last seen location. Thus, you begin your quest to find this guy. You start off, working your way through the lower depths of the city, seeing what information you can dig up. Maybe some of the airborn taxi-drivers have some details.. maybe he offers you the name of a joint known for its diverse underground clients.. so you find this place, and start scouting out the guys in there.. This situation could lead you from one place to the next, until you finally find your target. To add spice, NPC''s who may know the target, or be weary of you, could inform other NPC''s that you''re on the look out for you.. the next time you park your speeder, you could get attacked by a gang of guys who don''t want you messing in on their business.. Done effectively, I can see a game like this being countless hours of fun. Since there is no set way to accomplish anything, and its not guarunteed that you can beat every mission that comes along, there would never be any repetition. If you approach a mission in the completely wrong manner, you could simply go on a wild goose hunt, never finding the right info. On the other hand, if you succeed in your mission, there could perhaps be a "skill" factor, in which the more missions you complete, the better you are at getting info from people, and the more complex the missions get. Another possibility: random mission generators. Names, dates, descriptions, and a background story, could all be generated for your targets. This way, no game is ever played the same by any person. And since the city is constantly moving and going on and about, chances are, you''ll never see the same people twice (unless of course they work at a specific area). Anyway, this all sounds pretty complex and sort of daunting, but I think it could be done. I''d like some of your opinions, suggestions, or critiques on this proposal.

Interesting idea - could be good if done well. This kind of non-linerarity is always nice, and the idea of the player acting as a bounty hunter is a good use for a non-linear system. The whole idea of tracking, gathering clues, etc would probably appeal to a lot of players - presuming it worked. In practical terms this level of non-lineararity would be difficult to maintain and balance - you're talking some pretty hefty AI, emergence and system dynamics.

There was a very interesting discussion a while back on the AI board dealing with a dynamic gossip spreading system for NPCs - potentially very useful for this type of game. Imagine a scenario (I think you mentioned this above) where word gets back to the subject that the player is on his trail - subject promptly disappears. Or perhaps the subject has powerful allies - allies the player doesn't want on his back. The player would have to be very careful who he talked to.

Definetely has potential. Also suited to many different settings - would be just as much fun in a sci-fi, modern or fantsay setting. Almost any kind of world/background could be used.

[edited by - NeverSayDie on June 12, 2002 6:16:22 AM]

Another good point about this type of game - almost by definition it''s suited to gameplay combining a nice mixture of action/combat and character interaction. This is something many players appear to consider an important feature - they want some combat but they also want more intellectual/story-based non-combat elements.

A bounty hunter game with this kind of depth would obviously have a lot of character interaction and puzzle type work - looking for clues, tracking, etc. There would also of course be various combat stages - capturing the subject, interference from subject''s allies, local law enforcement, punters who don''t like your questions, etc.

Assuming the game is as non-linear as you describe, the player will have a large element of choice over the level of action they want. Ultimately they have to capture/kill their subject, but how they achieve this is up to them, as the only fixed goal is locating the subject - how they acquire this information is ultimately irrelevant.

This level of tactical choice should be a good selling point for a lot of players.

hi....heres my humble opinion....

what you suggest sounds good but its not really a game idea in its own right. its more of a component (or way of thinking) that can be integrated into a more detailed game idea.

theres nothing to say that it will neccessarily lead to a great game - for example it opens up the possibility of constant backtracking between locations to gain information, and a game that is soley based on the gathering of information could get pretty tedious. as someone else stated, it would be more practical if combined with a seperate element such as action/combat etc. Since the information gathering would be weighted equally with these alternative areas, just as much attention must be paid to these. the system for information gathering you suggest is good though - it would certainly aid in immersing the player and help to provide continouity.

Dave

quote:

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In practical terms this level of non-lineararity would be difficult to maintain and balance - you''re talking some pretty hefty AI, emergence and system dynamics.

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Not if you design it really well. I think that 90-95% of the people in the city can be generated using a particle engine. Once the hitman has speaks with such a character, the game randomly determins (sp?) the knowledge of the character (can be based upon previous encounters, character type etc.). After that, copy the characters attributes to a new NPC, kill the particle and replace with the NPC. If the hitman speaks with the cracater again, it will have the previous experience (since he''s NPC). All the other people are still controled by the particle engine using very little resources. You only need AI for the important characters in the city and the particle people the hitman has spoken to before.

Sander Maréchal
[Lone Wolves Production][Articles][E-mail]

I like the idea very much. It has that "emmersive" factor.

Jobs would be readily avalable of course. Even the common bar master wants someone "taken care of". But to realy advance in ranking you would have to limit yourself to what jobs you take, and you would have to finnish them quickly and well. The faster you do that the more messages will be on your answering machine. Think "Driver". To get a rep. like Boba Fett has, you would have to do the little "Extras" like a video of the guy duying. In fact this should be a requirement. How else will the boss know you are telling the truth.(unless you choose the lie of course)

Instead of no map at all, how about the option to buy one. It would be accessable from the pause menu, and would help keep people from becoming fustrated. Of cource it might not be accurate, but that is the price for not driving around on your own.



Keep Shining

Ultimate Power Leads To Ultimate Corruption
(I can''''t remember who said that)

Why not have a map? Instead of big arrows saying "Go here next" it could have arrows pointing to places that you know, and that people have recently mentioned. This would decrease the player''s lostness feeling, and wouldn''t give away any important details. The player could even look at his map, select a location, and then a nice arrow would appear on the screen which would guide him there.

About the whole "directed" vs "non linear" thing... I can imagine what it would be like if the game was _too_ eager to help the player not get stuck. Someone might fire up the game to show his friend how cool the rocket launcher is, and after shooting things for ages, a policeman walks up and says "Don''t worry, I''m not going to arrest you. But just in case you wanted to know, there''s a criminal named XYZ and I think he''s standing right over there. I suggest you interrogate him".

Thing is, in a game like this, the player should know of some places where clues are always to be found. There could be some kind of super gossip king who will give information away at a price, so that even if the player is totally stuck, he can go to this guy and buy clues.

And.. stuff...

I have two thoughts on this idea;

1) Instead of the player character being a bounty hunter, the character could be a detective and this could be the basis for an entire massive detective game. Like someone else said, this could work in any genre; scifi, fantasy, modern. I agree with what others have said, ie the implementation would be daunting, which leads to...

2) Anyone who plays games has a 3d accelerated graphics card with a gpu that can process a bazillion calculations a second and has a big fat pipe out to the screen. For example right now I am running a 800x600 monitor at 16 bits per pixel, this thing is updated 75 times a second. Suppose we use an bitmap in video memory to represent the entire population of a city. 800*600 = 480,000 pixels. One npc = one pixel. Pixels on my machine hold 16 bits or a number from 0 to 180,00 (correct?) So if every pixel is a npc then there are 180,000 states it can be in. For example; state1-npc knows nothing about anything, state2-npc saw the subject in question, state3-npc saw the subject in question and doesn't care etc.... To expand you could set different bits to set the npcs attitude ie bit 15 is set to 1 so the npc is a gossip hound and tells everyone near him. So then you could leverage the massive speed and power of modern 3d cards to update your world image (bitmap) a couple of hundred times a second using every pixels attributes to effect and change its nieghbor. (Pixel Shaders?)

edit:

I'm not saying that the image of your npc would be the game map. What i'm getting at is you could use the image as a graphical representation of the data for your npcs and process and manipulate it using accelerated 3d hardware. then access that data when its time for an npc to appear on screen.

[edited by - nonnus29 on June 12, 2002 1:31:32 PM]

The whole thing sounds like a jumped up Carmen Sandiego to me...

But I like it. Gives a large roleplaying emphasis which is actually genuine, and not the usual pre generated linear stuff.

Game on...

I dont think the map should be a mini-map or something on screen, prehaps when you press M it brings up a screen-size map that can show the entire city. This city has all the regions labled, so that if your looking for a bar you should try the entertainment district or something. Therefore, the map doesnt tell you exactly where the bar is, but it does indicate the general area. So, you can hop into your speeder and head for the entertainment district, then when your there you can cruise around trying to find the particular bar.

you also should want the city to be dynamic, in that once you kill this target, it shouldnt respawn 10 mins later. So, each player has certain associations, such as factions, and when he is assasinated you can gain standing with the contractor''s faction, but lose standing with the target''s faction. By doing this, you can involve action elements, such as being hunted down by assasins of a faction which you have bad faction with.

The NPC''s should also have a constant number in the city, so that when you assasinate someone, although that exact person will not respawn, some random character should be generated within the city with or without a faction standing.

Also perhaps you should have competing bounter hunters, who compete for jobs, rather like the heros in Project Ego who have to compete each other for fame.

Just a brainstorming session a had....