ok...first off...it has been a LONG time since ive posted (hi i''m back!), so i am not up to date with all of the discussions that have happened lately...but this seems like a fairly obvious discussion, which may or may not have been discussed before. anyways... all of the rpgs(yes those again!) these days have the biggest baddest magic effects ive ever seen. to the point where i dont know what the heck is going on on screen. most of these have elemental qualities (fire, wind, water, blah blah blah...). so if summon up some "hurricane" effect, i think that there should be many more repercussions of this on the game world, instead of just killing the bad guy, and thats that. nothing else. now if i am strolling through the peaceful forest, encounter some monster, pull up my "hurricane" attack, i think that the world should be affected. ie: trees knocked down, floods, landslides, etc. now maybe i cant get to the next village due to the huge river of mud that i "accidentally" created using this spell. of course this could go away with time, but it would be a major downside to using your most powerful spells. another example. maybe i summon some sort of creature to battle another. my magic points, or stamina, or whatever go down past a certain point. i lose control of my summoned creature. oh crap. now he is loose. maybe he goes and ransacks the next village. so by the time that i get there, the place is in ruins. these are just 2 examples that i thought of right now, but if used right, this could bring much more strategy to simple games. in my opinion. give me yours. now. (please) -Luxury

I agree that it would be almost impossible to implement with a "totally" dynamic world...but maybe you could just narrow it down to areas, such as the peaceful forest. anywhere in that forest, if you use the wrong spell, then the will change that area. this is still not dynamic, and can be converted to scripted VERY easily. but now that i think about it some more, making it dynamic doesnt seem as hard to do as i once thought.

and i liked your post wav, about monster extortion . but one easy way to get around that would be that you can only summon one of each creature. if you lose control of it, and kill it, then you cant summon it again....its dead. sure somebody might go ahead and summon all of their creatures, and kill them right there. but then they cannot summon them for the rest of the game, where they might come in handy. and this probably deserves its own thread, because it has a lot of potential as well.

-Luxury

Ugh. Take a look at the rogue-like games. They have been doing this for years. You can tunnel through rock. You can create pits that drop you down a level. You can burn doors away.

The only thing that restricts the current crop of AAA titles is 1) they''d have to remember the effects which means storing more than the seed value for previous levels.

2) More icons (burnt trees, etc)

And most importantly:
3) It would allow players to work around the preplanned story.

Can''t get through locked door X? Why not a passwall spell? It''s been a staple in pen and paper magic systems for a while. No more hunting for the particular key for that wizard!

Even ignoring a more dynamic world as you described, which would be the next logical outcome, one that would require some significant progress is the NPC area, simple environmental effects would not be tough. But having a one-dimensional game (linear plot, monsters are only for killing, spells only cause damage or temporarily modify stats, etc) is *easy* to design and *easy* to balance, and *easy* on the player. And it''s profitable.

All that said, I agree with your sentiments.

The only problem with a dynamic world in a programming sense is what to do with the on-screen things. You see, the maps you walk through talk TONS of hours to paint. Any changes usually mean a DIFFERENT map is displayed, with the changes applied to it. The program doesn''t to the changes, merely it changes what it''s displaying.

Now, i would LOVE to make a world in which every object is real. But think about how much processing power just running your room would take! I mean, you''re talking about everything having stats.. everything having defined shape.. etc. You could do it, it would just take a long time.

One thing annony (landfish) forgot to mention was that pen and paper wasn''t played on computer. And any games like that where you can change the scenery were primarily text-based games. No graphical game has ever done something on that scale due to resources.

It''s true, you could do it. But you''d have to have a math model for it first. When they cast hurricane, how does it work, exactly? They''d have to be near water, since hurricanes only exist on the ocean and they move up into land. Depending on the strength of the wizard you''d have a more or less powerful hurricane. The force of the hurricane would detemine it''s destructive area. I mean, the hurricane can''t just appear from thin air. It would rise up from the sea, and take time to accumulate, and then move to the wizard''s location. It would destroy anything in it''s path to the wizard, and if the wizard did not make it dissipate there, it would continue making a path of destruction.
For some reason, i picture a wizard outside an orc stronghold, chanting up this hurricane to come bowl over the orcs. I mean, the wizard''s not into gold or anything.. hehe. Let other people search through the wreckage.

However, spells of this power make you wonder.. should you be able to cast this at will? I think not. If anyone could cast magic like this at will, you''d have like titanic-level duels between mages. So you''ve got to find a way to counter-balance it. Perhaps a mage can call up a spell like this once every month. I particularly like how D&D handled priest spells.. their god grants them the use of the spell.. and the god is the one who actually makes the spell happen. I see this system as being a little more validated than the "memorize spells and cast em at will" kinda thing. Also, it makes a much more interesting story line.. having to visit the oracle of your god to ask for his favor to cast this great spell. I sense a roleplaying opportunity!

J

hehe..i like that idea about the hurricane destroying everything between the wizard and the ocean, and then whatever else he was aiming at. haha.
taking this thought further...because you are summoning up all of the moisture, clouds, winds, etc...and i believe that hurricanes are low points on the barametric scale(am i right?). then this creates a high point somewhere else, so maybe another section somewhere complete else, like say a swamp, becomes where the high points are, and the climate changes. instead of raining or whatever it becomes hot and dry, drying up some of the swamps, and possibly creating a new path open to the player.

the point is, if you have all of this power...it would make you think twice about using it. sure it will have its positive affects...but also its negative. the point is is that magic is very unpredicable (or it should be)
as far as linear/non-linear goes...the way it is implemented could go either way.

-Luxury