humm.. Naz, you raise an interesting point, one that people have been trying to grasp for a long time when it comes to RPGs, i think. The real problem is that you can''t make a true virtual world yet. You have to program in all possibilities ahead of time. The concept of making solutions that you haven''t thought of ahead of time possible has existed forever with computer games. However, lack of neuro network capablity has stunted that area of gaming
What I think is best to do is have a large puzzle development team.. with all people working seperately or in small groups to make a puzzle. Once done, you pass the puzzles around in the teams, till all teams have handled all puzzles, and thought of different solutions to them. This way you get a large enough group.. and you''ve got all possible solutions covered. That is the tactic i plan on utilizing until i find a way to make other things a reality.
I think the best way to plan for simple by-passes is to simply make the world as realistic as you can. Everything in the world is real, touchable.. not just a simple still figure. If someone should marr a tree, and carve their name into it "Billy loves Jane" or some such.. it should stay that way. Anything that''s in the text of a text-based game should be real.. "A babbling brook gives an air of peace to this area".. look brook.. "what the hell are you talking about, there''s no brook here!"
Point should be well made there. I''m also working on a random room generation system, based on an overall mapping of an area.. which will allow people to wonder off the beaten path. My goal is to make hunting more realistic, and rangers more useful. Who would want to wonder off if they might never get back? It''ll also incorporate a real distancing system, so that you can wonder as far from the path as you want, and still be able to find your way back again (if you just go north.. then you''ll be able to just go south again). However.. elements such as direction sense will play a big role. If you walk straight north, you''re not always walking a straight line.. leading to you getting off course, without knowing.. hehe
There''s a lot more too it.. such as stumbling across the orc horde while wondering.. and accidently leading them back to town (oops!). Finding a nest of goblins.. hehe.. i plan on keeping a wall in my office (or home) with the world map on it. It''ll be like the big strategic maps that they have in war rooms.. lol. And there i''ll plan troop movements of certain races, and things that should happen within my game world, without the players even knowing. And once the orc population rises to a certain level, they might make a trek into town.. hehe. just some of my plans for ensuring the world is run more realistically than any others.

J

The biggest thing is that i''m working towards an MMORPG.. but it''d be much easier to impliment in a CRPG. The game could be taught to generate objects as needed.. and store them. That way if the player had TONS of room for a database, they could go around destroying forests.. hehe.

I''ve worked on trimming it down a LOT, since storing individual room sections in a database would be a large waste of time and space. What i''ve come up with is simply making a system which takes an input variable.. and generates a room based of that. This first simplistic generator would take in what type of room.. and then use a template to make a room corresponding to that.
To take it further, i''ve got variables for terrain, climate, and a terrain modifier. An example would be a forest in cool climate with rocks.. hehe. The terrain modifier could be nothing, or could be of the same type to make a more dense forest. If you have 10 types of terrain, that makes 100 room combinations, all modifiable by weather, say 5 of those.. 500 different room types all together. That way it merely takes what it needs and pieces it together to make the room It''ll take some work.. but, yeah.. you can do it.

J

***Going back to the original post*******

In chess there are one quest - kill the king :-)
and there are billions of ways to do that -
and the ways are easy to learn - but hard to master.

The ultima series are very close to do this.

Personally i think puzzles are the wrong way - but rather indirect requirements are the right way.

Imagine a game which are won when a dragoon are killed.
The dragoon is easy access able (no linear levels down to it - which even a lot of ''open'' games tend to make)
However the dragoon is tuff - and have tuff monsters around it.
The character development are open (aka ultima).
There are no puzzles and no sub quests.

Eventually the player will win by making a good mage/fighter/monk or create a strong group (ect ect).

Rather that making fun puzzles - developer should make fun features, good environment and make character development fun.

just my 5 cent.