You shouldn''t worry too much about the graphics, whatever the resolution and colors, if the artist is skilled, he can make the message go through. I still remembe doing some very nice graphics for the HP48 calculator (132*64 B&W) for a zelda type game, and I was quite amazed by my work. It''s like your brain can see details and colors where there are only a bunch of black dots. Of course, you have to have a good artist. Crappy graphics will just kill a game. But don''t assume that good graphics are done with more resources, they just need a good artist.

After all, do you see a lot of pictures in books, or pen and paper RPG ? And yet, these are by far the more "entertaining" experiences I have (well, ok, sex is better )

youpla :-P

I think that it is a combination. You need the atmosphere of the art in visuals, sound and gameplay. They are inter-connected. I really like the idea that you need to balance each of these elements, and they need to play on each other. This is something that I don''t believe most beginners consider. A game is not just a bit of graphics chucked in with some sound and maybe a bit of gameplay... It is a combination of graphics mixing with sound to create an ''air'', and to have this ''air'' mixing with the gameplay to create the art of a game. Otherwise it is just a piece of hacked code, with someones graphics and someone elses (not necessarily) sound..

Just my $(2*rant/100)

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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In reply to your news spreading idea the easiest way to do this IMHO is to have each person remember a certain amount of news (do we hear linked list?) about stuff that happened in town and around, then whenever they contact another person they "chit chat" for a bit and for every minute or so (game time) they exchange one piece of news between each other etc, maybe longer, meybe shorter. that way news slowly spreads through town etc, although people can run screaming the message across town if the player did something ridiculous like kill a guard....

Also this way other news items, esp about the players current achievements will be noted, like I ahted in RPG''s where you did all this stuff (like get a legendary sword that noone else was able to get) and no one in town even cares? You''d think that your character would be in the history books eh? I mean it wouldn''t happen once you picked up the sword or weapon, but once you showed it in town the it would start spreading... that way there''d be new and interesting conversations occuring every time that the player went into town...

You could also beef this up somewhat by addin g idle chit chatter, gossip, and wild rumours from other towns etc.. Also by a local news paper and other things like etye witness accounts etc. This would add a wide array of depth to the game .... bit raving on there ... sorry

And with respect to the evil-good dr. jeckyl hide thing with the pc you could make the human, ork, goblin whatever models similar then define a certain number of key points in the model, that are merged with respect to other models over time, depending on how many of that tpe of monster the player kills. or in other methods you could just sometimes in dream time exchange humans for monsters as was stated above.

Another thing that I was thinking is to blur the lines betweena dream and reality, i.e. the player does not know which one he is acting in, i.e. he starts playing, goes to sleep (to recover health no doubt) then when he wakes up, healed, somewhat different looking architecture / night time? esp good in the forrest the character could be playing their alternate "persona" or a dream? then net time the character falls asleep they could wakre up back to normal etc, this way when after a few random sleeps the character could not know if they are in a dream state or not, and hopefully they will be in a wierd paranoid sleepless state, aka (one dodgy sliders epidode with some wierd assed goggles?) where the ppl could not tell that they were in virtual reality / dream state or normal reality.

This would be good especially if the characters thought that they were going on with the rest of their quest only to realise that they are still asleep, or something, (damage would be real etc), and then when they try and go to sleep they do, but wake up still in the dream... there are plenty of ideas like this, and if done right I hope it will win game of the year (why halflife?).. well enough of my blathering speech...

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au

These are some very interesting points that you add, but I was thinking about extending your ''gossiping'' idea further. This basically means that information is changed as more gossip goes around. The correct explanation for it is ''Chinese Whispers'' (ever played it?) where the further the information goes, the more different it becomes from the original. This is due to information loss, and replacement. You just have to send the topic through a function that picks out key words. Then, the key words are fed through with the recieving NPC''s knowledge, then you can substitute certain things. This can add to a great variety of gossips. I don''t know how difficult it would be to implement though.... Hmmmm

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
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made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

yeah well originally I was thinking of using pointers to specific news events that are combinatiopns of flags ertc, that could be too limited, but the thing is that the npc''s and etc must be able to "understand" what and who they are talking about. I mean the chinese whispers idea is a good one, possibly with the flag idea (i.e. bit flags etc) you could randomly modify one bit or so? depending oh how they were arranged this could be a good thing, saying for instance that "this guy x killed y goblins" gets changed to "this guy x killed y * 2 goblins" etc (sorry Landfish...) on the other hand it mihgt actually lead to things like "this guy x rescued a girl" to "this guy x killed the girl and sided with the evil dictator wizard"... I guess you''d jsut have to ensure that you pick out the key points where things could be changed, and in what direction, i.e. gossip usually increases the number of monsters that you killed etc.

But the gossiping should only be used from heresay, I mean if the palyer killed 1 guard then when the news gets told, on wanted poisters etc all over the town ppl aren''t gonna start speaking that he killed a whole army etc...

Oh well I''ts early in th morning here, slap me if I''m raving on...again

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au