I've got an interesting set of problems that come from one source: In 99% of all the RPGs out there, you can pick your character, but not the world; and in just about the same percentage, the game world never changes. But what if it did? What if, as a result of your actions along major plot lines, the world changed in ways that caused gameplay to temporarily disappear or become essentially duplicated as the world's tech level progressed. To really understand what I'm asking, think about being an immortal who sees history change over a long time (how isn't important, but if you've seen my other posts about quantum AI/lifetimes/etc. you'll know what I mean). Assuming the game to be broken up into multiple eras, if you were to, say, start (or fail to stop) a war that destroys society in one era, you could be left playing in the ruins in the next. Or, if you cause (or fail to prevent) the society's expansion into space, the gameplay of trading / fighting by aircraft would be duplicated into now trading / fighting by starship, only with different limits and rules. (You don't need to read this whole huge post to respond, btw, I've just provided specific examples below. Sorry for the length![rolleyes]) Basics Everywhere you go, your main focus is on survival and leveling in order to change the game world (for story or your own goals). You accomplish leveling by sneaking, fighting or bartering your way through different environments, either as a person or in some kind of vehicle (ATV, VTOL aircraft, starfighter, tricycle, whatever). You may get into other gameplay (if I can fit it in), in the form of item creation or leading a group of followers, but the focus, again and again, is "combat, stealth, trade." Era 1: Nanopunk Earth, The Arcology Setting: Earth is a mix between ruins, wilderness and sprawling, sealed arcologies with buildings extending into orbit. We've expanded as far as a few colonies on Mars, and are actively colonizing near-earth orbits (L4, L5) and the moon. Gameplay: You're a citizen in one of these arcologies. You're trying to survive by doing various jobs that involve running around on foot or via transit tubes. To get money for enhancements and RNA skill boosts, you work for various employers against their rivals, which possibly gets you into industrial espionage, dangerous courier work, item creation / selling, or outright crime. You may meet NPCs to ally with, who generate story events; you may also get into minigame gameplay involving hacking, item creation or repair. Transition: When you get enough money, you'll be able to either safely go lower (into the dangerous, rebellious areas of the city); outside (into post-apocalyptic ruins); or up (into space and the colonies) Earth Variant 1: Outside Here there are ruins of modern-day cities, tribal factions, biomech constructs, and storms of corrosive nanobot clouds. New Gameplay: Atmospheric vehicles, starting with weak ATVs and progressing to VTOL aircraft; you also gain the ability to build temporary basecamps to help expand. Earth Variant 2: Down To survive in the lower regions requires good hardware, as you face cultists (using nano for mindcontrol), seditionists and crime gangs. Additional Gameplay: Take over critical resource areas; (abstractly) command or destroy a cult, rebel movement or syndicate, which creates changes in the tower above. Earth Variant 3: Up To survive in the upper regions requires that you start an enterprise, in the form of a top-tower business or starship serving the colonies (starships are huge and expensive in this era). This requires getting connected with the right people, getting parts / equipment you need, and getting financed. Additional Gameplay: Intrigue against rivals; (abstractly) win against other businesses for control of a market; command large, slow freighter or warship (think 2001). Now let's say that you spend a week or two doing this, and then your character naturally progresses to the next era. Era 2: Wormhole Artifact Setting: Earth is just one stop among dozens of new colonies. The game opens with a probe discovering an artifact in the Oort Cloud, which in turn activates an ancient network of wormholes leading away from Earth. Depending on how you ended the last era, the solar system is either unified or balkanized into states; it may be at war, or in expansion. Earth is either: 1) A tyranny (opposed by free colonies if balkanized) 2) An ignored backwater (with colonies fighting eath other if balkanized) 3) A strong republic (trying to control rebellious colonies if balkanized) Each outcome will depend on how you dealt with factions in Earth's towers, any plots you uncovered, and other freeform moves you may have made (like cornering the market on nanotechnology licenses). Gameplay: You start as a citizen of one of the colonies. Gameplay is similar to the towers, but the items, factions, story-threads and environment are different. Gaining a personal shuttle is like obtaining an ATV, and longer range starships like the upgrade to VTOL aircraft back on Earth. FTL hasn't been discovered yet. Transition: A story-thread involving which human power controls the wormhole governs the next era. The era ends with the first human starship transiting the wormhole, caused by either you or NPC rivals in the game world. Variants... If you expanded a colony and beat out its rivals, your colony becomes the first to the other side; if you've explored space, you'll find ruins and technology which will help humankind deal with threats on the other side; if you've gone back to Earth, you've either set the human race back or again affected whether it is a mighty empire or republic. All of these decisions determine how the human race survives in successive eras, whether it collapses into scattered stellar colonies, how it fares in First Contact (slaves? oppressors? allies? enemies?), etc. Final Thought I know this is a lot of material to cover, and I also admit it may not turn out to be nearly as flexible as I'm proposing, but if possible I'd like you to focus on what your feelings might be in terms of changing the world but seeing the same gameplay, just in different contexts; or losing gameplay because the technology level no longer supports it. In the different eras, you'll be seeing similar graphics (though some procedural texturing and modeling may be able to break things up a bit). Eventually, you'll start seeing similar patterns in story threads, as well. Also, please note that as the tech levels change, the numbers behind the stats will change. This may change combat, stealth or trade, but (by necessity) it will still be the same system underneath.

Quote:Original post by toipot
Sounds wonderful, I am the sworn enemy of script in games, and such a dynamic system is really appealing to me.

I know how you feel. Methinks you and I may have hit one too many floor triggers. [grin]

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However, you would have to ensure ... that any overall plot lines (which I hope are not scripted!) are not affected, or are flexible enough to compensate.

You know, this gives me a interesting (but dangerous) thought. I've been thinking of making plot lines based on "plot objects." For instance, the thing that opens up access to other stars is an artifact object.

So what if you play long enough to get out of the tower, get into space, fight a few wars, expand out past Pluto, discover this thing, open up doorways to tons of different star systems... and then it is destroyed.

Slower-than-light transport now becomes the only viable form of interstellar travel. You're stuck in the solar system.

The same thing might happen if toppling a tower is a plot possibility: You'd get stuck on a post-apocalyptic Earth. Rebuilding would always be possible, but it might take forever.

Now if this happened in most games, you'd just reload. But I'm designing around the idea that it is critical that you not be able to restore the world state. So you might lose access to gameplay for what would practically be a very very long time.

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The game world would have to develop on it's own, without your interaction, and just watching that would be fascinating for me.

Imagine if each time you started the game (in era 1) if you left the computer running for a few days, you would be looking at a completely different universe that in a previous game.

Wars, famines and other pseudo-random events would all take their toll on the environment and society and cause the history of the universe to take a completely different direction.

Unfortunately, while it's tempting to think of a pure world-sim behind everything, gameplay and technology are limits. I can see getting past some of the tech limits, but gameplay I don't. What if the sim develops to the point where everyone becomes your enemy, or warfare destroys the entire playing area? Since these events are outside your control, you will likely feel victimized (most would, because we demand that games be fair).

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I do think its important that things are beyond the player's control, the player shouldnt be all powerful, capable of completely rewriting history as they see fit, but neither should the history be static and scripted.

Ah, but wait a sec: What if, based on the plot, you were a pawn whose job it was to affect the course of history (versus other pawns?) That's the story premise, that you and other immortals are fighting it out for control of humanity's future.

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Again, these things should not be scripted, but be a natural progression of the state of the universe, and almost totally unavoidable by the player, who may even see it coming, but be helpless to stop it.

This issue came up time and again with a friend: What if you've spent weeks leveling up, have a high amount of investment in your character and stop at a city that experiences a nuclear attack. You die instantly.

I think most people would be severely ticked off, especially if they couldn't reload. So while I do want a wide range of possibilities in any given era, they must be clamped for gameplay reasons.

Quote:Original post by Spoonbender
Hmm, first, I have to ask, is this still the same game? Last I checked, it had the entire galaxy populated with countless alien species, and now, it's about Earth and a few colonies? Or was this just an example of how all this could work?)

Believe it or not, it all falls under one umbrella, but some of it will have to be scaled back. The focus has always been combat / stealth / trade, on the ground or in space, witha special emphasis on making NPCs extra-important. Since I think I have game mechanics that will let you experience several lifetimes, I'm free to start you on Earth, expand you to a few colonies, then get you into the Mobius Strip, a maze of wormholes connecting the galaxy. My hope is that you walk away with an epic experience, and will want to try to achieve different futures.

The drawback is that by focusing more on Earth, there won't be as much development for the aliens. Everything depends on content limits (graphics, writing, sound) for the most part, and I still don't have a clear picture of those limits yet.

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First, a few practical considerations.
1) Keep in mind how much wasted effort it would be. No matter what, the player always sees only one path through the game. The way the game changes based on your actions might only really become apparent if you play through the game again or compare notes with another player. I'm not saying it's a bad idea (It does sound damn cool), but keep in mind that the player will only actually experience a tiny slice of the content you create.

Would it help to build the entire game's premise around the idea that there are multiple futures, multiple "timelines" as it were?

Also, since I'm trying to hybrid a civ-like empire game and RPG, let me ask this: Why does the player only see one path? I've played Civ games where I've ended up with the Zulus conquering the world, or with a nuclear wasteland all over the globe; IOW, I've played multiple times.

The shift in scale to RPG only matters if each epoch is extremely long. So you could take 2 weeks, experience the lower tower, find out that you don't like it; take another two weeks, get into space, find out you love it, etc.

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2) To keep it manageable, maybe you should consider letting the universe and storyline evolve like you said, but try to hold back on the gameplay bits. (In your example as I understand it, you'd basically have to implement 3 different genres, just for one era. There are two problems with this. First, it's a huge extra load of work, and second, not all of these genres might appeal to the player. It might be better to focus your game a bit more, so the gameplay belongs to (roughly) the same genre, whether you decide to go outside, up or down. If a player occasionally have to play both Simcity, Halo and Warcraft, all in one game, that might put him off the game entirely, simply because only one of those genres actually interests him.

Definitely nix the idea of Simcity or Warcraft, that's not where I'm going despite the implications. That can't be done because of the AI and content overhead.

However, what CAN be done is the semblance of greater control (as SimCity and Warcraft suggest) via NPC interaction. Take Morrowind as an example: You are given choices in how to build a town, after performing missions. But that DOES NOT mean that you're playing SimCity.

Where I do want to take this is: Control some sort of avatar, be he walking, driving or flying, with stats (like stealth visibility) as factors to consider. That, I hope, is more manageable, and should provide a wide variety of gameplay, especially when the era changes.

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Other than that, it sounds like a brilliant idea, and I'd love to see it in action. As was said above though, don't let the player become all-powerful, singlehandedly determining the fate of the universe.

[smile] Okay, since this is the second time this has come up (along with the post above), I'd better ask: Given that the game is about going from lifetime to lifetime, what's wrong with becoming all-powerful in a single lifetime? Imagine that you become some sort of Alexander the Great, with the battles and management decisions stripped down into NPC interactions and plots by the court. The gameplay hasn't really changed since you were a peon, but the context has. Is that bad?

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I'd like to see things happening behind the scenes, powerful factions that each try to tip the balance with or without the player. Maybe it might not even be obvious to the player at the time, that his actions will actually have a long-term effect. (You might just think that you're trying to escape imprisonment, but in fact, you're determining whether the regime trying to imprison you should continue to exist. If they capture you, you might be able to spark a rebellion from the inside. If you escape, you might just run off and leave it all alone. (or the other way around, of course)
Or maybe you just decide to try a bit of smuggling, without knowing that if you succeed, you might actually lay the foundation for a powerful smuggling ring, or even a mafia that will eventually become extremely powerful (probably after you've left the scene though ;))

Yes, this is what I'd like to see as well. As I mentioned, though, the danger is that you could tip the balance in a direction that you couldn't perceive and thus may not like.

Maybe I should put in an "parallel universe" mechanism that mixes things up if you really don't like the world you've caused.

Quote:Original post by toipot
Hehe, find a mysterious wormhole device, pop through to have a look around, and find out you cant get back, as a war has destroyed it on the other side, earth is lost to you until FTL is developed. Now thats an adaptable storyline.

See, this sounds cool, but what about all the stuff you might be leaving behind?

Imagine that you had been building up status, rank and money fighting off pirates who were trying to bring down a colony on Mars, smuggling supplies past Jovian tyrants to Europa, and maybe even putting together enough cash for a base in Mimas.

Now you hit find this wormhole artifact, go through, and are cut off. Wouldn't you be ticked at this possibility? Sure, there might be new worlds to explore and alien races to contact, but the game has just nerfed all your progress, hasn't it?

(Or would wild new possibilities and surprises outweigh being "deleveled?")

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This idea of plot objects is quite neat, by this do you mean scripted objects of relevance to the plot, but which can be altered or destroyed while the gameplay remains?. Taking morrowind for another example, when you killed a plot character in the game, a message comes up stating that you have doomed the world by severing the thread of prophesy or something like that, in effect removing the main plotline. Having these adaptable plot objects may be a useful mechanism for avoiding such a problem, the plot would be very loosely constrained.

I'm hoping to make the plot objects adaptable, as you say, by liking story threads, triggers and dialog to their states. So if you destroy the wormhole object, there are a set of states that go with that.

As I said before, though, it has to be clamped, or you could run into boring or impossible situations (like setting off antimatter bombs that destroy the Earth when that's the only playing field).

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Cutting down on reloads is good, are you trying to cut down on player deaths etc? All these things abruptly end the gameplay experience, damaging the sense of immersion.

I'm working hard to make this idea of being some sort of spirit / energy consciousness that inhabits multiple lives workable. What I don't know is how much to soften up deadly situations, like combat or falling or walking out on the surface of Mars without a helmet. Above all, I don't want death to end the game, but I don't want you to be happy-go-lucky about suiciding, either.

I'm actually planning another thread around this subject. [lol]

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A total world sim would be difficult, I see what you mean. A constrained system would be important, but I think given our current state of technology, a good economy and faction simulation should do the job, with factions competing with each other for a larger slice of the economy.

Hmmm... you know, reminds me of the quote, "All wars are economic."

The one challenge with focusing things on the economy is that you have to hide a certain amount of detail from the player, or they will be able to game the system. I'm working from the pessimistic assumption that I won't have access to first rate game AI, and so will have to make up the loss in gameplay.

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Should the player character come to an arrangement where they are not well liked, they should be able to worm themselves out of it.

Let's say you set off a nuke against a rich, powerful nation. It seems right that you'll be playing the rest of the game running for your life. But the whole multiple lives thing is the ultimate stopgap. If you're caught and executed, you just restart further down the timeline, with the added advantage that if you buried any caches of wealth or equipment, you can go find them and dig them up-- provided the tech level allows this.

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Taking from the parallel universe idea, perhaps the PC could just jump into a remote system (outside this mobius strip?) with it's own generated factions, economies etc where the player would be able to effectively start from scratch (albeit, with any assets the player brought with them). The generation of a new, sufficiently large area would be tough but certainly not impossible.

Well, I'm pinning everything on mixes between procedural generation and hand-created content-- that's the only way to give you multiple worlds, let alone solar systems. While you will inevitably being to notice patterns (A is at war with B over X, which can be changed by Y), my hope is that by the time you see them you'll be engaged in a larger metagame, which is worldbuilding across lifetimes.

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Like some sort of God sim? but with a difference? Trouble is, if you can do anything to the universe, you may stop feeling a part of it. Think of black and white (an extreme example), there is emotional seperation from the world. Making the player feel a little bit more vunerable and powerless against the great forces of the world would, IMO, increase the immersion in a game, and make the universe more believable.

I see what you mean. Let me clarify: You're always going to be a mortal (in a rotting suit of flesh, as one of your rivals will be saying). You'll always be opposed by nemesis NPCs, who are initiating Big Brother plots to change the world (though you can keep your head down and just suffer the changes they make); and you will always be limited in what powers you can exercise, because the world is made up of strategic nodes. So you'll have limits, still be vulnerable, yet eventually have the power to raze or raise cities.

Quote:Original post by Jojosh_the_Pi
Dynamic plots sound great in theory, but there're reasons why 99% of RPG's use a linear plot. Probably the biggest one is time. Everytime the player has another option, the game creator has to have some way to handle this. If a player's actions can cause a city to prosper, stagnate, or be destroyed, that means additional resources to develop people, conversation, and graphics to handle them.

Good point. The question here is whether or not you should put time and effort into making a bunch of different places, or making a few places that can change a bunch of different ways. It really is a toss up. Over and over I hear players of RPGs disenchanted because they cannot affect the world. My gamble here is that having a few places that can change dramatically, along with some procedural tricks to vary dialog and graphics, will compensate for not having a bazillion unique locations.

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In addition, the player only gets to see a percentage of the (hopefully) awesome work! Will most players be willing to play many times to see the "rest" of the game? That's a question I can't answer; being out of school, my time is diminished, and I'll play an RPG only once, but I recognize others are not the same.

Actually, I strongly agree with you here, but maybe for a different reason. I have limited time as well, but will replay an Alpha Centauri or Civ over weeks (in bite sized chunks) because I don't know how the game will turn out.

Yet, as much as I loved Morrowind, I'll probably never play that game again. I know where everything is, and the world holds no surprises.

That's why I've thought a fusion between empire and RPG would work, because the world would change. The downside is that in fusing them, you make less an RPG and less an empire game and more of something that's completely new (which people may or may not like, can't say until it's done).

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One idea (which might be incredible): develop the world where non-playable characters would have some sort of "intelligence". It doesn't have to be extensive--characters behave differently in certain types of areas. People would move out of destroyed cities, except for maybe a few who refuse to leave home. Stuff like that. The game creator would control how the world should behave, but without 100% control over what the characters actually do, except for a handful of scripted characters.

Can you explain this a bit more? I'm not exactly sure I understand. Are you saying that the NPCs would make changes as you play?

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That being said, a dynamic plot would be cool, but be prepared to commit extra time and resources.

Oy, don't I know what you mean. But if ya can't have the latest next gen graphics, you might be able to kick butt by having an idea that few others are interested in doing. [wink]

I like the idea its always something I've was lacking in most games. I've always wanted to seem more games embrace the idea of allowing the player to shape the world they play in. A few older games allowed some aspects of such is in helping a town grow. But they put a limited amount of world shaping into games and I always wanted more. I'd love to play a game where as a single character I can help shape the world. Things like an election in a tower arises and I can help shape the towers future by trying to convice npc to support my chosen canditate.

As far as the plot objects go, they seem like a good idea. But I suggest making them mutable but not destroyable. For instance the jump gate in chapter two that you mention. It should not be possible to destroy the gate until its purpose has been resolved. Meaning that since the chapter ends when the first ship leaves the solar system. Then the gate can only be destroyed after its secerts have been discovered. So until at least one faction has learned enough about it to build another then no one can destroy it. Since destroying it would effectivly stagnate the entire game. Not that you can't have other ways to achive FTL but to keep the game cohesive and possible to finish would a small army of content developers, each chapter should start and end at the point. The state of the galaxy could be very diffrent in diffrent plays. But chapter two always starts during the solor development era, and chapter three always begins 20 years after the start of the galatic colonization movement has begun.

Lastly I strongly suggest that you have automatic saving at critcal points in the game. Thing of them as chapter and section markers. So that you can allow player to start again from the begin of any chapter in the characters history. Yo've won the game the galaxy is controlled by a massive trade guild that your president of. But you can't help but wonder what would have happened if you choosen to fight the seiger in chapter 5 instead of getting rich selling weapons to various other factions. Since the game saves the start of chapter you can easily.