quote:Original post by Wavinator
What do you guys think about the case where the adventure comes and finds the player? For instance, he''s ticked off the smuggler''s guild and they''ve sent people after him. Or he''s altered some balance of power or nature.

I think that would work quite well. The only thing that bothers me is when a game has to hold the player''s hand and walk them from one adventure to another.

Your example would work well because it sounds as though it would be part of a previous action that the player did.




Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.
What a plight we who try to make a story-based game have...writers of conventional media have words, we have but binary numbers

There are some great ideas floating across this forum!

I would like to point out that encounter tables should not be the only source of encounters. Of course, we all know this. But bosses are not the only kind of non-table generated encounters. Sure, there are the encounters which substitute for keys, or are intended solely to advance the plot.

But it is always a good idea to orchestrate encounters, as well. Fighting a generic enemy with generic attacks and generic hit points is never very exciting. No matter how dynamic and responsive the encounter tables, even the best tables will tend to generate commonplace encounters over time.

On the other hand, an encounter orchestrated by the designer is bound to be much more enjoyable. An individual encounter, with customized details, is a memorable encounter. How many of you played Final Fantasy VII? Do you remember which monster you were first attacked by when you first left Midgar? Neither do I. How about the encounter where Sephiroth kills Aeris? See the difference?

Those custom tailored encounters are so much more memorable because they are so much more effective.

Of course, customizing every encounter is ludicrous. There is a limit to the ammount of work a game designer can devote to a project. That''s where the encounter tables come in. But let''s remember that they are not the essence of game encounters. They are a surrogate. They take up the slack for the work that the designer can''t possibly take upon himself.

The fact that we have encounter tables is not that they will do all the work of creating encounters for us. We must do as much of the work as possible ourselves, knowing that we are so much better at it than any computer could ever be.

Let''s create custom encounters as often as we possibly can. Not only when there is a need to advance the plot, or when we want to utilize a key mechanism. The more of these we create in each game, the higher quality the game experience will be for the player.

And if those zombies are stupid enough to get into the revolving door in the first place, they deserve whatever they get!

And by the way, when was the last time you looked over an encounter table and saw the following entry:

Zombies (2): Stuck in revolving door?

That is a perfect example of something that must be custom made by the designer. And if you were playing this game, which would you enjoy more? Fighting that forgettable, generic orc I mentioned earlier, or finding a pair of zombies stuck in a revolving door? No contest.

I think that one of the greatest mistakes made by many big-budget game publishers is to rush their games out. The longer the designers and programmers have to work on a game, the better it will be. And a big part of the reason is that they have time to produce more of these custom encounters (if they''re good, anyway.)

Good to see so many great ideas. I''ll keep track of this thread, for sure.

~~Jonathon

Wavinator posted this in regards to an RPG, if I remember correctly. I think that one of the most important aspects of creating a great RPG is detail.

Obviously, in this genre, we all try to create dynamic, consistent, detailed worlds. But many of the best details are those which are not really important to the mechanics or plot of the game.

It is important to flesh out the main characters and NPCs, and all good designers spend the necessary time and effort on that. But what is too often overlooked are the inconsequential details which are not of critical importance. But there is a tendency to overlook non-central NPCs. Consider this difference. The first tavern has a generic barman and a few shady characters. The second bar has a cheating, odorific ex-sea captain for a barman. Among the regulars is a thief named Dietrich. He did not begin his life as a thief, but alas, he is a cleptomaniac. He never steals anything truly useful, and he is often caught in the act. But he never does any real harm, and he is a welcomed member of the establishment. Which bar is more interesting?

Of course, this much is usually fleshed out by the designer. But so many other details remain. What about the vegetation in a certain region? The annual festivals and customs of a village? That same bit of music that was playing that day, so many years ago? That beggar you met in Stanton, by the bridge there?

This is all part of creating an immersive, rewarding experience for the player. Anonymous Poster asks which details can be implemented using CPU generation. I think that many of these details can be generated that way. Certain personality traits for NPCs, for instance. But as with all computer generation, keep in mind that the CPU can never do the job as well as a good designer. I think it best to flesh out as many of these details as possible on our own, and use the CPU only as an aid. The CPU generation comes in to play when the details are just too tedious, or when deadline pressure becomes undeniable.

~Jonathon

Oops, that wasn''t Anonymous Poster! That was Ketchaval! Sorry about that.

In each area, add probabilities for each set of characters spawning.

EG. in a space dock, you''d have a very heigh probibility of monsters coming from the air-locks, but very few from behind the blast doors.

Find the optimum amount of characters to make sure that on average, the player isn''t too healthy, sick, dead. Doesn''t take too long to defeat the monsters, doesn''t take too long.

Use those probibilities to determine how many monsters get spawned in each particular location.

MS = ((prob / 100) * ((hl - ph) - (ph - hs)) * (atime / ctime)) * 100)

atime = atime * dtimes
atime = atime + ctime
dtimes = dtimes + 1
atime = atime / dtimes

MS = anount of monsters to spawn (if 0 or negitive, don''t spawn any)
prob = Probibility in that location
HL = The anount of health when the player would be called healthy
HS = The amount of health when the player would be called sick
atime = average time needed to destroy enemy
ctime = current time
dtime = amount of time averages have been calculated

(beware this is a simple formula, please check that it works first!)

Then you could play around with thr probabilities (eg. if the average time is too low, increase probibility, it average time is too heigh, decrease probability).

Perhaps change HL and HS, to adapt to the players style of gameplay? (look at the amount of time the player is at each state of health, then adapt?)

De nice codre