Since I''m proposing the abomination of an RPG with almost no story, I think the idea of a heavily detailed random encounter system rocks. If the encounters are interesting, and they spawn other encounters, AND not all encounters are combat based, it could have the effect of creating vignettes, or "storyletts." Since I''m handling growth seperately, and it''s an open ended universe (no real ending), then this might work really well.

Course, it''d be difficult to prevent pointless, shaggy dog stories here... gotta think about this some more...



--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by Wavinator
A friend was telling me that this is part of the Barbarian''s natural ability. He''s screams are so terrifying that he can make enemies flee...

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

I know of this, it is true, and pretty lame from what I have seen. But I was talking about a little different, just some icing on the cake. It doesn''t actually do anything, but it would look cool to shout your opponent down


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

Ok, inane as it was, Kylotan''s post really got me thinking. If random encounters consisted of the kind of thrilling interactions that he described, they could really suck. (unless you''re making Space Quest, but I think somebody already did that) So I''m thinking that one thing you could do would be to completely script short "vignettes", to use Wavinator''s word to come up at very random intervals, making them a kind of easter egg, but you could make it somewhat more than that by doing a very large amount of them, not letting one repeat, and not making them entirely random either.

You could also do things like make "wandering characters", perhaps other adventurers, that either follow a set path through the game, or randomly appear in the same area from time to time, and each time the player sees them, either play out a random scenario, checking it as "used" when the player has seen it, or incrementing a counter each time the player sees the wandering character, so that the scenarios play out sequentially. The reason for this, rather than a large number of independant vignettes, is to ease the burden of creating such an absurd number of interesting characters. Writing many scenarios for maybe twenty to thirty characters, rather than one or two scenarios for a few hundred characters, is alot more manageable a task.

The only reason I would personally do this is in a wide-open universe like Wavinator''s. If you had game-engine flags for in-game events, and this affected the random scenarios you saw as a player, you could have the appearance of cohesiveness and let the player feel he is impacting the world, even if the world itself was semi-random, like Wavinator''s "RPG inside an RTS". You could use all sorts of attributes for this, like player reputation, wealth, whatever.

If one empire were winning in the war, you might see more deserters from the losing side, wandering around. You also might wander into a battle that was going on, and depending on your game status, you might be radioed in to participate. It would be simple enough to have you lose face if you turned and ran, by a statistic tracking that empire''s opinion of you. You could also with this set a flag to increase the chance of the imperial police chasing you down and imprisoning you (which would have to be a larger, scripted event, since you would need much more to portray this). With careful design, you could get alot of results for relatively little effort. (compared to piece-by-piece designing an open universe, *ick*)

It just seems worth the effort. Random encounters w/ the same four faceless enemies every five minutes are too depressing. 8]

I am just thinking now of a quest from two kingdoms at the beginning of a war. They both ask you to find mercinaries to use against the other. You could then have a choice of one of 3 things:

1. Run off with their cash, smirking and never be seen from them again. Expect to be hunted down
   
2. Get mercinaries for one of the armies. This is fun, you should choose to give it to the army that will win, otherwise you get impaled. Not nice
   
3. Get mercinaries for both. Hope that each of the kingdoms don''t find out that you did. You now have equal chance of getting away with some recognition or with being discovered.
   

You can''t pitch mercinaries from the same band against each other (They just wont fight their friends will they?) and you had better not give the mercinaries to the losing side, because they may somehow be released (mercy, these aren''t warriors of any blood feud remember) and may give information to the rival kindom that you hired them. So much complexity, yet decisionmaking in a game .

Personally, I would like to see all general creatures removed from the game and replaced with intelligent NPCs. This would make it more difficult to charge into a pack of them, and even more difficult to survive it . Let us see a new era where we have bot-play. I can''t stand playing single player Unreal, but Bot-matches cain! Multiplayer is even better! Let us get out of the stone age and start getting some intelligent foes

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster.

It just seems worth the effort. Random encounters w/ the same four faceless enemies every five minutes are too depressing. 8]

This is a very good idea. I thought that recurrent encounters would give the universe a more consistent feel. Plus, it would be very cool to kick the butt of a bunch of mercs, but not be able to finish the job-- and then run into their buddies!!!

The counter idea I really like. It could work well for towns were people are supposed to live, and it could give certain areas character (as in, what''s that guy always in these caves?)

quote:
If one empire were winning in the war, you might see more deserters from the losing side, wandering around. You also might wander into a battle that was going on, and depending on your game status, you might be radioed in to participate. It would be simple enough to have you lose face if you turned and ran, by a statistic tracking that empire''s opinion of you. You could also with this set a flag to increase the chance of the imperial police chasing you down and imprisoning you (which would have to be a larger, scripted event, since you would need much more to portray this).

This is awesome! Yeah, I could see this working very well. It would make the empire and it''s citizens seem so much more human, especially when they end up holding grudges against you for not helping them in their hour of need. In fact, if this is logged it should be something that the NPC vigilantes who hunt you down say to you. "We still remember the battle or Rigel, punk..."

Thx for the inspiration!!!


--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:Original post by dwarfsoft

I am just thinking now of a quest from two kingdoms at the beginning of a war. They both ask you to find mercinaries to use against the other. You could then have a choice of one of 3 things:

1. Run off with their cash, smirking and never be seen from them again. Expect to be hunted down
   
2. Get mercinaries for one of the armies. This is fun, you should choose to give it to the army that will win, otherwise you get impaled. Not nice
   
3. Get mercinaries for both. Hope that each of the kingdoms don''t find out that you did. You now have equal chance of getting away with some recognition or with being discovered.
   

This is great. If a reputation variable was kept with each empire, you could have this double agent action. You''d just need some mechanism for your secret actions being discovered.

you had better not give the mercinaries to the losing side, because they may somehow be released (mercy, these aren''t warriors of any blood feud remember) and may give information to the rival kindom that you hired them.

Yeah, this I like. Maybe it''s how your secrets get discovered, along with a somewhat random factor that covers things like a mercenary getting too drunk and mouthing off in a brothel or something…

quote:
So much complexity, yet decisionmaking in a game .

Yup, this is the kind of stuff I''m looking for. Thx!

quote:
Personally, I would like to see all general creatures removed from the game and replaced with intelligent NPCs. This would make it more difficult to charge into a pack of them, and even more difficult to survive it . Let us see a new era where we have bot-play.

I''m all for this! I''m working for a game world devoid of monsters, instead peopled with NPCs that can do what you can do. If I can make them smart, the fact that they''re as good as you makes them all the deadlier. (Besides, in the future there''s very little native flora and fauna that can stand up to explosive homing flechettes… but smart creatures can!!)


——————–
Just waiting for the mothership…

quote:Original post by Wavinator

This is great. If a reputation variable was kept with each empire, you could have this double agent action. You''d just need some mechanism for your secret actions being discovered.

I was always thinking about a reputation value for each place, but I do think that it is difficult to have a discovery system. I think that with message passing NPC''s, they could travel between the two places. They have a chance of speaking of you (moreso if you are around or have been seen around the city recently) to others. This comes back to the old NPCAI learning idea... I hope that it is chosen for inclusion for versions greater than 1, I would love to see this

quote:
Yeah, this I like. Maybe it''s how your secrets get discovered, along with a somewhat random factor that covers things like a mercenary getting too drunk and mouthing off in a brothel or something...

Hmmm. That would be acceptable too

quote:
Yup, this is the kind of stuff I''m looking for. Thx!

Welcome, its the best I could do

quote:
I''m all for this! I''m working for a game world devoid of monsters, instead peopled with NPCs that can do what you can do. If I can make them smart, the fact that they''re as good as you makes them all the deadlier. (Besides, in the future there''s very little native flora and fauna that can stand up to explosive homing flechettes... but smart creatures can!!)

I am glad to see that I am not the only one... . Hopefully all games will eventually head this way

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft
"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy"
IOL (The list formerly known as NPCAI) - A GDNet production
Our Doc - The future of RPGs
Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche