Bay 12 Games Forum

I do hope for your sake that you aren't claiming that trademark, or eventually the real whole world and its dog (tm) will hunt you down.

Is the sword just kind of hovering around in the heavens waiting to waste you when you trigger it, or are you strapped to a table?  The first one is a sort of curse, the second is just a crappy situation to be in  

Yeah -- cursed items can be nasty.  In addition to the more item specific things (melding, not being lost), you could really have an item do just about anything untoward...  slowly transform the wielder into a kobold -- the item might not even be cursed in any other way, and the user could drop it if he or she is willing to part with it (the item might otherwise be very snazzy).  Most users would probably wait until they've become six inches shorter and are slightly hairy.

Tracing bad luck items...  like the Monkey's Claw I suppose.  As with many things in a computer program, tracking data wouldn't be difficult here -- I'd set it up something like this:

The game must decide at some point to bring about a terrible happening, either when the user makes a wish, or just at random, whatever.  When an unfortunate event is generated, its nature and the recipient can be recorded in a list attached to the item.  This will work even for slow insidious curses, since the luck biases they create will result in certain bad events/rolls which can be recorded on the list.  This list can grow, and the game can use the list to generate a legend -- the game would also need to keep track of the general movements of the item and each time it changed hands or was lost, just to make the story more interesting.  As long as this kind of data isn't kept on every leaf and stone in the game, it is very plausible to do it.  In fact, these kind of stories were planned to be the backbone of the "high score list" (the game will generate legends about important players which will permeate future games).  These legends will also be written by the program from lists of important events.  The most challenging task is making the prose of the stories without having them sound completely stilted and piecemeal.

You don't know how getting a mate would be accomplished in the game?  Try flowers!!!  This is going to be fun to write -- I'll have to get enough women around me to make sure I don't introduce a bunch of masculine gender biases, but your player (male or female) will have to get a mate in the regular way.  It should be an adventure in and of itself -- and might require a real one if the person you're going after is sufficiently picky!  There was a thread on the other board discussing "the usual method" so we don't need to go there again    Anyway, yeah -- I think it would be cool to become your heirs if you want to.  The game is going to need some kind of time abstraction code, so if you die before your heir is of age to play, the game can advance the universe if you like.  On the other hand, if you play the mother/father until death from old age, the heir would already be established -- since you deserve a lot of credit for getting them there, I don't see a problem with allowing the user to jump in and play a powerful heir if they want to.

[ July 21, 2001: Message edited by: Toady One ]

Plots have been considered, sure, but not that much.  The whole genre-atmosphere-plot system needs a lot of fleshing out.  The type of plot system that Alanor mentioned (coming from personalities) is the "emergent" plot system, which is the least structured.  During world creation, there will be a plot setup screen (which can of course be set to "random" or "emergent" if you don't want to know what the plot is or don't want one at all) where you can set parameters to your liking.  What did I write in the future section <checking>...

Okay, I wrote this -->

Plot:  The genre and atmosphere can set up the actors and locations, but they won’t be interesting unless they interact.  There are various plots that can be overlaid on the entire game universe, specific regions, or even within towns and entities.  Here are some simple ones:  end of the world (town), struggle of opposing forces, lone powerful nemesis, general expansion into frontier.  More complex and specific plots can be developed based on the goals of individual creatures.  The general overall plot here is just to give the universe a direction, if you even want one.  If the plot is set on “Emergent”, then the plots will only be generated by individual creatures and entities as they struggle to achieve their goals.  Thus, in order to play a fairly standard unstructured game, you might set the genre-atmosphere-plot to “Standard-Balanced-Emergent”, or “Standard-Standard-Emergent”.  There will also be a “Random” option for plot in case you want the universe to have some sweeping structure, but you don’t want to know what type (genre and atmosphere can also have “Random” settings, but that could lead to some really strange games!).  There is also the question of momentum – myth fantasy might “degenerate” into standard fantasy as the powerful creatures are killed off and the gods become less interested in the world, or it might be headed toward a massive end of the world confrontation.  Momentum is part of the plot, although things could happen (especially where the player is involved), and momentum might change (or the whole plot could fall apart).  In general, the universe generator will try to place enough interesting creatures, items, and locations for the world will stay exciting.  There will also be a creation myth and pre-game history, etc. that will utilize the genre, atmosphere, and plot that the user selects.  The pre-game history will introduce many specific actors and props to start things off running, if desired.  This history will be available depending on how the various entities pass down knowledge (you might make it a goal to uncover the mysteries of the past, even as the present is raging around you).

----------------ok, that's it

The Plot creator (along with the Genre/Atmosphere creators) would probably be an editor like Harlander describes.  Once the universe is already running, a plot editor would be more difficult, since all of the actors would already have motivations and so on that run along existing plots/personalities.  Adding a plot at that point would be jarring, but technically possible...

There are a few problems I suppose.  It will be difficult to make scripts as attractive as an actual preconceived plot, although with some effort we should be able to get close enough.  There is also the matter of getting the player to stick with the plot -- by the nature of the game, the player would never be compelled to follow a plot to its conclusion.  However, as the world will naturally be thrashing about quite happily on its own, there will be "time limits" in the sense that if the player following a plot doesn't act quickly enough, he or she will fall off the wagon (important town destroyed, actor killed, etc.).  It would be more difficult to make the game "wait", as most games with preconceived plots do indefinitely.  That is, if you decide to kill the constantly respawning orcs to gain experience for four or five game years, that messenger will still be waiting in the next town over to give you a letter that advances the plot.  Armok will have some trouble being so forgiving, since the messenger or town might not be there waiting after the forces of darkness destroy them.  Offhand, I can think of a few solutions:

a) too bad, you messed up.  Missing a plot doesn't end the game, since there are other things to do.

b) if the plot is incredibly important (perhaps determined during plot creation), I could try and make Armok react to accidents like a good DM/GM would -- that is, either don't let accidents happen unless the player would expect them (by making certain places and creatures "untouchable" by non-player forces), and if accidents do happen, introduce a plausible new actor or event to pick up the story line.

a) is easy, b) is harder.  Although since b) would just use the mechanisms that create plots in the first place, the possibility of implementing it is linked to the possibility of introducing plots in the first place, which is something I need to do anyway.

There's a good sentence.

All right, back to algebra...  3D modeler still in progress...  I have been taxed lately, although I think there's a new computer on the horizon now.  That'll be nice...  I'm getting surprisingly good frame rates on my junker, so I can do some stuff now.

With the languages, I could just make random jibberish.  It would be more detailed to make the jibberish less random, with racial features (orcs use low back vowels, while elves use more high front vowels, etc.)  Like anything, there are:

a) the level necessary to get the game running (all creatures speak straight English/whatever text)
b) the level sufficient to make the game complicated and interesting (the level you mentioned)
c) the level that we aspire to (something even more complicated than what either of us mentioned)

In order for Armok to run, all things must be brought up to the "a" category, while some things creep up to "b" to make it fun to playtest.  Then we bring things up to "b" while letting a few "c"'s slip in.  By that time, I'll probably be dead.  Whether or not language is one of the things that slips beyond the level you describe remains to be seen...

Right now, we're just pounding things to death.

As far as models and skins and so on, yeah, that's the general idea.  However, there are at least two things that are going to keep the problems in check:

First of all, Armok hasn't quite gotten to the point where, say, lots of items are being added in at a feverish pace.  That comes a little later -- right now, we're laying down the conceptual framework.  This applies to the models.  At first, I'll make a few crappy models (one for humanoid,  quadraped, etc.), and different creatures will probably be differentiated by size and color (neither of these require making a new model).  Then, just as I'd add in three different basic item types and ten pieces of furniture further down the road, the models would also become more complicated and numerous.  Once the general Armok framework is in, there will be programming sessions devoted simply to bloating the number of items, spells, creatures, and perhaps the graphics bells and whistles as well.  Right now I'm just putting in enough to
a) see the basic 3D maps without having to scratch my head and puzzle out where things are
b) get a real interface up.

Secondly, each random creature doesn't need to have a separate model, at least not with its own image file for a skin and vertex lists and so on.  Just as the parts are stuck together and altered in the game to make the creature in the first place, vertex lists can be spliced and pieces of a few preset skins can be merged to form the creatures overall skin.  Each part or whole model can be scaled to any size, and the stick-figure animation framework can be warped to change the gait of the creature, etc.  This can be done by the game on the spot whenever a creature is loaded.  I don't have to sit in front of a 3D Modeling Program pulling out my rapidly thinning hair to do it.

Water flows are going to be nasty (both in terms of just having the water move right, and to display it).  When you think about all the forces that are at work, it's really impossible to get a sound simulation working in a game (esp. real time, as you mention).  For instance, digging a hole down beside a lake, below the bottom of the lake, over and up.  The water should fill the tunnel all the way back up to the top, regardless of minor variations in tunnel shape...  it just gets ugly.  Or this -- take a cube that's say 20x20x20.  Fill each square randomly either with air, water, or earth.  Assuming the earth is suspended (or not), how would the water settle?

In the face of some of these problems, all that can be done is well, fudging the results.  I won't restrict player actions though...  you will always be able to dig wherever you please, and no matter what it ends up doing, enough water will shift when you dig up through a lake that you will probably be in bad shape.

I haven't thought about the graphics side of it very much.  There are probably some nice examples out there.  Any good waterfalls?  Those should be a good challenge to display nicely (I mean, when you consider the random landscapes and flows as well, the game will have to be able to react quite a bit...  I can't just plan for a few types of waterfalls).

So, yeah, no doubt about it.  Water is one of those real pains.  Kind of like polymorphing, and a few other things...

In actual programming news, I've just finished up a fractal landscape sample.  On my old computer (the 350 w/out a 3D card) I can print about 10000 or so triangles without much of a speed problem, so OpenGL is working nicely.  I've been quite happy with it so far.  I'm going to make some cheesy 3D models to work with over the next few programming sessions.  Then I can make the graphics switch rather quickly.  After that, I'll start heading toward some kind of test release (still around the 3% done mark though  :roll: ).

[ July 10, 2001: Message edited by: Toady One ]

Of course, the game is hardly complete (you can read the log and plan to see where I am), but at this point it can be fun to mess around with sometimes.

As for the chat room, I'm still having trouble with my internet connection.  Stanford doesn't recognize or has blocked the Bay 12 site for some reason, so I can't get there except through AOL (I'm on AOL now) or from my math office.  For some reason I can't get into the chat room from AOL, and I'm hardly ever in my math office.  As for other people, I suspect the game doesn't really have much of a fan base right now, since it isn't complete and I haven't made any advertisements or releases in quite some time now.

As for the actual game, I've been planning growths and the magical arts skeleton (they're kind of like the fighting styles), and I'll probably knock some things off the to-do list today.

The time unit being used now I simply call a "click".  For a regular creature to move between squares takes say, 50 clicks, and a regular attack takes about 10.  There's lots of wiggle room here, so creatures can have fairly fine degrees of speed.  I haven't decided how long a "click" is...  maybe 1/5 of a second or even less.  In the regular mode walking around, it would take a long time for a day to pass (I won't accelerate time as in some games).  However, you will spend a portion of the game in "travel mode", where time will pass faster.  In travel mode, getting food will probably be abstracted slightly, whereas in regular mode, you will have to eat, but time will pass in a normal fashion.  Keeping enough food won't become a complete annoyance (as it is in many rogue-likes, for instance -- with the click times above, you'd become slightly hungry in about the same time as Nethack, but it would take about 40 times as long to starve to death -- water is a different matter).  On the other hand, light sources might be more annoying, since I don't plan to have a plethora of inventory "slots" (missile weapon slot, light slot, weapon slot, shield slot, etc.).  You have hands.  The interface will have to pick up the slack.

About the player histories, we had mentioned some time ago an option: "interactive histories".  This might be along the lines of what you want.  As Alanor mentions, actually playing a two year old would probably just get boring -- especially if you had to do it every single game.

As soon as I get my new computer (Alanor is currently hassling computer companies over shipping delays), I think I'm going to give OpenGL a shot.  If I'm lucky, it shouldn't take more than a few days to get a backbone set up.  Then we can discuss interface suggestions.  This should happen in the next 2-3 weeks, depending on the computer nonsense.

In the meantime, I've been planning growths (fingernails, claws, hair, etc.).  The creatures without weapons really need them in order for the combat system to be complete.  I was going to do stuck-ins now, but they still frighten me on many levels.  It is conceivable that a train of stuck-ins could run right off the loaded map.  Very unlikely, but I don't have the convenience of blowing off the problem for that reason (I'm SURE somebody's necromancer will have a couple hundred zombie slaves stab each other in the backs, stretching for as many squares...  just to force me to confront this).  Stuck-ins will also require some interface options, which I'm shying away from.  So that's still in the works.

Vegetation and item wear/breakage/sullying are slated (those don't require much interface at all).

Finally, I've also been solidifying many of my plans for the magic system.  The sooner I get the fundamentals programmed the better, since magical variables naturally permeate every object in the game from creatures to items to map squares.  Actual spell-casting will require some interface again, although that's no reason not to let the enemy critters start it now.

Things have otherwise been a little quiet lately because of some unforeseen hassles coming out of the recent move, and running a temperature of 100F the past few days...  uck...