Not knowing how you plan to tell your story nor what it will be, Its a bit hard to properly advice.
Consider following games:
Oblivion & Skyrim; Open world, go wherever you want whenever. Linear story, Npc's waiting for you to talk to them so they can give you a task with no options.
Fallout 1 & 2; Open world, Go wherever you want but face the consequences because wherever does not care if you carry a rock or a minigun. Multi-path story, Events wait for you to arrive but your actions determines the result.
Dwarf fortress; Open world, Go wherever you want but the RNG rules supreme. No story or events, The RNG and you decide your story.
Planescape torment; Sequential world, Travel between unlocked areas. Multi-path story, Actions have a bigger influence over future events than any other game I know, not to mention the 5-15 dialogue options every time you get to input and a great story.
From the little you've written about your story, It seems like treasure hunting. Find a part of the puzzle that the RNG decides to give you then track down the rest.
In my experience, Open world games should have events that appears depending on ingame criteria which with what the player decides to do and what events occur will decide the story.
To tell a good story you need to restrict the player to a predictable path but you create different branches for the player to take.
I think the Bethesda model is a very solid one. I want a little more story direction than they give, and have more of the world connected to the central story, but not much more. Secondly, re: your "from the little you've written" comment and treasure hunting, clearly I gave the wrong impression, as that is precisely the opposite of what I want! In this release, that will be the focus, but that's only because I've been working on the basic components of one particular dungeon type this time. The way you put this:
To tell a good story you need to restrict the player to a predictable path but you create different branches for the player to take.
is
precisely what I want! It's just going to take quite a few releases to get us there
I have to say, I really do like the DF approach that allows the player to get to know a specific world. I know it's "realistic" (in literally the most morbid, existential treatment I've ever seen in a game) that when you die, you can never again experience the world. I'm just not sure that that is going to be a good idea for something that is presumably fun.
Several things here. Firstly, of course, most classic roguelikes adhere to the one life one world model. Sure, I'm generating more of a
world than just a dungeon, but the principle is the same. Secondly, could you say a bit more about what you mean by "fun"? I find the term fun a very troubling word to use to describe games, or at least, to describe the kinds of games I like to play. To me, the word "fun" implies a certain triviality, or a lightness, or something that's just passing entertainment, whereas the games I enjoy playing provide far more concentration, learning and complexity than a passing bit of fun would generally imply. I want a game that is highly "enjoyable" for people who want the kind of challenge I'm trying to make, but depending on your definition of fun, I may or may not want to pursue that particular goal
.
Would there be a way to, instead of deleting the world, just delete the parts pertinent to the storyline? Say, for example, the ziggurats hold the key to the holy macguffin. Would it be possible to have those or the items/art important to the story be deleted instead? This way you can still experience the unique world that's been created and interact freely with it, but not be able to power through the storyline.
Or maybe there could be an extra couple options for worldgen, Storyline Elements and Auto-World Deleting or something to that effect.
I ask because I think it'd be a shame not to experience the unique and admittedly sexy worlds to the fullest extent, but I do get what you're doing with the permadeath and think one of these might be a good compromise.
An interesting question, and one I'm not sure I can give an answer to yet beyond: maybe. I'm not sure to what extent that would leave that much to do, though - a lot of the game mechanics are being subtly reworked in my head at the moment in much more focused and interesting ways around a central plot. Nevertheless, it's a very interesting idea, and don't think I'm dismissing it. I'd just have to think a lot about how I could make it work.
What happens when you complete the story? does the world get deleted (which would be hella lame), or does it open up into "undirected" gameplay? Also, do you have to follow the story, or could you go off adventuring while the story waits for you to pick it back up?
Well... completing the story in every other game "deletes" the world! Or at least, certainly in every other classic roguelike. Ascending in Nethack or Crawl, or closing the portal in Adom, or whatever, deletes that particular world for good. As I say, whilst the world will be open, the gameplay is now going to be a little more focused and directed, and much of the exploration aspects will be focused around both discovery, but also "gearing up" (think mass effect 2 squads, or x-com at the strategic level) and moving forward in the plot. However, depending on how the plot pans out, I suppose it could potentially open up at the end. I very much intend to allow you to pursue your own directions in the game, but much of what you encounter will be tied to some key central themes. Sorry if that's vague, but I'm still partly working it out in my design documents myself!
Could you have an option to gen the world with story or not? Because that would be pretty awesome.
I'm afraid not. That would be a lot of extra effort away from the main direction I want to take. However, rest assured the story is not high fantasy swords and sorcery fare; I'm hoping it will be something sufficiently interesting to interest people not always interested in stories, but also told in a very Dark-Souls-esque way, so if you want to largely bypass the details, that should also be possible. I enjoy having to actively seek out stories myself, and that's the kind of feeling I want to emulate.
Ooh, there's something I'd like to suggest isn't done: If the world does get deleted or the storyline somehow ends with the death of the character or world, don't Fallout 3 it. By which I mean make sure the player knows where the point of no return is, and that there is one.
Agreed. Points of no return are absolutely, utterly, essential to highlight,
especially in permadeath or no-reload games.
aw, i was hoping the lineage idea would catch on; continuing to play as long as you have a direct descendant
'fraid not, unless things change. But we'll see. Once ziggurats are out, I'm then going to be working on history and civilization generation for a few months, and things could change in that period. But I feel very confident about the game I can see cohering in my head at the moment!
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Topic: Dwarf Fortress meets The Outer Wilds? "Ultima Ratio Regum", v0.10.1 out Feb 2023 (Read 596232 times)