I guess it would be a trivial operation just to have the game log stats in a text file (which hopefully wouldn't grow out of control). You could take that info and plug it into Excel or some such thing.
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.
Author
Topic: Sharing the World and all that jazz (Read 13742 times)