All right, here's how I'm planning on incorporating movies. I'm writing it up here because input would be welcome! I am going to color-code anything that I am particularly looking for input and suggestions on in blue.
First, the basics: each movie will be inspired by something happening in the game. A huge variety of different in-game events can inspire movies, including the following:
-Background broadcasts by AM Radio and Cable News
-News stories of raids by the LCS and CCS
-Terra Vitae secret missions
-Liberal Guardian special editions
-Sufficiently liberal paintings/songs/t-shirts sold by the LCS
-Love-stories of people in the world (including people seduced by LCS agents)
-Other movies
Movies go through phases. All movies begin in the inspiration phase, and move on from there to subsequent phases. There is a roughly 1/3 chance each month of a movie moving from one phase to the next. I don't know how to go about incorporating budget into movies, but bigger-budget movies will move more slowly. The phases are as follows:
Inspiration phase: all movies start here. Somebody is thinking about the movie, but production hasn't actually begun. Movies will have no effect on gameplay at this stage or any of the next three stages.
Writing phase: A writer is building the script for the movie and the cast may be under assembly, but no shooting has occurred yet.
Production phase: The actors are on the set, the scenes are being shot.
Editing phase: The film for the movie has been shot, but re-takes, computerized special effects, and various other edits are being made.
Release phase: The movie is out in theaters. The movie has its biggest effect on public opinion in this phase.
Legacy phase: The movie is no longer being shown in theaters. It will continue to influence public opinion, but at a much reduced rate.
Each movie will have four parameters that describe it. These will be its alignment, protagonist issue, genre, and setting issue. They each have the following effects:
-Alignment will determine the direction of the effect the movie will have on public opinion when it is released. A movie can have any of the political alignments in the game (L+, L, m, C, C+, S), as well as anything else that you or I can think of. In general, the alignment of a movie will be determined by two things: (1) the mood of the public when script writing began, and (2) the alignment of the faction responsible for the movie. Thus, activity by the LCS will result in more liberal than average movies, while the CCS, AM Radio, and Cable News will have more conservative than average movies, Terra Vitae may have its own alignment, etc. LCS infiltration of the movie industry can also make movies more liberal directly.
-Genre will be determined by the type of action that was responsible for the movie being inspired in the first place. For example, terror attacks by the LCS and CCS most commonly make for either action movies or dramas, TV secret missions often inspire spy or sci-fi movies, and seducing people into the LCS is likely to inspire romantic or pornographic movies. Genres are related to setting views, and an incomplete list of genres is below.
-Protagonist issue is one of the public opinion views in the game that the movie affects. It, too, will generally be influenced by the nature of the action responsible for inspiring the movie; for instance, publishing CIA secret documents in the Liberal Guardian might inspire a movie where the protagonist is snooping for the government, etc. The protagonist view is completely divorced from the genre, so any genre can have any protagonist.
-Setting issue is also a view in the game, but unlike the protagonist, it is closely tied to the genre. In general, the inspiration for the movie will not affect the setting issue directly, but each genre has a fairly short list of setting views that it can influence, and so will affect the setting view indirectly.
A partial list of genres and their applicable setting views are as follows, but more input would be welcome:
Action (CEO salary, corporate culture, drugs, election reform, gun control, judicial reform, police behavior)
Adventure (Amerindian rights, biodiversity, free speech, military spending)
Comedy (CEO salary, election reform, judicial corruption, taxes, women's rights)
Drama (Amerindian rights, civil rights, death penalty, free speech, gay rights, labor rights, women's rights)
Fantasy (Amerindian rights, biodiversity, pollution, religious freedom, superhuman rights)
Horror (animal rights, food ethics, genetics, nuclear power, pollution, religious freedom, superhuman rights)
Mobster (death penalty, election reform, judicial corruption, labor rights, police behavior, prison regulation)
Mystery (athletic freedom, food ethics, gay rights, gun control, taxes)
Noir (gay rights, police behavior, pollution, women's rights)
Pornography (athletics, civil rights, free speech, gay rights, sexual freedom, women's rights)
Romance (civil rights, gay rights, sexual freedom, taxes, women's rights)
Sci-fi (free speech, genetics, nuclear power, privacy, superhuman rights)
Space opera (civil rights, election reform, military spending, religious freedom)
Spy (corporate culture, drugs, military spending, nuclear power, patriotism, privacy rights)
Superhero (AM radio, animal rights, cable news, drugs, genetics, nuclear power, pollution, superhuman rights)
War (gay rights, military spending, patriotism, women's rights)
Western (amerindian rights, animal rights, corporate culture, police behavior, sexual freedom)
Note that several views are missing from this list (LCS, CCS, TV views) or badly underrepresented (AM Radio, Cable News), so input on where to put these is welcome.
Movie Mode
I also intend to ultimately include another mode to the game, Movie Mode, which will have its own win and loss condition, which will be accessible from the game start screens (a la nightmare mode, marathon mode, etc). In this mode, the game will play as normal in Liberal Crime Squad, but will have the following differences:
Each combination of movie protagonist and movie genre will have a set of protagonists, some of whom will be heroic and some of whom will be villainous. Depending on the ending of a movie, the heroes may win or the villains may win. In order for the player to win the game, a certain fraction of these villains must be defeated. If a certain fraction of the heroes are defeated, the player automatically loses. This represents the idea that each protagonist/genre combination corresponds to its own separate world, and the liberal heroes must be victorious in some fraction of these other worlds as well.
The cast of each protagonist-genre combination is as follows (colored [c=green]green[/color] for the heroes' side and red for the villains' side; input on this cast is especially welcome):
The Hero(ine), the main heroic protagonist
The Love-interest, somebody to be romantically or sexually involved with the hero(ine) or occasionally the sidekick
The Sidekick, a deuteragonist companion of the hero(ine)
The Mastermind, the villain responsible for instigating the Evil Plan
The Enforcer, the villain responsible for carrying out the Evil Plan
Movies will have effects based on their alignments as follows:
Elite liberal - the heroes all live, the villains are all defeated (happy ending)
Liberal - the villains are defeated but one of the heroes' side died in the process (bittersweet ending)
Moderate - at least one of the villains survived, and at least one of the heroes survived (neutral ending)
Conservative - everybody dies, except maybe for the sidekick or the love-interest (tragic ending)
Arch-conservative - the heroes all die, the villains win (downer ending)
Stalinist - the main villains die, but by the end of the movie the hero(ine) becomes a villain him/herself (alternate downer ending)
Any more ideas for endings are also welcome
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Topic: Terra Vitae Fork (version 2.0 released!) (Read 339020 times)