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[Retropunch]

CyberRogue

Hello everyone, I'm a new-ish poster (though a long time lurker) and I just wanted to post about my first serious gaming project which is a Cyberpunk Rogue-like/Simulator.
Although I've put roguelike, it aims to be about 70% simulation and 30% combat, with a heavy emphasis on role-playing, survival and procedurally generated content.

It's still currently in early alpha and we've(it's a joint effort) not released any versions of it yet, but I'm looking for community input, all of which will be seriously considered. We're going for a Gibson style cyberpunk, near-future (2034), with a lot of unchecked technological advances causing trouble. It's aiming to be harsh and gritty, with zero magic or sci-fi robots.

What we've got so far...
-It's a pretty simple RL in terms of combat, stats, items and dungeon delving, this will change dramatically, but we wanted a solid basis to build on. We want combat to be rare, tactical and extremely deadly.
-Hunger, Rent and Rest all need to be dealt with.
-Procedurally generated corporations with history (see below) which you have to be loyal to in order to use their services/items.
-NPCs with schedules (ala skyrim). All NPCs will also be chatbots, so you can have a proper (if limited) conversation with them.

Some VERY WIP pictures below:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Standing around the Artiste bar:


Procedural generation of corporations with some basic background info - far too simplistic currently:

Basically, I'm looking for community thoughts/assistance on how we can make this a great cyberpunk simulation, especially in terms of smaller, 'day-to-day' things which will help make it immersive.
A few requests:
-If anyone knows the creator of the Bisasam tileset, we'd like to give credit!
-Any help in doing more tiles/graphics (of any kind) would be greatly appreciated!
-Help designing historical frameworks for corporations/entities.

[hemmingjay]

You have come to the right place. Once you have a working prototype I would post this game in our "other games" forum section and you will get roughly 50-60 interested parties responding. I am a big fan of what you are trying to do and will be watching. I don't have much to offer in the way of feedback right now, as I still don't know much about your game.

As far as daily activities that add immersion, well in my own game I have added a news feature and the game creates random news stories by using modular sentence fragments and applying proper grammatical form. Further, it takes in game events to create one or two headline events when appropriate. It serves no function beyond immersion in my game but in yours it could be tied in to your mission system by offering foreshadowing which would give you a leg up on the competition by offering one of the most dynamic mission generators. Just something to consider. I hope it stirs a big idea loose.

Welcome and good luck!

[Hugehead]

It looks good, kinda like a more in depth version of the Shadowrun video games without the elves.

A few requests:
-If anyone knows the creator of the Bisasam tileset, we'd like to give credit!
-Any help in doing more tiles/graphics (of any kind) would be greatly appreciated!

According to the Dwarf Fortress Wiki Bisasam made the Bisasam tileset. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository#Bisasam
I think I could help with graphics, what needs doing?

[Retropunch]

Thanks for the support!! It's going along really well and we've just managed to put all items and monsters in easily editable data files.

Hemmingjay:
Thanks for the advice, and the news system does sound like a very good idea! I've already got a prototype 'stock market' working, where your actions (as well as other random ones) either help or hinder corporations, with news on how they're doing. More general world news would be interesting though, especially if it led to future missions/stuff you could actually get involved with.

Hugehead:
Thanks for pointing me to the resource, I wasn't sure if Bisasam was the person who made it or if it was just the name of the tileset. We're definitely aiming for a shadowrun style thing, but we want it to be the sort of game that you can enjoy without doing missions or much fighting. 

As far as graphics, we're looking for any help in creating a tileset (as transparent png files, like biasasms). If you're interested throw me a PM and we can talk about it more.

[Servant Corps]

-Help designing historical frameworks for corporations/entities.

What exactly do you mean by that? I could try to create a random corporation 'history' generator for you, but I don't know any roguelike programming languages, so I'm not sure that would be worthwhile for you. I'm also not sure what you want the historical framework for. Is it simply to decide their strength and weaknesses, or are you aiming for a more complex simulation detailing the rise and fall of corporations?

[Retropunch]

-Help designing historical frameworks for corporations/entities.

What exactly do you mean by that? I could try to create a random corporation 'history' generator for you, but I don't know any roguelike programming languages, so I'm not sure that would be worthwhile for you. I'm also not sure what you want the historical framework for. Is it simply to decide their strength and weaknesses, or are you aiming for a more complex simulation detailing the rise and fall of corporations?

We're trying to make it as complex as possible, with a full history behind their rise to prominence, dealings and so forth. So far we have their main product areas (weapons, biotech ect.) and past take overs/mergers, but we'd like to have a much fuller description which includes strengths and weaknesses, past dealings, rivalries and so forth.

If you'd like to help, it's actually pretty easy! If you look on this site: http://doryen.eptalys.net/data/libtcod/doc/1.5.1/html2/namegen_file_4.html?c=false&cpp=false&cs=false&py=false&lua=false
you'll see the random 'name' generator we're using. An example sentence using the king variable (which chooses a random name from the 'king' list) would be 'the lord + king + ruled from 1200 to 1243'. From this you can create quite complex sentences, as you can create many lists for adjectives/actions taken and so on. If you can construct some lists and good descriptions we can put them together in a coherent way. We have a list of names already, so if you want to put a random name, you can just use '+ name +' and if you'd like to add a name that'll be referenced a few times just make up a variable name and we'll put it in. Furthermore, there will be three major corporations in each game (to start off with), so if you want to assign a rivalry you can just do +randcorp+ (to refer randomly) or +corpone+/+corptwo+/three to specifically reference) to choose one of the other in game corporations to refer too. 

For some examples, the descriptions of civilizations in DF is the kinda thing we're aiming for, another example would be the description of wars by Uultima Ratio Regum:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The war lasted for five months and saw a large number of close-fought skirmishes as well as three major battles. The first of these was the Clash at Ostozil`s Redoubt, which saw an army of the Horde of Ebropox`s spearmen, axemen and horse archers attack the Kingdom of Afatic positions, being defeated after a closely-fought three hour battle. This was followed by the Clash at Fohete`s Bridge, which saw an elite force of the Horde of Ebropox`s horse archers face off against the Kingdom of Afatic`s swordsmen and macemen, being defeated after a decisive six hour battle. This was followed almost immediately after by the Battle of the Running Shields, which saw an elite force of the Horde of Ebropox`s axemen face off against the Kingdom of Afatic`s crossbowmen and knights, being defeated after a subdued four hour battle. During this engagement Ixo Brynoraxym of the Horde of Ebropox was killed fighting an enemy crossbowman, causing her axe Wrathshatter to be lost on the battlefield. These engagements led to heavy casualties on the side of the Horde of Ebropox. This contributed to their eventual defeat due also to the sympathy with the enemy among many in the civilization. This led to the signing of the Treaty of Fappoze which guaranteed the Kingdom of Afatic an amount of new land

Any help would be appreciated, and feel free to PM me if you want to talk about it more!

[Scoops Novel]

I replied to your games i wish existed post, and I'm glad someone shared my idea. Could you tell me more about the chatbots? Perhaps the corporation history should be determined by what sunk into the public consciousness, trivial or not, where other corporations beat them in the propaganda war, and local knowledge, with much of it eventually fading into obscurity? I'm assuming that each corporation has a tendency to be in every conceivable market, though they may dominate some, and which division provides what in a particular area could affect what the locals are familiar with.

[Retropunch]

I replied to your games i wish existed post, and I'm glad someone shared my idea. Could you tell me more about the chatbots? Perhaps the corporation history should be determined by what sunk into the public consciousness, trivial or not, where other corporations beat them in the propaganda war, and local knowledge, with much of it eventually fading into obscurity? I'm assuming that each corporation has a tendency to be in every conceivable market, though they may dominate some, and which division provides what in a particular area could affect what the locals are familiar with.

I replied to that post in GIWE, but I'll reply in more detail on these issues here.
As far as Chatbots go, you will be able to talk to every NPC in a similar way to a chatbot like Cleverbot/Alicebot. This will actually be easier/better than general chatbots, as you'll be talking about in-game things and the conversation will flow around the pre-generated history and game events/places. Unfortunately, I worked out that it'd be a bit unfeasible to have each NPC as a distinct chatbot, so it'll actually be the same AI (or two or three different ones for different places/types of people) when you talk to anyone - this presents trouble with the AI learning/remembering stuff from each conversation, but we'll probably have it remember some things remembered and spread as 'gossip'. However, the chatbot(s) can be programmed to react differently depending on where the conversation is happening. So if you're in a bar the chatbot might talk about your drink/drugs, whereas if you're in a shop it might talk about stuff in the shop.
I mainly wanted this so you could feasibly go into a bar and strike up a conversation with someone and it not just be a dull list of options to go through one by one or get a generic 'I'm busy' response from non-important characters.

As far as obfuscated/fuzzy history I think that's a great idea. I always think that games shy away from being an 'unreliable narrator' and it'd be nice to have localized/unreliable knowledge. I'm unsure how to do it in a natural way, but I'll have a think about it.
As you say, each corp will be in most markets, but dominate a few. They also have a list of other randomized factors like if they're happy with robots or more into genetic engineering, how militarized they are and how criminally inclined they are. We'll also have a few groups/cults/factions on top of this, and eventually I hope for lesser corporations to grow and shrink in prosperity, possibly even toppling the mega-corps to become one of the 'big three'. This requires on the fly generation which is kinda hard to do, but possible.

[Servant Corps]

Any help would be appreciated, and feel free to PM me if you want to talk about it more!

I can try to write something up based on cyberpunk tropes. Do I need to download litbcod...or could I write something and then just post the code in spoilers and have you try to test and fix it?

[Retropunch]

Any help would be appreciated, and feel free to PM me if you want to talk about it more!

I can try to write something up based on cyberpunk tropes. Do I need to download litbcod...or could I write something and then just post the code in spoilers and have you try to test and fix it?

Try not to stick too closely to tropes or cliches! Although cyberpunk is itself quite rigid/specific genre (or, this game is very 'traditional' cyberpunk) we don't want it to feel as though it's just rehashing really worn stuff.
As some background it's a realistic near future (2034) - robots exist but not at cyborg/replicant level (I know Blade Runner is 2019, but that's a bit of an odd one) and genetic engineering is only just taking off (lab grown organs are common place, but super strength isn't) - it's sort of Deus Ex H:R/Neuromancer level of advancement. There haven't been any major wars, but there have been a few catastrophes, including one large radioactive/biotech catastrophe which has caused some people to mutate (but not in an X-men or super power kind of way, just mutate into grotesque abominations). Nation governments still exist, but are pretty useless (yet can still enforce laws/have police).

You don't need to download libtcod, just create the code/lists as the example link shows, and then put together sentences with +listname+ (where listname is something like kings in the example) as the random variables. Please PM it me though as it'll be neater and be easier to discuss stuff about it.

[Servant Corps]

Alright. I'll PM it to you when I'm done. I'm already completed writing the origin story*, but I think you would want more than just the "origins" of a company, so I'll try to move beyond that.

*By "story", I mean one or two sentences. But I figure that it's important enough to know how a corporation came into being, and less important to know the mind-numbing details.

EDIT: Hang on, I'm unsure whether what I have written can in fact be accepted by you or if it is too advanced for libtcod. Let me send it over what I have to you for review before I continue.

[Retropunch]

Great work Servant Corps, I've just responded to your message.

As far as history, as much and as complicated as possible is best. I'm really not worried about giving the player a ton of backstory and complicated details - even if some are a tiny bit dry.

Oh, and +1000 points for eschaton!

[Servant Corps]

I sent you another message completing the history generator, and though more can be added, I don't have the time to do so. Hopefully, it'd be acceptable.

[Servant Corps]

Hang on, just a quick question about the roguelike. Is it going to be a standard dungeon crawl, only with a cyberpunk facade over it, or is it going to be a sandbox world where the player can interact with different corporations and take up objectives? The former seems to call for more fluff than the latter, considering that the latter can already procedurally generate its own fluff once you know what they want to do and how they want to do it.

[Retropunch]

Hang on, just a quick question about the roguelike. Is it going to be a standard dungeon crawl, only with a cyberpunk facade over it, or is it going to be a sandbox world where the player can interact with different corporations and take up objectives? The former seems to call for more fluff than the latter, considering that the latter can already procedurally generate its own fluff once you know what they want to do and how they want to do it.

Definitely the latter. However we've started from a standard dungeon crawl perspective so as to give the player both something to do whilst we work out all the sandbox elements (which take a long time) and also because we do want some dungeon crawling in it. As I mentioned, it's going to be about 30% combat (in an RL/dungeon crawling style) and 70% sim/sandbox eventually.

What we're hoping to have is some well formed corporations with plenty of history and character (and what you've done will certainly help towards that!). Whilst the corporations may change over time and your actions may have a small influence on things, it won't be a case of the player deciding their fate.

One example is the second 'mission' we've got planned (the first two missions are hard coded/scripted ones to act as a bit of a tutorial). You eventually find your way into a dilapidated hotel full of cultists who worship a damaged AI and have been horribly corrupted by a radiation leak from said AI. This turns out to be a discarded AI from a corporation, which you can then report to one of the other corporations to use as blackmail (and boost your standing with them, allowing you to choose who you initially are loyal too) or to your starting corporation for a monetary reward.
This has no direct effects, and is probably going to be the most 'direct' of any missions, but allows you to push things gently in your favor.