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[tompliss]

PtW

There are some nice ideas...
The ChatBot dialogue is nice (different ChatBots for "humans" and AIs could help in this, using a more basic one for AIs and perhaps a less "informative" one for humans).
A cyberpunk setting is always nice (and this one seems like a low-tech Shadowrun (with no magic), which is really nice).
And having a pseudo-rogue-like with combat but other things to do (other than hitting a tree to craft pick and mine diamonds to make a sword out of them) is also nice.

I love your NiceRogue :p

[Retropunch]

PtW

There are some nice ideas...
The ChatBot dialogue is nice (different ChatBots for "humans" and AIs could help in this, using a more basic one for AIs and perhaps a less "informative" one for humans).
A cyberpunk setting is always nice (and this one seems like a low-tech Shadowrun (with no magic), which is really nice).
And having a pseudo-rogue-like with combat but other things to do (other than hitting a tree to craft pick and mine diamonds to make a sword out of them) is also nice.

I love your NiceRogue :p

Thanks! Good idea about robot AI and human AI. Robots are going to be incredibly basic for most of the time (only capable of basic commands/questions), although there may be some higher level AIs and robots which could do with a different AI. I think I can squeeze about 4 chatbots in with out it getting too heavy so possibly two 'human' chatbots, an AI chatbot and a robot chatbot. Chatbots are a hell of a lot of work though, so it'll take a while before they're fully integrated.

[Servant Corps]

Alright, I think I finally got the history generator to a complete state that I am satisfied with. Now the generator will give out enough information about a corporation to give you a good idea of what the corporation is, without overloading you with useless info. Previously, it did not give enough information. You could get something like "sociopathic fascist eco-weenies", and might be able to get some mental image of this corporation, but not entirely. Now I corrected that, to some degree, and I think doing anything more will do damage to this delicate balancing system.

[Retropunch]

Alright, I think I finally got the history generator to a complete state that I am satisfied with. Now the generator will give out enough information about a corporation to give you a good idea of what the corporation is, without overloading you with useless info. Previously, it did not give enough information. You could get something like "sociopathic fascist eco-weenies", and might be able to get some mental image of this corporation, but not entirely. Now I corrected that, to some degree, and I think doing anything more will do damage to this delicate balancing system.

Fantastic work!! I'm sure that'll come up with some really interesting variations and add a heck of a lot of back story/atmosphere. I'm currently thinking up ways in which they can have a tangible effect on gameplay. I'll probably take the approach of giving each phrase a variable modifier which will effect both their stock (things like previous terrorism groups having a negative effect) and also on the technologies that they associate themselves with, as well as their overall power/weaponry.

As an update, we've mainly been working on some of the more boring game mechanics (things like better targeting, scrolling maps and better inventories) so it's been a bit slow going on anything tangible. NPCs have better schedules now (if a bit quirky) although we're a long way off giving them proper wants/needs. Chatbot implementation is going well, and with Servant Corps' corporation history we'll have more stuff to talk about with NPCs! 

[LeoLeonardoIII]

It sounds like the kind of game where you go to sleep in your apartment, and wake up, and go through your email, pay a couple bills, go out and eat at a noodle shop, and maybe witness a gang shooting or background explosions - and choose to investigate or not. Which would be pretty awesome.

I think this would do well as an extremely-detailed environment, where you can for example hack a soda machine, turn on a jammer and prevent nearby cell phone calls, see trash blowing down the street, watch as potholes fill with water when it begins raining, see a child chasing a cat down the street, etc.

I think Seattle is a great choice because it has an underground, although many other cities do too: Edinburgh, Portland, probably others. You could use a fictional city, putting anything in it that you want. Shadowrun also did well by having various neighborhoods that ranged from ultra-modern and with heavy police presence to "barrens" areas like the worst of Detroit or post-flooding New Orleans.

I would suggest picking up some Shadowrun books. I'm reading one on corporations and their histories, and from it you could easily create some random event tables that build up to a procedurally- and randomly-generated corporate profile, with top shareholders and board of directors, subsidiaries that got bought out, chance for a name change that combines both company names vs. leaving the subsidiary as-is to distance it from the main corp. And then, the opportunity to have new events happen that change those features of the corp, appear in the news, and spawn adventures.

[Retropunch]

It sounds like the kind of game where you go to sleep in your apartment, and wake up, and go through your email, pay a couple bills, go out and eat at a noodle shop, and maybe witness a gang shooting or background explosions - and choose to investigate or not. Which would be pretty awesome.

I think this would do well as an extremely-detailed environment, where you can for example hack a soda machine, turn on a jammer and prevent nearby cell phone calls, see trash blowing down the street, watch as potholes fill with water when it begins raining, see a child chasing a cat down the street, etc.....

That's exactly what we're going for! We're trying to make it as immersive and procedural as possible, where a great deal of the game is just about surviving day to day in a pretty harsh, cyberpunk environment. We're pushing for as much detail as possible, and lots of random events (big and small) to draw the player in. It's set in a fictional city, although it's got many different districts which differ considerably.

Servant Corps has also written us some awesome procedural generation stuff for corporate background info, and we're expanding on it by adding in a few of the kinda things you've mentioned. I'm a big fan of the shadowrun books/game and use a lot of it as inspiration, although we're hoping not to borrow too much off previous entries in the genre (although it's rather unavoidable).

The problem however is that we're doing it as a top down, turn based RL. Whilst this offers immense flexibility (and ease) in programming, it does make creating atmosphere pretty difficult, especially as none of us are particularly talented artists (although it's starting to look a lot, lot better!). For instance, if you've got an NPC browsing a shop, they're just look like they're stood there and walking occasionally walking about randomly. Similarly, graphical immersion things like a pothole fill with water and so on become pretty difficult to show.

if you have any thoughts of how to increase immersion or things you'd like to see please let me know!


   

[Draxis]

For graphical immersion, I recommend giving letting whatever look/examine command you have be able to bring up some kind of subjective description, not like the detailed but bland DF ones but something handwritten - with maybe some modularity, but designed to help the player create whatever imagery you want to express.

Or, and this would be a huge amount of work to go back and do, but if you could get Kyzrati to let you use the engine he uses for X@COM and Cogmind and port to it, that would open up a ton of options for graphics - in not just the game but the interface as well.  Still, probably not worth it at this point.

[Retropunch]

For graphical immersion, I recommend giving letting whatever look/examine command you have be able to bring up some kind of subjective description, not like the detailed but bland DF ones but something handwritten - with maybe some modularity, but designed to help the player create whatever imagery you want to express.

Or, and this would be a huge amount of work to go back and do, but if you could get Kyzrati to let you use the engine he uses for X@COM and Cogmind and port to it, that would open up a ton of options for graphics - in not just the game but the interface as well.  Still, probably not worth it at this point.

We've already got a look/examine command although the descriptions are rather basic and bland. A lot of this is going to be built on the procedural generation - in some cases you'll live in a Wen-Zari apartment block, this will have more robots in as they're a robotics company. In another game you'll live in a Smith-Avery Tech. building, which will have more subtle tech in it instead. These will feed into the descriptions and the life a bit as different corps will have a lot of different designs and things related to them.

X@com and cogmind look fantastic - I always forget how great they look till I play them again. Using the libtcod package we've got some really nice effects (like textured floors/walls) and once we get better at using it we're hoping to have lots of things like lighting and shadows. Might take a while for that though.

If anyone knows any good tiles designers then please send them our way!

[Nienhaus]

Sorry about not doing the sprites. I was at Comic Con over the weekend and I wanted to take a break as I tend to make a lot for people on SS13.

[Retropunch]

Sorry about not doing the sprites. I was at Comic Con over the weekend and I wanted to take a break as I tend to make a lot for people on SS13.

No problem, let me know if you get time to do anymore as we'd love to put them in!

[Servant Corps]

Servant Corps has also written us some awesome procedural generation stuff for corporate background info, and we're expanding on it by adding in a few of the kinda things you've mentioned. I'm a big fan of the shadowrun books/game and use a lot of it as inspiration, although we're hoping not to borrow too much off previous entries in the genre (although it's rather unavoidable).

I think I was able to avoid it because I'm not too familiar with Shadowrun (other than it has fantasy races in a near-future setting) or any other cyberpunk thing for that matter. Eclipse Phase has been an influence on me when writing the generator, but EP is a transhuman game that was made by the makers of Shadowrun.

What did serve as inspiration for me was the Wikipedia article for Cyberpunk, which was the only research I did before even starting the generator[1]. The article described cyberpunk as "evil corporations rule the world while governments are weak"...a reverse-1984. And since I know that there are a lot of corporations out there that can be seen as being evil without being 'for-profit', I was able to design the generator in a manner that should be fairly unique.

[1]And the reason it was the only research that I did was because you wanted me to be unique and not rip off existing cyberpunk tropes. So there we go.
===
EDIT: And just 40 minutes later, I remembered that I did play Syndicate (the original Bullfrog one) for a long time and am familiar with the plot of that game, its expansion pack, and the sequel Syndicate Wars. Some of that knowledge did inadvertently seep into the generator as well. So I'm not completely unfamiliar with cyberpunk.

[Mephansteras]

Looks interesting!

[Scoops Novel]

Just curious as too if you've heard of Papers Please. (Haven't played it)

[Retropunch]

Just curious as too if you've heard of Papers Please. (Haven't played it)

Yeah, I've played it and enjoyed it. It's aiming to be a little bit more futuristic than that, but I suppose similar in tone. One of the things which was great about it was the depth of the NPCs/people you process. We've been thinking up a lot of NPC content so that they can be varied and actually make you feel that they really are someone, rather than just a moving and talking object.
It's not great at the moment, but we'll add loads more soon so each NPC will have a detailed style/story/persona. This improves with your perception, and will eventually give you clues on the best way to deal with them.

Unfortunately we're currently bogged down by re-doing the stats as they were a little bit tricky to start off with. Whilst I do enjoy complexity, it was a little bit tricky to see what affected what and made it difficult to balance things properly.

Now we just have Strength, Dexterity, Perception and Intelligence. These sound like very standard dungeon crawl/ARPG game stats - and they are to a point - but they will eventually affect all sorts of non-fighting things (Strength for intimidation, Perception for discerning truth or lies and so on). It was the most straightforward way to deal with things without going to a completely different system or making things too non-intuitive. 

[Servant Corps]

Retropunch, I do have one question about the city that you are planning to set that game in. Is that city's background also going to be randomly generated? Or have you already got a preset city background ready, and the only thing that differs is the districts and the megacorps?
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I also have one idea for a background for the randomly generated corporation, but I am not sure if you are already done with the "random corporation generator". It's not really all that important an idea anyway; I just wanted to have the generator hit all the 'evil nonprofits' angles.
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And finally, ETA on a demo release?