So, here's the idea. It's 2010. Professor Ruffleberg died a few years ago, leaving a large, complicated estate. He specifically asked that his mansion be demolished, and that's started now. During the demolition, a locked safe not mentioned in his will is found, and when it's opened, the plans for his machine (which he'd hidden from the world) are discovered.
Cut to 2020, and the first prototype is nearly operational. You're in charge of the consortium of businesspeople, scientists, and other people who have poured funding into the project with a variety of hopes for its future. Throw in a bit of a resemblance to an adult version of the protagonist from the first game, but leave it ambiguous. You've got a taste for bad movies, particularly horror movies. If we've got the funding, and I'm assuming we have an unlimited amount of that for this fantasy, license a lot of real films, books, games, and what-have-you for this one. The original blueprints were designed for four "creators" to scan in order to produce the world, and nobody's figured out how, exactly, to change that yet. Unfortunately, there are
six major groups behind the funding here, and each has a preferred candidate. But everyone agrees that the first test run should happen as quickly as possible. Have a bunch of lampshading of science fiction tropes where scientists rush into some dangerous experiment too fast and it kills them all. Anyway, you have to choose 4 of them, and this serves as a prologue - if you know what you're doing, you can make a snap judgment and just pick whoever you want. If you are new, you can spend some time exploring the controls of the game, discussing with each potential creator their background, interests, and so on. Get a combat tutorial from your sparring tutor or something, with some more lampshading of your unusually buff, wealthy office worker protagonist.
Elizabeth (Fire-Eyes) might play a bit role in the prologue, giving you a rundown of the mechanics of the world-generation in the process of probably warning you not to go through with this. She absolutely will not be a love interest. She might even not be particularly attractive
or ugly, in complete defiance of conventional gaming aesthetics. If she appears at all, then she'll serve as a contact with the outside world, feeding you information that she's the only one competent to understand, and so on.
Here's where Toady gets a consulting credit - your choices serve as information used during a procedural world generation. Since we need solid plots for a game like this, we aren't going to have them generated from whole cloth - instead, you'll have one or two "major" landmarks that
always accompany a given creator and have a fixed layout, 4 or 5 "minor" landmarks of which 2 or 3 accompany a given creator on each playthrough and which have variable (but not completely procedural - probably building blocks with a few constraints on how they can be assembled) layouts, and then the space in between is generated. Do the same thing with NPCs at each landmark (so each one, regardless, will have a few fixed NPCs if it appears at all, a few that MAY appear, and so on). Since these are all geographically distinct and tend not to interact with one another, you'll only need to generate special interaction rules for the borders and the rare contact that there is (maybe trade for areas that can comprehend one another's technology, for instance). Each one will also have differences in the cinematography, gameplay emphasis, and so on. Each setting plays with the appropriate tropes, often with a touch of humor, and (unlike the main plot) draws from their entire genre, regardless of quality, rather than the general category of bad movies.
So, your options would be:
A scientist, who dedicates time to nature conservation and whatever stereotypes you want to associate with either. Produces an Ice Age world with (as a major landmark) an underground area of warmth and tremendous biodiversity, and aside from humans, both are inhabited entirely by extinct species. Survival and resource management are key here.
A businessperson, who reads a lot of science fiction and is a hard-core believer in both capitalism and the power of technology to better society. Produces a cyberpunk-aesthetic kind of world that teeters between dystopia and utopia with (as a major landmark) a city of leisure built and maintained entirely by robotic life. Conversation and manipulation, and some sort of universal hacking skill (which more generally could be used on the game world itself) are key here.
A military officer, who plays a lot of modern fantasy games and reads a lot of similar literature, from multiple cultures. Produces a medieval-stage technology world of war, in which military leadership, rulership of the people, and personal strength are all synonymous, and honor and responsibility to the people under your command are viewed as key values. A variety of aesthetics and definitions of honor from various real-world cultures are incorporated. Death here isn't permanent (for natives; you might be different, I dunno), so it's closer to Valhalla than some kind of crapsack world, but that might be changing as a crucial plot device. Combat is key here, naturally.
Some kind of artist or movie producer - I've started losing steam here, but there'd be various Cthulhu-style thematics here and stealth would be key.
And two more I've not thought of yet
Inevitably, they become trapped, and you're sent in to break them out for some reason I've yet to contrive. We're poking fun at bad movies with the main plot, so this shouldn't be too hard. By the end of the first world you explore, it should become clear that there are Evil Twins at work, and Carltron is behind everything - you should comment on how the villain "never dies". But then, as you reach the game's climax, it's revealed that it's all been a ruse! I've not quite figured out what the real villain would be, mostly because I can't think of a good enough cliche to rival "The butler did it".
Anyway, you do the whole thing with fairly unimpressive graphics (but not bad!), and no voice acting, because it A) makes the procedural stuff way easier, and B) you want to encourage modding. A lot. Bundle it with a program that streamlines creating new graphics, dialogue, and statistics for new things to incorporate, and I do mean streamline it. None of this Creator Kit stuff we got with Skyrim - some random player with an idea ought to be able to sit down and get started, even though the amount of work involved in actually getting it done will still be tremendous. As much of the work as possible should lie in getting it done, not in learning how to do it.
Get some professional comedians in to polish the script (the original game WAS supposed to be humorous, after all). Make all of the dollars.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16313485 times)