Guest_EntropicAngel_*
So gangs are your more "local," low-level threat, while the "bad guys" are a more plot-oriented, higher difficulty threat, it sounds like. That's good - gives conflict a little more dichotomy. Could you recruit the gangs to begin working for the village against the bad guys?
And finding that balance between reactivity and needs-based NPCs and the game completely going in a direction that is unsupported by the design is a really common problem. Not sure how familiar you are with Ultima 9, but one of its biggest reasons for failing was their scope in trying to make the game as simulation-esque as possible and finding out too late that the game just could not support it. One bug story I remember is that they had planned on making naval combat between ships possible, but then scrapped the idea. Then, about eighteen months later, the had some random NPCs who swarmed one of the ships, attacking it as an "enemy" because the flag had never been removed. The programmers, who were under the impression that the ship couldn't be targeted by AI anymore than a wall could, were astounded that the enemies swarmed the ship, were attacking it in huge numbers, and then the ship hit "0 HP" and sunk into the waves.
Not sure that rant was totally applicable, but it just goes to show how there may need to be a time when turning off or toning down designed features may actually result in legacy issues and problems as well, so tread carefully.
I'm not thinking recruitment (outside of the player maybe joining a gang), but I don't want the gangs to be static "we're at war with everybody" entities. Their..."morality" you might say would be dependent on that of the leader (leaders?).
So, in theory one of the gangs might be "good" if the leader is "good," and perhaps gangs with similar leaders, leaders who encounter each other in a non-hostile environment and develop a positive relationship, might become non-hostile (to one another, not village or other gangs) or maybe even allies.
Again, not sure how I want the "bad guys" to go. If they do end up affecting the game world, they would definitely be able to get into conflict with any group, and perhaps multiple groups might find themselves fighting together and thus develop an affinity for each other...
Something I just thought of, based off of that edited paragraph and your comments: have the village as a faction as well, rather than simply a collection of individuals.
It's a good thing I can see where that's from when I reply, cause I didn't know
How will conversation work? Text based? Will there be flags to denote different NPC's being in the same room/area as one another (like would an NPC talk differently about another NPC if they were right in front of them, for instance) or would it be driven solely by the stats/math and the not the surrounding environment?[/background]
I was thinking TES-like, with a list. I really think voice-overs would be best, but I don't know where I'd get the talent (might be able to do it at a recording studio), and to do it right would cost a small fortune--you'd need maybe hundreds of voices so that there's no TES overlap.
That's an interesting idea about the flags. I hadn't thought of that. It would be fairly straightforward to add code-wise (just add a collider to the character of some radius to do it quick and dirty). Would increase the number of lines a lot, though.
Thinking about voiceovers, while it might require lots of people, all in all the amount of unique dialog would be fairly small. Mainly comments about other NPCs and factions, and about one's attributes.
Just as a suggestion, could there possibly be an increased relationship bonus to those NPCs who are vital? This isn't that much of a realism stretch - people who bring valuable services to the community usually are highly regarded.[/background]
That's a good one. I can see it. Thanks.
Yeah, one of my biggest roadblocks to attempting game design myself is art assets (coupled with zero coding experience). There are lots of open-source art assets, but that can definitely be an issue of being hodge podge. As a suggestion, I'd say plan on using place holder art until you get further down the line with your systems. It may be worth paying someone a few hundred dollars to contract out some art designs for you at that point if you've sunk 100+ hours into the design of it.
I actually had zero coding experience before, but it's one of the best parts in some ways, because chances are very, very strong that someone else has done it, and if you know how to look, you can use some of their (freely given) code for your purposes. For example, procedural terrain splatmap (basically the actual terrain like grass or snow) generation (though I'll admit I'm still having a few issues with this one). And with this as a template, I can create a similar thing for trees, for example, that will place trees in grass but not in snow (or only certain trees in snow, or only to a certain height). It will take a little bit of digging to figure out how to cross-reference to the terrain from the tree script, but it's entirely possible.
That's a good idea. I can mock up some models swiftly to work for stuff like humans or animals.
And yeah, you're probably right. heck, I've already put I'd say at least 10 hours into the "demo" I've got, so if I can maintain motivation (and oddly I have pretty well, I've barely played any games recently), the full game will get lots of love.
To address a comment made earlier about the game being highly CPU intensive, one thing I have gathered from modding is that checks are made far too often than would be necessary. An "always on" check for hunger may not be needed but only once every 3 seconds to result in the exact same gameplay, but significantly less checks and processing.
Just a thought from an inexperienced guy.[/background]
True, true. Optimization will definitely need lots of work for this game.
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