World Theme and Backstory

[Cervator]

Hear hear

I keep seeing references to Arcanum, and have seen it now and then online and even in stores. I wish I had enough time to spare to actually play it - you can get it online for the magnificent sum of $6: http://www.gog.com/gamecard/arcanum_of_ ... ck_obscura

Not that I really have money to spare either, but if somebody is willing to go through it who can use the inspiration to do something significant for Terasology I might be able to survive actually buying the game for said somebody

Quests - hesitant, like I've expressed here and there, tho I've got some sneaky ideas to do something similar. Yeah just handing out procedural kill quests and such would be fairly meh, especially vs. games that do it so much better. Same for substantial story-driven stuff, tho I like the idea of procedurally generated flavor.

DF style gameplay to perfection I agree on as well, it is an ambitious challenge that seems more like an ultimate goal than "this is what we're doing now!" - if we can solve assorted technical obstacles on the way there we'll have a viable game long before getting there, and maybe, just maybe, we can eventually get all the way there. One big advantage we have over Toady: Open source and a large team

In the meantime tho, lets make a fun sandbox!

 

[woodspeople]

1. Love Steampunk to death. Would be far more exciting than the long-dead-beaten horse of pseudo-medieval fantasy. If I never see another orc it will be too soon.
2. My main problem with hard-coding game engines is not so much fixing themes but fixing assumptions about what you can and can't do and what it all means or can mean. I don't like being told I have to kill without knowing why. I don't like being told there is only one way to do things. I don't like being given ten thousand identical tasks to perform. I like scratching at the surface and finding something underneath. Few games have ever offered that sort of satisfaction, but there is no reason they couldn't. The game of subversion is far more interesting than the game of blind submission to authority. The best games can be played with as well as played.
3. The reason I say it might be useful to keep as little hard-coded as possible is that it is impossible to predict what sorts of gaming geniuses are not in the room right now. Keeping the doors open keeps the game ready to amaze itself.
4. How about this for a method to make an engine that works to create amazing games: each person think up ten game scenarios that would make them stay up several nights in a row to play. (Or want to if they could, for those of us with responsibilities.) The engine should be able to make them all work, or most of them. One of mine was the treaty thing. Here's another one. You are told you are an apprentice engineer. You are given an increasingly difficult set of machine parts to build. As time goes by you begin to wonder what it is you are building and what it will be used for. When you probe, your teacher tells you that you are suppporting a project to save the world. But there are confusing bits in what they say. Eventually you start to suspect that their vision of "saving the world" involves purifying some of it.... You begin to wonder whether you should continue. You begin to seek challenges not in building the machines you are asked to build but in pretending to build them while subtly sabotaging them so they won't work. At the end of the game ... you find out if you guessed right.

 

[woodspeople]

In case "for those of us with responsibilities" was offensive: I meant, for those of us with little time free left over after work and child care. Not for those of us who are responsible. We are all responsible here

 

[Cervator]

Hehe, yeah, trying to balance my responsibilities with also trying to keep up here has me staying up till 1-2 am on weeknights when I probably shouldn't - but hey, I'm hopefully still healthy enough to survive partially off 5-hour-energy for a few months

I think we're in agreement on where the engine should be flexible: Don't hard code who wants to kill who for no reason, do vary starting opinions on who tends to feel like killing their neighbors for assorted reasons and allow that to change over time both naturally and by power users editing that in-game or out-of-game.

So employing a tactic I've found useful at the office: Does anybody not want us to start with a mix of fantasy + steampunk? Speak now or forever hold your tongue! And I don't really mean the "hold your tongue" part, anybody can totally speak up later, I love discussion, I'm just trying to be dramatic here.

There will still be challenges like the roundish style of a lot of the steampunk stuff (hello eventual HD texture pack!) and we might still have orcs, but maybe they'll want to serve you tea. And they might be wearing monocles. Throwing that last one in as a bonus. Really, exactly what we'll see depends heavily on what we have people willing to implement

 

[woodspeople]

Another worlds-within-worlds idea: there are 98-or-some-other-magical-sounding-number core secrets. Some of them have to do with items, some with places, some with characters and behaviors. A few random examples, just thinking of items:
- The Sword of Seeming: deals lots of hit points, but the moment you wield it, whomever you are looking at looks exactly like either yourself or a random choice from your online friends (real or NPC); optionally, whoever it looks like gets some of the hit points you dish out to the monster it really is
- The Amulet of Invisibility: on wearing it you become invisible to monsters AND to everyone else including helpful NPCS and other players (including in chat); and you can't take it off for x time ticks
- The Armor of Perspective: you become well-nigh impossible to kill, but there is a side effect: the longer you wear it, the visual manifestations of monsters and friends morph more and more until one group turns into other, then back again at somewhat regular intervals (the trick is to figure out when to put it on and when to take it off - if you take it off at the wrong time you have to wear it again to get your perspective back on track)
- The Map of Change: looks like a normal map, with a GUI you can use to place "annotations" on the map like labels and pins; only later do you realize that you weren't annotating the map, you were annotating the original shown on the map: placing giant pins and words on it (get it, the map of change)
- The Drawing Pick: draws you toward precious gems, but only works in complete darkness (including your being unable to see what you have just mined), and some random proportion of time actually has you mining nothing but stone and dirt
- The Foreign Factory: you craft a machine whose function you can control but whose location you cannot; it appears somewhere and does useful things, but you have no idea who might benefit from it and can only hope people will make more so you can use one too
- The Dream Boat: you build a boat that can carry you across the water and in the air; every time you disembark you wake up in your own bed; you have to then figure out if you got anywhere in reality or just in a dream
- The Ore Bore: a "monster" that looks just like a block of ore, but if you try to mine it, it pops out of the wall; it doesn't attack you, just hangs around and bothers you all the time, getting in your way as you walk; there is some secret way to get rid of it (killing it won't work)

That was just a few things, but the game-that-surrounds-the-game would be that nobody is allowed to tell anybody what the secrets are. You roam around and you find these items or places or characters, but you have to guess what they do and what their side effects and Faustian bargains might be. They are not on any wiki, and anybody who tells anybody what they are is instantly shunned (or labeled a liar, thus keeping the secrets safe). This is a bit like birdwatching where people keep lists of birds they have spotted (and aren't always that revealing about where other people can see them). So a sort of "score" in the game-that-surrounds-the-game is how many secrets you have found (and if you are a modder, maybe how many you have added). But if you can't talk about them it's hard to count them... And mod packs could boast of how many "unique" or "new" secrets they contain... This is all just kind of silly, but my general point is that a sandbox game could be sandbox in LOTS of ways beyond "you can place blocks." And that there can be as much game outside the programming as inside it. Maybe we let the computers have too much of the fun?

Within a Steampunk/fantasy theme which lends itself to this sort of thing well dontcha think

 

[glasz]

I think when choosing the theme of the game there are 2 things to consider : what does it look like (art), and what interactions it allows (code). The two are often linked,if you play a med fan setting you expect to be able to cast spells, fight with sword etc... But it doesnt mean there cant be other interactions, like baking, harvesting, etc... So defining the look and setting doesnt
close the door to any gameplay feature we'll wish to add in the future.

Otherwise i'm ok with the med fan / possibly expendable to steam punk setting. I would have prefered a more original approach but in the end it's the gameplay that will make the game worthwhile or not.

 

[Cervator]

We're picking a very broad theme anyway. The exact implementation would be up to who we have available with a desire to do exactly what. We could try to pick a more exact direction within the overall theme and be boned if nobody feels like producing it. I don't want to force anything that specific on a bunch of volunteers who wouldn't enjoy doing it

So if you were to look at your expected time availability and desire to do something you'd enjoy, what would you like to do? Would there be some specific style or flavor within the general theme you'd consider more original or unusual? The tea sipping orcs wearing monocles comes to mind again, tho that might be a bad example

 

[Immortius]

I tend to shy away from traditional fantasy races somewhat. In particular dwarves are completely oversaturated at the moment (with ale), at least as the PC race.

 

[glasz]

Speaking for myself : I find it fun to invent my own creatures, but then its not like i'm such an accomplished artist that creating an elfe or orc is not a challenge, and adding the steam punk composent adds a necessity for invention anyway(the orc with a monocle). And once we have created the elves dwarves and else there's no reason we cant make other creatures that are fully original.

 

[SuperSnark]

Throw out traditional "races" for a moment. What about tech vs. magic cultures? Say there are two primary tribes of humanoids. One favors primitive tech (steampunkish - but square~!) and one favors magic/swords.

Sticking with our sandbox theme, we simply have these two factions to begin with that favor these particular principles of life. Druids vs. tinkerers kind of a thing. Neither are "good" or "bad"; they're just at odds for resources and cultural dominion.

This could be a simple way to start things off in terms of generic world population - plop down culture X here, culture Y there. If they cross paths, they fight (mech-warriors vs shape-shifters!). Or maybe on occasion they have taboo love affairs. ; )

Players could choose a starting faction and go from there. As they begin to harvest and build and develop goals for their culture, there would simply be another culture attempting the same. Kind of Age of Empires-ish, but with a LOT different gameplay and a LOT more flexibility.

And of course we'd have random cool creatures to populate our world; fierce and hostile etc.

What do you think about that idea (tech vs. magic cultures)? Kind of keeps it simple, but a bit more unique than generic fantasy. We could flesh out all kinds of interesting cultural ideas based on that generic premise. The look of the humaniod, the clothing, weapons, styles of architecture, etc.

 

[Cervator]

Tech vs Magic as two initial factions to kick off everything sounds good to me

Easy enough in eventual multiplayer to spawn a new world with two Portals in it, fairly distant from each other, and spawn the player at the appropriate one - which becomes their "Spawn Village" in MC terms, the portal object able to provide utility

And to go with the "non-hardcoded world that makes sense" angle rather than them just hating each other arbitrarily just stack them against each other in initial behavior config stats. The steampunkers are exploitative of the environment (not in an evil fashion, they just use what's there!), the magic nature folk abhor exploitation (consider trees sacred or what not). Little bit like dwarves vs elves in DF, but without needing to be dwarves or elves.

 

[metouto]

How about this .....

The bomb (or what ever) has been dropped .... all earth has been transformed into something strange .... all peoples of the world have mutated unto something that is hard to tell what (creations of different races and what not) and on the whole are distrusting but with work could be won over to your views (or not) ..... animals have also mutated into things that can hardly be understood. They are also distrusting but can be won over if approached in the correct way (what ever that would be) .... because of the bomb (or what ever) all knowledge is still there but you have to find it and make it work again but in remaking this said knowledge you may find something even better than what was there before ... and because of this bomb (or what ever) new things have begun to appear that the world has never seen before.

I keep thinking back to what woodspeople said about using the trees roots as modes of travel in this new/old world but you have to find out how it works.

Magic in not my cup of tea but you could put it in as something that has happened because of the bomb (or what ever) combining elements of the world to create something never before seen ....

well, just a short version of my 2 cents for what ever it is worth

 

[glasz]

I like cervator's idea of having the 2 factions set against each other, not arbitrarilly but through their interactions with the world : the magic people will be able to cast a healing spell when near a tree, while the tech guy will just see a source of wood.

 

[woodspeople]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (Arthur C. Clarke)

I like it. It has things underneath it.

 

[Cervator]

That's it! Super evolved eco hippies using salvaged green tech revered as magical, insisting it isn't tech

 

[glasz]

Presented like that nobody will want to play the tech people

 

[woodspeople]

Agree that artwork is usually the bottleneck. It's great to talk about flexibility but somebody has to sit down and draw the teacup held by the orc with the monocle. Far more people can imagine than can code, but far more people can code than can draw cool looking stuff. So in a sense the whole thing hangs off what the artists are willing to spend their time drawing! Steampunk is a good choice in that it's popular with artists. I think.

This is just more crazy brainstorming but have you seen FortressCraft? It's for one of the consoles. I haven't played it, just saw a video. What intrigued me was its "workshop" which you could use to design smaller-than-block structures, like a chair or table. You made it huge with normal blocks, then zapped it with something and the game made a tiny copy of it that fit within a block. Wouldn't it be cool if TS could jump over the art hurdle by incorporating a blocky character design workshop? Like, you place blocks to design a blocky creature/NPC, then zap it with something and it becomes a creature/NPC definition that is used normal size? Then people could create new art to match their new creature/NPC definition "bundles" without being "artists". The only problem is, maybe such a thing would simply make it easier to make crap, and the world would be flooded with ugly art. But it could be fun anyway. That would be sandbox-y in lots of ways.

As to factions, if there are two I would always want to play as the third one. But I do like the tech/magic angle, because they are not races but coherent belief systems. This means that any creature/NPC could belong to either of the factions, or both, or neither, and that behavior could be interestingly non-knee-jerk.

 

[Cervator]

Interesting - the "Block Shrinkage" thing is planned and getting more common, I saw Mythruna add it sometime after I started thinking about it, and FortressCraft too? I haven't seen FC much directly, but it has gotten a bit of a... reputation

The idea tho of imbuing special blocks like that with life... that speaks to the mad scientist in me

People already make giant statues anyway...

(And I'd totally play the straight up tech people!)

 

[glasz]

Besides if magic is just an unexplained technology, the 2 factions could have both their own magic and technology. I think the interesting angle is that a ressource could be perceived diferent way by different factions, just because the use they can make of it is different.

 

[GoldenDragon]

Tech vs Magic as two initial factions to kick off everything sounds good to me

Maybe you should make two diffrent worlds. Then the "Tech" faction should have a more sci-fi like world and the "Magic" faction should have a more fantasy like world. Then you can travel between these worlds by building some kind of portal using a special type of block.

Maybe we should have diffrent classes that limit the weapons and spells (if there are any) that you can use.
If we take a mage as an example, the weapons you can use should not be many, but if there are spells, you should be able to use more of those instead.
If we take a gunner for example, you should be able to use all the guns in the game, but you should only be able to use a few meele weapons.
and so on.

What do you think? Should I open a topic for classes, or shouldn't there be any?