World Theme and Backstory

SuperSnark

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Cervator said:
The magic people could be descended from forerunners injected with nanobots which explain their ability to affect matter in a different fashion, but generations ago they forgot why. Then they built a divine creation story on top of it, consider nature sacred, and fight viciously to protect it - just on normal terms they're peaceful.
I absolutely love that as potential backstory. Very cool!

I think glas and I are thinking from both an art/story perspective in terms of "what does this culture look like today". And keeping them as "distinct" from each other as possible up front / on the surface.

As woodspeople and others have suggested, I think having an initial "game mode" in mind will help us feel out the possibilities of the engine.
 

glasz

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I thought of goblins not as a evil ugly creatures like in Tolkien, rather as strange mischievous creatures. Agreed they are cousins of pixies and elves and the likes, but i think goblins would be a little more original and a little more shade of greys.

http://albhertglasz.deviantart.com/art/goblins-297393226

Maybe while we think of the theme in a general, large strokes way, we can try to define a few basic interactions, wich would help us connect general ideas with real gameplay elements. Like we'll probably have dirt, rocks and trees/wood as primary materials, what would be the interactions of the 2 populations with these?
 

Cervator

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Neat :D

Definitely look like magical goblins, which is nice and novel.
 

woodspeople

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Love the ears. Like how the shoes and hats complement each other. The poor posture in 1 and 2 bothers me, they should stand up straight! Will lead to back problems eventually. The child says I am wrong because goblins might have poor posture. Still. Wonder how this would look blocky?
 

glasz

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They could follow the day/night cycle, day being favorable to techies, night to magies.
 

AlbireoX

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I prefer sandbox. Everything should be accomplished through modding, official mods or not. I don't want to be confined to a Steampunk game.
 

Cervator

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I think the going idea so far is that we'll make the core engine very low level, then provide a few game modes that would more or less be built-in mods :)

The primary idea in here with the tech/magic split might end up being known as some sort of "Tao" mode, pitting two interesting contrasted societies against eachother (not that they'd be forced to fight, but stacked against each other)

In addition to that I'm sure there'll be some sort of "Creative" analogue, as well as general survival sandbox, perhaps even full DF one day.

In the meantime while we don't even have a mod system we may build the beginnings of Tao into the core engine as a helpful implementation goal.
 

eleazzaar

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Hi, i just stumbled across this project today. I'd like to see some Voxel crafters go in a bit more original direction as you are trying to do.

Some thoughts about the Theme and Backstory:
IMHO the best experience comes about when the Theme/Backstory of the game and the gameplay integrate seamlessly.

I copied some bullet points from the wiki, that i think are relevant:
  • • Minion management akin to Dwarf Fortress or Dungeon Keeper - creatures that will have needs that take up space to provide that then in return provide you with various benefits. This helps fill out the world.
    • Crafting more focused on realistic workshops improving quality and quantity based on upgrades, specific minions, etc
    • A more vivid world that's alive and changes over time, even without direct manipulation by the player
    • Autonomous NPC societies that grow on their own and can both be source of minions as well as valuable trading partners. Or be your greatest enemy...
It seems like NPC minions are going to be a big part of this game. One of the problems with NPCs, especially in an arbitrary 3D world, is that it is extremely hard to make them seem like intelligent, thinking beings, when they cope badly with the world around them. If these NPCs look human (more or less) it is hard to care about them, when their actions are such bad imitations of humanity.

However, there's way to deal with these shortcomings -- don't make them human, or even humanoid. Players are much more sensitive to uncanny/odd/stupid behavior, when humans are supposed to be doing it. We know how humans act. And we expect humanoids to act pretty similarly. We are much more forgiving of odd behavior from non-humanoid robots and critters etc. We have fewer strong expectations about how they will behave. My dog will happily do the same thing every day, with the same enthusiasm. Going outside never gets old. If an adult person acted that way, it would be disconcerting.

So populate the world with non-humanoid critters who are simple-minded. Present them as having an intellect somewhere between that of a dog and a human child. To drive it home, perhaps make most of them shorter than the players. Don't make these critters speak English. "Humans" quickly seem phony when they repeat the same phrases with the same inflection. They can chirp, bray, or rumble, whatever and thus feel more believable.
The AI will seem more successful, as their simple-minded behavior is expected. You can build NPC societies-- they will inevitably be simpler than real human societies -- but it won't seem like a hollow imitation of human society if it is presented as something else.

The player(s) -- and only the players-- will be something else, perhaps human or humanoid. From somewhere else perhaps- maybe a traveler in a totally new land. Thus the player's role as the natural leader, and the guiding intellect of the local fortress/village of minions/critters makes perfect sense.


As to the technology, you can have a goal of including zeppelins and cannons etc. But i'd suggest if having functional societies is your goal, that you start with the stone age, and add the crafting, actions, AI, blocks etc. for the most simple things first. From their you build the next level of civilization one level at a time, enabling bigger, more complex societies with each level, until you want to stop.
 

Cervator

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Hello, eleazzaar, and welcome! Yep, very apt feedback, thank you. I think we're roughly going for that, especially with tech level. Not sure entirely on races, there are a lot of options, but we might be more at the whims of whatever races we'll have contributors willing to work on - which at least this early may be more important as any content is better than no content (from aiming for perfect content) :)

Over time we'll be able to refine more. The creature-centric approach is definitely important to me personally, and I eagerly welcome more feedback and contributions!
 

woodspeople

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Thinking about the minions issue and the point raised by eleazzaar. Can think of three orthogonal axes of NPC-ness:

1. Extended capability: the extent to which through NPCs things happen without the player having to do them "by hand". Robots, automated factories, track-laying rail cars, and on the magic side, spells and enchantments fit here, and also to some extent pets and farm animals. The axis goes from weak to strong extended capability, meaning: how strong they make your hand, from just avoiding a few extra clicks to running a whole city in your absence.

2. Freedom of will: the extent to which NPCs have any say in what you do with them. Automated factories and spells would have none; robots maybe a little to some; pets and farm animals would have more; humanoid NPCs, we expect, would have quite a bit more. There is a hard stop on how willful we can program NPCs to be, which was eleazzaar's point. Making things that appear to be more willful than they actually are programmed to be ... is sometimes ridiculous but sometimes just okay. It depends a lot on how they are presented.

3. Friendliness/hostility: whether NPCs do what you want out of helpfulness or in bending to your power and force (or whether they will do what you want at all). If there is no freedom of will this axis is void, since it doesn't matter.

You can imagine these three axes going together in lots of different ways. For example, if you say captured enemy soldiers and made them defend your fortress, capability might be high, but so would will and hostility. Or, say you built a robot to follow you around and carry stuff: low capability, no will, friendliness doesn't matter. But then say the robot grows a consciousness, and it gains in capability, will and ... uncertainty as to friendliness.

And you can also imagine each axis doing a backflip to describe the player:

1. Extended capability - you help NPCs extend their capabilities as a helper, either a minion/servant or a god.
2. Freedom of will - you have little or much. You might think this axis doesn't matter because people always have lots of options, but actually in a game the player is strongly limited by what the game "allows" them to do. So this could also vary, and possibly in interesting ways (see related discussion about undo).
3. Friendliness/hostility - you are helpful or harmful to NPCs.

A few more examples taking that variation into account as well. A trading situation, like the Millenaire mod for Minecraft, is a middle-ground for all three axes for player and NPCs. You help them, they help you; you and they have freedom of will (you more than them, but not much more); you are all neutral in your stance, though you may vary back and forth as you play. The game Black and White had the player as the provider of extended capability to the NPCs; your freedom of will was far higher than theirs, but still limited by the game mechanics; and you could be friendly or hostile (but not both at once if I recall correctly?).

Anyway, those might be some useful axes around which to define NPCs in, say, mods. I have not liked the word "minions" and thinking about why, I think it's because it conjures up images of a hostile relationship to creatures with high freedom of will bent to your purpose by force. That sounds like not much fun to me. However, if I look at this as a 3D space I can see several spots in it I would like better. I wonder if drawing up such a thought-space would help to find games everyone would like to play within TS?
 

eleazzaar

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Interesting thoughts.
I've only dipped my toes in DF, so i'm not very clear on how much autonomy the dwarves have. My impression is that it is loose/indirect, and control of "minions" in this game is generally intended to be loose/indirect also.

My use of the term "minion" wasn't meant to imply forced servitude. Swap out "minion" for "NPC" if you want.

I think my points about minions/NPCs are valid for axes #1 & #3. If this is going to be a game where no NPCs have autonomy, but simply do what you tell them to do until you tell them to do something else, then my argument isn't so strong.

EDIT:

Another benefit of using non-humanoid critters as NPCs occurs to me. Since you are looking to DF, i assume you will want the NPCs to have different "outfits" to represent armor, equipment, class (in a DnD sense) and/or profession. These outfits would take up a certain amount of texture surface. I assume you would also want there to be generally more than one tribe/village of each type of NPC. Some of these tribes the player may have won with gifts/threats/help/force. Other tribes may be neutral, or even hostile. How do you tell them appart? Well the friendly/hostile continuum can be indicated with the expression of the eyes -- that's why i wanted them to have large, expressive eyes. If you walk into a village and all the NPC critters look happy when they see you, you can feel safe. If they all scowl, get ready to run/fight.

But beyond the expression, it would be convenient to be able to easily tell the members of one village from another village. In a game using humanoid NPCs, you pretty much have to add some special color to their clothes. While possible, this limits the colors you can use for outfits, and unless the outfit is otherwise monochrome, it requires the player learn which arbitrary part of the outfit carries the village color. But with non-humanoid critters, you have a more obvious, convenient option, you can change the color of their fur/feathers/skin/scales. In one village the shark-dogs might be purple, in another red, in a third grey, and so on. This is more obvious, and more fun.
 

woodspeople

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Interesting again. I like the eyes thing, though to many it may be too "cute" to work? Maybe some very non-cute sets of eyes would prove the point... Glaring, glowing, etc.

Another idea is behavioral tics - tribes are differentiated by the unique ways they move around. This could tap into the huge body of work in assessing "micro-expressions" as indicators of intent (is this person about to give me a gift or stab me?). Tics are also pretty easy to automate with configuration, and it's a method of identification that requires a little "work" on the part of the player. Anything that moves away from "it looks like a zombie, kill it" makes the game more multi-dimensional!
 

woodspeople

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One more thought on the eyes idea: there is the opportunity to mix together indications of friendliness and hostility, which makes for a more challenging game. Portal is the example of that (and Hal before it) with sugary-voiced homicidal computers. You could imagine fluffy pink bunnies with nasty eyes, and huge ogres holding maces with friendly eyes who will in fact give you diamonds, unless you attack their bunnies of course ;)
 

eleazzaar

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woodspeople said:
Interesting again. I like the eyes thing, though to many it may be too "cute" to work? Maybe some very non-cute sets of eyes would prove the point... Glaring, glowing, etc.
Heh, they don't have to be giant MyLittlePony or Chibi sized glistening eyes to work -- just big enough that you can distinguish expressions from a reasonable distance. Minecraft-sized 2 pixel eyes aren't enough, unless you rely on props like red glowing eyes = angry.

32x32 pixel faces are probably sufficient-- if you tried hard you could probably do it with less. There's no reason the rest of the model should have that pixel density.

woodspeople said:
One more thought on the eyes idea: there is the opportunity to mix together indications of friendliness and hostility, which makes for a more challenging game. Portal is the example of that (and Hal before it) with sugary-voiced homicidal computers. You could imagine fluffy pink bunnies with nasty eyes, and huge ogres holding maces with friendly eyes who will in fact give you diamonds, unless you attack their bunnies of course ;)
Games generally train you to ignore expressions, and determine friend or foe by the "monstrousness" of a character. But people have deeply ingrained instincts to determine intent based on facial expressions (at least for humanoids). It would be interesting to see how often and how quickly the video-game method could be unlearned.
 

Cervator

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Interesting stuff, very nice and appreciated :)

Yeah, also scratch my use of "minions" to mean anything other than "useful NPCs or even PCs" - the exact details of the relationship could be very wide and open for interpretation

woodspeople - that thought space / graph idea might be very helpful, especially in moving toward some sort of implementation beyond just discussion

I'm still not a 3d wizard so the texture stuff for expressive faces - I imagine it would work and that we're not blocked by technical limitations. It could also be a novel take on things, that "unlearning typical video game behaviors" seems very appropriate. I just don't know much about how to make it work... :D
 

eleazzaar

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Feel free to split if i'm taking this thread too far off topic.

Speaking of expression, here's a graph i did for another abandoned game project. It charts the NPCs reaction to the player based on 2 axes.
 

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glasz

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Nice!

As i was suggesting in another thread, we could use swapable textures for the face expressions. My idea was to split the face into separated expressive parts, that is eyes, mouth , eyebrows mostly. If the creature is animalistic, we could add ears/ tail position. And why no variations in skin color. With like 3 diferent expression for each part of the face( for example eyes closed/half open / wide open) we could allready have a panel of expressions by combining each part.
 

eleazzaar

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glasz said:
My idea was to split the face into separated expressive parts, that is eyes, mouth , eyebrows mostly... With like 3 diferent expression for each part of the face( for example eyes closed/half open / wide open) we could allready have a panel of expressions by combining each part.
Sounds like a bit of overkill, don't you think?
If we do 3 or 4 expressions-- something like: Happy, Neutral, Angry and maybe fearful-- that will be going beyond most games. There's little or no overlap in these expressions that would justify spitting the face into multiple parts.
Accomplish 3 or 4 expressions, and an AI that uses them appropriately, and then maybe it will be worthwhile to think about making the NPCs more nuanced actors.

glasz said:
And why no variations in skin color.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but the eyes, and expressive bits of the face could be on an otherwise transparent PNG, applied over the underlying skin color.
 
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