H-world discussion (SPLIT)

xJEDx said:

Are you still working on the project? The site doesn't seem to have been updated in over a year. Skip The Jungle and make the space exploration cRPG! Please! The graphics look great, by the way.

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I'm pretty much stuck with the design of the space exploration game.

The problem in that project is that there is a whole galaxy to explore. First this seems to be a good thing, and I was pretty proud of my solar system generator, but actually the size bears some problems:

The game is played on a personal scale. This means the most detailed level (inside buildings, space ships and space stations) is 1mx1m. But there buildings, cities made of buildings, planets with cities and space stations, solar systems with a lot of planets and space bodies, and a whole galaxy of solar systems.

City maps should have a scale of 10mx10m

Planet surfaces should be mapped at 1kmx1km ... 100kmx100km

Inside solar systems there are distances of millions of kilometers.

The game needs to provide reasonable and intersting content on each scale. IMO it's impossible to design this by hand. Using random map generators bears the problem that the maps will be similar at some point, and the player will notice this. Thus the thing eventually gets boring.

The world is too big to create proper content on all scale levels, I'm afraid.

I think the core problem of the idea, that on one hand, the games is played on a personal scale - the PC walking around, and interacting with his environment. On the other hand, there are cities, planets, solar systems, a whole galaxy of solar systems.

I guess I would have continued if I could've solved a few problems:

- I need a good generator for space stations (interior, layout)
- I need a good generator for cities (roads, buildings)
- The buildings/space stations need inhabitants, who can be talked to
and who can give quests and informations. I have no idea how to do that
(by random?) in a game of that scale? - I must admit I have no idea how
to implement smalltalk with NPCs on a random basis at all

Another problem was player motivation. I wanted to create a less combat centric game. Thus the traditonal empowering scheme (upgrade equipmnet, fight even stronger foes) can't be applied. I wanted the game to focus on social reputation and scientific advancement. Both handled by the research of alien artefacts.

Scientific research turned out to be much less fun than combat. It is less thrilling and often very repetitive. I'm afraid it will beocome boring very soon.

Modeling social/reputation effects seems to be difficult, but probaly it could be made into the game somehow.

I admit I'm not a good enough game designer to solve the problems. I've given up.

Today I'm of the opinion that the whole concept won't work - maybe if a team of people tackles the problem and manages to craete content for all the different scale levels, but no for a single person hobby coder like me.

This means, I'm back to the things that I can do: mostly I'm working on the engine, and to show off the capabilities I'm working on the example game "The Jungle". I'm more of a programmer than a designer, and my tries to get help failed so far. "The Jungle" is a very traditional game, and it can borrow concepts from a lot of existing games. This is much easier than designing a whole new game.

I'm sorry, I've had to learn that there are limits for me

I've tried to get help, someone who is a better designer, and who also can help to write level templates, edit config files and arrange the content of the world. There've been a few contacts, but nothing successful so far.

I must admit, I probably just have too little time that I can spend on this project.

Hi Hajo,

It sounds like some of the content you would like to have could be created by a community such as this one. I wouldn't mind giving input on NPC's, quests, and such if you gave me some guidelines to work with and feedback on what I submitted to you. Coding isn't really in my background, but if you have some sort of level creator/generator type tool for making the space stations and other locales I could at least attempt to help you create them. Regardless of what you decide though, I wish you good luck on your Jungle game.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

Hajo said:

- The buildings/space stations need inhabitants, who can be talked to and who can give quests and informations. I have no idea how to do that (by random?) in a game of that scale? - I must admit I have no idea how to implement smalltalk with NPCs on a random basis at all.

Click to expand...

Have you seen the way Gearhead handles randomized NPC conversations? Its a little screwy but it works. Other things you mentioned like reputation (both global and on a character by character basis) and non-combat professions are handled well by the game. If you're considering taking another shot at H-Space World, maybe you could borrow some ideas (or whole bits of code. :D )

About the scope of the game - if the game was pared back so the gameworld was only as big as the solar system (this one or an imaginary one) it'd allow you to hand craft those half dozen or so "critical" game situations (those that define character and quest choices) on each planet that can drive the game forward. There'd still be the other profession stuff (planetary raider, pirate, company man, scientist, pilot, intergalactic private eye - combination of any and all of these) that make up the bulk of the gameplay, the game would just have corners.

Smalltalk is usually derived from a pool of 'common responses' that 'commoner' NPCs of a certain location will use.

Most of the large scale stuff can be done fairly easily. Nearly everything you mentioned as a problem isn't really a problem to do at all, Hajo. You're looking at it from the wrong point of view. You need to have interesting things happen for the player on a universal scale, right? Things dealing with exploration, combat, covert activities, supply hauling, and so on, right? You need it to be random on a scale that's gigantic as well.

That's all been done before, years ago, in fact.

What you need to do is look at that part of the game as a 4X type game, like Master of Orion. The player is just a peon in the universe controlled in a similar fashion to a 4X game. Instead of the player playing an empire, though, the player would just be playing a lone pilot in the 4X. The computer would handle all the empires, and assign tasks as it typically would in a 4X game. The difference here is that the player might be assigned the task instead of a lowly AI controlled ship or fleet. The player can be assigned these things depending on the political system of the AI controlled empire, what the player's job is within that empire and/or the player's rank with the empire, and so on. It can be a direct order from the commanders or something like a job board with varying credit amounts for the job.

Within a 4X framework, you have a number of tasks that the AI might want you to do to another AI empire. Those would lead to a variety of missions. Stealing enemy technology, assassinating a governor, and so forth.

Reklar said:

Hi Hajo,
It sounds like some of the content you would like to have could be created by a community such as this one. I wouldn't mind giving input on NPC's, quests, and such if you gave me some guidelines to work with and feedback on what I submitted to you.

Click to expand...

So far, I've got a galaxy with a very large number (>100,000) of randomly generated solar systems.

Imagine what it means to model one (earth-like) planet only: you need a world map with continents and oceans, mountains, forest areas etc. There have to be cities. The cities are made from buildings -> the player moves on a 1x1m scale in the most detailed level.

I assume even a large community would neeed years to model a few planets. In case of a few 100,000 solar systems the task seems to be undoable.

Two solutuons spring to my mind

1) use random-based generators
2) use premade templates

Bot solutions have the drawback of being repetitive at some point. If the player visits enough places he's seen all template types or used all generator variants and a new planets will become "just another planet". At this point the game will not offer much to explore anymore.

If we cut the scale, say model only one or a few solar systems, we can give them good, consistent, sensible and cohesive content, but we loose the idea of exploring a whole galaxy.

Maybe some of you have played Frontier (Elite 2) and First Encounters. It suffered from the same problem: after playing a while, you've seen it all, there is nothing new anymore. Even if the galaxy is gigantic.

Reklar said:

Regardless of what you decide though, I wish you good luck on your Jungle game.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I've found someone who wants to create a RPG module for the H-World engine. I hope his module will be better than my "The Jungle" example game.

You could shoot for the traditional roguelike solution to your problem. First, there will be randomly generated levels, but the game would have such complexity that it would take a while to understand what everything was and how to use them. Don't explain things too much in the manual, and let the player tinker things out. This could be like landing on an alien planet and the player runs across a strange dohickie that doesn't come with instructions. While of course the player will figure it out, either by trail & error or reading spoilers, if you make the objects complex enough and with serious consequences, then it will still be fun. I know how the altars in ADOM work, but I still get giddy as a school girl when I run into one.

Next is also to have scripted content that will always spawn in every game and have a large impact on the game. Roguelikes will have special rooms that spawn on a specific level that usually have something important to the plot or hold a special item. Anyway, that's just a few of my ideas. Good luck with you.

Saint_Proverbius said:

Most of the large scale stuff can be done fairly easily. Nearly everything you mentioned as a problem isn't really a problem to do at all, Hajo. You're looking at it from the wrong point of view.

Click to expand...

This sounds like Steven Hawkings solution to the "singularity of the big bang" problem. If time is interpreted as a 2 dimensional plane, the singularity (beginning of time) vanishes. It's then just another point inside theplane instead of the beginning of a straight line.

The problem in here, is that before you changed the point of view, you don't know which kind of change will lead to the simplest solution.

Saint_Proverbius said:

You need to have interesting things happen for the player on a universal scale, right?

Click to expand...

That'll help, yes.

But I ran also into a lot of minor problems. AT some point I felt surrounded by problems and didn't know what to do first ... I was kind of lost.

Saint_Proverbius said:

Things dealing with exploration, combat, covert activities, supply hauling, and so on, right? You need it to be random on a scale that's gigantic as well.

That's all been done before, years ago, in fact.

What you need to do is look at that part of the game as a 4X type game, like Master of Orion. The player is just a peon in the universe controlled in a similar fashion to a 4X game. Instead of the player playing an empire, though, the player would just be playing a lone pilot in the 4X. The computer would handle all the empires, and assign tasks as it typically would in a 4X game.

Click to expand...

This is an intersting idea. It will make the world alive. Maybe it can create the 'content' and 'reason' that I was missing so much.

Thanks, SaintProverbius, this is a good idea!

I don't see why you couldn't just scale back to 50-100 systems. That's still a lot of fucking space to explore, and if you develop some good methods for including randomness, well then that's just that much more.

Make it a pretty dangerous universe--and not necessarily by combat only. Radiation, solar winds, micrometeors, near total vacuum,alien diseases--there's a lot of way to die in space. Making the character system very rich added to high player mortality could add to replayibility. Add in a dynamic trading model, mining, salvage, xenoarcheology, research, etc. I like what Saint said about having a 4X-style AI battle going on in the background to add "life."

I don't think you have to detail out the entirity of each solar system, planet, city, and/or space station. Check out some of the space sim games like EVN. All you really need is a good description of each place, really. I'm no programmer, but I think I know what's fun in a game, and I can write. If you want to go forward I would gladly donate some writing: names, alien races, dialog, histories of civilizations, descriptions of planets, cities, natural phenomenon, etc.

xJEDx said:

I don't see why you couldn't just scale back to 50-100 systems. That's still a lot of fucking space to explore, and if you develop some good methods for including randomness, well then that's just that much more.

Click to expand...

This is a sticky topic, and we go off-topic quite a bit. I don't want to pollute the thread.

Thank you all for your suggestions! They show me solutions to some of the problems. But actually I had given up the space exploration game idea about a year ago, and currently I'm working on two other projects already. This means even if we find solutions for all the problems now, I couldn't go on working on the project again anytime soon. I've got even too little time to discuss your suggestions properly

At least if we ant to discuss the idea of a space exploration RPG, I think we should continue this discussion in another thread? This one is for announcing indie projects, and I guess our discussion just makes it harder for readers to find all the announcements.

Maybe a mod could move these? I for one would be interested in continuing the discussion of design ideas for a space exploration cRPG.

I agree with xJEDx, even if my contributions to the discussion would probably be of limited use.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

My space exploration game design sketch/notes until I stopped June 2003:

http://h-world.simugraph.com/space/data/space.txt

I'm still working on the H-World CRPG engine, but the current demo game bundled with the engine has a more traditional setting: The player is lost in the jungle. Some spell keeps him trapped. He wants to find a way home. It's still very incomplete currently.

Honestly I must admit that this project really can't compete with those done by real game programmers/designers. I'm just a wannabe hobbyist, inspired by some great games, trying to see if he can do something similar ... and learning that it's much harder than it seems first

I'm doing it for the fun, and maybe some day the project will get somewhere OTOH there are so many similar projects out there, at times I doubt it makes sense to work on just another CRPG engine.

Hajo said:

My space exploration game design sketch/notes until I stopped June 2003:

http://h-world.simugraph.com/space/data/space.txt

I'm still working on the H-World CRPG engine, but the current demo game bundled with the engine has a more traditional setting: The player is lost in the jungle. Some spell keeps him trapped. He wants to find a way home. It's still very incomplete currently.

Honestly I must admit that this project really can't compete with those done by real game programmers/designers. I'm just a wannabe hobbyist, inspired by some great games, trying to see if he can do something similar ... and learning that it's much harder than it seems first

I'm doing it for the fun, and maybe some day the project will get somewhere OTOH there are so many similar projects out there, at times I doubt it makes sense to work on just another CRPG engine.

Click to expand...

I'm impressed, Hajo, and would certainly encourage you to continue working on this project when your time permits. It appears that the venerable Saint Proverbius had some early input that fits well with your setting and I'm sure community veterans could add even more helpful ideas. I look forward to your continuation of this project as well as the two you are currently working on, so please keep us updated on your progress.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

Ok. Split it, now go bananas.

Hajo Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 4:53 pm Post subject:

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H-World/The Jungle (with emphasis on the engine) is one of the projects that I'm currently working on. Recently I've met some people who are interested in the project and will help to improve it. Radomir "The Sheep" Dopieralski started to improve the graphics, and "ABCGi" announced to create another CRPG module for the engine, but most likely will also participate in the development of the engine. To say we're a team was too much, just some people who share similar interests and started to tug at the same end of the rope alltogether. Currently I think the project is perfectly well, and the future looks bright I was surprised that people started to join that early, given the current state of the engine.

The other project is a transport simulation game, a completely different genre:
http://www.simutrans.de

In case of Simutrans we are a small team, currently three programmers, one graphics coordinator and a few loosely associated artists from the comminity. I've started to work on Simutrans 1997 and it was in continuous development since then. I think I can use Simutrans as an example that I can be quite persistent on a project if the path is clear.

In case of the space exploration game, I must admit this was the second try to create one, and I got stuck again. But with every try I learn a little more and maybe some day I'll get it done

Thanks for the split Whipporowill!

Thanks Whip!

Now we've got our own thread, but nothing to discuss anymore, it seems. *sniff*

I've got a question: how to make reaserch interesting?

If you were supposed to play a scientiest, and a major part of the game was doing research on alien artefacts, how could it be implemented in the game in a fun way?

Sorry, Hajo, I've just started school this week, and what with Fallout being resurrected to be exploited by chumps, I haven't had a lot of time.

But, my first idea as how to make research fun would be to implement some kind of "formulas" for combining artefacts to make things. The spectrum for how this could be done could range from well-documented and logical all the way to mysterious and somewhat random. I guess the obvious thing would to have the "formulas" make new technologies, i.e. weapons, stuff for the ship, etc. I suppose it could also make things like implants for the PC, though that could be way cheesey. Maybe better yet it could make things like maps, sensors, or translators to allow the PC to continue to unfold the stories of the lost alien civilizations. Perhaps also these stories could be made from randomly mixed components which, again, I would totally be up for submitting writing for.

Other ideas for making playing a scientist more fun (which I think could be a blast!) that are in my mind right now: quests to collect data from anamolies or certain classes of planets, the study of xenobiology via meeting and convincing alien species to allow you to examine them, study of alien languages, quest to travel to cities and give scientific speeches at conventions, and development and testing of experimental technology.

Before I start on the research ideas, I had some thoughts about The Jungle. Rather than going straight down the line with a fantasy game, how about an Indiana Jones pulp setting? Most of the work could carry over, monsters, traps, dungeons - think Worlds Of Ultima - Savage Empire.

Back to the scientist - we need to ask what benefits research/science can provide to the player character. They need there own space in the game, comparable to combat for fighters, sneaking for theives, and so on. The first thing that came to mind was the decryption mini-game from Covert Action. It used a simple substitution cypher, although I'm not sure how it would work without Covert Action's time constraints, or with alien/primitve alphabets. Basically, scientists should be able to know things (or find them out) that other character archetypes don't.

This could help provide for varied amalgams. The Indy-style combat-scientist (with whips and guns and extremely high native body-counts,) the sneak-scientist (creeps in and steals artifacts, or perhaps just observes and documents rituals from the shadows,) or even a diplo-scientist (knowledge of languages allows him to speak with tribe elders and get access to sacred sites in a non-violent way.) You still have pure, core occupations, for raiders just interested in loot, but you also open up the game for meta-plots with decoding artifacts/tomes/rituals, which give science skills their own unique purpose.

<edit> Just read Jed's post and found it kind of funny that I was suggesting things for a jungle adventure, and his were for a space game. Still, I think the ideas are interchangable. I really like the idea of the anthropologist (which would work well in the jungle setting.) Rather than providing a history of alien (tribal) races as backstory, have the PC make first contact and work it out for themselves. Exploring areas and making maps, at least as a part of a character's occupation, should be in almost every RPG as far as I'm concerned.

Humans are too frail and much to short-lived to explore the universe with any efficiancy, unless you play loose and fast with physics and go with FTL travel, which isn't my thing. To me the emotional impact of space is the fact that it's so friggin huge and unattainable.

To me, the obvious solution to an explore-the-grand-universe game is to increase the size/longevity of the player. Think, say, Galactus. Except I would make the player some huge super organism, maybe a space fish, that can move through space and eat things...like planets. Longevity would be key, this creature would exist not in the world of minutes or hours or even days or years, but in decades or centuries and millenia. (Think, say, of one of the Ultima's. Time is relative. Time moves at one speed in towns, at another on the overland map. Same would happen here, but on a larger time scale).

Things you could do:

1) Interact with other space beasts.
2) Have witty conversation with sentient planet (ie. solaris)
3) Fight of hordes of rampaging hominids as they attempt to prevent you from eating their home planet.
4) Integrate survival elements. Havn't ate enough m-class planets lately.
5) Be a god.
6) Avoid the bigger fish.

This all a bit tongue-in-cheek but at the same time I think it's a cool idea and could make a great game.

protobob said:

2) Have witty conversation with sentient planet (ie. solaris)

Click to expand...

One of the ideas has been to have a picky computer or even a semi-organic sentient ship. If the player doesn't get along with his ships personality well, there's no space travel today.

But I'm afraid most player wouldn't want to argue with their spaceships. Ships just have to work.

Eh, who cares what 'most' players want. What gaming needs is more inovation and new ideas, not the same old tired. Seems like all we get these days is the same old tired.
'Most' players already have what they want, Madden 2010 and Tony Hawk 16.

I say go with the coolest ideas you can get.

I wish I had more time to post something meaningful, but until I do I'll just chime in with xJEDx, EEVIAC, and protobob and agree with their ideas because they all have valid points and good possibilities. Hopefully I'll have more time to post Thursday.

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)