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Poll Result |
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Dwarf fortress? |
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| Never heard of it. |
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50% |
[ 4 ] |
| Heard of it, Never played it. |
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25% |
[ 2 ] |
| Played it, Its ok. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Played it, Loved it. |
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25% |
[ 2 ] |
| Played it, Sucks. |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Carp ate my soap makers! |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
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Total Votes : 8 |
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Author |
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icarus
Troll
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Location: Olympia Washington
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 Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 8:13 pm Post subject: Interview with toady. |
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http://www.kwanzoo.com/social-trivia/tarn-adams-interview-part-1-of-3.shtml
This is an interview of Tarn "toady" Adams. The creator of Dwarf fortress.
I was not involved in this interview but I agree with most of it. And I thought you guys might be interested. It details the process that made my favorite game and sheds light on the kind of thought patterns involved.
Particularly the part where he talks about procedural generation.
We have been developing graphics for the past 40+ years* but Physics engines are only 10 years old** and Procedural generation is the new big thing.
We should have had procedural generation since day one.
Graphics are used for eye candy and physics are used for graphics. It should be the other way around. Graphics are there for immersion, i don't care how many shaders you have. If everything is indestructible and bounces like it is made of plastic its wasting processor power and pushing the uncanny valley.
Ideally it should be that to run the newest games you need a big PPU card, The VGA card should be an afterthought. 3d models should be built over a network of particles not a hollow shell of polygons.
*Space war came out in 1961 and beat out pong by 11 years.
** I think Half life is the first 3d video game with a serious attempt at a physics engine. |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject: |
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"toady" sounds like an interesting character i.e. sleeps all day, works all night, an ex maths professor, semi recluse. Procedural content is very interesting, but incredibly difficult (which is why everyone went the graphics route).
I thought MMOs were a great shortcut, if the AI and world simulation is too hard just fill it with real people and stand well back. Felt like a revelation when I first played Ultima Online, but you soon see the limits of it i.e. people acting like dicks, people just grinding the game, nothing really affecting the world, no role playing, etc. EVE's supposed to be better but I don't have the time to sign my life away to it.
So dwarf fortress could fill a hole quite nicely.
MMO's have really gone backwards since the text mud days. This book gives a great insight into what it was like. Players could get together and create their own content, the mud described in here sounds amazing, every kind of genre, group, aesthetic you can think of the players made and linked together.
http://www.amazon.com/My-Tiny-Life-Passion-Virtual/dp/0805036261/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216854412&sr=1-1 |
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icarus
Troll
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Location: Olympia Washington
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| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:19 am Post subject: |
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Yes they have and its a shame. WOW being an easy target, I will use that as an example. In World Of Warcraft you are dumped into somebodies story and told to play with a bunch of other people. You are told that these guys are your friends and that these guys are you enemies. But nobody cares and everyone just goes and fights monsters. There's a plot but everyone ignores it because you can't effect it.
What if we had an MMO with no predefined factions and no plot besides what the players make. Yes there would be wandering monsters and randomly generated dungeons but thats not the point of the game.
Players would form kingdoms (and towns and guilds) and build cities. All cities would be player made.
Monsters would would spawn out of dungeons that would appear randomly in the wilderness. If you destroy the dungeon the monsters will stop spawning. If left unchecked the monsters would eventually overtake the player made cities. This would keep the players from running out of room and provide challenge for people who don't like PVP.
The Mods would adjust the monsters aggressiveness to match the players so it stays in a challenge.
As players conquer the wilderness they will attract NPC townspeople to do boring things and help populate the cities. The monsters serving as a backdrop, the players are free to form alliances, Build civilizations, and do whatever.
There is no story forced down your throat and grinding can be left to the NPCs.
| Poo Bear wrote: |
So dwarf fortress could fill a hole quite nicely.
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I hope you don't over fill that hole. Its pretty dam addictive. |
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Lostlogic
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Posts: 19
Location: United States
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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| If you remember, UO originally started out with what you talk about. Dragons getting hungry and attacking towns, etc. |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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Very interesting what happened with UO
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uos-resource-system-part-2/
http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uos-resource-system-part-3/
To summarise:
1. people don't role play they just exploit i.e. they'll wipe out an entire areas animal population if it means they get +1 on a stat or do one of a million other unpredictable things.
2. it's hard to have proper consequences without ****** off others i.e. if the wolves went nuts because you killed all the sheep and then invaded the town you'd have lots of dead newbies who were very unhappy.
3. feedback - it's hard to understand what is going on i.e. in case 2 how do the newbies know why this is happening or what to do about it.
4. fun - people who aren't having fun stop giving you money - this makes developers very scared and encourages predictable, balanced, easy to add, simple content.
So, getting this stuff to work in single player games is I think doable, but in mmorpg's it will be very hard indeed. Imagine if someone managed it though, a mmorpg that wasn't about grinding and really felt alive. |
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Ren Fraggle
Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 31
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 5:00 pm Post subject: |
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Shadowbane tried this a bit too. It let players build and manage cities, hire NPCs to work in your shops and act as guards, the players in charge of the city could manage it by allowing certain people/guilds/alliances to enter, shop, and build stuff. They could also ally with or swear and oath of fealty to another city. On the other hand, you can deny certain people/guilds/alliances from entering your city, or declare a war. It was mainly a PVP based game, as no NPCs will ever decide to just attack your city unless a game master decided to play an event, which didn't happen much if at all. It sounded good, but then you get your large armies of people that don't care about playing politics and starts wars with you just because the game lets them.
Another problem with MMOs that applied to this game is that they won't just exploit the game, they'll eventually find the most efficient way to exploit to get the best results. Someone will find a way to grind a character to it's max level within a week, while finding and picking the best skills and equipment so that they have the highest DPS possible. After that happens, then that build is made standard, and nobody would dare make anything different or else his character will turn out inferior and useless. |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 5:48 pm Post subject: |
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I think it's interesting that Spore will allow people to interact in only a non-confrontational way i.e. your planet and it's inhabitants will get trashed by others many times over, but you'll never even get to hear about it.
I assume game A will get an update containing game B's world, then player A will go trash this new world. Game A will then never get updates about game B's world again. I'm guessing that's how it works.
Another multi player procedural heavy game is Animal Crossing. The interesting thing there is that you don't have to have other people involved to play, you can have fun on your own. Other players have to be invited in. The whole game pushes a nurturing non-competitive aspect that encourages visitors to help tidy up and send presents to each other. Similar vibe to Spore.
Multiplayer + anonymity + competition = very tricky |
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icarus
Troll
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Location: Olympia Washington
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| Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:42 am Post subject: |
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I think the first problem I thought with my idea was that with a truly random wilderness newbies would have no room to level.
The solution to that would be ditch the RPG interface and make it an action game.
Player skill and equipment would be the deciding factor in fights.
Player skill is independent of game experience and if you a member of a powerful faction you would have access to good equipment.
Or you could just make bigger monsters farther away from the cites.
As for the monster genocide.
The dungeon's form which the monsters spawn from would appear randomly and would be expected to be cleared and destroyed.
When one goes down another will pop up somewhere for the players to find and destroy again. |
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SethP
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Posts: 302
Location: Connecticut, USA
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| Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 4:34 am Post subject: |
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| icarus wrote: | What if we had an MMO with no predefined factions and no plot besides what the players make. Yes there would be wandering monsters and randomly generated dungeons but thats not the point of the game.
Players would form kingdoms (and towns and guilds) and build cities. All cities would be player made.
Monsters would would spawn out of dungeons that would appear randomly in the wilderness. If you destroy the dungeon the monsters will stop spawning. If left unchecked the monsters would eventually overtake the player made cities. This would keep the players from running out of room and provide challenge for people who don't like PVP.
The Mods would adjust the monsters aggressiveness to match the players so it stays in a challenge.
As players conquer the wilderness they will attract NPC townspeople to do boring things and help populate the cities. The monsters serving as a backdrop, the players are free to form alliances, Build civilizations, and do whatever.
There is no story forced down your throat and grinding can be left to the NPCs. |
Have you ever tried EVE? If you stay in empire space there's all the things you dislike (pre-generated NPCs, pre-defined factions, a semblance of a pre-defined plot*), but if you head out into 0.0 space, you basically get exactly what you describe. The factions are Alliances, which players chose to leave and join, all of the stations that exist in 0.0 were created by players and then populated by NPCs (although I believe the players have to keep funneling resources in to prevent the station from falling into disrepair). The only thing that pre-exists in 0.0 is the space, resources, and NPC "monsters." Is that similar to what you're describing?
* Supposedly now players can effect the empire-space plot. War has been declared between the four major factions and you can join up in one of their respective militias, theoretically causing the outcome of the war to be player-driven. I have no experience with that, though. |
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icarus
Troll
Joined: 01 Mar 2004
Location: Olympia Washington
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| Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:09 am Post subject: |
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| I have heard of EVE. They say its is realzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.... |
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Poo Bear
Pod Team
Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK
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| Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:17 am Post subject: |
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EVE does sound very good, but when I played some of the other design choices got in the way, mainly the time required, the hands off controls and the learning curve. I think that's one of the reasons WoW is so successful, if you just feel like a 30min game you can still get something meaningful done and it's very easy to get into.
http://www.jumpgateevolution.com/
Maybe jumpgate can marry the two together. |
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