what is a story ? That is a hard one!

What I had thought this far, was to have the NPCs deciding among a predefined set of goals, and then decide of a way to achieve this goal. I mean, that they would build a method to achieve it.

Still, this only makes part of a story, because in every story there is a global meaning, a backbone which gives the story its quality. This is what you call heart I think. It may differ from one story to another. It depends on what you want your story to be about. Is could be a criticism of facism, an hymn to the joys of life, or whatever you want. In my mind weaving the story is the artistic part of story writing. When a computer can do that, it can then be called a writer...

Whew... I''m getting a headache just thinking about this one.

One ideal that I have for this:
The game would be a series of mini-quest.
The results from the previous (or even all prior quest) would influence the way the next quest are presented.

Lets see if I can elaborate.

Quest 1:
Find the temple of knowledge and read the "Book of Truth".

Quest 2:
Using the book of truth, find the "Tree of Strength".

...


OK, so "Zondor" finds the temple reads the "Book of Truth" and then he destroys it. Leaving Quest 2 virtually useless. The book has been destroyed. But, "Zondor" did read it. The game would know that he read it. So... Quest 2 is rewritten to say:

Quest 2:
Find "Zondor" and ask him about the "Tree of Strength".

I''m not sure if this is "doable" but it would be fun trying

Dave "Dak Lozar" Loeser

Paul,

Are you basically suggesting that the game manufactures subsequent plots based on the player''s actions by itself without the game develoers plotting out each story by hand? Like the game would have certain rules that tell it how to react to certain situations?

What if quests were nothing more than links (akin to web terminology)?

In Dak''s example of Quest #1 leading to Quest #2, etc...and his idea of Zondor now being the keeper of knowledge on the Book of Strength.

What if we simply changed the link from Quest #2 to Quest #3 so that Quest #2 now links to Zondor. To complete the chain, Zondor would now inherit what Quest #3 linked to next...if you get what I mean..

Now it becomes even MORE interesting when we can link to more than one quest at a time..

ie. in one instance of our game, Zondor becomes a raging psycopath and murders more than one KEY NPC character in the game..your quests change and now you are put on a simply search-and-locate mission for Zondor to find out what''s happening..

I think the idea of a continuous game would be PHENOMENAL. Imagine thinking the game is over, and realizing that it''s only JUST begun! I would LOVE the idea of playing say Ultima III, and playing it NONSTOP until I reach Ultima VI...playing not only
all the games in between and finishing them, but playing around
in the "in-between" Sosaria/Britannia..

I hope I''m making sense, as I''m not working on too much sleep..

So what you''re all saying is that, based on the outcome of beginning quests, the PCs end up with nemises and overarching goals leading to future stories?

I like that idea. Random NPC, Mr. X, becomes involved in a simple, randomly generated quest. At the end of the quest, Mr. X is upset with the PCs, so he generates a new problem for them. As long as Mr. X survives, the AI continues to focus him on thwarting the PCs in whatever they go do.

So Quest ID 33284 (go to location A, do action B, retrieve object C) will be different for 2 different parties because one of them is being thwarted by Mr. X (who gets C before the party does, creating a new adventure), while the other does not have a nemesis yet.

Wow, the potential!


Pax

An interesting idea to say the least.

I''ve only worked on a game divided in chapters at which ends some parameters are recorded that will change the next chapters.

If you''re planning to do something like what Nazrix said it''ll be an major evolution.

If you just plan to do something like what I''m working on...
I learn that Chrono Trigger already is doing something like that.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Hahaha! Man, this proves my philosophy about not bothering to hide your design ideas because a ton of people already have them... (as they say, great minds think alike )


Here''s what I''m trying to do since I don''t have an over-arching story in my CRPG: Mix a system of AI actions together with random events. So, if the random event generates Mr. X, he becomes an AI actor that can change and grow (within certain bounds), and has objectives and goals just like the player.

I think the less the player becomes involved with Mr. X, the more he should fade away as far as AI goes (maybe if you don''t kill/banish him he''s still causing problems, and you get wind of it from time to time... but it''s really all abstract.)

I think certain random events and quests should be saved for later. This will really help create the illusion of consistency. So, you thought you were finished with Zondor, only to find that he doesn''t make an appearance ''til much later in the game (like all those action comics you probably read as a kid )

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

So how do we boil down a *story* to a series of parameters, that we could tweak, link, cut, etc.

Princess P was taken prisoner by the evil E. All knights of the realm come to the rescue, but one of them, Sir K decide to badly wound E, that was actually only acting to protect the princess P against K, now the story becomes to find K and recover P... and so on and so forth.
This is really interesting as the more I read about MMORPG the more I see the exact same problems than in Live Action RPG (where you walk around all dressed up and fight with massive late swords)...

All this makes me think about self modifying code. It''s definitely doable, but you''de have to think the way you define a plot in a quite nice manner.

Let''s take an example ? the Lord of the Rings ?

character F is given a ring and has to go to character E to wait for further instructions, but ...

Doesn''t AI also play a very important role in all of this? Something has to motivate the NPCs to perform different actions. (NPC''s are people too!)