the way i see it, any abandoned ship (to stick with the original scenario) has a reason for the abandonment, and the crew went somewhere for that reason, and never showed up somewhere else because of it. also, i don't think it would be so hard to generate those details. however, this doesn't mean that the player character can discover all these details.

wavinator, i remember you saying that you wanted to include other NPCs that do the same thing as the player, and this is an opportunity to use that. maybe the ship was already found by one of those NPCs, who also went to the planet's surface, and rescued them for a reward. as far as the player is concerned, he can do his best investigation, only to find some empty escape pods, a cave that looks like it was lived in for a short amount of time, and the burn marks from the NPC blasting off with the rescued crew. maybe when he visits a nearby settled planet, he'll hear about how his NPC nemesis saved the crew after they abandoned ship for whatever reason.

every random thing the player encounters should be relevant, and offer a gameplay point; but that doesn't mean the player will be willing, able, or necessarily in time to get anything out of it. sure it might suck to go through all of that effort of investigating just to be beaten to the punch, but that's the point of rivalry isn't it? besides, the player could always follow closely behind, catch the slightly earlier rescuer, and blow him up or take the rescuees hostage (if he was only doing it for the money and not to be nice).

There's a lot depending on this.

Maybe the reward could be related to who and how you rescued these people. If the victim is a jerk, then there's no reward unless you decide to force it. If they are friendly but have nothing, you get nothing. Maybe they have a reward to give you but it's all they have and you have to choice to take it or leave it and be nice.

I personnaly am going along with a few others here and say that it would be a nice change to see something that revolves around other characters than me. I COULD take up the responsibility, but others (not always) could do the task.

I guess my final answer is to somehow combine everything and get a balance.
Rewards should be there but not always.
Events should happen but always have a solution even if it's a bad solution (no reward and get attacked) or just one that may be too complicated or too late. If that ship crashed 200 years earlier, and nobody survived, there's nothing that can be done. Or maybe they were attacked and the perps were just too good and left no trace.
Events should be interconnected at times. Like that one example of the people in a bar talking about the ship that was supposed to pick them up. Unless the people were just traveling for pleasure, there was a reason which usually involved another character, i.e. pickup / delivery, business meeting...

Overall, this may at first discourage the player but it will eventually also show that the game is very alive. Very different than a game which revolves around the player and nothing happens which isn't designed for them.

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Original post by Wavinator Just looking for general opinions here... The game leaves you with a mystery that you can only answer with your imagination. [...] Should there always be a meaningful explanation to why something happens in the game?

Yes. I hate loose ends. I don't mind if I am involved in that sub-plot or not, but I don't like thinking I might have missed something.

Zegfrieg, have you ever play an old adventure game called Lure of the Temptress? Their basic system is like yours, but very basic, in that game, no NPC ever stays on one place, they keep moving, and when an event triggers, one of this npc might gossip something to someone that you might overhear once you near them.

Just wanted to say thanks for the replies, guys. I've been busier than normal this week and haven't been able to stay on top of this thread, but I HAVE been reading your comments.

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Original post by Mr_Ridd It's still a difficult one though becasue if you have to many events without rewards people will probably become dispondent and not want to go anywhere because there's no point. Sometimes you have to do something just to keep people in the game. Make them want to know what happened to the ship. There has to be balance probably favouring the reward side.

You got me wondering about whether or not there might be a good ratio for "it's just there" encounters and mission spawning encounters. I wonder if even 1 for every 10 is acceptable, 1 "just there" for every 10 that lead to a mission.

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Original post by boolean One of the problems with open ended RPG's in my opinion, is that if you find a man wounded in a field, you straight away think 'ooh, a mission'. You know straight away he has a story attached to him that you will follow through to the end, and that only you will figure out. I think that ruins the game in some ways, because you feel like the entire universe revolves around you, and you see everything in terms of ‘missions I can do’, rather than a dynamic world.

Good point. Funny, I call this "Player 1" phenomenon after those bad co-op games that focus the entire game's attention on the first player even when there's more than one. [smile] I wonder if the dynamic world aspect is part of the explosion of interest in MMO games.

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I think it would be refreshing to find the empty spaceship, find no clue as to what happened, and then at best hear some people in a bar talking about how the ship that was supposed to pick them up never arrived.

I think what you've highlighted here is that there needs to be some kind of closure. That's important to keep in mind.

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Also, by doing this, you can really catch the player off guard. By letting them believe that a star cruiser exploding might just be some accident that happened, when they see a man getting mugged in an alley they will have no idea if it's a story element or just something that happened. This I think would make them a lot more surprised when they find out that they are at the centre of a story involving the mugged man.

I-War is an example somewhat like this where you witness occassional traffic accidents between ships at a jump point. You don't have any clue as to what caused it, but you have the advantage of being able to scarf up free cargo. Now if this sometimes lead to rescue boarding missions or picking up mission cargo that important people come looking for, it might both be acceptable (by convention) and exciting.

(Or would that lead you to never pick anything up?)

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Original post by TechnoGoth I always felt that the key to making a belivable game world is ambiant activitiy. Basically that other things are go on in the universe besides what the player does. Because of this it only natural to encounter things like derlict ships or crash sights. You could assign a cause to them or not but they shouldn't nessirally lead to a reward or mission. For instance if the player can find crashesd ships from time to time - perhaps some hidden functions could calculate what events have happened or will happen this week in each sector and distribute them around - then the player maybe be able to make a sideline as a salvager, or just cruise around looking for maidains in distress.

Yes, now this is what I mean by having an appropriate convention for introducing these types of things that may not necessarily be a complicated, drawn out mission. If you knew that you could salvage or steal the ship you'd at least get something for making the trip.

I want to make a distinction that I didn't make very clear above: I wouldn't lead you to a landing site that just had nothing, but sometimes you'd encounter mysteries that you couldn't solve. You could still scrap or steal the ship in this case, which is what I consider self-supporting gameplay-- gameplay where you can sprinkle goodies throughout the map and just let the player figure out how to collect them. Plots and missions, though, are far more intricate and require more care and effort.

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Also ambiant activity could be an excellent way to have subplots to play out. ...

Great example and good point. As a subplot it would also be less labor intensive, and thus allow more content in the game world. In fact, you might find yourself in anticipation of whether or not this derelict is another "one of those strange ships with weird markings."

There may be let-down, though, upon finding that it's not an active plot. I'm not sure if there needs to be a subtle convention that says, "Hey, bub, don't get too excited about this; it's not one of the major plotlines, so expect to be surprised but don't expect to be wowed." Tough call.

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Original post by Zefrieg You know, I'm actually starting a project that sounds vaguely similar to what you are planning with your random events/missions.

[smile] Glad to hear it! I'd like to see more gameplay like this, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

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Since most NPCs are not in the player's view, they are only defined as being at a certain place at a certain time. It will take so much game time for each NPC to complete their task at a specific location. If the player decides to visit a certain area where the NPC is currently located, then that NPC will be placed on the map.

I like this idea because if you can maintain continuity you can get alot out of teleporting NPCs behind the scenes. Saves alot of problems.

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Not all NPCs will complete their quests. In fact, many of them might die. This is usually decided statistically. The player might see a corpse of that NPC at the location they visit. There will be various ways a player can pick up the quest of the dead NPC. Either through a journal, map, or through another NPC with knowledge of the quest that NPC was on, a player will be able to decipher what needs to be done next. Though, there may be no way to decide at all.

How do you think your players will react when they come across a dead NPC but can't pick up the quest (either its expired or they don't have the right item or whatever). Will they be disappointed and/or annoyed or will they think "Oh, wow, this guy was really on a mission he couldn't complete... wow, this game world is alive." Now as much as I'd like them to think the latter I'm concerned that with MMOs out there and the current level of gamer cynicism (due to over-promise and under-deliver titles of late) that this will be a tough sell.

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Original post by Mr_Ridd Do you not think that game concepts such as the ones stated above are taking things a bit far. I mean, the whole purpose of playing a game is to have fun, to fight, to get where nothing has got before.

It IS possible to get worldbuilder's disease and try to create a massive, living, breathing world, yes, but if you've ever watched the denizens of Morrowind or Baldur's Gate stand out in the rain at midnight (while you walk around naked-- try it sometime[grin]) you'll know where the desire comes from. I think moving NPCs around and trying to create enough enjoyable smoke and mirrors is a good thing so long as it doesn't cause your project to collapse.

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I do like with the concepts though, but I think that the most exciting parts in games are when you can attack the enemy. I think it would be a lot more fun if the enemies were a lot more advanced, meaning that they won't just attack in a common style. I do think that having random events will push the game though. The idea that NPC's are active while you are not there is also good but I don't think that it should be taken to the extemes. I think that people are prepared to put up with so much before they, "When is it going to end!". I suppose it's just a matter of balance.

I take your point about... well, getting to the point (attacking enemies, completing quests, finding treasure, etc.) It is a balance because if you have too many constant, active encounters you'll never get a chance to settle into the game at your own pace. A perfect example of what not to do is Freelancer, for instance, where every few #*@! kilometers you encounter yet another enemy, yet if you didn't, the game would be boring as hell (very much like Diablo, no supporting gameplay which can lead to a sense of repetitive pointlessness in many players).

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Original post by hh10k There's nothing wrong with things that don't have any benefit to the player, as long as they can quickly determine that. If you have 'events' that look almost the same but do pay-off, then you are encouraging them to waste time for nothing. An example of this are breakable boxes in FPS games. If you even once make a special item drop out of one, the player will spend the rest of the game smashing everything in sight, just in case. I think game makers have learnt their lesson on that one.

Excellent example, and I actually hated this in Half-Life and other such games where the reward ratio was rather low (and having useless debris that disappears didn't help).

Again, this suggests a strong need for conventions which tell you "hey, this is minimal interactivity" and those which say, "hey, this is a mission." Boxes with a special color might have been a good convention.

I'm thinking of two conventions that might work: Beacons and scanning. If you come to a hulk and see a beacon that leads you elsewhere; or if you scan the ship and pick up some weird evidence, then this tells you to invest time.

The convention needs to be akin to the old adventure game sentence, "You can't do anything useful with that."

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Original post by Acapulco Another good post Wavinator, you're always interesting to read.

:P Thanks!

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At the risk of stating the obvious, everything in a game must have a point, or... it has no point. It doesn't have to serve much purpose, but it must serve some purpose, or give some reward, or you're wasting the player's time. If you find a hulk of a ship, explore it, and find nothing interesting on it, why is it there? If a player explores why it might be there, reward him! Give him a reason to discover. If there's nothing to discover, it shouldn't be there.

Are you at all concerned about having the world feel like it revolves around you-- I think this varies with players, and some get very annoyed with it NOT revolving around them, while others get annoyed that the weight of the cosmos is on their shoulders.

By reward, btw, what if there were a standard reward for every encounter: For instance, any time you encounter an item, vehicle or structure, you can usually melt it down for raw material using nanotech? (Things that need to be permanent would be said to have some field or defensive nano or whatever).

What you get, then, is for every encounter either you can get raw material for making new items or you can get a mission (or maybe both).

Is that enough of a point?

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This may seem unrealistic - stuff in life often happens for no good reason, and the events that occur and unfold can often seem cruelly random. This is a game - it's a chance to remove meaningless distractions, and concentrate on a meaningful one.

What do you think of ambient animations, like the birds found in Baldur's Gate or creatures wandering the map in Starcraft? Just curious.

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Original post by onyxflame I think I like the idea of random NPC quests. This way, you could find out that your derelict spaceship was really used by some NPC party to do something dangerous, which they died while doing. In which case, even if you chose not to pick up their quest, you'd know that whatever it was that killed them was really dangerous.

If you did it this way random events actually could come in pairs or sets of encounters spaced over the map. For instance, almost every ship comes with a crew, and that crew exists on the map somewhere. They can be either dead, doing some mission, or offering some reward. But the more you solidify this convention, the more you'll make players hunt around if you have a "crew has mysteriously gone missing" scenario, which isn't a good thing.

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Which leads to another point which I consider obvious. If you just have a random derelict ship, it'll be a bigger mystery than if you have a derelict ship in a known dangerous area (or in an area that you can find out is dangerous). If the ship is floating in the space owned by the evil Blob Aliens, you don't need to explain what happened to it, it's pretty obvious. If it's floating above a relatively peaceful Earth for no apparent reason, I personally would want to know wtf happened to the crew.

Yeah, you're right, actually. SOme events explain themselves by the context of the environment or the times. If there's a news story, for instance, of strange disappearances that you encounter before encountering the ship, it'll make sense. (Not be as satisfying as a mission, but satisfying to those who want to be immersed in a world, maybe?)

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Original post by Wavinator By reward, btw, what if there were a standard reward for every encounter: For instance, any time you encounter an item, vehicle or structure, you can usually melt it down for raw material using nanotech? (Things that need to be permanent would be said to have some field or defensive nano or whatever).

With that built in, I don't think I'd get annoyed by finding random ships out in space with nothing inside them. I can board, do a quick sweep, and if I don't find anything useful I just junk the debri and continue on with whatever I was doing.

I'd take a slightly different route with the permanent structures, though. I'd get pretty suspicious if I went to junk something, and I was told it had some wierd defensive nano or what have you. Moves like that feel like hacks to prevent players from breaking the story. Something that would feel less hackish, to me, would be that you have to disable the ship's main computer before you can junk it, either because of the electronics interfearing with the salvage procedure, or because its transmitting a 'please don't junk me' code that legal salvage machines are required to honor. So if the structure is permanent, the game can just have additional layers of protection preventing you from deactivating the computer. Combine that with a few other features [size/volume/density constraints spring immediately to mind] to keep things random, and everything will seem a bit more immersive.

CM

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Original post by umbrae Wavinator, your ideas are great. Have you played any of the Escape Velocity Series? They sound similar to the game you are developing.

[smile] Thx for the support and link. Actually, I was an EV fiend before it came to the PC-- it was the only game that redeem the Mac for me. :P

EV actually is a good example of the challenge here, though: Almost all random events in EV:Override all involve combat between known to be warring parties, so the encounters explain themselves. However, what becomes a challenge is that since that's the point of the game, the rest of the gameplay (like mining and trade) seems tacked on and certainly isn't dangerous, exciting or even challenging after awhile.

I think the remedy to this is a large body of "encounter objects" which you can do something with. My point in posting (and getting such excellent feedback) was to get a feel for how linked together by story / context / meaningfulness these events had to be. It's nothing (well, relatively nothing compared to plot) to model a bunch of objects, attach rewards to them, then spawn them all over different star systems and planetary surfaces. Being careful to make these events worthwhile in a larger sense is what is tricky.

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As for your current question, I think either you do it and have a largish number of unrelated happenings, or you don't have anything unrelated or not having a mission associated with it. If you go in between players will get confused.

I think only if you have no convention. Consider, for example, if you encounter a starship graveyard: These hulks would have partial levels you can EVA into and explore around, just as you could walk around in your own ship.

A good convention here, I think, would again be scanning and beacons-- the game's way of telling you what's important. You could have dozens of near empty wrecks, but getting special signs from one would make it worth getting suited up and jetpacking over to. (It would be important to get this sign quickly so you don't have to snoop around long-- and this would be a perfect place for leveling up items like sensor upgrades which expand your search range)

Another convention (just thought of) would be proximity and age: If the graveyard is old, it's probably picked clean; if its newly discovered, it's rich in booby traps and treasure.

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It depends on how detailed you can make your world. Most games don't have enough development time to detail everything, so anything that is interesting or detailed usually has a story or mission behind it. By the sounds of it your game is partially a volunteer effort, and I think it would be a bad idea working on non-gameplay related events and situations because you want to get your game finished right?

This is a good point that can't be ignored, but let me take a bit of pains to make clear that this would be part of filling out the world. There's nothing worse than traveling through the empty spaces of Morrowind's back-country (at a high level, that is) or I-War's near empty solar systems.

You can get a sort of "copy and paste" bonus that saves you content creation time if you add in things like derelicts, floating cargo and ruins because mass production will be expected (we don't demand, for instance, hundreds of unique cars in GTA because mass production is an acceptable fact of life). Again, this needs a good convention to distinguish "just there" content from purposeful mission / plot content.

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Original post by krez the way i see it, any abandoned ship (to stick with the original scenario) has a reason for the abandonment, and the crew went somewhere for that reason, and never showed up somewhere else because of it. also, i don't think it would be so hard to generate those details. however, this doesn't mean that the player character can discover all these details.

One reason I had for thinking about pulling this kind of stunt was to unnerve you. As you play the game I want you to sometimes use your imagination, which is more rich and vivid than graphics can ever be, in filling out what might have happened. It would be important, for example in this scenario, to here of spacers muttering about occassional strange disappearances or encounters with beings so advanced that they accidently annihilate you by their presence; or for you to hear about double crosses and rescues or whatever. These are meant only to fill out the background fiction of the world.

An example I found intriguing was hearing about the evil spirits and vampires in Morrowind's back-country. Though I only encountered them at high level, and thus unfortunately wasn't all that impressed, it did make me worry about where I made camp or what terrain I was going through-- which was entertaining while it lasted.

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wavinator, i remember you saying that you wanted to include other NPCs that do the same thing as the player, and this is an opportunity to use that. maybe the ship was already found by one of those NPCs, who also went to the planet's surface, and rescued them for a reward. as far as the player is concerned, he can do his best investigation, only to find some empty escape pods, a cave that looks like it was lived in for a short amount of time, and the burn marks from the NPC blasting off with the rescued crew. maybe when he visits a nearby settled planet, he'll hear about how his NPC nemesis saved the crew after they abandoned ship for whatever reason.

Ah, good reminder, and that idea is very much in play. I wouldn't want to always have the nemesis do this (ie., "why is this idiot always following me?"); and you'd need again a convention for how the player knows this information (encountering a log at the launch site or some key signature of the nemesis), but it would might make you burn with a bit more emotional motivation against him/her.

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every random thing the player encounters should be relevant, and offer a gameplay point; but that doesn't mean the player will be willing, able, or necessarily in time to get anything out of it. sure it might suck to go through all of that effort of investigating just to be beaten to the punch, but that's the point of rivalry isn't it? besides, the player could always follow closely behind, catch the slightly earlier rescuer, and blow him up or take the rescuees hostage (if he was only doing it for the money and not to be nice).

Yes, this highlights the importance for not only random encounters but encounters that stay persistant so you can do something about them.

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Original post by trapdoor I guess my final answer is to somehow combine everything and get a balance. Rewards should be there but not always.

:P Any idea of a good ratio?

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Overall, this may at first discourage the player but it will eventually also show that the game is very alive. Very different than a game which revolves around the player and nothing happens which isn't designed for them.

Yes, I think that a world that stops and waits for you kills immersion.

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Original post by Kylotan I hate loose ends. I don't mind if I am involved in that sub-plot or not, but I don't like thinking I might have missed something.

Here again you remind me of conventions. I knew that there were no loose ends in Morrowind by my journal entries. I need some sort of similar convention here, like scans returning no more info or log comments or something.

One approach might be to make up the plot as you go along.

When a random event occurs, select a handful of possible background stories to the event. As you investigate, or don't investigate, the event, those stories that are inconsistent with what you've seen are eliminated.

For example, the downed ship scenario:

• Crew still onboard


• Crew out to find shelter


• Crew killed by pirates/natives/mysterious energy field


• Crew rescued by kindhearted soul


• Ship landed on autopilot


• Etc...

Each story would be associated with events (such as waypoints or Galactic News bulletins). When an event definately occurs or does not, stories which are dependant upon that event woud be resolved. For example, there may be an event associated with a cave system nearby the ship. If, upon visiting the caves, they are empty, any other 'pseudo-random events' that were dependant upon them being in the cave would never happen.

If we assume your news reader uses the new Intellithread technology that selects news articles you are likely to be interested in on the basis of what you've done in the past, there is a fairly good chance that you'll eventually see a news bulletin that resolves an as-yet unresolved story.

Given enough time in the game world, almost all random events will be resolved by news bulletins, whilst scripted events will probably not. In addition, unresolved random events will be largely forgetten by the media, whilst scripted events will probably be important enough to the game world that the news will be full of talk about them. So it should be easy to tell the difference between mysteries that need solving and those that don't.