Eternal War - TOD's new game world concept
copx
Tower of Doom for a long time now. My primary problem was that I didn't want
a pre-defined world map or pre-defined quests.
Today I've finally come up with solution that's just perfect for the game
and I even managed to integrate an old dream of mine into it: a persistent
world that is shaped by your characters but not bound to them. That means
your second character won't start in the same world as your first. All the
changes caused by your first character will still be present. In fact you
may find his dead body somewhere in the wasteland or maybe you'll find him
sitting in the governor's palace ruling the entire planet ('cause that's the
position he acquired while you played him).
But what does "making changes to the game world" mean except for putting
your characters into powerful positions or leaving corpses? Well True to the
Theme (tm) the planet (where the game takes place) is at total never ending
war. The first time you start the game the territory is randomly generated
and distributed between all factions.
Then a simple algorithm assigns a "danger level rating" to each area.
Basically the areas in the heartland of the territory of a faction get the
highest rating while the border regions get the lowest rating.
Areas with low ratings feature less dangerous enemies and dungeons. This is
done to allow characters to slowly advance towards the dangerous areas.
And while doing this they change the world! Because each "liberated" sector
will be taken over by their faction. So if you stay true to the final
solution race war mentality of the theme you may want to exterminate all
other races and conquer the entire planet for your faction. Let's pretend
you managed to do that with an Ork character. He's an allmighty warlord, all
sectors are under his control. So you retire him because there's nothing
left to do (you have "won" - there probably won't be a fixed winning
condition in future versions of TOD, though).
Now you start a new character - a human - what happens? Well, your character
arrives right after an human assault on the planet. The human forces have
conquered one or a few sectors - conquering the rest is up to you! Of course
that's an extreme case. It's more likely that your characters will die
before conquering the entire planet.
Of course there are more options than "total victory" or death.You'll be
able to "retire" your characters at any given moment. Maybe your goal is
just to build a space marine chapter and become it's primarch and so you
retired your character after accomplishing that.
How do you build a space marine chapter? Well, in the first version you'll
probably just need to expand the power of your faction. To make faction
power meaningful to the player the selection of buildings and NPCs of your
faction will depend on its power. A weak human outpost won't have a space
marine chapter. But once you've conquered enough territory for your faction
it will appear. More power will also mean better shops etc.
But what appens to your retired characters? The Orc warlord and the Space
Marine primarch? Well, they will be where you left them! In fact your next
character might kill them! Some people might feel bad about killing their
old characters but those folks just didn't get the Warhammer spirit. It's
kill and (ultimately) be killed! Every real 40th millenium hero has to be
crowned by his own violent death!
Except for that it's a nice challenge to defeat your own uber characters.
I think I've found a novel concept that fits the game perfectly and I wanted
to share it to inspire other people and to hear your opinions.
copx
edw...@lore.net
> Except for that it's a nice challenge to defeat your own uber characters.
> I think I've found a novel concept that fits the game perfectly and I
> wanted to share it to inspire other people and to hear your opinions.
I like the idea very much.
I am hoping to include the possibility of retiring characters, but with
the idea that future characters can then come and persuade the retired
character to return to the adventuring life as a companion.
There could be a huge overarching quest much too difficult to take on
without a full party of uber characters.
--
-jude hungerford.
Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski
copx wrote:
> He's an allmighty warlord, all
> sectors are under his control. So you retire him because there's nothing
> left to do (you have "won" - there probably won't be a fixed winning
> condition in future versions of TOD, though).
> Now you start a new character - a human - what happens? Well, your character
> arrives right after an human assault on the planet. The human forces have
> conquered one or a few sectors - conquering the rest is up to you! Of course
> that's an extreme case. It's more likely that your characters will die
> before conquering the entire planet.
But what if you want to play an orc again?
What if your actions will somehow make the game world uninteresting?
Maybe you could have an option to let the time pass, and the faction
balance would slowly come back then...
--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(><) 3 Ouch!
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .
copx
<edw...@lore.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:jK8Ue.27407$FA3....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
I've always had the plan to make the most difficult challenges require a
band of characters. I haven't thought about the possibility to recruit your
previous characters, though. But it sounds like a good idea!
copx
copx
"Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski" <thesheep@ sheep.prv.pl> schrieb im
Newsbeitrag news:slrndi2i4n....@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl...
> At Fri, 9 Sep 2005 01:33:57 +0200,
> copx wrote:
>
>> He's an allmighty warlord, all
>> sectors are under his control. So you retire him because there's nothing
>> left to do (you have "won" - there probably won't be a fixed winning
>> condition in future versions of TOD, though).
>> Now you start a new character - a human - what happens? Well, your
>> character
>> arrives right after an human assault on the planet. The human forces have
>> conquered one or a few sectors - conquering the rest is up to you! Of
>> course
>> that's an extreme case. It's more likely that your characters will die
>> before conquering the entire planet.
>
> But what if you want to play an orc again?
You're not supposed to ;)
No really, I haven't thought about that.
> What if your actions will somehow make the game world uninteresting?
I won't allow them to do that. Even if the entire planet is mono-racial that
just means your next game may be longer.
> Maybe you could have an option to let the time pass, and the faction
> balance would slowly come back then...
Good idea. That would also solve the previously mentioned problem.
I'm thinking about adding competing AI-controlled NPC heroes anyway. To
avoid the feeling that your character is the only actually "acting"
inhabitant of the world. I always hated that in commercial RPGs..
copx
Juho Julkunen
> I'm thinking about adding competing AI-controlled NPC heroes anyway. To
> avoid the feeling that your character is the only actually "acting"
> inhabitant of the world. I always hated that in commercial RPGs..
True. Every Hero needs a peer group.
--
JTJ | http://www.kolumbus.fi/j.julkunen/
su
I like this idea as a game balancing effect.
Danger level calculated maybe like this:
First: Ideal algorithm (for unlimited processing power)
Player is on territory type Z
Other territory types are A, B, and C
Danger level =
sum of the length of all paths such that each path
is the shortest path from the user's square (i.e, territory type
Z)
to a square of a different territory type
where
the adjacent territory type square is not used by more than
one path
Second (for limited processing power):
Same algorithm but you divide the world into blocks surrounding the
player
and weight each block according to the count of friendly and
unfriendly
squares in the block. This greatly reduces the number of paths.
This will essentially count how far the player is from all
possible friendly territory squares and then use that count to
determine the danger level.
Problems:
1. Stepping on the edge of a large area of unfriendly
territory is significantly more hostile than it should
be since the player may be still quite close to a large area
of friendly territory. This may be a good thing since an
enemy owning a large amount of territory obviously is much
better at accumulating and keeping territory and therefore
more dangerous.
2. Being surrounded by 2 or more smaller areas of hostile territory
should be more hostile than being on a small hostile territory
that is near your own territory. In other words, two adjacent
enemies are more difficult than a single one.
Alterantive algorithm:
1. Divide the world into larger and larger boxes around the player
where
the weight of nearby squares is much higher than far away squares.
This is limiting in that at some point, being completely
surrounded
by enemy squares overwhelms the effect of friendly squares much
farther
away.