Author Topic: To 'normalise' a story....  (Read 1693 times)

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Offline Flipside

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To 'normalise' a story....
Ok, this is a bit of an odd topic since it's not based on current affairs on anything, merely on a thought that has been bouncing around my head for a while...

Basically, the one main problem with almost any sandbox game is the one of 'repeating stories', i.e. missions and scenarios become very familar. Most open-ended games have things like missions stored in a large, but not exhaustive database from which the missions are picked in a psuedo-random fashion.

So, what if there were some way of 'normalising' the mission creation procedure? Basically, find all the elements that form the context, action and reaction from a certain mission without using a large single mission database but rather creating it around a set framework. It's kind of like that game you played when you were a child, folding up a piece of paper and taking turns to draw a head, body and legs, so although the body was made up of the right parts, you could never tell what the finished drawing would look like.

As an example, there are several types of mission 'format', such as 'Seek', 'Destroy', 'Disable', 'Steal' of which any number could be a factor in the mission. I'm personally thinking (from a design point of view) that it might be better to pick the objectives first and then generate a story over it.

I'm trying to work on, out of personal interest, something that can generate these missions with more substance than things like 'The Thargian ambassadors Cat has been Stolen. Fly to %Undefined Variable% to retrieve it!'

So, my question to you guys is, we all know what makes a good story, and that's a good plot, but what do you think makes a good plot? Would it be better to have a large story taking place over a huge area, where your missions effect things slightly, but affect them universally, or would it be better to have several small 'plots' going on that don't interact much, but can be influenced far more by the player? We all like a story with a twist, but what makes a good twist compared to a tacky one etc?

 

Offline Ghostavo

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
Large story over huge area FTW. The game universe must make the player feel insignificant, but not to the point where his actions won't alter in the slightest the course of events.
"Closing the Box" - a campaign in the making :nervous:

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Offline Flipside

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
Personally, I'm for the large story idea too, probably the best way to go is something similar to the Eve online 'Standings' system, you'd almost need an AI system to decide how the computer would react to your performing a mission. Things like Piracy are easy to do, you only need one variable, your 'standing' with whatever Police forces are present, however, say you are asked to steal information from a surveillance point, that would have to effect the AI in such a way that not only do the offended people react if they find out, but they react in an appropriate manner.

Personally, I'd love to get things to a situation where you could perform the mission above, and then, say, visit a base of those whose info you stole, and see a mission to sabotage the research base where the info stolen fom one of their survellance units is being studied etc, all of it generated by the 'Character' of those you work for. You could literally watch a minor infraction escalate into a war (or help head it there).

The odds of it ever reaching that kind of complexity are slim, but the whole idea of a game that builds itself as it goes along has intruiged me for a long time.

 

Offline redsniper

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
I think the key to a good plot isn't originality so much (I mean, just about any plot twist you can think of has already been done in some way or another) but rather just striving for quality. Even a cliché plot can work well if it's executed properly. Just look at FS1...
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Offline Rictor

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
I think the key to a good plot is that it can't feel like a set of action to be performed. A to B to C, just meaningless busy-work. Most shooters for example, have something like:

-You need to get to Sector B
-The bay doors to Sector B are locked
-Find the control room to open the door
-The passage to the control room is blocked
-Find a way around
-Unlock the bay doors and get to Sector B

Rinse and repeat. Why do you need to get to Sector B? No one knows or cares. Doom 3 was a notorious example of this, at least in my book.

Ideally, there would be larger, more open goals that are set, and then the player is left to independently carry out smaller tasks which lead to attaining those larger goals. It's like someone telling you "buy a house", but you can then either work to make the money, steal, trade, take on paid missions as a merc or whatever.

Although even linear, scripted shooters, perhaps the most conventional and stagnant genre of PC games, can be engaging. Prey, for example, had a plot which I really liked, as did Half-Life 2, although both are little more than well-executed versions of "Point A to B to C".

 

Offline Mika

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
Could you explain how does your idea differ from dynamic campaign?

Does anyone know how to actually construct a dynamic campaign? For me it seems that the theather must be first programmed. Then entities that take part in the campaign, like factories that produce ammo and such. Then there would be the links between factories and battlefront etc. Soon after this it all turns out to be a huge mess from which I really cannot get a grasp at all.

Mika
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Offline Rictor

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
Obviously people have no problem with linear and non-interactive stories, since reading a book or watching a movie can be as immersive as the best game. The ultimate goal is not necessarily complete open-endedness and the player's ability to influence his world, but also an over-arching narrative.

Simply dropping the player in a vast world with only a distant goal to keep them going isn't necessarily the best approach. People need and want to be guided, they want to indulge in someone else's clever fantasy instead of having to come up with their own. So the balance should be between interactivity and plot. As you said, I think we're a long way off from having characters and factions within the game that can respond to all of the actions happening within the game-world as a real person would. As things stand, every specific action needs to be scripted to have a certain reaction from all the major characters in the game, which obviously restricts the seamlessness of the world.

I've thought about the "mission formula", for lack of a better term, concept quite a lot at times. And what I've concluded is that it's a far bigger can of worms than just coming up with an interesting formula. Or rather, coming up with an interesting formula is a bigger task than game-designers alone can handle.

 

Offline Flipside

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
There's also the high risk of 'Cascade' in a completely open AI system, if things go too polarised, you can end up with a universe which is totally unplayable, or gets caught in a repetetive pattern for a long period of time. So yes, some sort of controlling story would be needed, but what if that story could be 'plugged' into the mission generation routine, so that IT also has an effect on things? The player could become involved in the story through any manner of routes, be it trade, combat, stealth etc, and the player should be able to interact with the story in their own specialised way, there's little point offering a character who specialises at, say, stealth a job to escort a heavy warship through a combat zone, though as stealth, you might be employed to scout out the area ahead or act as a target spotter.

 

Offline Ace

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
I think the key to a good plot is that it can't feel like a set of action to be performed. A to B to C, just meaningless busy-work. Most shooters for example, have something like:

-You need to get to Sector B
-The bay doors to Sector B are locked
-Find the control room to open the door
-The passage to the control room is blocked
-Find a way around
-Unlock the bay doors and get to Sector B

Rinse and repeat. Why do you need to get to Sector B? No one knows or cares. Doom 3 was a notorious example of this, at least in my book.

Ideally, there would be larger, more open goals that are set, and then the player is left to independently carry out smaller tasks which lead to attaining those larger goals. It's like someone telling you "buy a house", but you can then either work to make the money, steal, trade, take on paid missions as a merc or whatever.

Although even linear, scripted shooters, perhaps the most conventional and stagnant genre of PC games, can be engaging. Prey, for example, had a plot which I really liked, as did Half-Life 2, although both are little more than well-executed versions of "Point A to B to C".

*Grumbles something about Rimscape being done save for the damned GUI which needs to be finished...*

Ermm anyway when it comes to a more or less non-linear game let's look at two examples:
System Shock and Deus Ex (first mission).

Both have simple goals at first: shut down the reactor, get to the top of the statue of liberty.

Now how those are done involves a lot of "Doom 3 esque" solutions which then had their own story fluff in the environments. The problem with D3 was the whole "Go to Delta Labs! Oh you're there, go to Zeta labs! Ermm... crap we need a hell segment... ermm there's a portal!"

Replace that with "Go to Delta Labs to shut down the reactor to the teleporter" and "Oh crap you need to go to the main facility  to shut it down direct as the reactor is being fed power from the other dimension!" tosses in more plot. Then throw in 'atmosphere' into the levels showing a bit of backplot.

Now for a more open space game... 'space terrain.' Megastructures like in Homeworld and Homeworld 2 are a solution as are special 'features' in the universe. A prime example is shows like the new Galactica where you have places like Kobol, New Caprica and its nebula, the Lion's Head Pulsar, etc. Variations on normal 'space terrain' that play right into the plot.

Stretch things out, have a void with no stars caused by some massive explosion of a starship and all that remains are the spectral remains of ships fading in and out between dimensions. Have a series of Dyson Spheres networked together, some of which destroyed. etc. etc. etc. Make sure they have similar visual styles that link together to add some deep context but don't go too overboard on prehistory factions.
Ace
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Offline TrashMan

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....

It's not enough to be able to generate missions, a few have to be linked in a cohesive manner.

And why limit yourself to one objective per mission? Why not 3...or 10? Why not make CONFLICTING objectives - so you can only do one
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Offline Flipside

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....

It's not enough to be able to generate missions, a few have to be linked in a cohesive manner.

Yup, that's exactly the situation I'm thinking about, The hard part is not getting little 'private wars' to break out or anything like that, the hard part, to be honest, is stopping them.

 

Offline Davros

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
"Does anyone know how to actually construct a dynamic campaign? "

no but both the source code to rowans battle of britain + enemy engaged comanche hokum have them...

 

Offline aldo_14

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
My thoughts are always around the concept of having layered cause-and-effect.  That is, the scenario (universe) has some degree of linearity in terms of how (for example) the 'war' gets started, and how it ends.  Ummm, which is a little vague.

One idea, specifically, I had was an FPS/Flashpoint style game set in an occupied and ruined city; with a world extending to a few kilometers of countryside outside (at which point they'd hit an insurmountable level of opposition, such as a hunter-killer chopper,  because you can't have an infinite world to play in).  The players' objective would be simply to 'liberate' the city; the enemies to occupy it. 

Each side - rebels and occupiers - would have a specific set of needs; food, arms, territory.   These needs would be fixed rules.  Below the 'needs' would be 'tactical needs'; these would be more randomised, but also fixed to certain strictures - for example, to hold position XXX for a food convoy, raid position YYY to hunt rebels, destroy occupier position YYYY.  Tactical needs would be grouped based on which need they fulfilled; the AI (determining the dynamic battlefield) would determine the importance of needs based on which were strongest and which were weakest; for example the rebel 'command' AI would focus on food raids of enemy convoys or bases if food was in short supply, or liberating territory if it was losing ground.

(these needs would also be finite resources, such that shortage would force retreat and potential defeat)

Tactical needs would, naturally, exist in multiples; they'd be performed both by AI simulation and player action, although the 'feed in' to the simulation part would be influenceable by player action.  For example, if the player has succesfully destroyed several tonnes of food in an enemy position in prior missions, then the opposition troops will be weaker there (in the simulation calculations).  It'd also be consequent that the players' success is exaggerated (the player does well, the 'war' goes well) but their failures are not (to avoid a spiral of doom) - but only in a manner perceived to be realistic.

Anyways, the tactical needs would by dynamically broken down into the actual missions; missions that had several objectives as mentioned prior.  But this environment would be stochastic; defenses would be changed on the basis of AI, randomisation and prior events (such as weapon shipments or even prior attacks).  Objectives would have their positions varying to literally anywhere logical.  Say you have a raid to capture a map; that map could be on the body of a dead soldier, on a table, in a truck, or thrown on the fire when you attack; each of these events is believable yet random.  At the same time, each objective is non-boolean; you can do xx% of it, so success is measured in terms of grey - the player has to judge when risk is acceptable (accounting for losses) based on the reward. 

Most games do this anyways, but not in terms of risk to the 'world', only risk to the player; 'tactical retreat' should be a viable tactic, and better than a phyrric victory in this sort of simulation.

  

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: To 'normalise' a story....
Yup, that's exactly the situation I'm thinking about, The hard part is not getting little 'private wars' to break out or anything like that, the hard part, to be honest, is stopping them.

To be honest, the answer to this already exists most likely; go look at most later Civilization games. You have to teach the AI to be a little less ruthless. Have one side sue for peace and so on. The problem is that you can end up reducing the player to ineffectuality in such a case.

My personal conception is something along the lines of the "slow fuze" familar to a lot of universes like Warhammer 40k or BattleTech in the Succession Wars/Tukkayid Truce eras. A lot of fighting happens, but it's small-scale and generally inconclusive, because nobody really thinks they can win. Until somebody like Hanse Davion comes along and realizes that they can win. They you get warfare on a massive scale that's conclusive...for awhile. Then he has to stop and consolidate or gets thrown back and things settle down for another few years.
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