SpaceSimCentral

i'm pretty sure i'm not the first who had ideas to that.i was remembering a old roleplaying game "advanced dungeons & dragons", the main task is to find some item in a each time new generated environment (dungeon, cave).then i let my mind a little fly and thought, should be possible to do something out of that.let's think of the environment what we have as a dungeon.further i remembered i made a board game, quite a long time ago, that was when my girlfriend made the jumper...the idea is simple, a bit like monopoly or any counting board game in general.you roll dices and get to a field or have to draw a card on which a event is written.i guess that tells enough, dices and events, that's another important thing. edit: i forgot you move from a to bwhile the event was often a dice roll again in the board game.i thought, it should be possible to get a "skeleton" for something like the above described idea, to get a lot of different (not really different) missions, you "only" would have to write a lot of "cards". i know that this sounds far easier as it will be to solve. like i said, i assume that's nothig new.

just to make it proof a quarter of the boardthe fields are unprescripted, you had to draw a card even to buy a field, the board is plastic coated and the use of the field is written later on them with a whiteboard marker.

i was wondering how many would have been confused by the money but i guess it's offense this isn't relevant it's only a condition of the board game but not the goal, the goal is to play it.in fact we havn't had made a "hard game" like monopoly, all players should stay in the game to the end but a winner should be there of course.what shall i say, it worked out.now to the more interesting thoughts i had.i was thinking of the condintions the "cards" have to fulfill.1st it must be declared to what the event is relative to, this influences in- and output of the eventthis will be,- player related, with the sub specification "player only", "A.I. only", or both.- mission related, things that happen and influence only the running mission.- gameworld related, to couple certain results of the events with the ongoing in the, game or perhaps to influence the gameworld.after that you can decide, - what will release the event- is it a decision or a task?- how is the decision made? a choice? a dice roll?- what is the task to fulfill?- the result of the decision or the result of the task, usually 1 or 0 - or a counting value i can add or substract from a value which marks the fulfilled task or a player value (leaves the opinion to say, you decided to take this contract, it will discount your reputation, or vice versa).it will output a result mostly of either yes or no to the relatives "player" or "game", where it has to be made clear on what it will effect, i.e. count/discount a value.to do that in a fixed mission isn't very hard and you are right if you say that we have such already (or close to), but a assasination or delivery is to me only a part of a mission.well i think already of a enhancemet of the assasination, by leaving it up to the "dice" if that wasn't the "wrong" person you killed. with the possibility to bribe the client, of course with little predictable result, or to find some additional information that will help you to find out if he's really "charged" or if it might be only a old rival who likes to see ones dead. but that's another thing and don't belongs here. wait, perhaps it does, let's see the possibility to bribe already as such a "event card" i can decide wether to do it or not. or the gathering of information will be another "event card" with a result to a counter i.e., i guess that covers it wellthe arthropode is marching on...it get's a little complicated now, i didn't think that this is new what i thought, neither the following idea is new.i imagined now that we have, if i look at a single mission, something i would call levels or a depth in the tree we build.a releasing decision, the following next event, a further decision or task and so on...from my pov events in the same level or who have the same depth are very similar, you could say they are interchangeable up to a certain degree.we would have to find of course a "interface" (doesn't covers the idea, "schnittstelle" in german isn't a interface, a line where the things are cut in the same manner)something that makes it possible to interchange them likewise you interchange the parts of the faces, pull on a strip and change green eyes to brown eyes.i know this is a bit far guessed and it makes myself nearly crazy to only think about it.finally, you simply plot a course and let the player act to what's ahead until he reached a end which he can't see, neither the programmer can see the end now(aha, the arthropode again).at least it would be a fine thing, hard to program i imagine but later on if the "skeleton" works, easy to create new cards to a few fixed conditions.something everybody can do, something i know from the rotten board game, it was like a well of ideas after the board was made and the conditions was clear.i was sitting in midst of all that (help) and was coordinating that shit or found ideas how to workout a idea, e.g. "i like to get killed in the game", while the girls argued "no, that's to hard, i don't like to be out of the game", ok, find a idea, get killed but stay alive...it was going on in that manner and finally we had a lot of events (cards) - "the walk of the doodah"i mean with that, just go on, do it, we will find a solution in the end....[/hr]i guess before we think about to let the mission plot get generated, we should work on the system for the "event cards", even if it's just to make some fixed plotted missions.later we can decide hows to find a "interface" between similar events and group them.

either you lost interest or i make everybodys head dizzy...i know here comes this "hippie-punk" scores 0 and likes to tell the top scorers how to build a game... (at least i feel so)but i guess if all would be "wrong" you would have told me.i only think it's known stuff, nothing new, approved a 1000 times and perhaps the reason why i never opened my mind.throw the player in a unpredictable situation, everybody likes that i guess.everybody will love to see some own ideas, that's why i like the idea of the "event cards", you could never know what will result from that neither.perhaps one likes to solve a problem with a musical tune? well go on, do so...let the player play a tune he has to remember to unlock something, "senso" in a game, cool idea no? (neither mine and would need some extra like some keys which represent notes).let them do a simple "dead reckoning", find system D while you know (perhaps not from start of the mission) A, B, and C, so D whatever the name is must be here... force the player to make notes and sketches, they will hate it and love it.perhaps let him do a special maneuvre, a sling shot, why not, take away 80% of his propellant and force him to do it, could be interesting i guess.i mean to land a ship manually is, we shouldn't forget that, a difficult task for a beginner, i do it blindfolded now, but i remember...so simply do a point landing could be a task for one.like i said, we (non programmers) need thee to build the "framework", we would be pleased i guess to fill out "cards" with our ideas which will be related to the "branches" (right term?) and conditions we have.

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either you lost interest or i make everybodys head dizzy...
Well for me it's the latter one. I really like the idea of complex puzzle solving random missions, I just don't have an intelligent comment to add. I'm reminded of a scenario I heard about in the original ELITE where if you bought a certain type of live animal you would find your ship being taken over by tribble-like creatures who would multiply so much that they obscured your viewscreen and the only way to get rid of them was to fly close enough to a sun to burn them up.

Marcel wrote:
I'm reminded of a scenario I heard about in the original ELITE where if you bought a certain type of live animal you would find your ship being taken over by tribble-like creatures who would multiply so much that they obscured your viewscreen and the only way to get rid of them was to fly close enough to a sun to burn them up.
Ahh yes... we have those delightful little buggers in Oolite!

I remember when I first picked up the tribbles in the original, I was like ohh how cute... until my whole screen filled up with them, fortunately for me I enjoyed scooping fuel so I ended up getting rid of them quick just by accident