I do want to see some more ambitious titles but there are simply things you can’t convey very well with text, a truly open and dynamic world being one of them. That’s not to say you can’t make a very good open RPG, that’s how they started, but following NPCs around as they live their lives. Wow. I’d be impressed!
I want to see more ambitious coding, but in a way that simplifies development and allows for better reuse/quicker writing and fleshing out. More game books than novels with stats? Not that I don’t appreciate a good story, I just think we have very little of the former!
Quixotic us a word on English? Like Spanish I felt proud of it. What I would love is a campaign creator in CS. Imagine a mara story online each week playable in groups of four people. Or even better @JimD or @Havenstone but hey a lets go poisoning and looting people with Mar could be fun
Fun fact: CSIDE did actually have a snippets bar at one point, but we decided it was easy enough for people to have a separate snippets -like project open that they could source from. That, and we now also have an “Example Projects” tab.
Oo, fair. I guess my artisitic creative juices are running a bit dry. I started CSIDE because I got frustrated when coding more complex cs stuff. I’ve got a number of abandoned games and routines I should really get around to developing or at least sharing. Implementing an A* path finding algorithm is probably my most ludicrous, though I did have to use a few *script calls.
Just so you know, when you say something is impossible, you have people like me who like a challenge, despite being very aware of how difficult something is.
But in general, I do agree with Mara. It just doesn’t stop me wanting to give it a shot at simulating a world, even if it likely never amounts to anything. Partly for myself and partly for others, even if it wouldn’t be appreciated by many. But a feasible project needs to come first for financial reasons.
And yeah, it is of course impossible to simulate a world where you can sit there and just watch an NPC go about their life or whatever. Or at least if you want it to be even remotely interesting, because you can only read the same text so many times and we can’t drum up infinite amounts of text. The only real way to simulate it is to create a time variable, use a hub system, and have certain NPCs/events appear or happen at certain times, while providing options to ‘live your life’ so to speak, like letting the player gamble. It’s just . . . unfortunately, a mammoth task, one best suited for multiple writers, and even then . . . it’s a lot of work for each individual.
I want to write a story of a person who is born in 20,000 BCE and witnesses mankind develop from cave dwellers hunting mastodons to a globally connected neural framework of everyone on the planet in the year 3000.
It seems like it would be possible to create the illusion of near-infinite amounts of text, though…variables multiply so quickly.
If it were coded cleverly, one could even build a world that worked, behind the scenes, like an immense game of Mad Libs. Use of the random variable also makes these things fun.
That’s one of my favourite ways of conceptualising ChoiceScript, actually–it’s all about how to best create the illusion of what one wants to achieve (choices with consequences! dynamically changing text! responsive characters!) without actually, manually doing what one wants to achieve (which would require writing a 200 million word novel).
Well, if you’re really scribbling, you might want to make that 2 or 3 time variables.
Variables = Day and period, with periods being morning, afternoon, evening and late night. So periods would go from 1 - 4. Then, to simulate the periods adequately so it doesn’t take you an entire morning to drink an ale, you introduce ‘actions’.
So, let’s say you choose to buy an ale, that would be 1/8 actions for the period. Gambling could be . . . say, 3 - 6? Maybe even 7. Basically set the numbers however you want, in accordance with how much time you think a particular activity would take. Once you finally go over 8 or whatever number you set, the period would change.
It’s just a hell of a lot of coding and management really. Very hard to keep track of things.
Open world is tough because you have to track the state of every moving piece. Where are NPCs and how may they interact with the MC? Have certain events occurred and how do they change states? Where is the MC?
It’s tough to do because of all the tracking. I am trying with my WIP but have cut back the scale because ultimately CS is a tool for changing narrative.
I’ve not heard of Mad Libs. I will look into it. My ideal concept is something akin to Fallen London. A hub structure, where you can choose the stories you take part in and do what you want within reason. But with the stories quite fleshed out, instead of small snippets. Of course, it’s the type of project that’s never finished. You just have to choose a point to say ‘that’s enough’, with the benefit of always having the opportunity to add more.
Use of the random variable would indeed make things fun too. You could easily implement something akin to random encounters, as in rpgs or pnp d&d sessions.
Variables multiplying quickly . . . yeah, that’s definitely true and I shudder to think of how unorganised my startup file would be if I ever embark on the project, given how unorganised it is already. Dunno about near infinite amounts of text, but something can be so branching that it’s likely a player/reader won’t ever encounter all the content, especially if options are opened and closed based on choices, which I think is a must if you want something truly reactive. No matter if it’s more game-like or novel-like. Personally, I’m looking forward to games like Torment: Tides of Numenera and Tyranny when they release. They’re both going to have you see only 30% - 60% of their content per playthrough, I believe? Can’t remember the exact numbers, and I’m definitely with you when it comes to it all being about the illusion. (I’m currently playing Wasteland 2 at the minute, for the first time.)
