   Idea for environmental challenges
This is relatively straightforward, but I've been getting so many great ideas from you folks I thought I'd toss it out for your consideration...The sci-fi RPG I've been posting alot about lately has a great deal of "dungeon crawl" potential in the form of derelict starships and alien ruins.  One thing that might enhance it is detailed environmental challenges along with NPCs and monsters.  Since you can own a starship and walk its decks, environmental challenges naturally can lend themselves to story and missions where you have to deal with disasters or malfunctions aboard your own ship, using the same game system.BasicsA straightforward way of creating environmental challenges is to give a level some general stats, then create gameplay for the player to alter the stats.  The level stats can apply to the whole level or just one area of whatever shape.The core level stats would be atmosphere (type and amount), air pressure, heat, radiation and maybe gravity.  These in turn would affect your character and equipment.You could alter any of these by using items or objects on the level, and equipment (whether you know it or not) might regulate these stats.  For example, shooting up the air processors of a ship would change its atmosphere rating over time as carbon dioxide began to replace oxygen.TolerancesAll objects would have environmental stat tolerances in the form of a max, and in some cases a minimum.  Exceeding these limits would cause status effects (like malfunctions in radiation) and possibly damage.Environmental EquillibriumLevels would be arranged hierachially, so that a level could affect another level.  A ship traveling close to the sun, for instance, would have its deck levels affected by both the heat and radiation of the star.Levels would try to maintain equillibrium in the areas of pressure, radiation, atmosphere and heat.  This means a hull breach would drop pressure, raise radiation, alter atmosphere and lower or raise heat, depending on which side the hole was facing.  The rate would be decided by the size of the hole.Environmental ObjectsHere's where it may get more interesting...Environmental objects would be things like clouds of gas, pools of liquid, fire or electromagnetic fields.  They would alter stats directly and / or cause status effects to equipment or your character or crew.Some, like fire, could grow in size, spreading into neighboring cells based on consumption of combustible material.  In this case, fire would be an entity with "health" which would eat nearby objects marked by the game as combustible.  It would add to its health as it spread, and add to the level's heat stat in the region it was in contact with.  Likewise, extinguishers would attack its health, as would running out of combustible fuel.  This could be done either on a per cell / node basis, so you could have fire that dies in one place even while it spreads elsewhere.The spread of gas or liquid could be handled similarly.  Using The Level To Overcome ChallengesIn the case of a fire or other spreading effect, like gas or air loss, you could seal off areas of the level with doors or forcefields.  You could also don equipment, such as insulated suits to walk through arcing electricity or use gas masks to deal with toxic air.You could also do a bit of object combination:  Blending oxygen and hydrogen to make enough water to fight a fire, for instance, or adding antifreeze to prevent water from freezing.You could also alter environmental objects by "attacking" them with the right inventory object or substance, or by altering the stats of the level.  For instance, you might blow the air out of the ship in order to quelch a raging fire, then quickly pump air back in.Important Question: Abstract or detailedThe core question I have about all of this is whether or not to bother with this level of detail and flexibility.  As a player, you'd have to be willing to learn that a substance affects the environment a certain way (water on fire is easy, but if it was an oil fire water might not be what you wanted).Alternately, I could use a sci-fi mumbo jumbo mechanism called field emission:  Your engineers and scientists would simply be able to project fields in certain spots:  Forcefields to stop air loss and contamination; "molecular suspension fields" to stop fire, "inertial dampening field" to stop gravity damage, etc.  I'd then toss the combining of compounds, chemicals and whatnot so that you could make straightforward choices about energy and manpower allocations to setting up and deploying fields.It might be interesting to be able to come up with your own creative solutions.But OTOH, there's no point developing it if only a fraction of players out there would use it.  Not only do you have to know how to fight, and maybe manage a crew, and deal with the universe at large, but you'd have to know the individual strategies for environmental objects like lightning, radiation clouds, etc. and how to "attack" the problem.People are used to fighting monsters, fighting the environment in detail might be too much.Thoughts?
  Forgot to mention: There are alot of places you can take an idea like this, just by modifying stats and objects.Some scenariosYou land on a Mercury-like planet very close to the sun.  You have 10 hours to salvage a derelict before the planet rotates and radiation and temperature levels rise through the roof.After setting down on an icy, airless comet, you discover a fully pressurized outpost whose door is jammed.  If you pry open the door, it may well blow into you, causing injury, due to pressure.You find a half-submerged alien wreck filled with valuables and monster guardians.  You lure the monsters into a big central engineering area, remotely set charges on the far wall to flood the room, then turn the power on to electrocute them all.I'm not sure how much of all this can be animated, but I'm fairly confident that with enough stats and a decent set of rule and FSM routines, you could get these compound effects.   ;  Sounds interesting but it also sounds like a lot of work, both for the programmer and the player.for the player:How much detail the player is required to know just to play the game vs. how much detail the player could use?  If you have to have an engineering degree just to play the game, no fun for most people.  If a chimpanzee can play the game but having an engineering degree helps/makes more fun, I think your on to something.If a player can blow a hole in the wall to let in the water to drown the monsters, what is to stop players from not using the front door (since it is most likely trapped) and cutting straight into the wall with a uber arc welder?  Will mining consist of the player literally digging for veins of gold?  Will poorly dug tunnels collapse?Of course this would have implications on your economy too.  Maybe your tired of space exploring/combat and you want to plant some trees (Christmas trees that you can sell of course).  Is the soil right?  Is the sun giving off the right amount of radiation?  Are the seasons right for this type of tree?  Build a bio dome where you cross pollinate different trees to get the right tree type.  This sounds disturbing close to a sim game more than an RPG.  But if you added it to your game you might want to consider having large expanses of space where combat is non-existent/minimal.  I mean who is going to want to farm if every three seconds someone is burning down their grove.  for the programmer/designer:It seems like, from the example scenarios you give that you would have to come up with stats for absolutely everything, and that could be massive.  Does this plot of land have the right materials to grow my oak trees?  How much heat would you have to generate before the beach becomes a sheet of glass?  Now what are the statistics of glass again?;  I have read many of your recent posts, and although I am sure you have answered this somewhere, I would like a clarification.When you are walking around a ship and these stat effects might occur, are we talking a realtime game or turnbased.  If it is turnbased, then I would say go ahead and add all of the stat effects and whatnot that pleases you.  However if this is realtime, you really need to consider simplifying things.  The last thing I want to do as I run down a ship's hallway is pull out a thermometer to find out if the pool of water is going to scald me.  I don't even want to have to stick my pinky finger as my mother would do before feeding the young kids soup.   ;  My concern with this level of detail is that the player is going to expect to be able to manipulate the world and objects in order to come up with varied results...which is good, up until they try to do something that makes sense, but which you as a programmer forgot to account for.  I like the way that you're catagorizing things, and giving them all attributes -- this will go a very long way to ensuring everything is covered.  But I still get nervous thinking that at some point, a player might try to go McGyver on you and invent some combination of resources that in every aspect *should* work, but that wasn't thought of before.On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, will be players that don't want to have to have degrees in biology, chemistry, and physics in order to play.Personally, I love the idea, and being able to sort of think your way through a situation...it's kind of a puzzle, but more realistic.  If you can make it work well so that it's intuitive, easy to understand, yet deep enough to be able to come up with some wild results, I think it'd be great.   ;  I think it depends on whether there are more player that WANTS TO deal with the challenges, than those that feel they HAVE TO deal with it.  As long as you keep the player to be the actor instead of the  reactor, and keep the knowledge a bonus instead of requirement, I think the challenges can only add to the game (excluding the costs for implementing them).[Edited by - Estok on July 9, 2004 3:47:12 PM];  Trying to figure out what equipment to take on a salvage mission would be cool.  Finding out that some of it is useless because it doesn't work or is extranious, I'd say it's a good element to include.  But from playing X-Com recently, I can say that picking through equipment for each mission can be a bit of a bother.As for fires, if they're on board my ship, I don't think I'd want to deal with them if I'm in the middle of a firefight.  If you're going to include it I'd suggest having some sort of automated system or crew handle it.  Dealing with it once in awhile would be cool if say the automated system goes down, but if it tears me away from a more important element of the game, I'd say don't include it.   ;  This kind of idea is pretty much the same (if not the same, or unconsiously a simplified version of my idea).And I have thought about the fact that some players don't want to think about everything, like in this senario.You need to scatter a glas wall, bullets don't work, and charges are not avaidable, you do have a sonic frequency generator. To scatter glas with sound, you need to know the glasses own frequency and emit that frequency for a period of time. The long way to do that is to try each frequency for a time untill it shatters, since you don't have a degree in phycics (or whatever you need in this area of science) you can spend hours finding the right frequency, and then find out that he already past it because his step was 1 and he should have been looking in the .1 range.But if you would have a degree in Physics, you might know what the frequency of glas is (I believe sound strength to scatter glass is 137dB, so that is around 20MHz?) and you would brake that barrier in a few minutes.Where was I?Oh yeah, you might want to introduce a tool that could tell you what properties an object has. In the form of Star Trek, it would be a tricorder, it tells you what it is, where it is, what it properties are. And it can even emit that frequency for you. :)That way even not Beta trained people could enjoy the game.Not sure if this is helpfull or not...   ;  It sounds good but all information given will be primary in the form of visual and that might be too much for a player to process while still under 'attack' by some form.  The calculation of maximum performance on stats by player during the heat of the battle might be too much.  It is too realistic to be process with one sense (visual).  In real life, if I'm at a ship and there is some radiation, that information (where and how much) is given to me FIRST interm of HEAT while my eye is focusing on the target.  I can detect gas by smell and not just seeing some 'green color cloud' and then seeing my heath go down to note that its toxic.  Of course, you have a space suit and those alarm thingy but are you asking people to take graduate from NASA to play the game?So as other suggested, it would have to be turn based game for people to take some time to process the information to maximize their output.  Because, as real time, it feels like a JOB man.  That is, it might be too stressful to enjoy.;Quote:Original post by KarsSounds interesting but it also sounds like a lot of work, both for the programmer and the player.It's not trivial to program, but the combat and psionics system I have in mind already relies on object or region based operations on a skill, stat or resource (incrementing it, decrementing it, etc.).  My aim is to develop a reusable effects module that can be used in future games.  So rather than developing a combat system with unique logic tied to individual weapons, I'd assign atomic effects to items:  A shotgun, for example, would decrement HP while performing a knockback effect on the target.Applying this same system to environmental effects, however, only makes sense if it's understandable.Quote:How much detail the player is required to know just to play the game vs. how much detail the player could use?  If you have to have an engineering degree just to play the game, no fun for most people.  If a chimpanzee can play the game but having an engineering degree helps/makes more fun, I think your on to something.I think you've nailed a vital part of this problem.  Toward this end, what if EVERY obstacle automatically gave you a basic "tool tip" popup that told you exactly what it needed, but this was only the most basic way of handling it.In the instance of fire, for example, the tool tip might say "water."  Water would work, but so would lack of air.To get something of the Star Trek feel, maybe NPCs could also act as a hint system, based on their skills.  So you'd get your Geordi Laforge talking about "what we need is to do is somehow starve out the fire."Quote:If a player can blow a hole in the wall to let in the water to drown the monsters, what is to stop players from not using the front door (since it is most likely trapped) and cutting straight into the wall with a uber arc welder?This is more of a separate matter, but the basic answer is nothing.  This would depend on the resources and stats of the equipment versus the walls in a level.  I have no problem with you walking through drywall Robocop style in power armor, or drilling through it in a rig.  Levels exist to provide a baseline challenge and corresponding reward.  In an open ended game, if you bring dynamite to a gunfight, so to speak, I say have fun.  Just like in Fallout and Morrowind, if the challenge isn't enough, move on to harder areas.Quote:  Will mining consist of the player literally digging for veins of gold?  Will poorly dug tunnels collapse?Mining gameplay is actually meant to be very simplistic, not to stand alone, so it'll be more of a collection / scavenger hunt than detailed placement of charges.If I added any underground travel, however, I'd use a "quick travel" world map to represent movement, with different regions offering different risks and rewards.  If you got out of the rig, I'd generate the level based on your path reusing the same graphics for cave interiors.This would then avoid problems with constructive solid geometry and the issues that Red Faction ran into with limits to moding the terrain and getting stuck in tunnels you dug.  (I guess I would add minerals as part of the regions for the heck of it, if I allowed this).Quote:Of course this would have implications on your economy too.  Maybe your tired of space exploring/combat and you want to plant some trees (Christmas trees that you can sell of course).Does the idea of level stats seem unbounded to you, such that if the game has things like pressure, radiation, air etc., then it cannot be done without automatically implying that the stats cover every possibly permutation and possibility?If so, why is this different from combat?  Physical combat, for instance, should have weight shifting, grip, weapon balance, etc.  Yet few games model this.  And when a game like Soul Caliber DOES add some of this detail, such as weapon swing speed, players don't automatically expect the aforementioned detailed stats to automatically kick in.Quote:Is the soil right?  Is the sun giving off the right amount of radiation?  Are the seasons right for this type of tree?  Build a bio dome where you cross pollinate different trees to get the right tree type.This level of detail would only exist if the game gave you an object, the interface and the gameplay.  Again, I'm not understanding why you go in this direction at all.  Tree growth doesn't seem all that interesting to the majority of players I know, so I don't feel compelled to put it in-- however, if they did, I'd strongly consider it.Quote:This sounds disturbing close to a sim game more than an RPG.  I should warn you that there are some elements, such as managing depleting resources (supplies, fuel, food) that ARE very sim like.  The RPG aspects come from being a character, leveling, story-lets, shopping and NPC interaction.  Quote:But if you added it to your game you might want to consider having large expanses of space where combat is non-existent/minimal.  I mean who is going to want to farm if every three seconds someone is burning down their grove.Granted, and I do plan for a "difficulty bowl" around key areas, with the centers being safe and the lip being deadly, monster filled areas.Quote:It seems like, from the example scenarios you give that you would have to come up with stats for absolutely everything, and that could be massive.I may be underestimating this drastically, which is one reason to throw it on the board here.  But I think that aside from the 5 or so environmental stats, you'd need:Stats for the level objectsHit pointsEach max / min (heat, pressure, etc.)Status effect for exceeding (copy stats to environment, reduce stats, explode, etc.)Now, if level objects fell into categories, you could simplify this even further.  Electronics, for instance, would have a radiation limit, and the effect of going too high would be to fry the circuitry.  Individual objects could have modifiers to this base category imbedded into their name ("Shielded Electronics" vs. "Unshielded Electronics")Quote:  Does this plot of land have the right materials to grow my oak trees?  How much heat would you have to generate before the beach becomes a sheet of glass?  Now what are the statistics of glass again?If I want to melt a wall, provided that it's possible, and I shift+click the wall or whatever and can see its environmental limits; or if I can "scan" it and get the same, does this solve the problem?