The graphics would be easily accomplished with a neat gem like OGRE, but the dynamic world would be hard. But worth it, I think.
The "dynamic world" part is what interests me most. The graphics don't have to be in the latest
Morrowind or
Unreal style, just advanced to basic 3D or at least really good 2D. From discussion elsewhere in this forum, it sounds like the different kinds of dynamic gameplay there could be are:
-Virtual world: entire societies get simulated in the background, and villages, quests etc. get generated for you to explore. Very complicated, and could get repetitive.
-Smart NPCs: In a fixed world, NPCs have motivations and behavior beyond ItE1's conversation trees, and even beyond
Morrowind's conversation system. NPCs react differently to you based on your race, past deeds, and reputation (which might lead to different endings and good replay value). The challenge is not to make the players' expectations too high and to not make NPCs do anything blatantly stupid.*
*In
Morrowind for instance, if you become head of the Mages' Guild and then, in your Guild HQ, pick up a berry belonging to the Guild, everyone in the building will charge at you screaming "
Now you die!"
-Dynamic environment: Certain events such as caravan routes and weather, and day/night get modeled in the background, affecting parts of the quest or just creating neat atmosphere.
We have the technology to do the last two. I've even fooled around with the Python programming language and saw how some of it could be done. For smart NPCs at the
Morrowind level, for instance, all that conversation comes from a big list of topics, each of which has a list of lines. Each line has requirements like "speaker must be an elf." When you pick a conversation topic, the NPC says the first response for which all the requirements are met. Some lines also execute scripts like "give the player 100 gold" or "attack!" There's nothing magic to it, just a lot of dialogue-writing. Once you've done that, you can create a new NPC by just saying "male Khajit Assassin in the Thieves' Guild," and the NPC will automatically have access to the appropriate dialogue.
To get more complex behavior, what you can do is create a list of goals. The NPC can have scripts for "find food," "hunt monsters," etc., and execute one at a time based on a set of internal drives like hunger. Make an NPC that carries on simple conversations and can gripe that it's hungry because it actually *is* hungry, and you're already ahead of the Big Famous RPG.
-Kay
Back from Anthrocon with ideas and furry art.