Wouls you like a second part of ITE?

[FallenWolf]

Hello folks!

So, now i take the chance to start the forum's first poll
I'd be very interested in your opinions, so please vote AND give your comment as a reply.

Thanks

~FallenWolf

[Mira]

Yes.  Just...yes.  I don't care what style the sequel is done in.  I enjoyed the first one enough so that I'm sure I'd enjoy a sequel.

[FallenWolf]

Uhuu another hardcore-fan

[Kay]

It depends on the quality. If it were done with the same level of graphics and sound as before, I'd expect a low price. If the graphics were upgraded substantially, if Wyrmkeep dabbled in non-linear gameplay, and if they promised not to make me go through the Rat maze so many times, I'd pay more.

[FallenWolf]

I didn't think the rat maze to be difficult there were just 3 points you had to pass, and that every time... after a break of 8 years i still knew it by heart

[Threed]

Sho' would like to see a sequel.

I think it would have to be updated, though, to become more mainstream - there would probably be nothing better than a lush and dynamic 3d world with the graphics, and the the "world" of Gothic, or maybe one of the earlier Ultimas, where village AI each had their own agenda, making exploring - not just following the plot - much more exciting and entertaining. It was fun to just wander around in the Ultimas and watch the world "move" by itself, even if you did not interfere. Very clever use of AI, I think.

There was a Dreamer's Guild game that was similar to this, Fairytales and ...? It was very unpolished, though, but it spoke greatly of the sorts of dynamic worlds you could achieve.

The graphics would be easily accomplished with a neat gem like OGRE, but the dynamic world would be hard. But worth it, I think.

[FallenWolf]

Hmm well... should ITE really get more "mainstream"?
Ok, that will be necessary for getting good sales, but wouldn't it loose some of it's "specialities"? (excuse me, but i don't find the right words ^^)

But the graphics of the game you named looks nice.. would work i think..

[Threed]

What would it lose, exactly?

Technology is constantly progressing - if you choose to sit back and make something intentionally antiquated when you could make the world more lush and dynamic, why shouldn't you?

For instance, there is a popular 3d "system" called OpenGL. Many 2d platform games have recently been using OpenGL for a neat effect - 2d dynamic lights and shadows. In some games it can take the world to another level - shadows slowly vanish as a guard walks towards you holding a torch. If you shoot the guard, though, the torch suddenly goes out and there's a whoosh of shadows as the light is extinguished!

Could old games do this? Sure, they could... but they have to draw it all by hand. With technology systems like OpenGL you get this sort of behavior "for free," and all it requires is a modernish (2001+) video card. The less time you have to work on something, the more time you have for something else.

Why not use current technology to make the world more *real*?

Think about this: the scene where Riff has finally gotten past the fortress and is standing on a ledge outside, staring out over the valley on the other side, with the huge, looming storm in the background.

How cool would it have been to watch that storm move, lightning crash against the sky.

How cool would it have been if that storm was *real*, and enviromental effects - rain, a dark, thick fog - were present where-ever the storm moved?

How cool would it have been to just sit on the ledge for a few minutes, watching the storm sweep across the valley, the trees blowing, the light dimming as the storm gets closer to the fortress? Occasionally birds burst from a few trees and fly into the air? Watch a few NPCs from the cheetah clan coming your way through the forest to avoid the storm?

[Wes13]

I have an Idea for a sequel.
It will take place 4000 years after ITE. The Morphs are now an advanced spacefaring race. When an exploratory mission goes into an unknown system they discover the Humans and many other races fighting for galatic supremecy. Now the Morphs are thrown into this Galatic war.

Tell me what you think about my Idea.

[Threed]

What's the hook?

What's the plot, where is the plot going?

What, then, at a sufficiently technological level, distinguishes Morphs from Humans, aside from a thick sheaf of fur?

 

[WyrmMaster]

And the characters will be:

Colonel O'Rif
Major Rhene*
Dr. Daneeah Elkson
T'okk

We'll get right on that.  

* Or Captain.
 

[Wes13]

 I get the joke Wyrmkeep.
 

[Ottergame]

More furry games!

[Kay]

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.

[Threed]

Yeah. Morrowind was beautiful and atmospheric, but the AI had some flakey (unintended, I'd hope) behavior. I'd mentioned OGRE as the scenegraph because I'm not a big fan of reinventing the wheel - I like solving the logic problems, not redoing mundane tasks that someone else has already done if need be.

What you describe is precisely one of the concepts I wish more people would implement: emergent AI. You do not script the actions of the Agent* in question, per say, but you do whatever provide a "neural-net" with predefined behavior for particular archetypes. The AI progressively learns, to a point, and then its actions become seemingly unpredictable. You supplement this sort of AI with a list of goals; actions that it wants to see accomplished, and let it "decide" how it wants to accomplish these rules, depending on its personality matrix (weighted values and emotions assigned to each Agent), and what it "knows," things it has learned through the neural network. This takes a big burden of the programmer because he does not have to script for every possible eventuality - player kills NPC's wife, player kills NPC's children, player robs NPC, player gives NPC mudbath, player kills someone in front of NP - and players get a quasi-random, more fun experience. Also, I like the irony in an AI not giving you a quest reward because he has to pay for all the damages you did to his property trying to rob him blind. =D

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...

Ah, but this is predictable. X + Y = Z. With a more emergent AI, it could decide, on the weighted values of what you have done - has the player destroyed my property? has he insulted me before? has he tried to bribe me lately? did he just rape my goats? - against the worth of the goal (each goal having a particular weighted worth in contrast to the AI's likes, dislikes). A simple integer value later and the AI can respond with a negative or positive response, which will unfortunately have to be written down somewhere. Still, it gives more breadth to the illusion that what you do affects the world in some meaningful way: your actions suddenly have consequence! Real consequence, too; not the fake Morrowind "everyone on the planet just knows what you did!" consequences. =D

Python is beautiful, by the way, but I prefer C# because I can't think as fast as I type. I'll typically logic out a problem, a way to solve it, before even writing a line of code. Just the way my mind works.

*Artifical intelligence that is not scripted and can generally be passed as "life-like enough" is usually coined to be an Agent.