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Post by echocdelta on Dec 21, 2015 4:53:45 GMT
I think the primary difference between playing a god versus playing a very powerful wizard or monster or something like that, is that a god wants his people to do something without being able to directly control them. Lacking of power should never be a factor (which is very counter intuitive for game design as it goes against the usual progression of power) So the difficulty of the game isn't completing a goal with limited means. But rather it's trying to understand your people such that you know what it takes to get them to do what you want them to do. Doing so with an individual should be relatively easy, but doing this with something as complex as an entire race of people should be very difficult. Personally I think a missed opportunity in god games has always been that the primary opponent isn't the devil (in case you play a good god) or god, (in case you play the equivalent of the devil). Being diametrically opposed to your opponent in what you want the same people to end up being like. Molyneux's god games always pitted you against another god who had his own people to influence. But I think it's more interesting to be influencing the same people, but wanting a different outcome for them. Way I see it, you could approach it as every human in the game world having a list of possible actions that they can tag as being either right or wrong. And things that happen to them, either through your interaction, your opponent's interaction, or other people interacting with them, can change those tags. People with different tags could become each other's enemies, or allies respectively. So it's very much a matter of understanding which NPCs to influence first, to create chain reactions that works out in your favor. For instance, if you influence the local religious leader, it'll influence different people around them than if you influenced the town idiot, or the king. Putting a controversial notion into the head of the idiot is less likely to lead to conflict, as people take him with a grain of salt anyway, doing it to the king could lead to all sorts of conflict, which may also be a good thing, depending on the situation. Another thing I find important is that the big miracles, like destroying a town, should always be available, but should create such a big and hard to predict change among the people, that a person looking for a specific change among their people would rarely choose to use it, so it stays a very significent event when used. Another thing to consider is a potentially endless game. If neither the god or the devil destroys the people entirely, and even if the players manages to create a unified set of morals among the people, the antagonist should always be able to start a new change in morality somewhere. The player could, if they want to, innitiate an 'end times', at which point all the souls who have the right moral code are tallied, which is how crowded or deserted the player's heaven or hell end up being. A final score, should the player want it. But if they don't, they could just keep playing. - I think this requires a strong base NPC Pawn manager, one that is able to track values/states as well as a lot of maths that goes into 'knowing' if a certain NPC has 'detected' an incentive. It's easy to tune this to 'pyromaniac likes fire miracle, thus will do your bidding' but the nuanced version of it will be 'Regular Joe kills Regular Steve from Town B because he likes cherry bushes and they suddenly appeared in the backyard with a note attached saying 'Kill Steve'' This however outlines a running theme on NPC Pawn category - we can agree that the less 'control' you have over followers, the more 'God' like the gameplay becomes. Concept: Drawing from the same population of followers against a God or entity that is diametrically opposed to you, emergent through miracles or gameplay. - It's worth pointing out that Black and White did this to an extend, with some leeway on how extreme it was. Arguably, it made the games default to 'good' God and made you feel like Evil was a deviation - well, there is a bit of an oversimplification in both how we perceive the idea of 'God' and how we perceive ourselves. It isn't, excuse the pun, Black or White. In terms of systems, it's less difficult - you have X, they have Y instead, you are defined as XXB, your enemy is YYA. I do absolutely agree that it's best to divide an existing population and neutral beliefs, which might tie into idol worship mentioned previously. Concept: Behavior sets of NPCs draw from a predetermined list that is changed by tracking influencing values from other sources, such as 'witnessing' miracles or interaction with other followers. - Looking at relationships between pawns, transfer of values between these relationships and how hierarchies between pawns influences a larger system. NPC Pawn state manager, tracking pods of pawns or grouping. This would work if the base platform of systems was scaled in a way to allow for information to pass between two entities or classes. For performance's sake, and memory, it'd be ideal to have them as groups (hovels/villages) of shared behaviors between NPC Pawns in an NPC Settlement, so you find yourself trying to take advantage of the unique classes of settlements (Fishing, Mountain, Desert). This is an ideal feature, but one that follows existing systems, but a brilliant one none the less. Concept: Cause and effect of miracles more pronounced scaled to the size of miracle, thus if a value system was used, the size of a miracle would multiply the effect the miracle would have on the behavior sets of NPC Pawns. - This actually immediately draws on the previous system and also, surprisingly, is present in BW. This actually ties into the idea of building temples granting massive one-off or previously inaccessible powers, in that they'd be superweapon type biblical events causing widespread belief in you as the one God. This concept is definitely a natural extension to the previous system and base resource mechanics of NPC worship. It's probably at this juncture that we can start seeing systems or concepts that begin to call on each other, across multiple people posting. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 21, 2015 5:14:06 GMT
- What do you think makes a 'God' game distinct from any regular city building or 4X-style game?Building off the "competition should be for followers' hearts, not their lives." I think it could go both ways depending on the type of god you wanted to be. I would love to see the option to take over the world physical, I.E. go out with armies and control the land or philosophically, I.E. control the hearts of the people of the world. I would also like to see the ability to be a good or evil good and have viable methods to go the physical or philosophical route to world control. - What are important mechanics you feel would be core to your understanding of a 'God' game?
Very broad powers, that effect larger groups or wide areas of land. Not to say there can not be fine control powers but they should cost much more to use, require prerequisites to use or have a limit on how often they could be used or timers between uses.
- What are your thoughts on accessibility vs. depth?
Easy to learn hard to master.
- Are there any previous iterations of God games you think did things well, or horribly, that one should take note of?
Populous and Power Monger are good examples for me for the physical take over the world. I have only played Black and White a little, but it is good for how the path a god chooses effects his followers. I.E. As you do evil deeds your follows should be come more even and take on a more evil look. DO good and the followers take on a more good normal look. This would also be a good path for DLC or micro transaction appearance packs.
- How much control over NPC actors should a God have?
Very little. One prophet or Avatar at most. I really enjoyed the Dungeon and Dragons Time of Troubles book series/transition. Where the gods and goddess where thrown to the planet and walked around in one of their avatars. Some took up residence in one of their larger temples and grew to giant size and fought other gods that attacked their city. Some hid there presence and took a more secret path to guiding there followers and working their plots. That could be a cool event/end game. Where all the god/goddess are cast to earth and now have to pursue their goals in a more limited fashion. This has some strong historical parallels, and I think this might be an interesting thing to balance between how we perceive an angry, not-peaceful God, and one that is benevolent. This begins to split gameplay mechanics towards combat, by choice, and non-combat, by choice, each aligning to how one would see the idea of the player's avatar disposition. A just crusade, is still a crusade and by no means a 'good' or benevolent act. Concept: The player avatar has substantial effect on the land, thus most powers are sweeping miracles instead of fine tuned point powers, such as casting rain onto a 1m-square piece of land, as opposed to creating a rain storm in an area. This is a concept that's been repeated before and I can understand the idea behind it - maybe offsetting this to player hosts in settlements being able to cast miracles in specific places, whilst the God is able to call on larger/grander widespread areas. In terms of systems, this is basically scale-able, because once the player can cast rain, we can scale the rain to be larger or smaller, as long as we have a robust system for how that casting is emitted in 3D space. It's basically the player placing an emitter or event in a specific area and that 'playing' itself out. Concept: NPC art assets change depending on values added or subtracted from miracle usage, NPC's killed by followers or if player actions are connected to NPC deaths - such as flagging 'miracle active' and counting deaths, thus flagging player as an aggressive or evil God. - This is asset swapping, literally based on value tracking. We could even change textures, in-engine (flat color can switch RGB values) and basically make land darker or more vibrant etc. I'd personally shy away from tropes that are cliche (ooooh the evil God makes the land baaaaad) but instead looking at exploring player disposition with color tinting, thus a militant player would have a 'red' land with harsher angles on art assets, whilst the softer gentle God would have greener, curved, assets.
Concept: Non direct control over followers, instead finding hosts or avatars that will serve to be your link to the NPC settlements. - I'm seeing this come up a fair bit, meaning that this is something worth looking into as a proper gameplay system. It solves a number of interaction questions for me, as having your NPC host be a directly controlled (or flag/banner following) unit would be a pretty good thing to prototype. |
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Post by Aynen on Dec 21, 2015 5:20:14 GMT
I love how extensive your replies are, echocdelta, and you're not withholding on complexity either.
Looking at your views on NPCs being influenced by other sources, it made me think a choice has to be made between 2 types of gameplay:
1: You can see clearly written how the world and it's NPCs are affected by a change, which means that the effect becomes more like a choice of preference.
2: You can't see clearly written how the world and it's NPCs are affected by a change, which means you have to guess. This means a player action feels less like picking a preference, and more like experimenting in the sandbox to see how the sand reacts.
If you pick option 1, you'll get more sense of agency and less frustration over the game not doing what the player intends for it to do. But the NPCs also feel emptier, creating less of a bond between them and the player.
If you pick option 2, you'll feel less like you're in control, but can attribute much more value to NPCs since you don't have full disclosure on what makes them tick. (Like humanity's ability to recognise faces in things that have no face, the same can happen with personally and behavior)
Most of the concepts I propose rather hinge on this choice being made one way or the other.
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 21, 2015 6:09:08 GMT
Individual followers should convert slowly under influence of benefitting from or witnessing your good/bad miricles, the more you convert the more miricles you can perform. Don't work off areas of influence, make the followers free ranging, maybe they fight opposition followers when they come across them. I liked influencing followers growth, maybe giving them what they need in resources makes them move in particular directions. Create a lake or clear areas to farm, conjure herds of animals and people expand towards them. Eating these animals make them appreciate you as their God, using trees you've grown makes them believe in you, raining on crops, they then consume converts them. I don't know how good your AI writer will be but small pvp games have a massive market like clash of clan and Star Wars commander (both mobile I know) but could save cost of trying to produce AI, over some network connectivity design. Don't go for massive numbers of pvp, get 1 on 1, friend vs friend system right first, after all we all love getting one over your mate in a game, make sure there is clear boasting rights from this. Offer a sandbox mode off the bat, people love to play without limitation and experiment. Is this a one off cost PC game or looking at mobile design? Stick to one platform, if it works, then consider porting after/if it's successful. Time progression, don't promise it, but leave it as possibility, you could release dlc new eras.
This tracks onto previously mentioned systems, but an interesting idea here is that 'borders' of player avatar influence is essentially based on the population of followers, their movements might dictate borders themselves. This might be linked to Settlements themselves, or to the individual, regardless it's definitely a unique angle.
Concept: Miracles should affect the gameplay area, in that they can influence positively or negatively the resources available to the NPC Settlements. This might require tracking of the path from miracle, miracle effects resource, resource is consumed by NPC, NPC associates resource to miracle, NPC is flagged to be follower, follower generates worship. This system is not simple but definitely within the scope, providing that the NPC Pawn manager can handle triggers to flag certain conditions that would essentially recognize that a miracle was cast and has affected it. Concept: PvP with perhaps 1 v 1 multiplayer over net, or LAN, based around God's using powers to destroy each other's idol. - We can currently track multiple Vive's in the same space, we might be able to scope for 1v1 multiplayer. I can certainly say that the whole Jupiter thing is not going to happen, because realistic technical reasons. Concept: Sandbox play mode without an end or clear objectives to 'end' the game, or enter into fail/win states. - I think this was mentioned before, sandbox gameplay seems to be super popular and for designers/developers it provides the ability to incrementally develop content, respond to feedback and iterate. Sandbox is a sandbox for you, the consumer, and the developer. I can tell you right now that we are not doing mobile. The one platform we are developing for is essentially VR, the HTC Vive, but our experience using UE4 allows us to port over to PC with specifically the considerations for input ports, as opposed to building for mobile and porting up to PC. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 21, 2015 6:12:14 GMT
I think being a God, in a God game with no followers it would be somewhat boring unless you just really love the building and terraforming aspect of it. Which is my second least favorite part. My very least is battle, so my suggestion is make battle optional and even consider some different tiers for how involved your terrain shaping is. I prefer to shape my followers lives instead of their mountains and rivers. To each his own, but isn't that what is great about being a God to begin with? I'm starting to think about making battle, or combat, a part of how you extend your will as a God, as opposed to a mandated part of gameplay. What if you incite combat, but without the explicit assurance that your followers are successful in combat. I personally hated the idea that you 'micro' troop movements and deployment as a God. I think it is immersion breaking and totally a cop out. It's where the scales of 'accessible fun gameplay' tip too far and start eating away at player engagement through the genre/subject matter. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 21, 2015 6:17:44 GMT
I love how extensive your replies are, echocdelta, and you're not withholding on complexity either. Looking at your views on NPCs being influenced by other sources, it made me think a choice has to be made between 2 types of gameplay: 1: You can see clearly written how the world and it's NPCs are affected by a change, which means that the effect becomes more like a choice of preference. 2: You can't see clearly written how the world and it's NPCs are affected by a change, which means you have to guess. This means a player action feels less like picking a preference, and more like experimenting in the sandbox to see how the sand reacts. If you pick option 1, you'll get more sense of agency and less frustration over the game not doing what the player intends for it to do. But the NPCs also feel emptier, creating less of a bond between them and the player. If you pick option 2, you'll feel less like you're in control, but can attribute much more value to NPCs since you don't have full disclosure on what makes them tick. (Like humanity's ability to recognise faces in things that have no face, the same can happen with personally and behavior) Most of the concepts I propose rather hinge on this choice being made one way or the other. Hey thanks Aynen! I've been chipping away at backend design stuff all day, since around 8AM (it's 5PM now) and I now have a large categorical list of concepts that are starting to overlap strongly. It's identifying common areas that need mechanics to be teased out and crushed into technical tasks. I'm thinking about making our Trello board public, so people can see the process, but that might be further down the track. I think out of the two systems, the only question becomes that of UI and visibility - having the information there, tracking it and changing it still exists. Option 2, I believe, is the immersive and diegetic option. The rationale here is that it can also create the illusion of depth due to player-side emergent stories attributed to player behavior. The example here, and this is not an indication of my target depth because f-that, is Dwarf Fortress; arguably a Dorf is more complicated and draws on more systems than a number of biological constructs, but it is definitely a mechanical entity that only responds to stimuli, but as players we attribute their misbehavior or unpredictability to character or emergent narrative. Option 1 pales in comparison, Option 1 is the Sims option that will turn the system transparent and too visible. The machine behind the curtain. Also no good way to display the information in a diegetic manner, which will break immersion. |
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Post by Aynen on Dec 21, 2015 6:37:15 GMT
I love how extensive your replies are, echocdelta, and you're not withholding on complexity either. Looking at your views on NPCs being influenced by other sources, it made me think a choice has to be made between 2 types of gameplay: 1: You can see clearly written how the world and it's NPCs are affected by a change, which means that the effect becomes more like a choice of preference. 2: You can't see clearly written how the world and it's NPCs are affected by a change, which means you have to guess. This means a player action feels less like picking a preference, and more like experimenting in the sandbox to see how the sand reacts. If you pick option 1, you'll get more sense of agency and less frustration over the game not doing what the player intends for it to do. But the NPCs also feel emptier, creating less of a bond between them and the player. If you pick option 2, you'll feel less like you're in control, but can attribute much more value to NPCs since you don't have full disclosure on what makes them tick. (Like humanity's ability to recognise faces in things that have no face, the same can happen with personally and behavior) Most of the concepts I propose rather hinge on this choice being made one way or the other. Hey thanks Aynen! I've been chipping away at backend design stuff all day, since around 8AM (it's 5PM now) and I now have a large categorical list of concepts that are starting to overlap strongly. It's identifying common areas that need mechanics to be teased out and crushed into technical tasks. I'm thinking about making our Trello board public, so people can see the process, but that might be further down the track. I think out of the two systems, the only question becomes that of UI and visibility - having the information there, tracking it and changing it still exists. Option 2, I believe, is the immersive and diegetic option. The rationale here is that it can also create the illusion of depth due to player-side emergent stories attributed to player behavior. The example here, and this is not an indication of my target depth because f-that, is Dwarf Fortress; arguably a Dorf is more complicated and draws on more systems than a number of biological constructs, but it is definitely a mechanical entity that only responds to stimuli, but as players we attribute their misbehavior or unpredictability to character or emergent narrative. Option 1 pales in comparison, Option 1 is the Sims option that will turn the system transparent and too visible. The machine behind the curtain. Also no good way to display the information in a diegetic manner, which will break immersion. I couldn't agree more  My preference is with option 2 also, for the same reasons as you describe. It will mean, however, that you'll depend more on NPCs that can portray information naturaly, through visual ques in body language as well as dialogue. That's quite heavy on asset creation. Giving the player interpretable information probably won't come cheap. Dwarf Fortress gets away with it so well because of it's extremely simple visualization, which is easier to attribute things onto that aren't actually there. But if you're making a 3d virtual reality game with good visuals, this doesn't work in the same way. An expressionless 3d model of a person will feel empty, whereas a 3 pixel representation of a being can still feel rich if it does things that are unexpected. So committing to option 2 really is committing to a big endeavor. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2015 7:07:37 GMT
I think being a God, in a God game with no followers it would be somewhat boring unless you just really love the building and terraforming aspect of it. Which is my second least favorite part. My very least is battle, so my suggestion is make battle optional and even consider some different tiers for how involved your terrain shaping is. I prefer to shape my followers lives instead of their mountains and rivers. To each his own, but isn't that what is great about being a God to begin with? I'm starting to think about making battle, or combat, a part of how you extend your will as a God, as opposed to a mandated part of gameplay. What if you incite combat, but without the explicit assurance that your followers are successful in combat. I personally hated the idea that you 'micro' troop movements and deployment as a God. I think it is immersion breaking and totally a cop out. It's where the scales of 'accessible fun gameplay' tip too far and start eating away at player engagement through the genre/subject matter. So here's an idea with regards to extending your influence/will/etc... At your godly disposal (after some time or through some difficult-to-unlock means) a limited use god-power that was capable of wiping out a rival civilisation if used properly... the caveat is if you wipe out that civ/culture/people you lose priceless culture, resources, etc etc, thus adding another "hard choice" level to the board. Hidden consequences for scorched-earth gameplay regardless of whether you've cultivated a bloodthirsty society that hardly blinks an eye at an Armageddon-level god-stompings. Essentially God Consequences. |
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Post by Spiderweb on Dec 21, 2015 8:07:19 GMT
I suggested this before, casting to many miricles against an enemy -"Gods" followers causes a negative for your side, plague, pestilence, famine, poisoning etc it spreads from enemy to you via migration and that in turn actually strains your people's resources, eventually causing shortages and disbelief and disease and your people seeking other gods to worship.
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Post by gillburt on Dec 21, 2015 8:18:30 GMT
I'm starting to think about making battle, or combat, a part of how you extend your will as a God, as opposed to a mandated part of gameplay. What if you incite combat, but without the explicit assurance that your followers are successful in combat. I personally hated the idea that you 'micro' troop movements and deployment as a God. I think it is immersion breaking and totally a cop out. It's where the scales of 'accessible fun gameplay' tip too far and start eating away at player engagement through the genre/subject matter. So here's an idea with regards to extending your influence/will/etc... At your godly disposal (after some time or through some difficult-to-unlock means) a limited use god-power that was capable of wiping out a rival civilisation if used properly... the caveat is if you wipe out that civ/culture/people you lose priceless culture, resources, etc etc, thus adding another "hard choice" level to the board. Hidden consequences for scorched-earth gameplay regardless of whether you've cultivated a bloodthirsty society that hardly blinks an eye at an Armageddon-level god-stompings. Essentially God Consequences. "God Consequences" triggered thoughts for me around "definition" and the notion that we define concepts/words not necessarily by what they are, but by what they are not. In otherwords, "red" does not automatically mean "red", but helps us to understand that when someone says "red", they actually mean "not blue", "not green" and so on. Or, put another way, the strength and need for definition is stronger where alternatives exist. So if all the world was a single colour, the need for "red" would be redundant. Applying this to the idea of a God Game.... Player A's "believers" could produce more belief, more quickly, at the edges of the players domain, namely where it collides with belief systems As those other belief systems are overcome, and the world within becomes more stable, so the belief production becomes less rapid. However, you could link this to the idea posted earlier about pools of belief, and introduce a maturity, or stability idea. Rapidly produced belief, or belief that is "fresh", is less stable, more volatile. It can be easily deployed to influencing base emotional behaviours Left to mature or age it becomes better suited to different types of deployment, say more intellectual, less emotional pursuits. But these in turn "unlock" (so to speak) new powers and stages. This might allow for different progressions within your domain and allow the gameplay to evolve over time, maintaining a relevance for engaging with all your lands. It would also allow for different styles of game-play and link to geography too - so if you want to be a peaceful god, you might want to find somewhere that is more isolated to begin with, if you want to be an fighting god, then park yourself down in the middle of an existing hotspot and go for it. The older, longer serving parts of your civilisation might be more impressed by Artistic interventions, whereas for those on the edges, setting fire to a tree and shouting at them from behind a rock might be enough to get their hearts pumping and send them over the hill to attack. From an AI perspective, the more "mature" the belief, the more those peeps influenced by might learn to behave in less volatile ways. |
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Post by Spiderweb on Dec 21, 2015 8:41:16 GMT
Another concept discussed but not really used in Godus was their biomes, they used fixed areas just to limit building types, but if you could cast a miracle it could paint that area with a brush that affects NPCs entering it, a combination of brushes makes that area more of a conversion hot spot. The brushes fade over time (as does belief) ensuring your need to keep them suitably impressed to remain a loyal followers and belief generation. You could even paint areas to attract certain people types and have buildings in those areas reflect that type automatically.
example
create lake/river miracle - make hole in the ground fill it with water, surround with a blue brush that attracts fishermen. They build huts in the blue area and because its a miracle you created they give you belief. Over time the blue area fades, as they become use to it and see no more miracles. You fill the lake with "bag of goldfish" miracle (or you pick up some fish somewhere and move them to the lake), that pick up and drop fish action repaints a blue area.
plant crops miracle - grows a natural field but paints it brown, attracts farmers, starts to fade as does follower belief, refresh with harvest rains.
grow trees miracle - repeat with trees.
animal herd miracle (or pick up and move them) - repeat.
create mountain miracle - attract miners.
Rinse repeat for any other resources you want to expand on.
as you progress and unlock powers the duration of the effect could lengthen making keeping the belief levels easier. Even have a permanent/non-fade brush unlockable.
All these games seem to use tech trees, I don't care what it looks like as long as it shows clear progression as you grow, population based (even by population type) would be fine by me.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2015 9:46:54 GMT
Another thought along the Greek God lines and thinking of fun VR God activities...
Playing Cupid and shooting a bow and arrow at intended lovers.
Charging and throwing lightning bolts.
Smashing the ground with your fists to make earthquakes.
Jazz Hands.... for your ultimate power!
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Post by morsealworth on Dec 21, 2015 10:38:23 GMT
Remember the Workshop from B&W? While I would hate for all buildings to have to be built that way (seriously, people who don't do anything without a divine revelation?), I loved the fact that those were part of the world AND the part of the interface at same time. And, to tell you some of my old Godus recommendations (I did really believe that it was going to be a God game once), I'll say this: 1. Narrative should never include direct communication with the God as if seeing them in person. It should rather be prayers and legends about God does/can do. In fact, it's a great idea for the tutorial: a myth being narrated to children by old shaman. 2. God should be heavily dependent on his followers. God shouldn't be able to do anything that has nothing to do with his followers and should be worshipped to gather his power of faith. 3. Now the belief as a resource would be best seen as a tri-pool system (note that the word "pool" here refers to the state of energy and size of the pools is dynamic): 3.1. Potential Energy pool. This pool is a pool of energy that is not used and is available for both momentary miracles (think Fireball from B&W) and sustained miracles (think Forest from B&W). 3.2. Active Energy Pool. This Pool is used to power sustained Miracles. And while it draws power from The Potential Energy Pool, it takes all of the required energy and reserves it. And the active Energy slowly decreases until 0. When a Miracle's active Energy turns zero, it ends. Premature end of Miracle cancelled manually returns most of the energy left in Miracle's pool (if not all - a question of game balance) to Potential Energy pool. Note: You may set a togglable flag that would let Active pool draw sustainment energy from Potential Pool. This would be best if it allowed that for each Miracle separately for miracles like Shield or Rain. 3.3. Energy Recovery pool. This pool is amount of Energy you don't have, spent and not recovered yet. What makes me put it into another pool? Well, I believe that believe must have its maximum value dependent on the number of active worshippers (as in, the ones who actually believe in you and worship you and not just live in your city). Also I think that the faith recovery must somewhat increase with either amount of power in this pool (encouraging more active player) or in Potential Energy pool (encouraging limited involvement). Also any Energy from new citizen starts from this pool. Again, the speed of Energy recovery should depend on amount of active followers. 4. AI is key. No, AI is THE key. God Game is Artificial life simulation and as such has to be based around followers and their AI. God powers are clicks and whistles compared to the fact that you should have followers that have their own civilisation and can forget about you (or even worse, create a new cult with mythos stolen from your cult) if you don't show them your power and grace. That's why belief should be a support resource, while their lives should still be central. 5. Another idea is drawn from Shinto, Japanese faith. A God must have a goshintai, a "body" - object of worship. It can be literally anything - from a feather to a drawing. Examples I personally favor would be a meteorite ("A star that has fallen from the skies"), a Tree that has survived a lightning strike ("the protector from lightning", like Slavic Perun was worshipped through a tree stump once), or even an animal ("The desert beast of divine beauty", Bastet). 6. Stuff that stems from previous one - ability to infuse different objects with your divine power (counts as sustained Miracle, always draws power from Potential pool unless destroyed manually) that will perform some miracles on their own, like Creature from B&W. May even have separate number of powers you cannot cast yourself. Sustains belief in you by populace that sees this huge wonder. Potential names: Tsukumogami, Shikigami, Golem, Shinshi, Messengers... 7. Ascendants. Ability to turn a number of your followers into demigod ascendants that do not grow old, do not get diseases, cannot breed, do not sleep but require your divine grace for all that to work. Ascendants do not provide belief until turned back into a normal follower. Ascendants also make people believe in you more, work as foremen, oversee construction of buildings dedicated to you, etc. Ascendants also can perform rituals - miracles that require followers to participate in them AND powered by divine power. Ascendants may charge those decreasing the ultimate cost spent. So they are essentially are priest caste of humanity, but this time actually supplied with real divine power. And as such, they guide their less blessed (but no less important) brethren in their endeavors. Also work as scholars. Hi morsealworth! Thanks for the amazingly detailed feedback and after distilling this I've managed to broad stroke a number of concept categories as well as technical categories, identifying points that might share commonalities. The strikingly great ideas that actually imply less complicated systems are 5, 6, 7 - these ones immediately stand out as being more traditional than you think. 5 - Player Avatar is grounded in an idol, or a dynamic/static asset that represents the physical manifestation of the 'God'. This can immediately allow for fail conditions on any Player Avatar, as well as acting as a diegetic player HUB that can indicate visual markers for progress, notifications, resources etc. A white maple tree in the center of NPC pawn settlement, slowly withers as your boundaries are exhausted by encroaching enemies.
6 - Create physical objects that can cast miracles automatically, or build certain objects than can access miracles that the player cannot. I personally think that this is immediately attractive as it distributes interactivity across multiple methods, including buildable assets that have worth/consequence to the player. This is definitely an idea worth exploring as it's scalable, can be modular and can allow for players to incrementally progress towards certain constructions that would allow them access to miracles that could be 'epic' but without easy access/saturation. The player completes the Temple of Air, a massive spire that looms over the landscape, almost taller than the avatar itself. A single symbol prompts the player to cast a massive typhoon. They do it and everyone screams 'OP'. 7 - Player can directly convert scaled set of followers, proportional to all NPC followers, into their hosts or demi-god priests/heroes. Interesting mechanic, perhaps opening up direct control potential. This can simplify a number of concerns in regards to automatic of NPC pawns and player interaction - the priests or heroes themselves can serve to be the instruments. Remember, this can actually detract from point 1, and will serve to contradict some systems, whilst allowing others to be better executed. The player empowers a single NPC pawn to become a directly controlled follower, who can move groups of NPCs towards certain goals - or can cast micro-miracles, such as healing or rain, that would otherwise be below that of the interest of the Player Avatar.
The following systems I believe are actually points of commonality we can all agree on to be things to aspire towards: 1- The AI NPC actors do not directly respond to or refer to the player avatar as a concise entity, instead deferring to myths, stories or secondary accounts of player actions in the gameworld. The initial part of this is simple, but the emergent systems that it entails become dependent on theoritical AI driven systems that are essentially multiple iterations of complicated stuff working to create the illusion of artificial intelligence. Many games approximate this, including the first attempt by Godus to create commandments based on simply tracking values, such as how many times something has happened, and mapping that into a system that simply presents it in a believable way. But it was never advanced further than the skin deep stat tracking and didn't really have observable influences in the gameplay. This would require us to think about the technical design specifications - this is definitely something that would be ideal, but would require concise design work to inform technical engineering. 2 - Player avatar can act within a boundary defined by a resource system, which in turn is defined by NPC 'worship' of the player. This is actually a fairly easy system to scale once implemented, as it tracks values that are generated by flagged NPC followers on a tick (or something to that effect). The boundaries could be a giant spline or decal or really anything, technical research pending, but easy to execute. Boundaries for Player Avatar would be easy to implement in terms of movement/navigation systems, because we can lock the player headset camera to the edge of a boundary. User Experience testing would inform this, but it's do-able. 3 - Robust AI automation that plays it's own game, or has emergent behaviors, which can disregard player avatar. This is the single most intimidating and complicated system, but a co-worker of mine is a very skilled AI programmer who could shed light on how this system would scale. Design-wise, it's a nightmare, because surprisingly many God games totally tank this part on purpose. The easy way to forgo this is to reduce the significance of NPC Followers into being 'masses' of entities that are essentially below your notice, but the macro implications on gameplay would be hard to define. How do you communicate this? How can this be scaled for 10 settlements? 100 settlements? 10 villagers? But I'm sure that there is an AI War method here, or something to lift from Distant Worlds, that would shed some plausibility to this track of thought. If we treat emergent behavior and other stuff as extended scope, but keep the AI automation, we could look at systems where AI tries to accomplish set goals, like collecting wood or food, based on rudimentary pathfinding/stat tracking etc. The challenge would be limited to just getting the AI to play a village sim game, whilst you go be a total dick to them with smashing homes and wiping out forests. 3, 4, 5 - From a design stand point these systems can be merged into a single system, I only say this because it can have User Experience issues with communicating the functionality of 3 separate systems tracking a similar resource. For example, if we replace the 'Worship' with 'Gold', would the exchange of 'Gold' for player actions make as much sense in terms of engaging gameplay if it had 3 tracking systems instead of a single add/subtract operation on a maximum/total pool for resources. I am glad to be of assistance. 6. No, as I said, the whole idea is being unable to control those directly. Somewhat like Creature's spellcasting - you can teach it to the Creature and teach the AI to have vague priorities (obscure to the player which makes it even more fun), but you can't force them to do it. Or like walking and breathing - you can order your spine to start walking, but you do not control the process itself. That, again, plays on AI. 7. While it does contradict (1) in part, it also justifies it for main populace. Think something like Darwinian Officers of prophets. They are the only ones who you can influence while you still are unable to control them completely - part of original idea that I didn't get across was that they are empowered by you, but still can hear only echoes of your divine symphony. 1. Good points. But that's the whole idea of a God game, just as I said before. 3. (I think you refer to 4. in original post) Emergent AI, as I said before, is precisely what God Games have failed so far, and what was the most important. Do you remember what was the best in B&W? It was either teaching the Creature about values and/or the fact that followers grew lazy if you let them relax with your miracles. And yes, just as you said, it's the problem that we have yet to solve, and that's precisely why tapping this problem would be AWESOME. I think I should point you to Tropico series and Evil Genius for inspiration. Also Banished. ANd, strangely, Godus also helps at makes followers build their own houses, at least (The Universim, however, would be even better.). 3,4,5, (I trust you mean 3.#. in my original post) - those are designed (by me) to be one system in the first place. I was just trying to point out importance of Active Pool added to traditional potential/Recovery pools that already exist in may games, from Dune II (health) to Creeper World (Energy). See the (3) for disclamer about energy states. It is close to Mana reserving in Dragon Age and Kingdoms of Amalur, but not quite it. Well, you probably understand it anyway. Concept: NPC art assets change depending on values added or subtracted from miracle usage, NPC's killed by followers or if player actions are connected to NPC deaths - such as flagging 'miracle active' and counting deaths, thus flagging player as an aggressive or evil God. - This is asset swapping, literally based on value tracking. We could even change textures, in-engine (flat color can switch RGB values) and basically make land darker or more vibrant etc. I'd personally shy away from tropes that are cliche (ooooh the evil God makes the land baaaaad) but instead looking at exploring player disposition with color tinting, thus a militant player would have a 'red' land with harsher angles on art assets, whilst the softer gentle God would have greener, curved, assets. Also, let me once again iterate on the side of divine domains. Each time when I think about it, I can't help but think of the fact that one god's role is quire flexible and changes with time as cult grows stronger or weaker. Let us take Osiris, for example. First he was Green-Faced Harvest, the deity that was killed by his followers each year. Then he became the god of wealth and trade, as grain was the main commodity to be used as barter intermediary (money didn't exist and food was the most liquid commodity). And then he also became the god of measurement, as the grain was weighted on scales and, well, it was the most measured stuff (for above reasons). And at last, when he was killed by Seth (hot desert wind), he went to the underworld where he weighted (compared) hearts of the dead to a feather of Ma'at, the Owl-headed Justice. See how one transits into other? Or another interesting example: The Celestial Lady, Bright Mistress Inanna. She came into Existence after the Sky Cow An (the rain was milk from her bountiful udders) turned into a male and separated from the Sky Bull as totem creature (who became An's subordinate) and people of Uruk desperately needed a female deity to have a divine marriage with. And there Inanna, daughter of An (she was also claimed to be daughter of different gods, but that was far later), whose whole role was aforementioned marriage ans as such the divine loli (seriously, she was depicted as a girl at the beginning of puberty/right before puberty, the ideal marriageable age at the time) has no domain herself. And just because of that, her domain was that of Daughter goddess. And she also was Wife goddess. And we know that Daughter-wife is one of the strongest archetypes, Griselda complex, essentially the love itself. And as such, she became the goddess of love and sex, gaining her first meaning and nature. Incidentally, her nature also made her into a spoiled, hysteroid child, but that is a norm for women in the first place (no offence intended, in fact, Qetesh is a prime example with way less "spoiled" part and I personally find her a very nice person), but that was essential in her character depth and made her even cuter (yes, cute goddess, can you imagine that?). And since she was the goddess of sex, she inevitably become the goddess of fertility, right? Yes, she did. And since she was already the goddess of fertility, she became the Mother-Goddess, the deity of safe delivery of birth. And as such, not only she became exact opposites in one person (Daughter AND Mother at the same time), she also grew a kickass rack while not getting any taller (she was depicted older than before, but not far older, about twelve years old). And her cult was so important ot humanity as whole that in Greek mythology there were two goddesses descending from her - Aphrodite through Phoenikians (Astarte) and Akkad (Ishtar) and Hebe through Hurrians (Hebat, Hepa) and Hurrians (Hannahannah, mother goddess derived from Iananna's later aspect). So I believe the change of Divine Domains should not be linear, but instead a kind of associated web-like stuff. |
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Post by Deth on Dec 21, 2015 12:13:29 GMT
Another concept discussed but not really used in Godus was their biomes, they used fixed areas just to limit building types, but if you could cast a miracle it could paint that area with a brush that affects NPCs entering it, a combination of brushes makes that area more of a conversion hot spot. The brushes fade over time (as does belief) ensuring your need to keep them suitably impressed to remain a loyal followers and belief generation. You could even paint areas to attract certain people types and have buildings in those areas reflect that type automatically. example create lake/river miracle - make hole in the ground fill it with water, surround with a blue brush that attracts fishermen. They build huts in the blue area and because its a miracle you created they give you belief. Over time the blue area fades, as they become use to it and see no more miracles. You fill the lake with "bag of goldfish" miracle (or you pick up some fish somewhere and move them to the lake), that pick up and drop fish action repaints a blue area. plant crops miracle - grows a natural field but paints it brown, attracts farmers, starts to fade as does follower belief, refresh with harvest rains. grow trees miracle - repeat with trees. animal herd miracle (or pick up and move them) - repeat. create mountain miracle - attract miners. Rinse repeat for any other resources you want to expand on. as you progress and unlock powers the duration of the effect could lengthen making keeping the belief levels easier. Even have a permanent/non-fade brush unlockable. All these games seem to use tech trees, I don't care what it looks like as long as it shows clear progression as you grow, population based (even by population type) would be fine by me. I really like this idea. It gives you control with out you placing buildings. Very Simicity. I would expand on it that like in Simcity you could paint sections of your city to have a general control of how your city grows but the exact type of buildings that appear are random. |
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Post by morsealworth on Dec 21, 2015 12:25:39 GMT
Oh, and on account on Abrahamic style - yes, you can be tastless and play some plain Ahura Mazda-esque deity that has no meaning nor substance and is nothing else but jealous overseer that wants to hog every person to himself with nothing else to it than politics. But hey, would that really be game when you play a Divine? Isn't that just another political struggle for power in a new skin? I would strongly prefer to be a real deity, meaningful deity. I want to be a concept, an archetype. I want to reflect a part of my followers and I want them to reflect me. I want, for example, to start from debauchery and end up with agriculture, trade, justice (because contracts) and gratitude (because exchange). Or start from good health and through robustness and strength (isn't what good health is all about?) move on to Ambition and Destruction of everyone in my way (and note, without being contradicting my own nature in the least). Another concept discussed but not really used in Godus was their biomes, they used fixed areas just to limit building types, but if you could cast a miracle it could paint that area with a brush that affects NPCs entering it, a combination of brushes makes that area more of a conversion hot spot. The brushes fade over time (as does belief) ensuring your need to keep them suitably impressed to remain a loyal followers and belief generation. You could even paint areas to attract certain people types and have buildings in those areas reflect that type automatically. <snip> I think that resources should attract people by themselves, though. But I love the idea of being able to create resources, since, you know, orichalcum and hihiirokane were legendary, mythical, sacred... And both stood for meteoritic iron, the very first iron ever used by humans. So it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that humans received their first iron from heavens. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 22, 2015 3:40:10 GMT
Hey thanks Aynen! I've been chipping away at backend design stuff all day, since around 8AM (it's 5PM now) and I now have a large categorical list of concepts that are starting to overlap strongly. It's identifying common areas that need mechanics to be teased out and crushed into technical tasks. I'm thinking about making our Trello board public, so people can see the process, but that might be further down the track. I think out of the two systems, the only question becomes that of UI and visibility - having the information there, tracking it and changing it still exists. Option 2, I believe, is the immersive and diegetic option. The rationale here is that it can also create the illusion of depth due to player-side emergent stories attributed to player behavior. The example here, and this is not an indication of my target depth because f-that, is Dwarf Fortress; arguably a Dorf is more complicated and draws on more systems than a number of biological constructs, but it is definitely a mechanical entity that only responds to stimuli, but as players we attribute their misbehavior or unpredictability to character or emergent narrative. Option 1 pales in comparison, Option 1 is the Sims option that will turn the system transparent and too visible. The machine behind the curtain. Also no good way to display the information in a diegetic manner, which will break immersion. I couldn't agree more My preference is with option 2 also, for the same reasons as you describe. It will mean, however, that you'll depend more on NPCs that can portray information naturaly, through visual ques in body language as well as dialogue. That's quite heavy on asset creation. Giving the player interpretable information probably won't come cheap. Dwarf Fortress gets away with it so well because of it's extremely simple visualization, which is easier to attribute things onto that aren't actually there. But if you're making a 3d virtual reality game with good visuals, this doesn't work in the same way. An expressionless 3d model of a person will feel empty, whereas a 3 pixel representation of a being can still feel rich if it does things that are unexpected. So committing to option 2 really is committing to a big endeavor. I agree with this, which might call for an animation blueprint manager that would allow for scaling. I was thinking about this last night and the main thought that occurred to me is similar to what I feel 22Cans might have envisioned - scaling complexity through time, progress and content updates, which would allow it to not be too immersion breaking. Thus, maybe a small straw hut hunter/gatherer village would express themselves with a simple set of animations. They're hungry, they're cold, they're dead. I think context here is important - arguably the endeavor for multiple ages is probably one that hamstrings many of these concepts. Progress through size, not by 'age', might be an interesting path to explore. Animation states should ideally work to implement core functions, pawn walking, walking not skating, pawn sits down, idle anim states, maybe rudimentary socketing - pawn has sack, pawn has pick, pawn drops stuff etc. A basic system can be extendable with new functionality. In UE4, we can lerp between animation states, so even with the hand (for example) I literally make a single frame of hand_open, hand_closed and the skeleton is lerped by the engine. So, with bipedal skeletons, it is possible to essentially just make keyframes and lerp for the time being. Is it quality? Not as good as 100% hand made. Does it work? Yes. Is it cheap? Yes. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 22, 2015 3:43:28 GMT
I'm starting to think about making battle, or combat, a part of how you extend your will as a God, as opposed to a mandated part of gameplay. What if you incite combat, but without the explicit assurance that your followers are successful in combat. I personally hated the idea that you 'micro' troop movements and deployment as a God. I think it is immersion breaking and totally a cop out. It's where the scales of 'accessible fun gameplay' tip too far and start eating away at player engagement through the genre/subject matter. So here's an idea with regards to extending your influence/will/etc... At your godly disposal (after some time or through some difficult-to-unlock means) a limited use god-power that was capable of wiping out a rival civilisation if used properly... the caveat is if you wipe out that civ/culture/people you lose priceless culture, resources, etc etc, thus adding another "hard choice" level to the board. Hidden consequences for scorched-earth gameplay regardless of whether you've cultivated a bloodthirsty society that hardly blinks an eye at an Armageddon-level god-stompings. Essentially God Consequences. Surprisingly this system would rely on permanency of consequences - the AI migration of settlements is basically a difficult system because the manager would need to 'known' and define boundaries of settlements, make decisions to move settlements or populations, or know to flag entities so that they pathfind to nearest settlement. So maybe, if a settlement is 'destroyed', the NPC Pawns pathfind to nearest closest settlement. For border conflicts, this could create internal migration or refugee movement towards your borders. This, essentially, could be an interested sandbox tactic. I could see that this relies heavily on robust pathfinding and creating a system of settlement management, the game loop here being that maybe if the 'center' of the town was destroyed then the settlement is treated as 'destroyed'. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 22, 2015 3:53:55 GMT
So here's an idea with regards to extending your influence/will/etc... At your godly disposal (after some time or through some difficult-to-unlock means) a limited use god-power that was capable of wiping out a rival civilisation if used properly... the caveat is if you wipe out that civ/culture/people you lose priceless culture, resources, etc etc, thus adding another "hard choice" level to the board. Hidden consequences for scorched-earth gameplay regardless of whether you've cultivated a bloodthirsty society that hardly blinks an eye at an Armageddon-level god-stompings. Essentially God Consequences. "God Consequences" triggered thoughts for me around "definition" and the notion that we define concepts/words not necessarily by what they are, but by what they are not. In otherwords, "red" does not automatically mean "red", but helps us to understand that when someone says "red", they actually mean "not blue", "not green" and so on. Or, put another way, the strength and need for definition is stronger where alternatives exist. So if all the world was a single colour, the need for "red" would be redundant. Applying this to the idea of a God Game.... Player A's "believers" could produce more belief, more quickly, at the edges of the players domain, namely where it collides with belief systems As those other belief systems are overcome, and the world within becomes more stable, so the belief production becomes less rapid. However, you could link this to the idea posted earlier about pools of belief, and introduce a maturity, or stability idea. Rapidly produced belief, or belief that is "fresh", is less stable, more volatile. It can be easily deployed to influencing base emotional behaviours Left to mature or age it becomes better suited to different types of deployment, say more intellectual, less emotional pursuits. But these in turn "unlock" (so to speak) new powers and stages. This might allow for different progressions within your domain and allow the gameplay to evolve over time, maintaining a relevance for engaging with all your lands. It would also allow for different styles of game-play and link to geography too - so if you want to be a peaceful god, you might want to find somewhere that is more isolated to begin with, if you want to be an fighting god, then park yourself down in the middle of an existing hotspot and go for it. The older, longer serving parts of your civilisation might be more impressed by Artistic interventions, whereas for those on the edges, setting fire to a tree and shouting at them from behind a rock might be enough to get their hearts pumping and send them over the hill to attack. From an AI perspective, the more "mature" the belief, the more those peeps influenced by might learn to behave in less volatile ways. This raises an interesting point to consider - the absence of evil does not make things automatically 'good', per say, so this system would rely on NPC behaviors having tracking of past states - which would need to be deferred to clusters or cells of NPC, as individual tracking, calling and changing would become cumbersome for any system to handle. The only games that do this to a depth is DF, Rimworld, Gnomoria and other settlement building simulations - most/all of which immediately lag past a point (and become permanently unplayable at certain 'growth' stages). For DF, it's 200 pawns, for Rimworld it can be two dozen, but all are crushed under their own simulation weight. We need to keep that in mind, which also equips us with more skeptical outlook when other people make promises of grand simulation systems. What this calls for is essentially the question of how can we create populations that can be unique, like kind fishing village who dislike violence, and the aggressive valley people who raid their neighbors. The balance of macro-micro behavior sets here, so that you can implement stability, volatility and progression of interests, essentially lies in the depth of the system and how it can scale. Population clusters, so a settlement, can probably handle more depth than each villager, who can be more shallow but each can be varied. Stability and the idea of settling a population down over time as concept is fantastic and might ideally tie into the 'wonder' or monument building aspects. You don't build temples to convert nice fishing village, you light a bush on fire, but to keep a city you might need to build something like that. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 22, 2015 3:59:01 GMT
Another concept discussed but not really used in Godus was their biomes, they used fixed areas just to limit building types, but if you could cast a miracle it could paint that area with a brush that affects NPCs entering it, a combination of brushes makes that area more of a conversion hot spot. The brushes fade over time (as does belief) ensuring your need to keep them suitably impressed to remain a loyal followers and belief generation. You could even paint areas to attract certain people types and have buildings in those areas reflect that type automatically. example create lake/river miracle - make hole in the ground fill it with water, surround with a blue brush that attracts fishermen. They build huts in the blue area and because its a miracle you created they give you belief. Over time the blue area fades, as they become use to it and see no more miracles. You fill the lake with "bag of goldfish" miracle (or you pick up some fish somewhere and move them to the lake), that pick up and drop fish action repaints a blue area. plant crops miracle - grows a natural field but paints it brown, attracts farmers, starts to fade as does follower belief, refresh with harvest rains. grow trees miracle - repeat with trees. animal herd miracle (or pick up and move them) - repeat. create mountain miracle - attract miners. Rinse repeat for any other resources you want to expand on. as you progress and unlock powers the duration of the effect could lengthen making keeping the belief levels easier. Even have a permanent/non-fade brush unlockable. All these games seem to use tech trees, I don't care what it looks like as long as it shows clear progression as you grow, population based (even by population type) would be fine by me. The brush system actually describes a technical mechanic that would define areas for AI to understand - like dropping a lake would paint the area blue, but only as a 'under the hood' system that the AI goes 'I spawn fishermen_building there'. Black and White had reducing miracle effects over time, it's just some basic maths on that front. This is actually pretty interesting for backend systems, considering that we can define areas in blueprints and on meshes, in-engine/runtime. You could even make it a bit easier and basically say 'if there is X material near settlement then player interaction will increase spawn chance/NPC Pawn to pathfind there and spawn building'. Tie that with material layers in material blueprints and it might work in a clean way. AI bit, not sure about, but material layers - yes. |
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Post by echocdelta on Dec 22, 2015 4:02:15 GMT
Another thought along the Greek God lines and thinking of fun VR God activities... Playing Cupid and shooting a bow and arrow at intended lovers. Charging and throwing lightning bolts. Smashing the ground with your fists to make earthquakes. Jazz Hands.... for your ultimate power! You'd be disgusted how easy those things are to implement. I can currently backhand houses and I could, for example, pluck clouds out of the sky and place them somewhere else. The other thing is throwing houses in the air and catching them again. I was building a system where we'd 'draw' lighting and that would activate the lighting miracle - the particle system, emitter and animations are there, we just need to hook in the gesture recognition. Our work in K4U (plugin for UE4, we made it) allows that to be less complicated than it has to be. We could do jazz hands causes tsunami, I'd probably just need to make a rolling mesh for the waves. Water shader is very robust already. |
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My preference is with option 2 also, for the same reasons as you describe. It will mean, however, that you'll depend more on NPCs that can portray information naturaly, through visual ques in body language as well as dialogue. That's quite heavy on asset creation. Giving the player interpretable information probably won't come cheap.
