|
|
Post by Gmr Leon on Jan 13, 2016 3:23:33 GMT
The thought I have here, though, is that sounds like it risks integrating the god aspect into the simulation, which while it may be entertaining to watch, loses part of the game in the process. Then again, I think you may have covered this exact point earlier in the conversation and I've overlooked it. Might be also that you dissolve the whole god part into the people with your interactions and their use/the occurrence of divine abilities basically representing you without them being directly employed by you, only sown through however you've guided the situation up to that point. Extremely hands off, but not leaving everything to be simulated, if that's what's sort of being aimed at. Also flows with Aynen 's earlier mention of feeling "your" progress through the people's progress. Let me explicitly explain this aspect of my model. First, let me use the ideas of Alexander Romanovich Luria: Let us imagine that god's available mes consist of two zones, analogous to abilities of a child. 1. The zone of actual development is already a part of your official faith and is recorded in both oral and literal tradition. Those are the powers you can use freely and what you're already are a god of. 2. The zone of proximal development, however, is very unstable. It consists of all the proximal nodes that are connected to your zone of actual development and are things that you also can use, but with support and much less freely than your actual developed mes. And as you use the abilities from your proximal zone, you make rumors about you using those abilities. And as rumors grow, the mythos are created based on those rumors and those abilities become part of your actual zone. Another emergent mechanic based on real world and it certainly does integrate into the simulation while giving the player enough freedom. Second, let me remind you that the ideas of ascendants and magical objects I mentioned in the very first reply to this thread are, in fact, influentable and creatable, but not directly controllable. For the former I personally thought that Majesty-like indirect tasking would be best. So your miracles could certainly happen, and some of them may even be directly controlled, but it also would be strongly connected to your followers. Did I mention that my idea of miracles requires the presence of the followers on the scene? That, and the fact I heavily prefer the sustained-type area miracles like Forest, Rain and Shield from B&W to the one-time use ones like Fireball and Create Wood. I just feel that they are better because they are less direct in nature. If following right, I think we're thinking along the same lines more closely than I'd read your response to suggest. My thinking was that the totems represent, at once, the kernels of actual development as a tracer to follow as they're integrated into each group's religion, with behaviors augmenting the expanded beliefs surrounding those kernels, the proximal development as you call it. The more influence you might exert that aligns/doesn't align with those expanded beliefs, the more they crystallize into both canonical (aligned with kernel/totem) and apocryphal (unaligned with kernel/totem) abilities. However, in a reflected fashion to proximal to actual as you describe for yourself, apocryphal might create an opposing deity. Think that lines up? Either way, even if you weren't to build off the totem idea as representing the same, singular deity, I still think it's a better model for representing various gods were there to be multiple ones, as it immediately differentiates between each one with a unique look, instead of merely a different colored/sized idol. |
|
|
|
Post by morsealworth on Jan 13, 2016 8:25:56 GMT
Well, that's why I don't like the word "idol" in the first place. Mainly because most people don't even know how it looks and what kinds are there. ALso because it became a slur, but that's another story.
My idea was for gosintai not to be something man-made in the first place. Not made explicitly for worshipping, at least.
|
|
|
|
Post by gillburt on Jan 13, 2016 10:48:53 GMT
Well, that's why I don't like the word "idol" in the first place. Mainly because most people don't even know how it looks and what kinds are there. ALso because it became a slur, but that's another story. My idea was for gosintai not to be something man-made in the first place. Not made explicitly for worshipping, at least. I'm leaning more towards Morsealworth's argument. Totems have a place, but I do not feel they should not be a de facto embodiment. Perhaps it could be something your people decide to do/you encourage them to do, or it might not. If we are trying to find a way of visually representing the influence of the god to the player of the game, that coud be done through some form of HUD rather than an in-game artefact by default. |
|
|
|
Post by Aynen on Jan 13, 2016 11:18:33 GMT
echocdelta I've been thinking about the pathfinding issue with placing your idol. The easiest solution I came up with is that the people don't need to be close to the idol for it to do it's thing. That it has an area of influence, and within that area it can identify the different factions there and possibly the player can let the idol influence those factions in different ways, unique to each faction under that sphere of influence. But I don't think it'd be fun to use that influence as the maximum range of the player's influence in general. It'd be more like an epicenter of devine intervention. A holy site. An NPC worshiping it could simply kneel into the direction of the idol (like praying to Mekka). Using this mechanic, I think players would be stimulated to place their idol in the busiest part of the world, where they can influence the most factions with it. This could well be a good thing, as it might be a good way to let the player determine his own difficulty setting for the game. Interfere with more factions at once and the game becomes more complex, more difficult to play. Place your totem somewhere more remote where it influences only one faction, and it becomes much easier to oversee the consequences of your interventions, and thus the game becomes easier to play.
|
|
|
|
Post by morsealworth on Jan 13, 2016 11:19:47 GMT
Well, that's why I don't like the word "idol" in the first place. Mainly because most people don't even know how it looks and what kinds are there. ALso because it became a slur, but that's another story. My idea was for gosintai not to be something man-made in the first place. Not made explicitly for worshipping, at least. If we are trying to find a way of visually representing the influence of the god to the player of the game, that coud be done through some form of HUD rather than an in-game artefact by default. No, that would break immersion. The whole idea here is to not use any HUD in the first place and keep interface organic. My argument is that you should be an external object and that the nature of the god would grow from that object and that the deity would be something "real" for the followers. You know, just as we have to rely on multiplication table and the substitution since we can't do arithmetic by ourselves and our perception relies on objects. |
|
|
|
Post by echocdelta on Jan 15, 2016 11:02:38 GMT
Hey guys, I've been hammering away at the pitch doc/Phase 1 delivery targets.
Looking like our new prototypes are going to focus on that NPC village, art direction, NPC AI managers (their logic and rule sets).
Also, yep, the project has been accepted and we're moving into pre-production, so it begins I suppose? I'm going to reply to the above comments but I've been wiped from the longest meeting day.
Thanks everyone for everything so far - the biggest takeaways moving forward (for me) is that we'll be keeping the model of constant communication and the public facing Trello got accepted, as well as the community hangouts thing too. The other stuff is basically as our discussion here is, an interesting 'win' is that the AI will be handled by AI programmers on staff and their goal is an NPC village organically growing (their words, not mine).
It's also entirely possible that soon there'll be more Opaque staff running around these forums, or we'll start our own forum. I'm probably going to be more active tomorrow, as it's been a super long week.
|
|
|
|
Post by morsealworth on Jan 15, 2016 11:14:43 GMT
Congrats, man. On all those greenlights.
|
|
Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
|
Post by Lord Ba'al on Jan 15, 2016 11:44:24 GMT
That's great news. I think this warrants a new forum section. Will discuss over PM.
|
|
|
|
Post by Aynen on Jan 15, 2016 12:26:36 GMT
Congratz on being greenlit!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2016 13:09:51 GMT
Conga-Rats!
|
|
|
|
Post by Gmr Leon on Jan 15, 2016 15:37:48 GMT
Hey guys, I've been hammering away at the pitch doc/Phase 1 delivery targets. Looking like our new prototypes are going to focus on that NPC village, art direction, NPC AI managers (their logic and rule sets). Also, yep, the project has been accepted and we're moving into pre-production, so it begins I suppose? I'm going to reply to the above comments but I've been wiped from the longest meeting day. Thanks everyone for everything so far - the biggest takeaways moving forward (for me) is that we'll be keeping the model of constant communication and the public facing Trello got accepted, as well as the community hangouts thing too. The other stuff is basically as our discussion here is, an interesting 'win' is that the AI will be handled by AI programmers on staff and their goal is an NPC village organically growing (their words, not mine). It's also entirely possible that soon there'll be more Opaque staff running around these forums, or we'll start our own forum. I'm probably going to be more active tomorrow, as it's been a super long week. Cheers! Don't forget to slip in the natural bugs of flora and fauna being mistaken for people and getting confused as to why everything has come to a screeching halt of over-processing AI! =P |
|
|
|
Post by echocdelta on Jan 18, 2016 5:56:53 GMT
Hey guys, I've been hammering away at the pitch doc/Phase 1 delivery targets. Looking like our new prototypes are going to focus on that NPC village, art direction, NPC AI managers (their logic and rule sets). Also, yep, the project has been accepted and we're moving into pre-production, so it begins I suppose? I'm going to reply to the above comments but I've been wiped from the longest meeting day. Thanks everyone for everything so far - the biggest takeaways moving forward (for me) is that we'll be keeping the model of constant communication and the public facing Trello got accepted, as well as the community hangouts thing too. The other stuff is basically as our discussion here is, an interesting 'win' is that the AI will be handled by AI programmers on staff and their goal is an NPC village organically growing (their words, not mine). It's also entirely possible that soon there'll be more Opaque staff running around these forums, or we'll start our own forum. I'm probably going to be more active tomorrow, as it's been a super long week. Cheers! Don't forget to slip in the natural bugs of flora and fauna being mistaken for people and getting confused as to why everything has come to a screeching halt of over-processing AI! =P I relayed this to one of our programmers and he visibly shuddered, this apparently sounds like something that only someone who has done previously would know. Looking directly at you. |
|
|
|
Post by echocdelta on Jan 18, 2016 5:59:13 GMT
Also thanks everyone! We're probably going to move everything to a small sub-board forum thing, so we can start having a structure not 7-page discussion and start curating everything in a less than nightmare fuel way.
I'll try to also see how I can host stuff like images and trello links there, each Friday I'll update that area with new prototype/pre-production information. Also we'll scope out a good time for a community dev hang session too.
PS. I'm still going to reply to all the things above
|
|
|
|
Post by 13thGeneral on Jan 19, 2016 16:47:12 GMT
Awesome news! Congrats on getting the project greenlit for further development. Really looking forward to seeing this progress.
|
|
|
|
Post by gillburt on Jan 19, 2016 22:28:13 GMT
Indeed - big thumbs up.... looking forward to hearing more! Well done!
|
|
|
|
Post by morsealworth on Jan 22, 2016 23:00:45 GMT
Congrats on the end of your fist official (as in, greenlit) week of the project. And while my curiosity has the best on me and thus I eagerly await your replies you mentioned (even new board, perhaps), I want to stress that I will have nothing against you just letting your brains relax after all that work. Of course, the precise extent of that work I don't know, but we're talking about further defining a whole project here.
|
|
|
|
Post by Gmr Leon on Jan 31, 2016 7:24:41 GMT
P.S. If any of the dev team (and anyone here) haven't played Skyward Collapse at least through the tutorial before, I highly recommend it. Very, very unique take on the god game genre, fitting faintly with some ideas discussed here (straying in many other ways away from them too, but high level ideas at least seem to fit).
|
|
|
|
Post by 13thGeneral on Feb 5, 2016 17:50:16 GMT
I'm really big on the potential for customization - especially in God Games - and feel that utilizing either in-app customization purchases of cosmetics, or an implemented customization editor so that players can literally create the world they envision. Like its been mentioned before, this not only engages players, it gives them incentives to form a lasting bond with the product. Like Mandrake suggests in this thread; ... there are microtransaction models that have been around for a bit that most don't really mind at all because they don't really affect the game whatsoever - they aren't required to access part of the game and similarly are not part of an abusive design that urges microtransactions to temporarily alleviate the intrinsic "suck" put into the design. Cosmetics. Yeah, simple as that. As Konrad pointed out about the holiday-themed material, it only takes a really, REALLY small time to make these items. With a bit of forethought towards where 22cans are heading with the combat, multiplayer, then something more to differentiate followers - something more personal than the small handful of deities offered - could be easily made and put into the game with a minimal amount of fuss and potentially more purchases than sectioning off game content behind paywalls. So you could have a Pirate civilisation fighting a Ninja civilisation. Or nekomimi fighting the kuromimi. Make them live in giant cat huts with balls of yarn for surrounding scenery filler. Terrain colour, tree/rock styles, etc. could also be added. Make it entirely a la carte with some bundles on discount and let the players go wild like Team Fortress 2.[/]
All sorts of possibilities that allow a player to customise their own civilisation in the game - if there were anyone competent in production to afford design some basic sense, that is.Doesn't that sound like an amazing addition? |
|
|
|
Post by morsealworth on Feb 5, 2016 19:22:48 GMT
I must note that, as customisation is actually essential for God Games (about as important as in all RPGs, and yes, God game is also an RPG in the literal sense of the genre), some of cosmetics should still come with the base game. Of course, its cost may be par of the price, as with other parts.
|
|
|
|
Post by idem on Feb 6, 2016 17:54:42 GMT
This is really cool stuff! A god game in virtual reality, that's awesome!
|
|
