As any of the avid game players may have noticed, the art behind RPG’s is dying. They are all about lots of quick rewards. Literally, click this, then click that and repeat 100 times. It’s only addiction is the constant state of achievement, and the fact you always feel the next is so attainable.
In a previous post, I discussed possibilities of how “Fun” can be defined in video games. While RPG’s depend on the feeling of rewards, I would ask that more RPG developers and designers start putting that as #2 or #3 on their list of things to cover. What the future holds in RPG’s is something that todays world is far more equipped to deal with. Players that can leave lasting effects on the games. In RuneScape, You mine ore from a rock, until the rock disappears. A minute later, the rock reappears. What if it didn’t. What if mining for ore literally expanded the map? What if your character could walk around somewhere, and randomly start mining. Find gold, and start a settlement. What if your military people could control X number of NPC military soldiers and take over villages, or clear out forests?
In games, the What If’s can be a painful thing to live with, as there are so many. Seriously take a look at this though. What if you could damage things like buildings and bridges. What if there was a finite amount of gold in the world. What if the monsters learned? In a later post, I’ll be discussing how to build a dynamic hard coded (interesting phrase no?) spell casting system can be linked with an effective AI that builds your world, enhances your monsters all without human interaction.
So the idea of mining literally modifying the map. First off, you need a living map, or supporting a constant state of change. Second, your map must be true 3D, not just a height map based on a black and white image. These are tough tasks, that do exist in the world, and will require some heavy proofs. Build your bridges, your houses, your mines and your mountains from stretching a single piece of ground and reshaping it. Then it will only take one modification system to handle manipulating it. Houses are simply predefined modifications. Mines can actually grow. You can knock someone’s house down. Naturally, you can give materials different strengths, indicating its more difficult to damage or work with.
Then you can create a real bounty system, and have NPC’s and PC’s hunting players who damage certain property, like the entrance to the goblin cave, or a bridge out of town, or someones house. This is one of those systems that once it’s built, it becomes putty in the hands of the rest of your programs, AI’s and players. Build real societies. But make an evolution. Don’t just write another click this, click that application. Be the next wave.
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