[MUD-Dev] Re: Forced story line...

[Marc Hernandez]

On Sun, 20 Sep 1998, quzah [sotfhome] wrote:

}Does anyone actually LIKE forced story lines? I recently

	(As an aside you might want to try Rainbow6.  It is very different
than a typical First Person Shooter unlike unreal which only had a
slightly more interesting story/NPC's).

}At any rate, one thing I found that really pisses me off,
}and that I hate, is their "forced" little scenarios: They

<Descriptions of saving unreal helpers snipped>

	The thing that spawns the 'forced' scenerios is the need for a
story.  A problem is that stories are inherently linear processes, and a
good 2d equivelent hasnt yet been found.  Games on the other hand branch
at huge rates (thus our inability to search the tree of go games even
though the tree is only 81 levels deep on a 9x9 board).  
	Another issue is the complexity of building realistic behavioral
NPCs.  Current research does interesting stuff mostly regarding movement
behaviors (Karl Simms,Rodney Brooks) and simple situations.  Yet with
scripted behaviors you can get as much life out of the NPCs as any cartoon
or story based media.  
	Scripted based behavior in a mudesque environment would
probably be a bad idea, due to the amount of people that would see the
same behavior and the ability of people to spot patterns.  It is always a
fun game to explore the programmers code via exhausing the NPCs actions.
Since often they are merely cardboard cutouts finding situations that
werent anticipated (or didnt have time to write) is usually fairly simple.

J C Lawrence wrote (in regards to Quake):
>Perhaps this has to do with my play style.  Some, I know, run in with
>all guns blazing, and more or less attempt to out run and out shoot
>whatever is there in a mega-testosterone paroxysm.  I don't.  I play
>the angles, the ricochets, the cautious advance, the careful
>arrangement such that I can (nearly always) waste them without ever
>placing myself at risk, let alone in the line of fire.  My goal is to
>play each level such that I don't even get shot, let along nicked,
>once.  Just leave a perfectly clean slate.
>Quake made this approach very easy.

	In Dune 2 (realtime strategy game) I found I could stop money
coming in for the computer player by allowing its harvester to crush my
marines.  As soon as it was far enough from the spice beds (where spice
was harvested for money) it would 'forget' how to get back.  
	The problem is that even simple intelligence is very difficult to
program.  

}-Q-
}(also, you can't save the lil guys that are nailed
}to those cross-like things, and elsewhere when they
}are trapped alive to something. <grumble>)

	

Marc Hernandez		marc at eisoftware.com
Programmer		www.eisoftware.com