[MUD-Dev] A footnote to Procedural Storytelling

[Travis Nixon]

Brandon Rickman wrote:
>> > This level of detail is going to happen in games.  That's not even a
>> > question in my mind.  But, I can guarantee that it's not going to
happen
>> > while artists are still building each and every item separately.  (the
>> > computer, the speakers, the telephone, the soda can, my keyring,
assorted
>> > ...
>>
>> This level of detail is challenging but certainly not impossible. Pretty
>> simple rules placed each and every one of those objects. The problem is
>> that there are a LOT of those simple rules which caused your clutter. A
>> couple of minor revolutions in computer graphics will be required, but
it's
>> not an insurmountable problem.
>
>Any advances in the "computer graphics" used to represent a story will
>result in a parallel improvement in the textual representation (i.e.
>words) of stories Because the problem isn't "I don't have enough
>polygons", the problem is "I don' know how to begin/I don't know the
>correct order of events."
>
>Being able to recognize a "cluttered desk" is equivalent to a polygon
>renderer deciding that there are too many objects to draw all of them,
>thus the level of detail presented to the user is unusually indistinct.


Sorry, I was trying to present too many ideas in too few words.  The idea
I'm trying to get across is not that having more detailed environments will
make better stories.  That is quite obviously not true.  However, having
more detailed environments will not be possible as long as an artist is
required to create them.  It would be possible to have a few cluttered
desks, but if an artist has to not only build them, but make them all
unique, it would not be possible to have even a few hundred of them.  (given
the assumption that the game itself has very little to do with cluttered
desks)  It will not be possible to have truly large worlds as long as an
area designer has to have his finger on every part of the world.

In the same way, it will simply not be possible to populate a large world
with interesting "stories" as long as a writer is required to come up with
them all.  (I'm sort of mangling the word story here.  What I mean is
building a history of past events and a system for determining future
responses to possible player actions, as opposed to a simple recounting of a
sequence of events)   The costs would simply be unreasonable.  Sure, have
writers for the big, major, world-changing plots, but to truly fill out the
world and the characters in it, you need a lot more than that.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about, from Everquest: The Fiery
Avenger quest.  Now, having never actually done it, I don't know all the
details, but from what I do know, it's a fair "story", invovling, among
other things, the ressurection of a lich, so you can kill him again.  (ok, I
didn't say it was necessarily a good story)  Basically, though, what it
boils down to is collecting items X, Y, and Z, and giving them to NPC W.
Now, since I don't work for Verant, I can't say how many man hours went into
this quest (any of you eqers care to comment on this?), but from the
player's perception at least, it took them many months to implement this
quest.  Obviously, it wasn't months of doing nothing but creating this quest
(or, if it was, you really need to hire new writers), but obviously there
was a lot of thought put into it before the final implementation.  But this
is just one quest, for one item, for one class.  And on top of that, it's a
completely static quest (which isn't surprising, considering the nature of
everquest...funny how Miragul never figures out that he's been found).  If
they spent even just 10 minutes creating and implementing this quest, that's
about 9 minutes, 59 and 9/10 seconds too long for the kinds of worlds I want
to be able to create.

Now, I'm not all that sure I like the idea of canned quests to start with,
but if you had a system that could take the current state of the world, and
figure out something interesting for a player to do, you could have a lot
more of these, and they would be dynamic and fit in the context of the
current events.

But as long as you have to have a human writer/designer behind the scenes
(or even people playing NPCs), this will be an unachievable goal.  Because
if a human writer decides that the magician's guild needs supplies, and
sends a player to fetch them (granted, not exactly the most glamorous of
quests, but that doesn't mean players won't do it), well, when the player
comes back, the guild should have what they need for a while.  They shoudn't
send the next player that walks in on the same errand, 30 seconds later.
But it takes that human writer almost as long just to think of the errand
and implement it (maybe longer, if you don't have the ability to implement
things like this on the fly), than it does for the player to do it.  Combine
that with a player to implementor ratio that could quite easily reach tens
if not hundreds of thousands, and you have a serious problem keeping up with
the players. :)

By the way, in case there's any confusion, I'm talking about the realm of
massive, commercial games here. :)

So, back to the original point.  What we need here is two major things.  A
way to create large worlds, and a way to populate them with interesting
things to do / see / hear about.  er...well, ok, there are actually a lot of
other things we need too, but those are two of the largest undertakings, and
where a lot of my idle thought has gone lately. :)

Oh, there's just one other thing that I personally need.  A largish
development staff, and a spare 20 or 30 million dollars to pay them for the
next few years.  Anybody happen to have anything like that laying around
anywhere?

:)

Travis




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