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Day to Day; Hour to Hour
Author
I was curious about your opinions about this. I''m mostly thinking of single-player RPGs here.
Do you think that time should be accelerated, or should be basically real-time. So a game day would last 24 real hours unless of course you sleep or something like that. Then time would be accelerated, but if you''re just walking do you think that each game hour should be a real hour?
"NPC's are people too!" --dwarfsoft
"Nazrix is cool." --Nazrix first, then Darkmage
I am starting this old game called Darklands, and this one uses what I call ''elastic'' time, you rarely play real time, sometimes you can skip a whole day in one or two seconds (when you are on the travel map, or when your characters are working to earn a living), sometimes it''s a bit slower (when you are going from one place to another in a town, MUD style), sometimes it''s real time with pausing allowed (for battles)... and it works REALLY well 
You had this in Elite Frontier as well, where you could increase the time 10x to 10000x (mainly during intra system travel), otherwise it was realtime.
For multiplayer ... I just don''t see how you could do it acceptably. I don''t know if walking for two weeks to go from one town to the other is acceptable, given the actual ''technology''. What I mean is, if we actually had some content to keep us interested, then of course, do it real time. I would love to go wander in the forest to pick my herbs, mushrooms, look for minerals and other stuff for magic and alchemy, if there were things to see and do, etc.
But right now .... no way !
There is one exception I can see, and it''s an idea I am thinking more and more about. If you had several characters to deal with. NOT a party, necessarily, but rather different roles, that you could switch to and from depending on the situation. Say you would have a whole family, you could direct the father going hunting and let the rest of the family deal with farming. Then go home. Next day, take control of the wide to go to the market, then look for herbs to cure one of your cows and go back home. During the time it takes the wife to go to town, you would switch to the son and go explore the woods with you younger brother... etc, etc.
Waddaya think ?
youpla :-P
You had this in Elite Frontier as well, where you could increase the time 10x to 10000x (mainly during intra system travel), otherwise it was realtime.
For multiplayer ... I just don''t see how you could do it acceptably. I don''t know if walking for two weeks to go from one town to the other is acceptable, given the actual ''technology''. What I mean is, if we actually had some content to keep us interested, then of course, do it real time. I would love to go wander in the forest to pick my herbs, mushrooms, look for minerals and other stuff for magic and alchemy, if there were things to see and do, etc.
But right now .... no way !
There is one exception I can see, and it''s an idea I am thinking more and more about. If you had several characters to deal with. NOT a party, necessarily, but rather different roles, that you could switch to and from depending on the situation. Say you would have a whole family, you could direct the father going hunting and let the rest of the family deal with farming. Then go home. Next day, take control of the wide to go to the market, then look for herbs to cure one of your cows and go back home. During the time it takes the wife to go to town, you would switch to the son and go explore the woods with you younger brother... etc, etc.
Waddaya think ?
youpla :-P
Well, I don't think it would be a good idea, or rather I don't see a way to implement this in a playable way.
First, it would diluate the action too much, ellipsis is very usefull to concentrate on what's important.
Second, because of the empty time you would have to implement all the actions wich are usually considered as boring, like relieving oneself, making camp, preparing the meal, washing the dishes...
Moreover, playing with time allow you to emphasize some aspects of the story by stretching them more than the rest.
Maybe I am a little short sighted there but in my mind, really real time wouldn't work.
---
Ahw, i wonder what do you do if important events happens at the same time to several of your characters ?
Edited by - DungeonMaster on September 3, 2000 8:37:27 PM
First, it would diluate the action too much, ellipsis is very usefull to concentrate on what's important.
Second, because of the empty time you would have to implement all the actions wich are usually considered as boring, like relieving oneself, making camp, preparing the meal, washing the dishes...
Moreover, playing with time allow you to emphasize some aspects of the story by stretching them more than the rest.
Maybe I am a little short sighted there but in my mind, really real time wouldn't work.
---
Ahw, i wonder what do you do if important events happens at the same time to several of your characters ?
Edited by - DungeonMaster on September 3, 2000 8:37:27 PM
Well, I am not really supporting the idea of Real Time in an RPG, I am just trying to argue its case, because it''s to easy to dismiss the idea.
Hence my idea of having to deal with several people simultaneously. I think this would blend nicely with the other thread on having a family as a form of reward. My intention is to allow *players* (NOT character) to be rewarded for their presence in the game by allowing them to get more importance. Either by sheer number (you could have a family), or by getting ranks (you could become a Warlord, able to control a horde of ferocious warriors bent on sacking villages, etc), or by having a more powerful character (that is, a character that could have an influence on the game by being granted privileges on the system... of course, this would be done on a personal basis, nothing automatic!).
If you had a situation with a character at the same time than another, you simply would make a choice, and hope that the AI is good enough (of course, you would be able to do your own little scripts, like "go home and close the doors shut!" ).
As for, should the time be accelerated but not elastic, then I think you should just scale it to the dimensions of your universe. And put some content in the game. That''s my main point here. If there are tons of things to do on my way to the town of Farfenburg, two weeks of walk from here, then I expect to have more than random encounters on my way there. Hunting, joinig a caravan, meeting hermits in the forest, stopping at a sacred site at a crossroad, camping at night, etc. plus the game would of course go on while you are not there.
And I am thinking about something : you could delegate control of one of your character while you are offline. That would be on top of the AI system, or maybe jsut an option in the AI scripts (obey "this player" orders). Of course ou would need to specify lots of stuff, as to what can the "babysitter" player do and not do, but I am sure there is something to be tried and tested here
youpla :-P
Hence my idea of having to deal with several people simultaneously. I think this would blend nicely with the other thread on having a family as a form of reward. My intention is to allow *players* (NOT character) to be rewarded for their presence in the game by allowing them to get more importance. Either by sheer number (you could have a family), or by getting ranks (you could become a Warlord, able to control a horde of ferocious warriors bent on sacking villages, etc), or by having a more powerful character (that is, a character that could have an influence on the game by being granted privileges on the system... of course, this would be done on a personal basis, nothing automatic!).
If you had a situation with a character at the same time than another, you simply would make a choice, and hope that the AI is good enough (of course, you would be able to do your own little scripts, like "go home and close the doors shut!"
).As for, should the time be accelerated but not elastic, then I think you should just scale it to the dimensions of your universe. And put some content in the game. That''s my main point here. If there are tons of things to do on my way to the town of Farfenburg, two weeks of walk from here, then I expect to have more than random encounters on my way there. Hunting, joinig a caravan, meeting hermits in the forest, stopping at a sacred site at a crossroad, camping at night, etc. plus the game would of course go on while you are not there.
And I am thinking about something : you could delegate control of one of your character while you are offline. That would be on top of the AI system, or maybe jsut an option in the AI scripts (obey "this player" orders). Of course ou would need to specify lots of stuff, as to what can the "babysitter" player do and not do, but I am sure there is something to be tried and tested here
youpla :-P
quote: Original post by Landfish
Was thinking, it might be cool to have an RPG that ran off you computer''s clock...
On the one hand, it seems like a neat idea, but on the other hand, I would get pissed off at always being on the game in the ''evenings''. After all, I can''t play during the days due this fascist capitalist routine I have called A Job!
So I''d only ever see the same old setting. When I go back to university though, it might be fun
have you played any of the fallout series?
They use accelerated time, but it does it really well - but it does get annoying when you get to a new area, and you can''t explore because it''s too dark, or the shops are''nt open : but it does add to the reality of the game.
DX++ The DirectX Programming Site
They use accelerated time, but it does it really well - but it does get annoying when you get to a new area, and you can''t explore because it''s too dark, or the shops are''nt open : but it does add to the reality of the game.
DX++ The DirectX Programming Site
Author
quote: Original post by Landfish
Was thinking, it might be cool to have an RPG that ran off you computer''s clock...
That is a interesting concept, but doesn''t that mean that you might play the game at 3:00-4:00. Then you save the game,and start the next day. It would probably be a different time, so it would lose consistancy.
"NPC's are people too!" --dwarfsoft
"Nazrix is cool." --Nazrix first, then Darkmage
quote: Original post by Landfish
Was thinking, it might be cool to have an RPG that ran off you computer''s clock...
Do you mean when it midnight and your up (still!) playing that in the game it would be midnight? so when you save and sneak home for lunch to play it would be midday?
I''m not sure that this would work due to the fact that you would jump from 12:am to 12:pm (00:00 - 12:00 for the europeans) what happened in between? For this example your character may have been sleeping... but what about others?
Dave"Dak Lozar" Loeser
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