Merge branch 'develop' of github.com:simon-brooke/the-great-game into develop
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doc/Appraisal.md
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doc/Appraisal.md
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# Appraisal
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## What is Appraisal
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There's an thing that all non player characters can do, which varies greatly from person to person, and which is of particular importance to merchants, and that is appraisal.
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Each category of goods has different dimensions of quality. A sword may be evaluated, for example, on
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| Dimension | Better is | Ease of appraisal |
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| -------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ----------------- |
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| Hardness | More | Difficult |
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| Toughness | More | Difficult |
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| Wear | Less | Intermediate |
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| Weight | There's a sweet spot, but it's low | Easy |
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| Length | Judgement call | Easy |
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| Decoration/Showiness | Judgement call | Intermediate |
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| Workmanship | Better | Intermediate |
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A person learns to appraise the qualities of a sword by having direct experience of swords with a range of values for the particular quality. A person who's only ever handled one sword does not know whether that sword heavy or light, pristine or worn. However, once a person has handled a dozen swords of different weights, they'll have some idea of what weight an average sword is, even if their idea may actually be a little off. Weight and length are easy to assess.
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Similarly, once someone has handled a few dozen swords with different degrees of wear, will have an idea of how many chips, how much corrosion or pitting, is normal. Wear is harder to assess, but it doesn't need particular techniques or skills to assess, just observation. To assess hardness, you really need to have sharpened the blade and then used it to the extent that it needs sharpening again, but if you've handled a lot of blades of varying qualities you may associate patterns in the steel, such as pattern welding, damascus steel, or a hamun, or particular markers' marks, with varying hardnesses. Toughness is even harder to assess (without actually chipping or breaking the blade) and is really going to come down to recognising either high quality steels or particular makers' marks.
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## Developing appraisal skill
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So: how does one gain experience? I'm going to assume that anyone who's bought a sword has handled it before making the choice. That anyone who's survived on the winning side f a battle unwounded will also have handled eight of each type of weapon used, for each such battle (the victors will have the pick of the spoils on the battlefield). That a weapon smith has handled sixteen for each year they've been working. And possibly that a master weapon smith will at least examine more weapons in a year than a journeyman, who will at least examing more than an apprentice. But, essentially, appraisal skill develops with exposure to items in the particular category. The exact mechanism for tracking this I'm unsure of, because there is a tradeoff between richness of records and data compactness, and this game looks like getting rather big.
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Of course, some people may be more observant than others, so it's possible that some people may gain appraisal skill on the basis of less exposure than others. But at this moment that's not a thing I'm planning to model.
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## What does appraisal skill buy you?
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In any category of goods, some individual items are better than others, and this difference may be significant. A person with good appraisal skill will recognise this difference. So a person with good skills, offered two items at the same price, will be able to select the better one; if bargaining for an item, will be prepared to offer a higher price for the better one; if selling items, will be prepared to sell the better one only for a higher price.
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Price arbitrage is how a static merchant makes money.
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doc/Biomes and ecology.md
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doc/Biomes and ecology.md
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# Biomes and ecology
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*The motivation for this document was to explain the mulberry trees in the Tcha valley, and think about why Tchahua is especially a centre for the silk trade*
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## Broader geography
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The broader geography of the world is not a matter for this document, but TODO: there isn't yet a document which usefully describes it, and there needs to be.
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## Biomes relevant at this stage
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### 1. Steppe
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The centre of the continent is the steppe; it is generally too arid for forest growth, and is therefore scrub and grassland. There is one principal river system, which feeds into a marshland in the south, from which the water then goes underground beneath the limestone plateau to become the Tcha and Sind rivers. In late summer there's little water in the river, and few other waterholes. Antelope, camels, horses, goats, possibly sheep are native to the steppe, and there are probably something like leopards which predate on them, but I haven't fleshed it out.
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Big dragons don't hunt on the steppe because they can't take off from flat ground, but smaller dragons may do so.
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Settled by the steppe tribes, who are nomadic herders, extremely warlike but not technically highly developed. They are the game world's principle horse breeders. Basically in the game as I'm working on it at present, the player cannot go north across the steppe because the steppe tribes are too hostile.
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A single major road, the Caravan Road, runs north to south across the steppe. There were in the past fortified caravanserrais along the length of the road, established and protected by Hans'hua, but they have been progressively overrun and destroyed by the steppe tribes and are now ruinous. Only one remains: the North Inn, just below the northern slope of the plateau. There is some limited horticulture on land close to the South Inn, supplying markets in Hans'hua.
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### 2. Plateau
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The limestone plateau runs along the whole of the southern edge of the steppe, from the western massif to the rim of the crater which forms The Great Place. It is a landscape of clints and grykes, on which nothing grows, and on which there is no water. It is about four day's journey by fast horse from north to south. The caravan road crosses the plateau from the North Inn to another caravanserrai, the South Inn, located in the north end of the Tcha valley. Because of the dense chaotic pattern of clints and grykes and the lack of accessible water, it is effectively impossible to cross the plateau other than by the caravan road, or by another path to the extreme east of the plateau, where it abuts the mountains of the Rim.
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#### 2.1 Hans'hua
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There is one city, Hans'hua, on the caravan road about half way across the plateau, where wind-pumps lift water from the underground river. Apart from this one city, nothing lives on the plateau. Migrating birds cross it, and that is all.
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The city is small, walled, and run as an extreme neoliberal oligarchy; the city's main industry is maintaining the wind pumps, and its entire income is from tolls on caravans passing along the caravan road. This has been, and is still, extremely lucrative, but it is obvious both to the long distance merchants and to the oligarchs that the new ships are going to make the caravans too slow, too risky and too expensive to compete, and that as more ships are built, traffic on the caravan road will dwindle.
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### 3. Massif
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There's a granite intrusion which forms the entire western coast of the continent. It's geologically old and consequently the hills, though high, are rounded rather than jagged; at the southern end of the range (which is the only part that's in the least fleshed out yet) they're not snow covered in summer. As the prevailing winds are westerly, this massif intercepts most of the rain, which is why the steppe is arid.
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Consequently it's pretty thoroughly forested, and the southern parts of it are mainly broadleaf forests including high quality hardwoods and many fruiting trees. Understory typical of mediterranean littoral forests, about which I don't really know enough.
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Deer, cattle, pigs, wolves, leopards, badgers, squirrels… masses of birds of all appropriate types.
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Because it's an old granite intrusion, the soil in the valleys is largely clay. There are mineral rich veins with a considerable range of minerals, but, obviously, not all in the same place.
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Settled by the Western Clans, a negroid people living mainly in small isolated villages in the forest, with mostly limited agriculture.
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#### 3.1 Northern massif
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I haven't yet fleshed this out, but there are probably permanent snows and the forests are probably coniferous. It's my current working assumption that the new great ships are built from old growth conifers, taken from forests in the northern massif; but as I say this is not yet fleshed out.
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The northern culture have developed very high quality ceramics using clay from the massif, including stonewares and porcelaines. I think the same clays also exist in the south of the massif, but the technology for producing high quality ceramics does not exist there. The northerners are also making high quality steels from magnetite and haematite from the massif. Whether these ores exist in the south I don't yet know.
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#### 3.2 Dor
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The northernmost of the western clans, the Dor, live in the central massif north of Andale, but apart from the fact that they exist and they're there, I don't yet really know much.
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#### 3.3 Andale
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The river An rises in the east of the massif near the south-west corner of the steppe, west of where the village and market of Dawnhold now stand, and flows more or less due westward. There are two major drops in the river's course, the upper a day's travel east of Silverhold, which is an actual fall of at least six metres, and the lower at Anghold. Between Anghold and Silverhold the river is navigable by small shallow draught boats; west of Anghold it is navigable down to the sea at Anmouth.
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There are freshwater and migratory fish in the river, and fishing is a source of protein and livelihood the whole length of the valley.
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The valley is largely forested. Apart from wild animals, domestic cattle and pigs are herded in the forest. Trees include alder, almond, apple, apricot, ash, beech, birch, cherry, chestnut, hazel, holly, lime, maple, mulberry, oak, orange, pear, walnut, yew.
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##### 3.3.1 Dawnhold
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Dawnhold isn't strictly geographically in Andale — it's east of, on the steppe side of, the watershead, but it marks the eastern border of the lands settled by clan An. There's an annual market, a village, and a garrisoned fortification to deter raids by the steppe tribes.
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##### 3.3.2 Silverhold
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Small town serving the only significant silver mine in the world. A tributary flows in from the north here, but I know nothing about it yet. There is a major fortification/refinery/treasury. All around Silverhold, right up to the headwaters of the An and right down to Anghold, the valley is forested with only small clearings round villages, which are mainly close to the river.
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Many other metals — certainly inluding lead, tin, and small quantities of gold, probably not copper — come out of the mines at Silverhold.
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The An produce enough ferrous metals for their own tools and weapons, but their iron smelting technology is not advanced and they don't export iron or iron products. They produce eathernware ceramics for domestic consumption. They produce leather and linen, and textiles from nettle fibres. They produce timber, which is their principal building material, but they don't export it. In practice their major export is silver coinage.
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##### 3.3.3 Longwater
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Longwater is a long, narrow lake, like Loch Lomond, on a tributary which flows into the An from the south, joining upstream from Anghold. There is no major nucleated settlement on Longwater, but there are sufficient small villages and hamlets on its banks to form an identifiable settlement cluster. Small boats can make it downstream from Longwater from the An and back, probably with some degree of portage around rapids. There's a pass over from the south of the Longwater valley to Gor territory, but it's high, difficult, and not much used. The whole of the Longwater valley is broadleaf forest.
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##### 3.3.4 Anghold
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There's a small town, market and fortification — Anghold — on the south bank of the An, just above first cataract, where boats are portaged up from the lower river to the middle reach. Downstream from Anghold the river is wider, slower and more meandering, with marshy banks. The valley west of Anghold, especially on the southern side, is also more populated, with more of the forest cleared and more arable agriculture.
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##### 3.3.5 Anmouth
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The An meets the sea at Anmouth, where there is a deep harbour at a bend in the river just east of a long estuary, There is a bar, making it dangerous to enter the harbour in bad weather, and the whole estuary is pretty exposed to western storms, although there may be some islands providing some shelter for emergency anchorages — I don't have that level of detail yet. Certainly the big new ships do not yet call in here, but could.
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There are farming and sea-fishing villages down both sides of the estuary. There is no tradition of ship building, however.
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#### 3.4 Gor
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Clan Gor occupy the south-western peninsula of the continent, and the south slope of the massif, east almost as far as the Tcha valley. Their land is forested with a similar mix of trees to Andale. They have no major rivers, but several minor ones. They live mainly in coastal villages, and sea fishing is a major economic activity. They have no deep water ports.
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In addition they do mine iron, and they have exported swords, but the market for their swords is being undercut by better crucible steel swords from the north now being imported into the Cities of the Coast by the new ships. Similarly, the Gor used to export earthenware, but that too is now being undercut by stonewares and porcelaines from the north.
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Because of a history of being victims of raiding from the Cities of the Coast, the Gor maintain a fortified eastern border along the line of hills to the west of the Tcha valley. Nevertheless they have mostly good trading relationships with Tchahua. In particular they export large quantities of raw and spun silk, and some woven silk cloth, to Tchahua.
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I don't yet have nearly a clear enough picture of the organisation and layout of the Gor lands, but their major stronghold and administrative centre must be to the east. While they traditionally had the communist and democratic culture of the other Western Clans, one family have become dominant and have become effectively hereditary leaders, influenced by the cultures to their east. However the leading family do not self-identify as aristons.
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### 4. Coast
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"The Coast" is the name given to the southern littoral of the continent, west of the Great Place and east of the Massif. It's limestone, with deeply cut, steep sided valleys separated by high, arid uplands, with scrubby vegetation, grazed by domestic sheep and both domestic and wild goats.
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The native culture were peaceable, communistic agriculturalists, not greatly different from the Western Clans. However some several hundred years ago they were invaded by a warrior group from the steppe tribes, who established themselves as a military aristocracy — the Aristae — and started to build cities — and impose taxes onto the peasantry, forcing them into a more or less cash oriented economy.
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The valleys were once forested, but the central valleys, which were in any case rather dryer and where the Aristae first settled and established cities, are now mostly cleared, and are a mix of pastoral and arable, with considerable viticulture.
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#### 4.1 Tcha valley
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The Tcha is the westernmost — and largest — river of the coast. It emerges from under the plateau at a pool under the South Tower marking the southern limit of Hans'hua territory and runs south more or less along the divide between the granite to the west and the limestone to the east. It is still largely forested, partly because it is relatively recently occupied by the Aristae, but partly because of the growth of the silk industry. This has led to some forested areas, especially near the navigable reaches of the river, being converted into mulberry orchards. However, there's still a great deal of mixed forest, and the majority of mulberry leaves for feeding to silk worms are gathered from natural forest.
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A road branches off from the main Caravan Road at the South Inn and runs down the eastern side of the valley, to a ferry across the Sind river, where it joins the Tcha as a tributary, at the village helpfully known as Sind Ferry, and thence to Tchahua.
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Mulberries, by products of the silk industry, are used in the production of brandy. Mulberry wine is produced in villages in the forest, and transported down river to a distillery at Sind Ferry, where it is distilled. Some mulberry wine may be sold in Tchahua for drinking as wine (and it is certainly drunk in the villages), but it is generally considered inferior to grape wine.
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There is some arable and mixed agriculture, mainly towards the southern end of the valley on the western (less steep) side, although this side is also largely forested.
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##### 4.1.1 Tchahua
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The city of Tchahua lies on the east bank of the river at the head of its estuary, and has deep water — the only really usable deep water port on the coast, being not only the largest river but also the least silted. Until quite recently it had been a small provincial silk weaving city, nominally independent but in fact paying tribute to both Sinhua to its east and the Gor to its west, in order to avoid being formally conquered by either.
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There's a multi-span bridge here — I think a pontoon bridge — of which the eastern most span is a drawbridge which can be lifted into a fortified gateway on the eastern (Tchahua) shore. There is a fishing industry, but as the eastern side
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Industries are silk weaving and dying, and fishing. Very recently, a new deep water quay has been constructed and the first large ships have begun to call. It is obvious that the city is going to become much more important as a strategic market and transport hub, but that has only just begun to have effect.
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### 4.2 Sind valley
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#### 4.2.1 Sinhua
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@ -52,4 +52,4 @@ The `player character` is the unique `actor` within the game currently controlle
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#### Route
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A `route` is a pre-prepared path through the game world that an `actor` may take. Most `actors` are not constrained to follow `routes`, but in general `routes` have lower traversal cost than other terrain.
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A `route` is a pre-prepared path through the game world that an `actor` may take. Most `actors` are not constrained to follow `routes`, but in general `routes` have lower traversal cost than other terrain.
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27
doc/Division of tasks between server and client.md
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doc/Division of tasks between server and client.md
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# Division of tasks between server and client
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An alternative nomentclature I may use for this dichotomy would be _planner_ and _performer_; it would be the same dichotomy. 'Planner' and 'server' are synonyms; 'performer' and 'client' are synonyms.
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## What do I mean by the 'server'?
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There is something which manages game state and things like the gossip network, merchant network, and major world events. This something is almost certainly written in some form of Lisp; I'd prefer Clojure but I don't think it's performant enough so probably Common Lisp. This means that it has inevitable pauses for garbage collection. Underneath this is a database which handles persistent storage of game state, which is probably an SQL database and quite likely [SQLite](https://www.sqlite.org/index.html).
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The initial idea of The Great Game is that it is a single player game, but it actually doesn't need to be and it would be quite possible for one server to support multiple clients, each being used by a different player.
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The server/planner decides what each actor does, models what each character knows, plans and records all actions and transactions. It plans speach acts, and handles conversations which happen off screen, but hands speech texts over to the client/performer layer for actual performance. It also plans journeys as described in [[Pathmaking]], but it doesn't deal with movement within a polygon or with collision avoidance. It deals with fights which happen off screen, but not those that happen on screen.
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## What do I mean by the client?
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There is something that renders an interesting and lively display of the part of the game world that the player can see from their current position. This display has to run without significant pauses — it's not OK, for example, for all conversation to stop suddenly in a market place just because the server is garbage collecting.
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The client is written in some high level game engine system, possibly Unreal Engine (although for ideological reasons I'd prefer an open source one).
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The client/performer renders and animates everything the player character can see, and performs every sound the player character can hear. In doing this it is responsible for
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1. The rendering of landscape, vegetation, buildings, furniture, and everything else that is fixed within the visible scene;
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2. The animation of everything which moves within the visible scene, and, to facilitate this, detailed route planning and collision avoidance;
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3. The performance of all speech acts and gestures, all musical performance, and the playing of all [foley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)) sounds;
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4. Combat which happens in the field of view, including specifically all combat (including sparring) involving the player character. This means that the client/performer is the bit of the system which decides what blows are struck and whether they hit their targets, and consequently which character wins each fight. It reports this information back to the server.
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@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ First, a framing disclaimer: in [Racundra's First Cruise](https://books.google.c
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I will never build a complete version of The Great Game; it will probably never even be a playable prototype. It is a minor side-project of someone who
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1. Is ill, and consequently has inconsistent levels of energy and concentration;
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1. Is old and ill, and consequently has inconsistent levels of energy and concentration;
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2. Has other things to do in the real world which necessarily take precedence.
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Nevertheless, in making design choices I want to specify something which could be built, which could, except for the technical innovations I'm trying myself to build, be built with the existing state of the art, and which if built, would be engaging and interesting to play.
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@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ I want the player to be able to interact with non-player characters (and, indeed
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4. The particular non-player character's attitude towards the player;
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5. The particular non-player character's speech idiosyncracies, dialect, and voice
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and it must be pretty clear that the full range of potential responses is extremely large. Consequently, it's impossible that all non-player character speech acts can be voice acted; rather, this sort of generated speech must be synthesised. But a consequence of this is that the non-player character's facial animation during the conversation also cannot be motion captured from a human actor; rather, it, too, must be synthesized.
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and it must be pretty clear that the full range of potential responses is extremely large. Consequently, it's impossible that all non-player character speech acts can be voice acted; rather, this sort of generated speech must be synthesised. But a consequence of this is that the non-player character's facial animation during the conversation also cannot be motion captured from a human actor; rather, [it, too, must be synthesized](https://youtu.be/fa3_Mfqu8KA).
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This doesn't mean that speech acts by non-player characters which make plot points or advance the narrative can't be voice acted, but it does mean that the voice acting must be consistent with the simulated voice used for that non-player character - which is to say, probably, that the non-player character must use a synthetic voice derived from the voice performance of that particular voice actor in that role.
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@ -35,25 +35,27 @@ This doesn't mean that speech acts by non-player characters which make plot poin
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Modern Role Playing Games are, in effect, extremely complex state machines: if you do the same things in the same sequence, the same outcomes will always occur. In a world full of monsters, bandits, warring armies and other dangers, the same quest givers will be in the same places at the same times. They are clockwork worlds, filled with clockwork automata. Of course, this has the advantage that is makes testing easier - and in a game with a complex branching narrative and many quests, testing is inevitably hard.
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Interestingly, [Kenshi](https://lofigames.com/) — a game I'm increasingly impressed and influenced by — is not quite clockwork in this sense. As the player upsets the equilibrium of the game's political economy, factions not impacted negatively will move against competing factions which are impacted negatively, in a way which *may* be scripted, but it's so well done it's hard to tell.
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My vision for The Great Game is different. It is that the economy - and with it, the day to day choices of non-player characters - should be modelled. This means, non-player characters may unexpectedly die. Of course, you could implement a tag for plot-relevant characters which prevents them being killed (except when required by the plot).
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## Plot follows player
|
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||||
As Role Playing Games have moved towards open worlds - where the player's movement in the environment is relatively unconstrained - the clockwork has become strained. The player has to get to particular locations where particular events happen, and so the player has to be very heavily signposted. Sometimes the mark you have to hit to trigger the next advance of the plot can be extremely awkward; [an example from Cyberpunk 2077](https://youtu.be/GEYkuctBUYE?t=2990) is finding the right spot, in the quest 'They Won't Go When I Go', to trigger the button which raises the cross.
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||||
Another solution - which I'd like to explore - is 'plot follows character'. The player is free to wander at will in the world, and plot relevant events will happen on their path. And by that I don't mean that we associate a set of non-player characters which each quest - as current Role Playing Games do - and then uproot the whole set from wherever they normally live in the world and dumping down in the player's path; but rather, for each role in a quest or plot event, we define a set of characteristics required to fulfill that role, and then, when the player comes to a place where there are a set of characters who have those characteristics, the quest or plot event will happen.
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Another solution - which I'd like to explore - is 'plot follows character'. The player is free to wander at will in the world, and plot relevant events will happen on their path. And by that I don't mean that we associate a set of non-player characters which each quest - as current Role Playing Games do - and then uproot the whole set from wherever they normally live in the world and dump them down in the player's path; but rather, for each role in a quest or plot event, we define a set of characteristics required to fulfil that role, and then, when the player comes to a place where there are a set of characters who have those characteristics, the quest or plot event will happen.
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||||
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||||
## Cut scenes, cinematics and rewarding the player
|
||||
|
||||
There's no doubt at all that 'cut scenes' - in effect, short movies spliced into game play during which the player has no decisions to make but can simply watch the scene unroll - are elements of modern games which players enjoy, and see to some extent as 'rewards'. And in many games, these are beautifully constructed works. It is a very widely held view that the quality of cutscenes depends to a large degree on human authorship. The three choices I've made above:
|
||||
There's no doubt at all that 'cut scenes' - in effect, short movies spliced into game play during which the player has no decisions to make but can simply watch the scene unroll - are elements of modern games which players enjoy, and see to some extent as 'rewards'. And in many games, these are beautifully constructed works. It is a very widely held view that the quality of cutscenes depends to a large degree on human authorship. The choices I've made above:
|
||||
|
||||
1. We can't always know exactly what non-player characters will say (although perhaps we can in the context of cut scenes where the player has no input);
|
||||
2. We can't always know exactly which non-player characters will speak the lines;
|
||||
3. We can't predict what a non-player character will say in response to a question, or how long that will take;
|
||||
4. We can't always know where any particular plot event will take place.
|
||||
4. We can't always know where any particular plot event will take place;
|
||||
|
||||
Each of these, obviously, make the task of authoring an animation harder. The general summary of what I'm saying here is that, although in animating a conversation or cutscene what the animator is essentially animating is the skeletons of the characters, and, provided that all character models are rigged on essentially similar skeletons, substituting one character model for another in an animated scene isn't a huge issue, with so much unknowable it is impossible that hand-authoring will be practicable, and so a lot will depend on the quality of the conversation system not merely to to produce convincingly enunciated and emoted sound, but also appropriate character animation and attractive cinematography. As you will have learned from the Mass Effect analysis videos I linked to above, that's a big ask.
|
||||
each, make the task of authoring an animation harder. The general summary of what I'm saying here is that, although in animating a conversation or cutscene what the animator is essentially animating is the skeletons of the characters, and, provided that all character models are rigged on essentially similar skeletons, substituting one character model for another in an animated scene isn't a huge issue, with so much unknowable it is impossible that hand-authoring will be practicable, and so a lot will depend on the quality of the conversation system not merely to to produce convincingly enunciated and emoted sound, but also appropriate character animation and attractive cinematography. As you will have learned from the Mass Effect analysis videos I linked to above, that's a big ask.
|
||||
|
||||
Essentially the gamble here is that players will find the much richer conversations, and consequent emergent gameplay, possible with non-player charcaters who have dynamic knowledge about their world sufficiently engaging to compensate for a less compelling cinematic experience. I believe that they would; but really the only way to find out would be to try.
|
||||
|
||||
Interestingly, an [early preview](https://youtu.be/VwwZx5t5MIc?t=327) of CD PRoject Red's not-yet-complete [Cyberpunk 2077]() suggests that there will be very, very few cutscenes, suggesting that these very experienced storytellers don't feel they need cutscenes either to tell their story or maintain player engagement. (Later) It has to be said other commentators who have also played the Cyberpunk 2077 preview say that there are **a lot** of cutscenes, one of them describing the prologue as 'about half cutscenes' - so this impression I formed may be wrong).
|
||||
Interestingly, an [early preview](https://youtu.be/VwwZx5t5MIc?t=327) of CD Project Red's [Cyberpunk 2077](https://www.cyberpunk.net/us/en/cyberpunk-2077) has relatively few cutscenes, suggesting that these very experienced storytellers don't feel they need cutscenes either to tell their story or maintain player engagement.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -8,4 +8,4 @@ Work by other people which is relevant to what I'm doing, and which I should stu
|
|||
|
||||
## Systemic games
|
||||
|
||||
1. [This video](https://youtu.be/SnpAAX9CkIc) is thought provoking with excellent examples.
|
||||
1. [This video](https://youtu.be/SnpAAX9CkIc) is thought provoking with excellent examples.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -16,11 +16,11 @@ The principles of game play which I'm looking for are a reaction against all I s
|
|||
|
||||
6. Dumb and dumber: non-player characters, even important ones, have extremely limited vocal repertoire.
|
||||
|
||||
Of these, the last two, I think, are key: they are the root cause of the other problems. In fact, to take it further, the real key is the last. We talk a lot about 'Game AI', but really there's nothing remotely approaching artificial intelligence ins modern games. Non-player characters do not think; they do not learn; they do not reason; they do not know. They speak only from the script. And they speak only from the script because of the fetish for voice acting.
|
||||
Of these, the last two, I think, are key: they are the root cause of the other problems. In fact, to take it further, the real key is the last. We talk a lot about 'Game AI', but really there's nothing remotely approaching artificial intelligence in modern games. Non-player characters do not think; they do not learn; they do not reason; they do not know. They speak only from the script. And they speak only from the script because of the fetish for voice acting.
|
||||
|
||||
## Death to Dumb-Dumb
|
||||
|
||||
As I've argued [elsewhere](), [repeatedly](), we can now generate a wide variety of naturalistic speaking voices, and have them narrate text. Now of course there's great deal of information conveyed in human vocal communication in addition to the words – of which emotion is only an example, although an important one. Generating voices with the right tone, the right emphasis, for different situations may be harder than I anticipate; there may be an '[uncanny valley](Uncanny_dialogue)' in which generated speech just sounds uncomfortably off.
|
||||
As I've argued [elsewhere](Voice-acting-considered-harmful), [repeatedly](Selecting Character), we can now generate a wide variety of naturalistic speaking voices, and have them narrate text. Now of course there's great deal of information conveyed in human vocal communication in addition to the words – of which emotion is only an example, although an important one. Generating voices with the right tone, the right emphasis, for different situations may be harder than I anticipate; there may be an '[uncanny valley](Uncanny_dialogue)' in which generated speech just sounds uncomfortably off.
|
||||
|
||||
But it's a trade off. For possibly less than perfect vocal performance, you get the possibility of much richer repertoire. You get not only the possibility that non-player characters can talk about the weather, or gossip about their neighbours, or give you directions to local places of interest. You get the possibility that a non-player character's attitude to you may be conditioned by the fact that they've heard that you stole from their second cousin, or that you killed an outlaw who'd raped one of their friends.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -30,11 +30,11 @@ And with the emergence of intelligent behaviour comes the emergence of possibili
|
|||
|
||||
And as now gameplay possibilities emerge, as new stories emerge organically out of the dynamically changing relationships between non-player characters in the world, the need for scripting decreases.
|
||||
|
||||
The problem with scripting is that it greatly limits player agency. The story can only have one of a few predetermined -- literally, scripted -- endings. This is clearly expressed in [a review of Red Dead Redemption 2](https://youtu.be/_JRikiQyzLA) which I recomment to you; but is equally true of almost all other games.
|
||||
The problem with scripting is that it greatly limits player agency. The story can only have one of a few predetermined -- literally, scripted -- endings. This is clearly expressed in [a review of Red Dead Redemption 2](https://youtu.be/_JRikiQyzLA) which I recomment to you; but is equally true of almost all other games.
|
||||
|
||||
Dynamic side quests have fallen into disfavour, because, when they've been tried in earlier generation games, there were too few possibilities, and they became repetitive and boring. I don't believe, with the wealth of compute resource we now have, this any longer need be the case. On the contrary, I think we can now dynamically generate a wide range of different, and differently complex, side quests. I think, in fact, that these can [emerge organically](Organic_Quests.md) from the structure of the game world.
|
||||
|
||||
## Death to Psycho-Killer
|
||||
|
||||
If the main way a player can interact with non-player characters is to kill them, and if the player doesn't have a systematic combat advantage over non-player characters, then it's going to be a short game. This is why players in many or most video games do start with a systematic combat advantage, and that combat advantage tends to increase over the course of the game as the player becomes more proficient with the combat system, and acquires better weapons, armour and combat buffs. This in turn means that to keep combat 'interesting', the game either has to through larger and larger armies of 'bad' non-player characters against the player – a fault seen at its worst in [Dragon Age 2](https://youtu.be/Sc8Bn8yqPYQ?t=3150).
|
||||
If the main way a player can interact with non-player characters is to kill them, and if the player doesn't have a systematic combat advantage over non-player characters, then it's going to be a short game. This is why players in many or most video games do start with a systematic combat advantage, and that combat advantage tends to increase over the course of the game as the player becomes more proficient with the combat system, and acquires better weapons, armour and combat buffs. This in turn means that to keep combat 'interesting', the game has to through larger and larger armies of 'bad' non-player characters against the player – a fault seen at its worst in [Dragon Age 2](https://youtu.be/Sc8Bn8yqPYQ?t=3150).
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,13 +1,13 @@
|
|||
# Gossip, scripted plot, and Johnny Silverhand
|
||||
|
||||
I've been writing literally for years -- since [Voice acting considered harmful](Voice-acting-considered-harmful.html) in 2015 -- about game worlds in which the player speaks to non-player characters just by speaking the words they choose in their normal voice, and the non-player character replies using a pipeline that goes, essentially,
|
||||
I've been writing literally for years -- since [Voice acting considered harmful](Voice-acting-considered-harmful.md) in 2015 -- about game worlds in which the player speaks to non-player characters just by speaking the words they choose in their normal voice, and the non-player character replies using a pipeline that goes, essentially,
|
||||
|
||||
1. Alexa/Siri style speech interpretation;
|
||||
2. A decision on whether to co-operate based on the particular NPC's general demeanor and particular attitude to the player;
|
||||
3. A search of the game state and lore for relevant information;
|
||||
4. A filtering of the results based on what the particular NPC can be expected to know;
|
||||
5. Generation of a textual response from those results based on a library of templates which defines the particular NPC's dialect and style of speech;
|
||||
6. Production of audio using a [Lyrebird]{https://www.descript.com/overdub?lyrebird=true) style generated voice.
|
||||
6. Production of audio using a [Lyrebird](https://www.descript.com/overdub?lyrebird=true) style generated voice.
|
||||
|
||||
As I've argued before, the game engine necessarily knows everything about the lore, and the current state, of the game world. It would be possible for any non-player character to answer literally any question about the game world, from who was mayor of Night City in 2020 to who lives in the apartment one floor up from yours, to what the weather is like in North Oaks just now.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
5
doc/My-setting.md
Normal file
5
doc/My-setting.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
|
|||
# My setting for the Great Game
|
||||
|
||||
It should be evident that all the key ideas in The Great Game project would be applicable to games set in the historic past of our world, to games set in its present, or to games set in some imagined or forecast future; the ideas are intended to be, and I believe are, largely independent of setting.
|
||||
|
||||
Nevertheless I feel the need for a concrete setting to ground the development of ideas. I've chosen deliberately not to place that setting in the real world; although it's broadly based on cultures from the late bronze age/early iron age mediterrainian.
|
||||
26
doc/Not my problem.md
Normal file
26
doc/Not my problem.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
|||
# Not my problem
|
||||
|
||||
## Introduction
|
||||
|
||||
This document is essentially a catalogue of side-tracks which I do not have to go down when implementing The Great Game. Solved problems; or problems which are common to many other games, so if I don't solve them someone else will. The object of doing this is to work down to a constrained set of problems which are genuinely things I'm trying to innovate, which I should focus on; which essentially come down to
|
||||
|
||||
1. Gossip
|
||||
2. Reputation
|
||||
3. Dynamic character motivation and action, and hence
|
||||
4. Dynamic economy, and
|
||||
5. Dynamic plot
|
||||
6. Procedural ('genetic') buildings.
|
||||
|
||||
(Note that although procedural vegetation is in principle a solved problem and so I don't need to solve it, I need repeatable procedural vegetation so I need to be a bit careful about the procedural vegetation library I pick).
|
||||
|
||||
## Animation
|
||||
|
||||
I envisage a well rendered three dimensional world in which many non-player characters interact with one another and with the player character. All of my characters are either human, quadrupeds, or birds (my dragons animate like very large birds). The humans are all just human; there are infants, children, adolescents, youths, adults, elderly; there are multiple racial types — but they're all human. Systems for creating varied distinct human models exist; systems for animating them exist; systems for applying and animating clothing exist. Even systems for animating continuous speech exist.
|
||||
|
||||
## Rendering
|
||||
|
||||
Ideally I'd like a stylised, not-quite-photorealistic render, because such things age, in my opinion, better than things which do seek to be photorealistic. But actually that does not matter very much; the game won't be made or broken by its rendering. Photorealistic renders are sort of the current default, that most game engines.
|
||||
|
||||
## Continuous Open World
|
||||
|
||||
I've done a great deal of thinking about how to render a continuous open world over the years, and I think at least some of it is reasonably good; but I haven't actually written any code, and in the same time period other people have written continuous open world libraries which do work, so I'd be much better choosing an existing one.
|
||||
56
doc/On-sex-and-sexual-violence.md
Normal file
56
doc/On-sex-and-sexual-violence.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
|
|||
# On Sex, and Sexual Violence, in Games
|
||||
|
||||
For me the purpose of games is to provide worlds in which players can explore moral actions, and the consequences of moral actions. Sexual violence is something that happens in the real world, and which happens, even within the real world, more frequently in areas of poor governance and open conflict; and those are areas in which there are important moral actions, and important moral consequences, so they are areas in which it is interesting to set games.
|
||||
|
||||
It would be ludicrous to argue 'sexual violence is wrong, therefore we should not represent it in games.' Killing people is also wrong, yet it is extremely common in games. However, sexual violence — and in particular the representation of sexual violence — does pose some specific problems that need to be addressed.
|
||||
|
||||
Firstly, sexual violence is extremely gendered. Yes, male people are sometimes subjected to sexual violence, but nevertheless the overwhelming majority of victims of sexual violence are female. Yes, female people are sometimes — extraordinarily rarely, but sometimes — perpetrators of sexual violence, but nevertheless perpetrators of sexual violence are almost exclusively male.
|
||||
|
||||
Secondly, it is extremely tricky to represent sexual violence in visual media without eroticising it. There's a [very famous scene in Last Tango in Paris](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/last-tango-in-paris-butter-scene-b2270513.html) which the director might claim is consented in context, but which appears to me to be a clear case of anal rape, which is nevertheless highly erotic. There's a scene in [High Plains Drifter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Plains_Drifter#Plot) where no part of the rape is actually represented — it happens off screen — but it is nevertheless perceived by many people (including me) as eroticised. Many people — I suspect more men than women, but certainly including women — do find the idea of rape erotic. It seems to me highly undesirable that a game should be seen to be rewarding immoral action.
|
||||
|
||||
(Yes, I know many modern games do quite explicitly reward killing, including of characters whose culpability is at best trivial, but — surely — this is something we should be seeking to move away from.)
|
||||
|
||||
## Subtlety and Nuance
|
||||
|
||||
A final issue here is that sexual interactions between people are subtle, and are subtle even around issues of consent. A less powerful person (normally a woman) — alone or as a member of a weak party, a party of perhaps older people, other women, children — may submit to sex with more powerful others without protest in order to protect others in their party, or to avoid death or serious injury, or to avoid starvation, or to escape debt. Do any of these things truly count as consent?
|
||||
|
||||
Again, a less powerful person may submit to sex with more powerful others transactionally in return to protection, or shelter, or food, or other resources. In modern society we might see this as sex work, and we might argue that sex work falls into the same moral category as any other labour entered into transactionally. But, generally, is it moral that people should be put into a position where their survival depends on their ability to sell any sort of unwilling labour?
|
||||
|
||||
(This is not to deny that some people, who do have secure living conditions or who could choose to do other things in order to gain secure living conditions do choose, willingly and voluntarily, to engage in sex work; and it isn't to criticise those people in any way).
|
||||
|
||||
Games are not very good at subtly and nuance. When, while playing a game, the character who is our avatar in the game, who we thought we were controlling, does something which we didn't intend them to do, it's very wrenching and immersion-breaking.
|
||||
|
||||
At the same time, if other characters in the game interpret something the player's character has done as sexual violence when the player did not intend sexual violence, that's also undesirable.
|
||||
|
||||
So, questions:
|
||||
|
||||
## Sex between non-player characters
|
||||
|
||||
People have sex. If people didn't have sex, there wouldn't be people; but more, if people didn't have sex, there wouldn't be (many) stories, since most stories are driven at least in part by sex. So pretending that non-player characters don't have sex is worse than unrealistic.
|
||||
|
||||
We live in a pathologically repressed society, in which open sex — sex in public places, sex with other people present — is rare, is seen as deviant, is (perhaps in consequence) highly eroticised. Does that mean that all the societies we represent in our games must be similarly repressed?
|
||||
|
||||
I would argue strongly to the contrary. Games are environments in which we can explore moral possibilities, and a society in which public sexuality was normal is clearly a possibility. Would such a society be a better society? Games are a mechanism through which we can ask that question, and questions of that sort.
|
||||
|
||||
If we're going to represent a society in which public sex is normal, then we're going to have to represent public sex on screen. It can take one of many forms:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Sex as normal activity — it's just going on in the background, and no other non-player characters pay much attention;
|
||||
2. Sex as conscious performance — sex where the participants intend to be watched, and other non-player characters do pay attention (this may include consciously eroticised performance);
|
||||
3. Sex as part of a religious or other ritual event — this is related to, and is, sex as conscious performance, but the purpose of the performance is symbolic and/or sacramental. This doesn't mean it is not eroticised, but it may not be eroticised.
|
||||
|
||||
By 'eroticised', I'm meaning deliberately intended to trigger sexual feelings in the audience — which, if the player character is present, includes the player.
|
||||
|
||||
## Sexual violence between non-player characters
|
||||
|
||||
In a world in which there are characters who are thuggish, who seek to dominate, terrorise and subdue other characters, whether those characters are outlaws or soldiers or aristocrats, to pretend that rape would not be used as a means to dominate, terrorise or subdue is… bowdlerisation. It's unrealistic, and it's a morally indefensible choice.
|
||||
|
||||
So there has to be a mechanism for non-player characters to decide to commit acts of sexual violence towards other non-player characters. The player must at least hear of such events through the gossip network, and should be able to find the specific non-player characters involved, and speak to them. Whether it's necessary to portray acts of sexual violence on screen is something I'm much less persuaded by, simply because it runs the risk of eroticising them.
|
||||
|
||||
## Mutually consented sexual activity between the player character and non-player characters
|
||||
|
||||
Mutually consented sexual behaviour between the player character and (certain, scripted) non-player characters has been a feature of video games for some time, and has occasionally been portrayed with real sensitivity and eroticism. Two cases I would point to are
|
||||
|
||||
1. The sex scene between Geralt and Shani in [The Witcher]()
|
||||
|
||||
## Sexual violence from the player character towards non-player characters
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ Routing is fundamentally by [A\*](https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-sta
|
|||
|
||||
#### Algorithmic rules
|
||||
|
||||
1. No route may pass through any part of a reserved holding, except the holding which is its origin, if any, and the holding which is its destination (and in any case we won't render paths or roads within holdings, although traversal information may be used to determine whether a holding, or part of it, is paved/cobbled;
|
||||
1. No route may pass through any part of a reserved holding, except the holding which is its origin, if any, and the holding which is its destination, if any (and in any case we won't render paths or roads within holdings, although traversal information may be used to determine whether a holding, or part of it, is paved/cobbled;
|
||||
2. No route may pass through any building, with the exception of a city gate;
|
||||
3. We don't have bicycles: going uphill costs work, and you don't get that cost back on the down hill. Indeed, downhills are at least as expensive to traverse as flat ground;
|
||||
4. Any existing route segment costs only a third as much to traverse as open ground having the same gradient;
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -2,11 +2,11 @@
|
|||
|
||||
## Background
|
||||
|
||||
Many computer role playing games, particularly older ones such as Neverwinter Nights, allow you to 'design' your player character from a fairly broad canvas. Race, class, attributes, gender and appearance are all selectable.
|
||||
Many computer role playing games, particularly older ones such as Neverwinter Nights, allow you to 'design' your player character from a fairly broad canvas. Race, class, attributes, gender and appearance are all selectable.
|
||||
|
||||
Choice has eroded over time. For example the Dragon Age series, where you can chose between three races, two genders, and a small number of classes. In the Mass Effect trilogy, you play as Shepard, who is human and essentially a Fighter, but can be either male or female and whose appearance you can customise. You can play as either lawful good or chaotic neutral. In Cyberpunk 2077, you play as V, who is human, either male or female, essentially a Fighter, and chaotic neutral.
|
||||
|
||||
In more recent games, there has been a trend towards more limited choice. In the games of The Witcher series, you get no choice at all, but play as Geralt of Rivia, who in the categorisation of Dungeons and Dragons, is a Fighter/Ranger, male, human, and somewhere between chaotic good and chaotic neutral depending on how you play him. In the Horizon series, you play as Aloy, again a Fighter/Ranger, female, human, and essentially chaotic good.
|
||||
In more recent games, there has been a trend towards more limited choice. In the games of The Witcher series, you get no choice at all, but play as Geralt of Rivia, who in the categorisation of Dungeons and Dragons, is a Fighter/Ranger, male, human, and somewhere between chaotic good and chaotic neutral depending on how you play him. In the Horizon series, you play as Aloy, again a Fighter/Ranger, female, human, and essentially chaotic good.
|
||||
|
||||
As I've argued elsewhere, part of the reason for limiting choice is voice acting.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Limiting choice of player character, especially in games with increasingly highl
|
|||
|
||||
## The Self-voiced Player
|
||||
|
||||
If we have voice interaction sufficiently sophisticated that we can allow the player character to say more or less whatever they want to say - [and my argument here is that we can do this](Gossip_scripted_plot_and_Johnny_Silverhand.md) - then we don't need voice acting for the player character, and that gives us a lot of freedom. There's then really no reason why the player can't inhabit any character in the game world and play as that character.
|
||||
If we have voice interaction sufficiently sophisticated that we can allow the player character to say more or less whatever they want to say — [and my argument here is that we can do this](Gossip_scripted_plot_and_Johnny_Silverhand.md) — then we don't need voice acting for the player character, and that gives us a lot of freedom. There's then really no reason why the player can't inhabit any character in the game world and play as that character.
|
||||
|
||||
## Tinder as a Character Selector
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -41,7 +41,8 @@ So, sensibly refinable attributes might include things like
|
|||
|
||||
1. Strength;
|
||||
2. Agility;
|
||||
3. Dexterity.
|
||||
3. Dexterity;
|
||||
4. Endurance.
|
||||
|
||||
I did think that 'intelligence' or 'learning' might be on that list but the more I think of it, the harder I find it to understand how low intelligence might be represented in a game in which the player speaks freely.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ This is mainly a land game. Broadly, caravans take the place of ships in Elite o
|
|||
|
||||
## A political simulation
|
||||
|
||||
Broadly, aristons claim territories in an essentiallu feudal arrangement, drive out outlaws, and levy taxes.
|
||||
Broadly, aristons claim territories in an essentially feudal arrangement, drive out outlaws, and levy taxes.
|
||||
|
||||
An ariston will be popular if their regime is stable, if taxes are low, justice is considered fair, oppression is low and depredations by outlaws are minimal. The more unpopular an ariston is, the more resistant the populace will be to paying their taxes, meaning the more military force needs to be diverted to tax collection and the greater the oppression. Taxes are required to pay soldiers and to maintain high roads, bridges, markets and other infrastructure. Merchants will prefer to travel routes which are better policed and maintained, which means more merchants trading in your markets, which means more tax.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
83
doc/a-generic-planning-algorithm-for-craftworker-npcs.md
Normal file
83
doc/a-generic-planning-algorithm-for-craftworker-npcs.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
|
|||
# A Generic Planning Algorithm for craftworker NPCs
|
||||
|
||||
## Preamble
|
||||
|
||||
The Great Game requires a number of different crafts to be performed, both because the economy depends on the products of those crafts and to provide verisimilitude and set dressing. Some of those crafts, the relations between them, and the progression within them are set out in [Populating a game world](Populating-a-game-world.html).
|
||||
|
||||
For the purposes of planning work, only Master craftspeople are considered.
|
||||
|
||||
A Master craftsperson has
|
||||
|
||||
1. a house and appropriate workshop, within a settlement;
|
||||
2. zero or more apprentices;
|
||||
3. zero or more journeyman;
|
||||
4. a spouse, who is usually of lower status;
|
||||
5. zero of more coresident children;
|
||||
6. zero or more coresident non-working parents/elders.
|
||||
|
||||
There are limits to the number of apprentices and journeymen a master may take on, essentially based on demand in the local market. The master is responsible for housing and feeding all of the household including apprentices and journeymen, and for obtaining sufficient craft supplies. All craft work done in the household belongs to the master.
|
||||
|
||||
Apprentices are definitely not paid. Journeymen should be paid, but this is a detail to ignore until we have other things working.
|
||||
|
||||
Journeymen will move on from master to master from time to time -- infrequently, but it will happen; and may be dismissed by masters when markets are tight. Journeymen probably learn their craft recipes -- which is to say, the items and qualities of item they are able to craft -- from the masters they work with. Consequently, journeymen will seek out masters with higher reputation; masters will prefer journeymen with more experience.
|
||||
|
||||
Apprentices do not move on until the end of their period of apprenticeship (16th birthday?) when they become journeymen.
|
||||
|
||||
The master will plan work in four hour sessions - essentially, a morning session and an afternoon session each day.
|
||||
|
||||
All craftspeople have regular schedules covering mealtimes, sleep, and festivals. A lower status person within the household will have regular schedules covering each of fetching water, fetching fuel wood, taking out night soil, feeding chickens, washing dishes and laundry, and so on.
|
||||
|
||||
When the master works in the workshop, all the apprentices and journeymen will also work in the workshop; when the master is engaging in recreation, they're also engaging in recreation. What they do when the master is e.g. going to market, I haven't yet decided.
|
||||
|
||||
## Commodity items and special commissions
|
||||
|
||||
In principle all craftspeople may make both commodity items and special commission items, but in practice many crafts will be mostly commodity and a few will be almost entirely special commission (for example a diplomat doesn't produce peace treaties prèt-à-porter); but I don't yet have a good model of how I'm going to handle special commissions, so I'm just doing some hand waving here to say they will exist and must be handled.
|
||||
|
||||
## The algorithm
|
||||
|
||||
A master craftsperson needs to keep stock of a number of things
|
||||
|
||||
1. Sufficient food for the household;
|
||||
2. Sufficient craft materials for immediate production;
|
||||
3. Sufficient funds to buy more food/craft materials when needed;
|
||||
4. Commodity craft items produced;
|
||||
5. Craft items work in progress.
|
||||
|
||||
### Choosing tasks
|
||||
|
||||
So in planning a period of work, the master has to decide:
|
||||
|
||||
1. Do I need to go to market?
|
||||
1. Is there news of a travelling merchant who buys what I produce arriving at my nearest market? -> go to market;
|
||||
2. Is the household running low on food? -> go to market;
|
||||
3. Is the household running low on craft materials? -> go to market;
|
||||
2. Do I have any commissioned items to produce? -> produce commissioned items;
|
||||
3. Should I work on commodities or take the day off?
|
||||
This is a throw-of-the-dice decision, influenced by
|
||||
1. Cash on hand (if there's little, greater incentive to work);
|
||||
2. Weather (if it's especially good, less incentive to work);
|
||||
3. Gossip (if there's interesting news, less incentive to work)
|
||||
|
||||
### Commodity production
|
||||
|
||||
If the decision is to work on commodities, the next decision is what commodity item to produce.
|
||||
|
||||
For each craft recipe the master knows there will be
|
||||
|
||||
1. A list of quantities of different craft materials needed per item, for example a sword might need two kilograms of steel of a particular quality, ten kilograms of charcoal, one kilogram of timber, half a square metre of leather;
|
||||
2. An amount of craftsperson time - for example, a standard infantry sword might take ten hours;
|
||||
3. Memory of prices achieved by item to that recipe in the local market.
|
||||
|
||||
The master will choose a recipe for which there are sufficient materials on hand, and which is profitable to make -- the more profitable, the more likely to be selected (but I think there's probably some furtive dice rolling under the table here too; you don't want all the smiths in town producing infantry swords at the same time, because that would swamp the market and drive prices down).
|
||||
|
||||
When an item is started, the materials for it are removed from stock and assigned to the item, which is added to the work in progress list. The number of items that can be produced in a work session is
|
||||
|
||||
(the number of hours in the session * the number of people in the team) / the hours to produce one item
|
||||
|
||||
At the end of the session, the integer number of items produced is removed from the work in progress queue and added to stock, and the modulus is added as `:work-done` to the remaining item, which is left in the work in progress queue.
|
||||
|
||||
Obviously items in the work in progress queue may need to be completed at the start of the next commodity work session.
|
||||
|
||||
Obviously, none planned at sufficient granularity to be animated unless the workplace is in the `:active` circle, and none of it gets actually animated unless it's actually on camera, but the book-keeping in terms of food and craft materials consumed and of items produced must be done.
|
||||
|
||||
This implies that at least many master craftspeople must be in the `:background` circle, i.e. woken up once every game day to plan a work session, no matter how far away the player character is.
|
||||
14
doc/intro.md
14
doc/intro.md
|
|
@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ easy:
|
|||
2. **Master**: what is the sum of (or average of) the esteem held for this agent by other agents of the same craft?
|
||||
3. **Explorer**: (e.g.) what is the sum of the distance between the most northerly and most southerly, and the most easterly and most westerly, locations this agent has visited?
|
||||
4. **Climber**: how many 'promotions' has this agent had in the game?
|
||||
6. **Conqueror**: how many total vassales, recursively, has this agent?
|
||||
5. **Conqueror**: how many total vassals, recursively, has this agent?
|
||||
6. **Citizen**: really, really tricky. Probably what is the average esteem for this agent among all agents within a specified radius? - although this will score more highly for agents who have taken part in notable events, and what I'm really thinking of for my ideal 'good citizen' is someone who really hasn't.
|
||||
|
||||
So each agent is assigned - by the dreaded random number generator - one top
|
||||
|
|
@ -321,7 +321,13 @@ maybe around 10%.
|
|||
|
||||
A caravan or ship costs so much per day to run, irrespective of whether full
|
||||
or empty. So the base cost of a journey is a function of the time taken, which
|
||||
is essentially a function of the distance.
|
||||
is essentially a function of the distance.
|
||||
|
||||
Obviously, on top of the base cost of movement there are tolls, which are imposed
|
||||
by the aristons through whose territory the journey passes (and therefore predictable,
|
||||
and can be used in route planning), and also the risk of having to bribe or fight outlaws,
|
||||
and the possible need to hire mercenaries to defend against outlaws, which is not predictable
|
||||
but can be estimated and thus also used in route planning.
|
||||
|
||||
### Outlawry and merchants
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -329,7 +335,7 @@ Outside the domains of aristons, outlaws may intercept caravans; when this
|
|||
happens the following outcomes are possible:
|
||||
|
||||
1. The merchant (together with any mercenaries the merchant has hired to protect the caravan) successfully fights off the outlaws;
|
||||
2. The outlaws steal the entire cargo (and may kill the merchant);
|
||||
2. The outlaws steal the entire cargo (and may kill the merchant and others);
|
||||
3. The merchant pays protection money to the outlaws, typically around 5%-10% of the value of cargo carried;
|
||||
4. The merchant employs the outlaws as caravan guards (see below);
|
||||
5. The outlaws allow the caravan to pass unmolested;
|
||||
|
|
@ -362,7 +368,7 @@ Generally, if a merchant buys goods in an ariston's market, or sells goods
|
|||
in the ariston's market, then the economy benefits and the ariston benefits
|
||||
from that; so the 'tax' element is part of the market markup. But if a
|
||||
caravan passes through an ariston's territory without stopping at a market,
|
||||
there's probably a tax of about 5% of value.
|
||||
there's probably a toll of about 5% of value.
|
||||
|
||||
Generally, an ariston's army will control outlawry within the ariston's
|
||||
domain, so outlaw encounters within a domain are unlikely. Soldiers could
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
|
|||
# On Dying
|
||||
# On Dying, and Injury
|
||||
|
||||
Death is the end of your story. One of the tropes in games which, for me, most breaks immersion is when you lose a fight and are presented with a screen that says 'you are dead. Do you want to reload your last save?' Life is not like that. We do not have save-states. We die.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -17,3 +17,11 @@ Obviously losing a fight must have weight, it must have meaning, it must have in
|
|||
Similarly to death, injury must have meaning. Any injury takes time to recover from. It takes a certain amount of time if you're able to rest somewhere safe, and considerably longer if you're not. If you fight while injured, you'll have less strength, less stramina, and probably also less agility. Depending where you're injured, there will be certain things you cannot do. If you fight while injured, also, your recovery time will be extended, even if you take no further injury.
|
||||
|
||||
Some serious injuries will lead to permanent scarring, and permanent loss of agility; you'll be just slightly slower in fights.
|
||||
|
||||
It should be said that [Kenshi](https://lofigames.com/) — a game I've only recently become aware of and greatly admire — handles all of this extremely well, and is worth studying.
|
||||
|
||||
## Reciprocity
|
||||
|
||||
If the player is going to depend on good samaritans for rescue after losing a fight, then there must be at least a social convention that people should assist people found injured on the wayside. Consequently, if the player fails to do this, that should in itself become a 'gossip' event which will lower the player's reputation with non-player characters.
|
||||
|
||||
On the other hand, helping NPCs found injured at the wayside can be another category of [organic quest](Organic_Quests.md), as a special subcategory of an escort quest.
|
||||
|
|
@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ The next tier of playable roles rotates around issues arising from the mercantil
|
|||
|
||||
### Aristocracy
|
||||
|
||||
Aristocrats are basically settled outlaws who seek to establish a monopoly on extracting taxes from inhabitants and travellers in a particular region by driving out all other outlaws. Within the comain of an aristocrat, you have to pay tax but you're reasonably safe from being attacked by other outlaws and losing everything. Aristocrats may also maintain and improve roads and bridges and do other things to boost the economy of their territory, may expant into adjoining territory with no current aristocratic control, and may wage war on other aristocrats.
|
||||
Aristocrats are basically settled outlaws who seek to establish a monopoly on extracting taxes from inhabitants and travellers in a particular region by driving out all other outlaws. Within the domain of an aristocrat, you have to pay tax but you're reasonably safe from being attacked by other outlaws and losing everything. Aristocrats may also maintain and improve roads and bridges and do other things to boost the economy of their territory, may expand into adjoining territory with no current aristocratic control, and may wage war on other aristocrats.
|
||||
|
||||
An outlaw ought to be able to become an aristocrat, by dominating an ungoverned area or by defeating an existing aristocrat.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -45,22 +45,24 @@ Soldiers, like aristocrats, are basically on the same spectrum as outlaws. Outla
|
|||
|
||||
## Routine, Discretion and Playability
|
||||
|
||||
There's a term that's used in criticism of many computer games which is worth thinking about hard here: that term is 'farming'. 'Farming', in this sense, is doing something repetitive and dull to earn credits in a game. Generally this is not fun. What makes roles in a game-world fun is having individual discretion - the ability to choose between actions and strategies - and a lack of routine.
|
||||
There's a term that's used in criticism of many computer games which is worth thinking about hard here: that term is 'farming'. 'Farming', in this sense, is doing something repetitive and dull to earn credits in a game. Generally this is not fun. What makes roles in a game-world fun is having individual discretion — the ability to choose between actions and strategies — and a lack of routine.
|
||||
|
||||
Most craft skills - especially in the learning phase - are not like this, and crafts which are sophisticated enough to be actually engaging are very hard to model in a game. Learning a craft is essentially, inherently, repetitive and dull, and if you take that repetition out of it you probably don't have enough left to yield the feeling of mastery which would reward success; so it doesn't seem to me that making craft roles playable should be a priority.
|
||||
Most craft skills — especially in the learning phase — are not like this, and crafts which are sophisticated enough to be actually engaging are very hard to model in a game. Learning a craft is essentially, inherently, repetitive and dull, and if you take that repetition out of it you probably don't have enough left to yield the feeling of mastery which would reward success; so it doesn't seem to me that making craft roles playable should be a priority.
|
||||
|
||||
## Cruise control
|
||||
|
||||
One of the most enjoyable aspects of The Witcher 3 - still my go-to game for ideas I want to improve on - is simply travelling through the world. Although fast travel is possible I find I rarely use it, and a journey which takes fifteen minutes of real world wall clock time can be enjoyable in and of itself. This is, of course, a credit to the beautiful way the world is realised.
|
||||
One of the most enjoyable aspects of The Witcher 3 — still my go-to game for ideas I want to improve on — is simply travelling through the world. Although fast travel is possible I find I rarely use it, and a journey which takes fifteen minutes of real world wall clock time can be enjoyable in and of itself. This is, of course, a credit to the beautiful way the world is realised.
|
||||
|
||||
But nevertheless, in The Witcher 3, a decision was made to pack incident fairly densely - because players would find just travelling boring. This leads to a situation where peaceful villages exist two minutes travel from dangerous monsters or bandit camps, and the suspension of disbelief gets a little strained. Building a world big enough that a market simulation is believable means that for the individual, the travel time to a market where a particular desired good is likely to be cheaper becomes costly in itself. Otherwise, there's no arbitrage between markets and no ecological niche for a merchant to fill. The journey time from market to market has to be several in-game days.
|
||||
(It's worth noting that [Kenshi](https://lofigames.com/), a game I'm coming to greatly admire, does not allow fast travel at all, but has an equivalent of 'cruise control' — you can set a destination and then accelerate time and simply watch as your characters journey).
|
||||
|
||||
An in-game day doesn't have to be as long as a wall clock day, and, indeed, typically isn't. But nevertheless, doing several game days of incident-free travel, even in beautiful scenery, is not going to be engaging - which implies a fast-travel mechanic.
|
||||
But nevertheless, in The Witcher 3, a decision was made to pack incident fairly densely — because players would find just travelling boring. This leads to a situation where peaceful villages exist two minutes travel from dangerous monsters or bandit camps, and the suspension of disbelief gets a little strained. Building a world big enough that a market simulation is believable means that for the individual, the travel time to a market where a particular desired good is likely to be cheaper becomes costly in itself. Otherwise, there's no arbitrage between markets and no ecological niche for a merchant to fill. The journey time from market to market has to be several in-game days.
|
||||
|
||||
I don't like fast travel, I find it a too-obvious breaking of immersion. Also, of course, one of the interesting things about a game in a merchant/outlaw ecosystem is the risk of interception on a journey. The Dragon Age series handled interrupted travel in 'fast travel' by randomly interrupting the loading screen you get when moving from location to location in Dragon Age's patchwork worlds by dumping you into a tiny arena with enemies. That's really, really bad - there's no other way to say this. Everything about it shouts artifice.
|
||||
An in-game day doesn't have to be as long as a wall clock day, and, indeed, typically isn't. But nevertheless, doing several game days of incident-free travel, even in beautiful scenery, is not going to be engaging — which implies a fast-travel mechanic.
|
||||
|
||||
I don't like fast travel, I find it a too-obvious breaking of immersion. Also, of course, one of the interesting things about a game in a merchant/outlaw ecosystem is the risk of interception on a journey. The Dragon Age series handled interrupted travel in 'fast travel' by randomly interrupting the loading screen you get when moving from location to location in Dragon Age's patchwork worlds by dumping you into a tiny arena with enemies. That's really, really bad — there's no other way to say this. Everything about it shouts artifice.
|
||||
|
||||
So I'm thinking of a different mechanism: one I'm calling cruise control.
|
||||
|
||||
You set out on a task which will take a long time - such as a journey, but also such as any routine task. You're shown either a 'fast forward' of your character carrying out this task, or a series of cinematic 'shots along the way'. This depends, of course, on there being continuous renderable landscape between your departure and your destination, but there will be. This fast-forward proceeds at a substantially higher time gearing than normal game time - ten times as fast perhaps; we need it to, because as well as doing backgound scenery loading to move from one location to another, we're also simulating lots of non-player agents' actions in parts of the world where the player currently isn't. So a 'jump cut' from one location to another isn't going to work anyway.
|
||||
You set out on a task which will take a long time — such as a journey, but also such as any routine task. You're shown either a 'fast forward' of your character carrying out this task, or a series of cinematic 'shots along the way'. This depends, of course, on there being continuous renderable landscape between your departure and your destination, but there will be. This fast-forward proceeds at a substantially higher time gearing than normal game time — ten times as fast perhaps; we need it to, because as well as doing backgound scenery loading to move from one location to another, we're also simulating lots of non-player agents' actions in parts of the world where the player currently isn't. So a 'jump cut' from one location to another isn't going to work anyway.
|
||||
|
||||
The player can interrupt 'fast forward' at any time. But also, the game itself may bring you out of fast forward when it anticipates that there may be action which requires decision - for example, when there are outlaws in the vicinity. And it will do this **before** the player's party is under immediate attack - the player will have time to take stock of the situation and prepare appropriately. Finally, this will take place in the full open world; the player will have the option to choose *not* to enter the narrow defile, for example, to ask local people (if there are any) for any news of outlaw activity, or, if they are available, to send forward scouts.
|
||||
The player can interrupt 'fast forward' at any time. But also, the game itself may bring you out of fast forward when it anticipates that there may be action which requires decision — for example, when there are outlaws in the vicinity. And it will do this **before** the player's party is under immediate attack — the player will have time to take stock of the situation and prepare appropriately. Finally, this will take place in the full open world; the player will have the option to choose *not* to enter the narrow defile, for example, to ask local people (if there are any) for any news of outlaw activity, or, if they are available, to send forward scouts.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -42,4 +42,13 @@ Sex, done right, is an extremely pleasant pastime. Sex can also be used to creat
|
|||
|
||||
For women, sex with other women carries with it no risk of pregnancy, so can be enjoyed or used for any of these purposes in very much the same way as it can by men; in other words, particularly for women, homosexual sex can be more lighthearted and carefree than heterosexual sex. To what extend our notions of homosexuality and heterosexuality are cultural I simply don't know. But because no children will result, a woman can afford to be more promiscuous with other women than she can with men.
|
||||
|
||||
##
|
||||
## Women and warrior/adventurer lifestyles
|
||||
|
||||
Generally speaking, people do not want to take their children onto a battlefield. If you're going to have a game world in which women significantly take on warrior or adventurer roles, then you must either have
|
||||
|
||||
* A culture which expects female warriors to be celibate; or
|
||||
* A culture with access to and acceptance of safe and reliable contraception or abortion; or
|
||||
* An acceptance of leaving infant children with grandparents, other relatives or foster carers for long periods;
|
||||
* A system of long term creches;
|
||||
* Any combination of the above.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Add table
Add a link
Reference in a new issue