Demiansky

[quote]I don't understand how certainty equals to the GM's novel. I totally agree that making your players characters in your story is a terrible way to GM, which is why I hate the term "Storyteller" to describe a GM. But to maintain a non-linear gameplay you really only need to ensure players are making their own choices. I don't think it really matters if what's over the mountain is either randomly generated or made up, because players really only care if there's some internal logic to what

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="29" id="2459965"] In a way, this is how I run my D&D campaigns, which have become very popular. I set parameters instead of making up a story ahead of time that players must follow. Instead, I create a world that ascribes to certain rules, use the dice as a "random" element to determine geographical and geological ranges during the world's creation, and then cut the players loose to discover their own objectives and discover their own villains. If they

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="27" id="2457258"] In a way, this is how I run my D&D campaigns, which have become very popular. I set parameters instead of making up a story ahead of time that players must follow. Instead, I create a world that ascribes to certain rules, use the dice as a "random" element to determine geographical and geological ranges during the world's creation, and then cut the players loose to discover their own objectiv

[quote who="Ratya48" reply="1" id="2458225"]So zoning? Like in SimCity? I would rather have residential structures be built automatically as your city grows in population, or an automatic upgrade feature where your buildings grow as needed to support population growth. (I hope the anti-automation police find this acceptable) [/quote] I agree. Anything that you are forced to build in beta like "housing" should be built automatically (if it MUST be built, the on

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="25" id="2455902"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 20 Lol, well, once more, computers aren't writing anything. Humans are writing everything, but the computer is simply following directions that humans gave them to assemble stories. Technically, all a stories follow certain narrative rules in a person's head, so I don't see why the kind of narratives I've described would be unnacceptable. Besides, if you had a choice

Cesare, good questions. I'm on lunch, so I think I can only 1 answer to your pronoun question. Each subject, such as the "Teuton Kingdom" have minor traits and standards by which you can substitute the subject name with the appropriate pronoun. For instance, you would choose appropriate pronouns and define when they would substitute in a narrative--- for instance, after "The Teuton Kingdom" has been mentioned twice, or after it has been used once and mentioned a second

Alright, so on to story skeletons. A story skeleton will have description types which correspond with primary clause parameters. So if a clause has a military description parameter, it will link up with the military description parameter on the story skeleton. So when you are making story skeletons, you will be stringing together primary parameters. So the first part of the story skeleton might look something like this: 1.&

[quote who="MagicwillNZ" reply="19" id="2455294"]Not that this isn't a noble use of your time, I'd prefer backstories written by humans and modders rather than a computer. This is for the same reason I mostly prefer human-made maps in strategy games: someone went through the effort of handcrafting a map, so someone might as well play on it. Teaching computers to write isn't trivial, to be sure, but teaching humans to write is down near impossible. [/quote] Lol, well,

[quote who="SpoonGod" reply="17" id="2455019"] There's a loooot of people researching in that area (natural language) and the state of the art is unable to do what you said in your first post right now, that's a fact, not anything against innovation. It's important to know what can be done and what can't be done right now. If you said you had an idea to have 1000000 crysis-quality troops at the same time in the screen all of them acting in a beliable way with their environment, well

Well, if you want to play a true strategy board game, try "Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition" and its expansion "Shattered Empires"; it is the ultimate Risk killer. You basically choose to play 1 of 14 unique races, conquer planets, establish trade pacts, build fleets consisting of numerous different ship types in space and armies on planets, research tech, deploy spies and sabateurs, form coalitions amongst players in the galactic senate and flex your political power to pass laws

[quote who="Raven X" reply="11" id="2444737"]This could be great if done right. Very interesting post Demiansky. You should have posted this in the Elemental Idea forums though. [/quote] Hm, true. I'll go ahead and switch it over.

[quote who="VicenteC" reply="6" id="2444501"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 3 Well, you haven't even heard my idea yet, and you are already saying it isn't doable. I think you have the wrong idea, though. What I'm about to propose isn't generating a story the same way that you generate a random map. I'll start describing what I'm aiming for in the following post... Doing worth to read, well constructed stories is out of the

Alright so here is the idea. I know the system works, because I've already created and used a simple version in excel/word for using hyperlinks for use in our sophisticated D&D sessions to generate town and city backstories and it has been a boon. Basically, the system is something inspired by my journalistic background and formal education in genetics. Let me first say that I am not suggesting a way by which stories are strung together, word by word, by s

[quote who="VicenteC" reply="2" id="2444345"]I don't think this is worth (most people won't read it). Appart that it's not doable in a good way right now. But if you have a good way, you can surely publish some papers on it, a looot of people in the scientific community would like to hear from you [/quote] Well, you haven't even heard my idea yet, and you are already saying it isn't doable. I think you have the wrong idea, though. What I'm about to propose isn't gene

Alright, so this is my boldest idea yet. In most strategy games, you have a handful of pre-set races with detailed back stories. Sure, you can customize the attributes of your own race in most cases, but once that is done, you either have to write your own back story or use one of the pre

[quote who="Tamren" reply="23" id="2444113"]I think your original point kind of got lost in there. What was it again? But still the problem is whatever we say now is based on speculation. Were going to be talking in circles until we get some concrete data to work on. "Continous Turn Based" can mean a lot of things. [/quote] Lol, okay. Yeah, my point was that it might be easy to keep track of many attributes amongst your units upon arranging them on the battlefiel

[quote]As for the axes, your penalty doesn't make sense. I have an axe in my hand and suddenly my armour is less effective? Did I use the axe to smash up my armour before I put it on? A penalty to parrying would make more sense because an axe is an unbalance weapon. If you were also tracking unit encumberance you could just make the axe a heavy weapon and that would be enough.[/quote] Yes, a sword can deflect a weapon better than an ax and axes, being less balanced, would leave your v

Very good example, Robbie :-)

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="13" id="2442921"] I have to (humbily) disagree on this point. Part of our goal is to make a world that 'feels' like a traditional fantasy RPG setting. When you play an rpg, you have some considerable distance to travel between cities (even when those cities are part of the same empire). The moment you have 5 settlement crammed into a corner, that 'rpg' feeling is broken and it just feels like tradition

[quote who="RisingLegend" reply="5" id="2443397"]Sounds like someone's going to be coming up with a pretty cool mod, that was a fun read demiansky [/quote] Thanks :-) You know, I'm actually thinking that Civ creation could have a lot more depth than simply clicking which advantages you want. Perhaps a story can actually be generated from the choices that you make... I've got an idea, but I'll have to mill it over while I work :-) That way, even if your opp

[quote who="joasoze" reply="24" id="2442160"]I sounds like you want to know everything about a battle before its played out. I would say that there should be some risk here. This is not chess If I know what units I have and what units the opponent have, then that should be enough. The rest is the guesstimation of great leader Joasoze [/quote] If the penalty for your sovereign dying wasn't so severe, I would agree with you. It's good to have a vague understandin

[quote who="Tasunke" reply="14" id="2442634"]Heheh ... have you ever played a Total War game with an all-cavalry army? It takes, I would say, more intelligence than "I have one unit which represents 1000 paladins, I annihilate you now" ... but it certainly can be rewarding. It doesn't always work, but with enough experience in moving your various cavalry wings just so ... it can lead to a marvelous slaughter of the enemy (with plenty o' prisoners ripe for ransom or execution) [/quote]</p

[quote who="cephalo" reply="20" id="2442821"]In my mind, city development and tech are quite different from a fictional point of view. When we say 'tech', what exactly are we talking about here? One thing that might makes things a bit bumpy in Elemental is that it's very rare in fantasy for technology to move at all, even over thousands of years. If anything it's more likely to regress. This is true not only for Tolkein but even in a highly technological setting like Star Wars

[quote who="Tridus" reply="2" id="2442590"]I was thinking about something similar today, because right now you basically start every game down 5 essence in order to create that first town. There doesn't seem to be much avoiding it, you really need a town at some point. Not sure if I'd really want to see it as a racial trait or simply as "you get a town at your starting location automatically", though. [/quote] Well, think of it in terms of say, Master of Orion 2 where

[quote who="LDiCesare" reply="17" id="2442295"] Quoting Demiansky, reply 16 Quoting LDiCesare, reply 13 Well, tech and magic in Master of Magic became pretty closely linked, unfortunately. There was no tech research in MoM. You built infrastructure like temples and libraries, but didn't research techs, only spells. Tech was represented by development in cities, which was an interesting twist. Call it development, tech,