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[Armageddon]

Hello, I have some questions about real time open world adventure games. I'm curious how you would go about designing games such as, Deadly Premonition, Disaster Report, Raw Danger, Mizzurna Falls, etc.

They seem so complex and also realistic in how big and detailed the worlds are. Do you think they're based on real world locations/maps and just smudged a little for design reasons? Or totally from scratch? And these games have several things you can do each day but you don't have time to do them all so it seems like there's a lot of replay value but the stories are like 40+ hours long I'd never want to replay it. Or every character having 24-hour schedules. It just seems very difficult to design these types of things. Especially if a story is already set in stone.

How would you go about designing these types of games? And what genre would you put them in?

[//BARCHboi]

Done

-=== The barch's guide to a quick overview of openworld games ===-

1. The Morrowind Constuction Set - Openworld games is only 23 items
2. THE SECRET OF OPEN WORLD IS FORMS LOTS OF FORMS
3. The Npc Tab for making unique character 
4. Designing Dialogue trees   
5. Building a Chunk Engine + LOD 
6. Processes to breaking the game down for building your own editor 

-----------------=========================------------------

[baconman]

Well, I know GTA games and other similar built ones (NFS, Spider-Man, etc.) are based on actual metro areas; but scaled down - freeways stay freeways, but HUGE major roads just become major roads, main streets become side streets, etc. ~ so it's an approximation of a major metro area; and then still given the skyscrapers for the aesthetic effect of the area, but it's considerably "tighter," if that makes sense.

The 24h scheduling doesn't have to be as arduous as you might expect; it's just a series of timepoints that the NPCs go between at certain appointed times. *shrugs*

[Armageddon]

I guess I was more curious how you think a narrative benefits from an open world game. I never felt it worked in Deadly Premonition because there's only one thing to do each day and exploring the town is really boring, especially with really long load times. So the open world is kind of pointless other than the sim stuff like eating and bathing. I never found any side quests.
Do open world games benefit from non-linear narratives then?
Plus designing cities seems pretty hard. If you ever want to re design an area it'd be difficult since it all connects. I guess modular buildings and such would be better.

[s0]

there are a lot of sidequests in deudly premonition

anyway u should play some majoras mask, it does the npc schedule thing in an action/adventure game better than most other gams.

[gimymblert]

Story are done the same way as ever, have an ecology of hints and care about information flows, it's better to have stake that span whole area instead of personal one.

Break area into function (globally private vs public (tied to identity (group or personal) like home vs mall) , intimate vs public (public toilet vs sidewalk), then specifically by activity type (work, leisure, transport, home, sustenance, etc ...) Once area are labeled it will make more sense and you will start to see natural flow between area (from private to public, from home to work, etc ...

Create prototype schedule per type of character (ex, home, work, lunch, work, bar, home) for each day type (work days vs week end vs holidays, etc ...), keep track of coupled activity (father drive child to school). From the global prototype you can derive sub prototype (father vs single mom) then unique characters.

From the schedule and area type, trace character path and time them and adjust type of character to path specificity (if you want your single mom to struggle place her further from school and work). Start to write characters based on their context.

Remember that behavior can be triggered based on area type, if the player enter a private area (someone's home, a enterprise he don't belong to) or an intimate area (occupied toilet) it's not the same as public-public area. You can therefore script your scene based on proximity of type of area, some scene work better with the correct ecology.

Notice that people have more or less the same schedule so area have a rythm and are populated based on time, at work time kid will be at school and adult at work, class of people will be more or less grouped into the same area. Designing the sociology will help you further plan. Type of problem are link to sociology, relation between people too, like minded people will likely share same place at some point in the schedule.

[//BARCHboi]

Hello, I have some questions about real time open world adventure games. I'm curious how you would go about designing games such as, Deadly Premonition, Disaster Report, Raw Danger, Mizzurna Falls, etc.

This is wrong, this is totally and utterly wrong. You dont want to learn how to make those games. I have something better for you - trust me my friend I am a tigsource Poster & Ludonarrative not gamer to boot and I know- please no protest - I just simply have a superior taste in video games

My friend I am going to teach you how to make Bethesda Games. A much better openworld game to study for your terrible plot of knowlegde

The Morrowind Constuction Set

The morrowind editor (morrowind construction set) is designed for mass production of landmass, npcs, weapons, items, ingredients (alchemy), clothing, lighting, doors containers and creatures. Morrowind featured an absolutely huge landmass, with thousands of unique creates , npcs, and cultures.  Containing over 10 miles of content and realistic textures and advanced weather systems.
Now I will flip this illusion by talking about that morrowind is actually only composed of 23 objects. You may think this is odd but its true.

- --- - - -- - -Figure 1 only 23 objects

The objects are
NPC, Creature, Leveled Creature, SpellingMaking (spells), enchanting (enchanted item effects) book, clothing, container, door, ingredient, light, lockpick, misc item , probe, repair item, static, weapon

And from that the game was able to create 10miles of worthwhile content. By creating one object and applying additional information and munipulations for each of those catagorysthat has interchangeable parts they are able to create the illusion of a world that has 1000s of items and creatures and buildings - how did they do this?

- --- - - -- - -Figure 2 picture of morrowind better then Deadly Premonition anime game

[//BARCHboi]

THE SECRET OF OPEN WORLD IS FORMS LOTS OF FORMS

In morrowind there are thousands of objects, however all of these objects are based around the template that I have below. The propetys of the Misc Item object is that it can be picked up, It can have a script applied to it (for additional propetys) It has a name and a weight, As well as a value, And as well as this it has a 3d model in game, While also a invertory icon. From this they can place this item into the game world

- --- - - -- - -Figure 3 The from that turns 23 objects into thousands times a better then Raw Danger

And from those steps it is easy to place objects into the game. You can see the Soul Gem on the plate on the table. While it is placed you can give it additional propetys need be. In this instance it is been given the propetys of it containing the soul of a winged twilight and is owned by the npc Galbedir – which players should remember this section of the game real well

Now because the object creation has been optimised it means that we dont have to make a unique ID object for every creature we want in the game or we have to make a unique object for every item Galbedir owns. It means that you have done the work of creating one object – and now you can make hundreds of objects in the span of creating two objects.

- --- - - -- - -Figure 4 All of the objects once created are now in a form

[//BARCHboi]

The Npc Tab

- --- - - -- - -Figure 5 This is how morrowind mass produced 2500 npcs

This is the tab for NPC's which gives you alot of flexibility to design a wide arrange of races / elves / humans. As well as give them special propetys that the form doesnt have through the scripts panel. From this the game creates the NPC object then applys all the propetys to it. Thereby turning that one NPC object into the illusion of them being hundreds of npcs in game that look more or less unique with unique skills and faction relationships.
The class list automaticly assigns what major, minor classes to use as well as gives the right dialogue choices for class based interactions.
You can also assign it to automaticly assign the minor major skills depending on the level you set it, freeing up the creator to not having to manually setting each of the dozens of skills manually. Freeing up the Game creators/ Level designers on other more important aspects of the game. One thing that could of been improved in this case is maybe a auto item button

The book

- --- - - -- - -Figure 6 A similar feature that allowed morrowind to mass produced books

The same with books in that it is simular to the items panel however what makes this section important is that the books has an additional section for its text. With its own tagging system. As well as a few more addition buttons for skill points.

And for enchanting. The scroll button is used for when the reading is done for scrolls which means that instead of reading from left to right with pages you read from top down scrolling so that the immersion is done right. This only a small section of how all the components work together but its enough to get the gist.

[//BARCHboi]

Designing Dialogue trees

- --- - - -- - -Figure 5 This is how morrowind mass produced 2500 npcs

Building complex dialogue in world building is by turning the dialogue into simple forms. Most dialogue trees are built in this way were you have a series of scripts. This is what the player interfaces with. Ill break down a basic way of doing this

Script Name
   Question
   Answer 
   AnswerScript

question is simply what the player can ask, Answer is what the NPC answers with, and CodeAnswer is what code is executed when the answer is given or can refer to other scripts. For instance when you place a npc you could call what txt dialogue tree the npc loads to talk to

Notice how some of the Answer scripts refer to other scripts? That is so you can build up onto other scripts. Which when clicked on Question 3 it would lead to a follow up question

So in question 2 I have a script that initialises the quest of the lost baby -
For each NPC in my game I would have them assign their own dialogue trees. Ill need a form for generating that as well as having multibles of these npcs would be time costly.
While in question 3 this tells it to go back to the original

If you game needs to check if certain stages are done you can add another varible for each question so that the question
Script Name
   QuestCondition      : quest[9] =50
   Question       : “I have placed the money in the safe, it is done”
   Answer        : “”
   AnswerScript      : set quest [9] = 100 give_item 'gold' 100

So the quest condition makes sure that the question that finishes the quest only shows if they have reached the stage of  50 (50 being set by other NPCS of your quest). That way you stop it from showing prematurely and with your conditions. You can set up multible stages for multible endings of quest. For example if the player doesnt put the money in the vault and kills someone accidently you could check for stage 60 which is the stage set and you can have a different outcome.
By having a series of various stages that finish ie 50,60,70,80,90 you can have as many endings to your quests as you need.

[//BARCHboi]

Building a Chunk Engine + LOD

- --- - - -- - -Figure 7 These trees all look the same but are radically different

Essentially with open world games another important component of open world games is how they load data. A computer would have a hard time having continually rendering 10km' worth of objects so you need ways of stagmenting the landscape. You need a way of staggering the loading. One way of showing that amount of data is LOD tech.

- --- - - -- - -Figure 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail

 What this means is that the game is now faster to load and means that the game can focus more on the details the player wants to see. You can spend all the extra resources that you have freed up on like higher poly grass or extra shaders.

For instance
if the object is 100 meters away from the player display   -10000poly objects
if object is 1000 meters away from the player          -1000poly objects
if object is 2000 meters away from the player          -10 poly objects
if object is greater then 2000 meters away          -display a sprite

This way complex landscapes can be displayed easily without a loss of too much detail
In skyrim this is generated automaticly, using LOD polygon removes that calculates the gist of what it would look like an display that. There are a few tools like that already that shouldnt be too hard to find, but its a diffenate boom for getting those great landscapes that are a hallmark of OpenWorld games.

- --- - - -- - -Figure 8 These trees look seamless with the rest of the environments even though they are sprites,

Even though there are made up of sprites down there, essentially it is undectable to notice the sprites. Likewise all of the rocks and water and grass are reduced creating a seamless experience of grass and foliages and buildings – the mind fills in all the potential ai that would be down there and stores.
While in reality there is no Ai or buildings they are seeing but a reduce set of buildings.

[//BARCHboi]

Processes to breaking the game down for building your own editor

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1.   Break it down
2.   Standeredise Parts to be interchangable
3.   What is my design flow – design to it
4.   Design for unforeseeable additional propetys
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1 . break it down
What is the game going to use most of the time – if the game is open world and uses many varied landscapes then. What is the least amount of processes that the game can be used to assist in that. If you could only use 8 objects that defined your game what would they be? If may be that your openworld game is actually much simplier to build then you think.
   2 . Standeredise Parts to be interchangable
How many Systems are in the game Overlap? Are items and plants simular in that they both can be picked up and drop?.  Do they overlap? Then it it sounds like that you need only one object to handle both of these cases. This way of thinking extends to Ai as well (eg Creatures and humans both run if getting attacked). Most forms be used for multible purposes. If so this is usually a sign that you are making a form unneeded. Do plants and items need to be seperated for example
3.   What is my design flow – design to it
Are the forms in places that make sense? For example the object placer makes sense to be next to the rendering window, Are the layouts for how I place the forms in a useful left to right method that assists the production of the game.
4.   Design for unforeseeable additional propetys
Sometimes you have features that may be unexpected. Does it allow you to use additional features via a scripting language? Can you assign the scripting language? Is it easy to add features and commands to that scripting?
How many items and how flexible. Do those items have sub propetys?

[Armageddon]

Wow thank you very much for all of this.

[gimymblert]

hahaha Good!

I thought he was talking specifically about organising the narratives and that teh basic were a given. But dwelling into the basics is always good lol

[melos]

it is hard to figure out the right things to design for: make a tiny open world game first with those tools in mind and as you make big mistakes in dwesigning the right forms you will discern the correct forms and beable toamke Skryim 2

[melos]

SOURCE: my game has hundreds of npc and cuonting and thousand of words in the dialogues. i build my in-game editor to hot-load script. i eat metadat

[J-Snake]

My friend I am going to teach you how to make Bethesda Games.

It's like taking Steven Seagal to teach someone fighting.

[gimymblert]

My friend I am going to teach you how to make Bethesda Games.

It's like taking Steven Seagal to teach someone fighting.

A 7th-dan black belt in Aikido, Seagal began his adult life as an Aikido instructor in Japan.[4] He became the first foreigner to operate an Aikido dojo in Japan.[5]

[J-Snake]

I might share one approach of mine:

one of my long term goals separates between two things:

1. procedural generation
2. handcrafted design

There is a clean separation between those two but they are combined in a seamless way. And here is how, a little simplified to get the idea across:

Imagine something like a first person Metroid where the ship landing sequence isn't scripted but it is you who is approaching a procedural planet-surface the size of our earth or mars. Then there is a hidden handcrafted underground base you have to find with the help of provided coordinates, and that is where the main game takes place. So there is a clean separation between point 1 and 2. That allows point 2 (handcrafted design) to work to its full potential, with clockwork perfect mechanics (unlike Skyrim etc.). While point 1 (proc gen) is mainly there to enhance immersion but not only that, it can be necessary or beneficial to go outside and explore the planet to collect combat- and mission-critical resources such as fuel, water etc.

Games like Skyrim don't really have a balanced relationship between those 2 points; Point 1 and 2 don't do each other justice, which mainly leads to a set of lifeless interactions free from any greater context. That's why it is just a mess.