Paradigm Shift

[Glitchfinder]

I was just reading through this, and I've got to say, I'm impressed with how much thought has gone into this game. There was one thing I wanted to comment on, though. You mentioned that you wanted a system to keep the player informed of current events, and that it wouldn't exactly be objective. That instantly made me think of the radio system in Fallout 3. In that, you'd be hearing the same DJ all the time, and he'd be talking about all sorts of current stuff. I also really liked how he tended to follow your exploits like they were proof that good still existed in the world. (He was always calling you "the kid from vault 101", or just "101", or variations of the above)

Anyway, I'd love to see a similar system get implemented in a game like this. It could easily have multiple radio channels, distributed over various areas. If I remember correctly, the radio even had ads.

 

[Perihelion]

Yes, that was actually the inspiration for this idea. It's gonna be like that. There will be several different news networks that are skewed in wildly different ways, so it'll expose you to the point of view of certain segments of the population as well as make you think a little more critically than just getting an infodump.

Actually, it might be neat to have the encyclopedia thing do something along the same lines. Like you can research things on the Internet, but there's no Wikipedia that enforces a neutral point of view or something, so you'll have to kind of piece together the real story.

 

[Glitchfinder]

Actually, it might be neat to have the encyclopedia thing do something along the same lines. Like you can research things on the Internet, but there's no Wikipedia that enforces a neutral point of view or something, so you'll have to kind of piece together the real story.

That would actually depend on what exactly the encyclopedia was. If it is the remnants of the internet, you could do all sorts of stuff. For example, you could have whole networks of abandoned sites. You could also have corrupted sites and servers, which give partial information. You could even have different sections of this internet, depending on where you are. (It's been broken up into pieces, after all)

The best part about an idea like that is that you'll probably run into news networks as one of the most common type of up-to-date site. (Since they are probably the only thing that any group really has time for in a world like that, and news probably has a higher priority.

I recommend that you actually separate the encyclopedia idea into two things. The network, and then a compilation of what you have seen and learned, as well as what you have left from the collective's databases. (And you could probably have memory storage from the collective stashed somewhere, that you can use to add to your personal encyclopedia)

 

[Perihelion]

Yeah. A lot of the encyclopedia entries are gonna be about old things or worldbuilding details, so it might be easier to get the real story. The Internet is fragmented in a lot of ways, I think. There was the Radlight quarantine, and there are crazy ai colonies around that do weird things to data, and there were probably a lot of events that just destroyed the infrastructure in a lot of parts of the world. So while there's still a lot of information on the net, it's a lot less accessible and a lot more random. And the news articles will be the most heavily biased things since everyone's reporting with a certain slant.

I like the idea of downloading things into your personal storage. I can see making finding info a minigame, and once you find x number of articles on a subject, your character writes up a little summary and puts it in the personal database, but since a lot of it is just necessary to understand what's going on, maybe I shouldn't get too intense with it.

As far as using info from the collective goes, they probably have random bits of information in their heads, but it's really, really unreliable--it's like taking one small segment of a hard drive and looking at parts of things. Hell, even their own personal memories aren't clear anymore. You might be able to access the moderator ai still, but I think it's kind of horribly broken.



On an unrelated note, I revisited Agata's concept art because parts of it were really, really lazy.

 

[PK8]

Heya! I've been meaning to post something but man, all that info! I had to re-read some things over and over, still doing it. That's quite a bunch of info and I dig it. :P Decided on what game-making program you're going to create this on yet?

Anywho, I think I might have a few ideas and I apologise in advance if they suck or if they sound kind of ludicrous. So yeah, a few thoughts. :P

• crazy shit that can happen to collectives (like, stuff that could go wrong, e.g. what about sleep/death, or other aspects of these things I may or may not be thinking about) / crazy shit you can do with collectives (like, types/structures, different ways superintelligences could go awry)
  • How about this: The further distant the collectives are, the less "connected" they are (in terms of teamwork) and the less intelligent they get while they're away from each other? (I think I'm thinking of something along the lines of signal strengths.) Nah, silly idea.
  • Ideas as to what to do if one of the collectives die.
    • The remaining collective also dies.
    • The remaining collective's mind messes up a little. (Decrease of knowledge, stuff like that)
    • The remaining collective gains the other collective's knowledge? Hmm...
  • Same things could be said about sleeping, I guess. *shrugs* :tongue:
  • This collective stuff has me thinking about conjoined twins now.
• crazy shit you can do with brain hacking/implant viruses besides information-mining (advertising? planting subliminal thoughts? falsifying memories? I think I want to shy away from outright controlling people)
  • Advertisements in your sleep. (I blame Futurama)
    • The advertisements abruptly interrupts your dreams (and nightmares).
    • You cannot do anything to avoid the advertisement (can't wake up from it or control it) while it's showing.
  • Twitching? :P *shrugs*
  • An increased wanting for what's being advertised?
  • Planting subliminal thoughts, falsifying memories... that sounds pretty cool.
  • How are you going to get this in the game?
• crazy shit you can do for puzzles and dungeons and whatnot with cyborg thingies and/or controlling two characters simultaneously
  • This is the only puzzle I've thought of which involves controlling two characters simultaneously. I've seen this done before in a pretty old-looking (I mean NES old) game I've played. I forgot it's name.
    Anyway, there's a maze. The maze is as large as the screen. (Let's say: 20x17 tiles if you're using RMXP) The maze is separated in half. Eh, I'm not too good at explaining things so I'll provide a screencap of a quick puzzle I did in RMXP.
    
    
    • You have to simultaneously control the two characters on the screen.
    • Both characters can go up and down when pressing up or down.
    • Both characters have to reach the top of the puzzle (or the bottom if you want to set it up that way) and be near each other to beat it.
    • The separated mazes can be slightly asymmetrical to give it a challenge.
    • Pressing left arrowkey would make the character on the left go right, while the character on the right goes left. Same goes for pressing the right arrowkeys.

And that's all I've to say so far. Keep it up! :D

P.S.: Check this out: Click.

 

[Perihelion]

Heya! I've been meaning to post something but man, all that info! I had to re-read some things over and over, still doing it. That's quite a bunch of info and I dig it. :P Decided on what game-making program you're going to create this on yet?

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I'm considering RM again. One, it uses Ruby, and two, I can use some of the default systems as placeholders until I get the real things working. This'll let me release functioning demos. RM also has a nice interface, and I'm pretty sure I'm not doing isometric tiles, so I don't have to worry about that.

• crazy shit that can happen to collectives (like, stuff that could go wrong, e.g. what about sleep/death, or other aspects of these things I may or may not be thinking about) / crazy shit you can do with collectives (like, types/structures, different ways superintelligences could go awry)
  • How about this: The further distant the collectives are, the less "connected" they are (in terms of teamwork) and the less intelligent they get while they're away from each other? (I think I'm thinking of something along the lines of signal strengths.) Nah, silly idea.

• • 
    I'm actually gonna do some interesting things with that. Because, yeah, they're only connected as long as their signal strength is strong, and I've been thinking about various ways to do that. It requires some infrastructure. The best case scenario is that all of your components are physically wired together, because that's hard to disrupt, but that failing, I think they use encrypted short-range radio (basically like wireless Internet). So if you disrupt the radio signal, you will fuck them up. Disconnecting a component from a collective will tend to drive it mad because it needs the other components to function. And I intend to play with signal strength and things of that ilk at some point in the game.
    
    

    [*]Ideas as to what to do if one of the collectives die.
    

    • The remaining collective also dies.
    • The remaining collective's mind messes up a little. (Decrease of knowledge, stuff like that)
    • The remaining collective gains the other collective's knowledge? Hmm...

    Your terminology is kind of confusing me. Are you referring to the two player characters? Collective refers to the whole entity; the individual people are called components.
    
    I should probably update the list of things to comment on, because I think I have some of it straightened out now. One component in a collective dying will disorient the other components, but uh, I think their implants have the ability to upload all information stored on that component after death. This info will generally be stored on the filter ai, and it makes the shock of death less bad. Pure communes and things of that ilk that don't have some computer component have substantially more problems, and of course collectives get hit harder if they're small.
    
    Too many deaths will destabilize the collective and probably cause the entire thing to fall apart. Which is actually one reason Helix poured so many resources into making its soldiers as individually powerful as possible--them dying hurts it a lot. I mean, I figure it kept them at a lower priority to mitigate the ill effects of death, but still.
    
    

    • Same things could be said about sleeping, I guess. *shrugs* :tongue:

    I was talking about sleep with people on IRC a while ago, actually. I think the subconscious processing of the collective is done in large part by sleeping components.
    
    

    • crazy shit you can do with brain hacking/implant viruses besides information-mining (advertising? planting subliminal thoughts? falsifying memories? I think I want to shy away from outright controlling people)
    

    • Advertisements in your sleep. (I blame Futurama)
      • The advertisements abruptly interrupts your dreams (and nightmares).
      • You cannot do anything to avoid the advertisement (can't wake up from it or control it) while it's showing.
    • Twitching? :P *shrugs*
    • An increased wanting for what's being advertised?
    • Planting subliminal thoughts, falsifying memories... that sounds pretty cool.

    • 
      Advertisements in your sleep are a good idea. I'll write it down.
      
      

      • How are you going to get this in the game?

    Dunno. A lot of this is just background information. The Radlight Dominion in particular does lots of implant-based advertising, though.
    
    

    • crazy shit you can do for puzzles and dungeons and whatnot with cyborg thingies and/or controlling two characters simultaneously
    

    • This is the only puzzle I've thought of which involves controlling two characters simultaneously. I've seen this done before in a pretty old-looking (I mean NES old) game I've played. I forgot it's name.
      Anyway, there's a maze. The maze is as large as the screen. (Let's say: 20x17 tiles if you're using RMXP) The maze is separated in half. Eh, I'm not too good at explaining things so I'll provide a screencap of a quick puzzle I did in RMXP.
      
      
      • You have to simultaneously control the two characters on the screen.
      • Both characters can go up and down when pressing up or down.
      • Both characters have to reach the top of the puzzle (or the bottom if you want to set it up that way) and be near each other to beat it.
      • The separated mazes can be slightly asymmetrical to give it a challenge.
      • Pressing left arrowkey would make the character on the left go right, while the character on the right goes left. Same goes for pressing the right arrowkeys.

Hey, that's a neat idea. Normally they can move independently of each other, but I can see them working like that if their connection gets fucked up somehow.

P.S.: Check this out: Click.

That's neat. I've bookmarked it.

 

[PK8]

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I'm considering RM again. One, it uses Ruby, and two, I can use some of the default systems as placeholders until I get the real things working. This'll let me release functioning demos. RM also has a nice interface, and I'm pretty sure I'm not doing isometric tiles, so I don't have to worry about that.

Ah crap, I didn't read the other posts. And that's cool.

I'm actually gonna do some interesting things with that. Because, yeah, they're only connected as long as their signal strength is strong, and I've been thinking about various ways to do that. It requires some infrastructure. The best case scenario is that all of your components are physically wired together, because that's hard to disrupt, but that failing, I think they use encrypted short-range radio (basically like wireless Internet). So if you disrupt the radio signal, you will fuck them up. Disconnecting a component from a collective will tend to drive it mad because it needs the other components to function. And I intend to play with signal strength and things of that ilk at some point in the game.

That's kick ass. I want to see that in action.

Your terminology is kind of confusing me. Are you referring to the two player characters? Collective refers to the whole entity; the individual people are called components.

I should probably update the list of things to comment on, because I think I have some of it straightened out now. One component in a collective dying will disorient the other components, but uh, I think their implants have the ability to upload all information stored on that component after death. This info will generally be stored on the filter ai, and it makes the shock of death less bad. Pure communes and things of that ilk that don't have some computer component have substantially more problems, and of course collectives get hit harder if they're small.

Too many deaths will destabilize the collective and probably cause the entire thing to fall apart. Which is actually one reason Helix poured so many resources into making its soldiers as individually powerful as possible--them dying hurts it a lot. I mean, I figure it kept them at a lower priority to mitigate the ill effects of death, but still.

Oh shoot! Sorry about the incorrect use of terminology. I meant components, yes. And gotcha.

Advertisements in your sleep are a good idea. I'll write it down.

Ooh, thanks.

Hey, that's a neat idea. Normally they can move independently of each other, but I can see them working like that if their connection gets fucked up somehow.

Thanks. :D
Oh hey, I just thought of ideas that would work with the idea I posted in my previous post. Perhaps an obvious idea but I'll suggest it anyway. How about putting in some switches that the player has to activate which would either open certain doors, close certain doors or open doors in some places of the maze while closing doors in others? Just a thought, I suppose. :P

P.S.: Check this out: Click.

That's neat. I've bookmarked it.

=w=b

 

[Perihelion]

Oh hey, I just thought of ideas that would work with the idea I posted in my previous post. Perhaps an obvious idea but I'll suggest it anyway. How about putting in some switches that the player has to activate which would either open certain doors, close certain doors or open doors in some places of the maze while closing doors in others? Just a thought, I suppose. :P

Yeah, I'm gonna do that for some puzzles. Like I was thinking one of the early puzzles would have the soldier navigating a maze while the node is in a control room flipping switches. It would work here too.

 

[bluehazed]

Bloody terriffic. I'm quite happy to see this up again :D I like your ideas.

 

[Perihelion]

I've been thinking about setting. The Middle East is cool, but it has a ton of issues already that are completely unrelated to what I feel like my game is about. For example, I tend to gravitate towards female characters, and the region is full of women's rights issues, and I really don't think I can deal with things like fundamentalists without people going LOL MUSLIM TERRORISTS, and yeah, I'm introducing enough conflict and cultural issues and stuff that I don't really want to have to work around existing stuff. I believe in conflicts arising from the world the story's set in, and I don't really trust myself to handle the issues of a culture I don't know well with deftness and sensitivity.

I mean, I was planning on setting it in a fictional Arabic country anyway, so it could theoretically just be completely Westernized or something, but that sorta defeats the point. Except for flavor, anyway. But I could work with that, maybe.

I don't know what I wanna do. I could theoretically stick it in Europe somewhere (and I again run into issues with not knowing the culture, but at least there aren't like rampant human rights issues everywhere already), as a few of the characters are currently from there and it would make things tie together more, but Arabic cyberpunk has a cool flavor. I like the architecture and the climate and whatnot better than Europe. I dunno.

@_@

On the plus side, I figured out a couple things about the plot and did a little more worldbuilding. Might post more on the latter later.


EDIT: If I put it in Europe, which I'm leaning towards even though I love deserts and things (;_, I'm thinking it's gonna be in the Western Balkans. Which is funny because I just got done ranting about how I don't trust myself to handle the issues of cultures I'm not familiar with, but....uh, at least it's less contemporary than the Middle East, right?

 

[Berserker]

You could always set it in Australia >_>

 

[eternal_magus]

With all this brain-hacking going on (and having recently watched Ghost in the Shell: SAC), it got me thinking. Perhaps you could have hacking done on a level where what the character sees is false? For whatever reason someone has hacked a door out of existence, and anyone who looks in that area will think they're seeing a brick wall. You'd need someone who wasn't affected by the hack to get to that area etc.

 

[Closedworlds]

I very much like the idea of the setting being Arabic. It would be more unique because of the mix of technology. I very rarely see games in this type of setting which is a shame because it is some of the best architecture.