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[P-P-6] Civilization v2 Brainstorming

Posted April 11, 2022 by Xhin

page 1

  • Quests
  • Various upcoming features (Town distribution/quests)
  • Guilds basic notes
  • Quests/Guilds Notes Draft 2
  • NPC Personality Traits: a rough draft
  • Nonlinear Self-building questlines
  • NPC system spitballing

    page 2

  • Talking v1 Draft / things about themselves
  • Identity System
  • Random Notes

  • There are 10 Replies


    Quests

    This is a very rough outline because it ties into other systems way too much for me to really plan it out in depth right now.

  • Each town has a limited number of quests. You can find out the exact number as well as who has quests at the Inn building, which each town has. You then have to ask around to find where that person is in the town to start the quest.

  • NPC relationships are procedurally generated and aren't stored anywhere -- if you get a quest from Bobulo to talk to his brother Joma, then Joma will know Bobulo is his brother and the quest will be built around various procgen personality / etc stats. This may lead to some weird family trees, which is acceptable.

  • Fetch quests will generate the item wherever you're supposed to go, even if you've already been there and it wasn't there originally. This should avoid coding headaches. However I'll try to use pre-existing resources (such as enemy spawns) wherever possible.

  • There will be some generation of factions / city exports / etc happening behind the scenes to make quests more interesting. Really, this is where most of the work will be.

  • December 5, 2019
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Various upcoming features (Largely deprecated)

    I've been working on several new systems to flesh the game out more and make it more interesting.

    Town distribution / travel

    There are large regions of the world known as "provinces" (currently, 4500 tiles by 4500 tiles). Each province has a Nexus, three cities, and ten towns. All 14 of these occupy one tile each in a 9x9 supergrid (each tile of the supergrid is currently 500 regular tiles). The nexus will always spawn in the middle and cities will always spawn in the middle of adjacent 3x3 grids. Towns will generate anywhere else. Some pictures will probably help here.

    There's four different ways these locations are connected together, with differing price points. Locations close together are the cheapest, "city links" connecting towns to the closest city within some range is more expensive, and the link between cities and nexuses is the most expensive. There's also an "edge" travel system that connects everything on the outer edge of the province in a kind of loop -- this is in between local travel and to-city travel but covers larger distances. Long story short, even if you have a map, finding the best route from one location to another takes skill.

    Provinces are also connected to each other by following the local rule with towns on the respective outer edges. This kind of travel requires the permission of whatever ruling body is in the nexus, but you can also set out semi-blind and try to find an edge town in another province yourself.

    Quests

    I'm working on a kind of randomly generated quests system. These will basically have you do things you'd maybe be doing anyway, along with standard courier/fetch quests. I'm going to pore over a lot of different quests in various open-world games to try to generalize them as much as possible.

    Quests are location-specific and heavily limited -- for example an outpost might only have one quest, a town might have 3-4. Quests tie back into the provinces system so knowing where your destination is and how to reach it is essential.

    Dimension changes

    Given all these changes, limiting the number of dimensions makes sense. You'll still need a few to be able to get around barriers but you really don't need an infinite amount of them. I also want to handcraft the dimensional palette some more because compared to biomes, most dimensions are pretty ugly.

    Limiting dimensions will also make it so biomes can spawn in any dimension and will encourage players to learn how to use their existing dimensions rather than just try to find something better somewhere else. There are a lot of advantages here.

    It might make sense to vary things physically from province to province rather than from dimension to dimension -- since provinces are quite large, this means getting to a different province takes work. I'm also considering creating a bit of ocean (with the swim speed thing) around a province. Overall this would help to keep the game self-contained within a province while still providing variety over time.

    January 22, 2021
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Guilds Basic Notes [maybe needs review]

    Reposting this here since it's part of this system now. It probably needs a review though.

    Guilds are essentially joinable factions that are vying for power over the entire Shatterloop universe. By joining one you can help it succeed by helping it grow, helping its members, and sabotaging other Guilds. Along the way you'll get perks in the Shops and Outposts associated with the Guild, and at later stages you'll be able to earn quite a bit of wealth for yourself through the Trading mechanic. The Guilds system should also be fairly fun to play on its own -- it's a collection of quests and mechanics that are half random and half handcrafted but either way are heavily influenced by whichever way your world generated so like other game puzzles you get a pretty unique experience every time.

    Basic Stuff

  • Interacting with the Guilds system isn't required in any way. This is an optional system.

  • As pointed out in my Lore post over in worldbuilding, Guilds are the main power structure of the world and tie into absolutely everything, including the weird layout of towns and houses.

  • Each seed generates some fixed number of guilds -- I'm thinking 7 for now. These have very different roles and territory from game to game -- because of how the generation works, each one is composed of an alliance of several smaller economic or magical or religious guilds.

  • You can belong to more than one guild at once, but you're eventually going to have to choose between them because you'll need to sabotage other guilds in order to promote yours to the top.

  • There's a progressive system in place that lets you "move through the ranks" essentially -- you start out doing really banal low-level quests but eventually work your way up to more diplomatic or tactical missions. I'm not quite sure what that looks like yet, but you'll be able to track where you are on the ladder.

  • The ultimate goal with a guild is taking over the universe -- this goal is heavily dependent on the procedural generation so unlike other ways of moving through the ranks it's impossible to say how long this goal will take.

  • Guilds have several subgroups that compose them, either willingly or unwillingly. The generation here heavily influences the way guild questlines work -- strengthening your guild internally or stealing subgroups from other guilds are a major part of the gameplay.

    Guild Components

  • Guilds have a specialty that ties in somewhat to their generated backstories -- they can be Gatherers (shop types like lumberjacks or geologists), Crafters (shop types like bladesmiths or outfitters), or Magicians (shop types like alchemists or zoos).

  • Each guild has three HQ's per dimension -- these are essentially random shops inside their territory, though it may be more handcrafted depending on how the generation works. HQ's are where you go to join the Guild or get high-level questlines.

  • Guilds have "territory", which is essentially a list of specific shops that are affiliated with them. If they're within the guild's specialty or fit into the guild's backstory, their loyalty is more solid, however this isn't always the case. The only shop types that are unconnected to Guilds are Pawn Shops, General Stores and Inns since they serve more specialized functions. They can definitely have preferences (and tie into questlines), but they're not supposed to. There's lore associated with this.

  • Every NPC in a shop associated with the Guild belongs to that Guild. They're not necessarily loyal or happy about it, but being Guildless is basically a death sentence.

  • You'll occasionally run across Adventurers outside of Towns -- these are also associated with a Guild, or often more than one. Like you they can kind of play the field because of their unique living situations.

  • Outposts are associated with Guilds -- they are in fact the highest ranking members of them and control a lot of the raw products coming into them from automated farms/fisheries/etc. Higher-level quests tend to involve these people directly, and medium-level sabotage involves their outposts.

  • Mines are associated with guilds -- if your Guild's specialty is Gathering, they'll definitely own Mines, and Crafters tend to swing that way as well (especially if their focus is armorers or bladesmiths). Magicians may not own any, and if they do they'll have fragile loyalty.

  • Ruins are associated with guilds but it depends heavily on the guild's relationship with magic -- magicians are obviously going to control ruins, but other groups will too if they have magical or tetrad-based subgroups in their core. Anything else and they might own them but it'll be fragile loyalty.

    Joining a Guild

  • Any time you interact with an NPC or a Guild you'll see which Guild they belong to (at least officially). From here, you'll be able to learn more about the guild and they'll tell you where to go in order to join it.

  • Joining a Guild requires going to one of the three HQ's in the dimension and speaking with the shopkeeper there.

  • You can belong to more than one Guild at once, but you'll eventually get sabotage/war/etc missions that will require you to pick a side. Getting to the absolute end of the Guild questline will eventually require picking a final side, for obvious reasons.

    Guild Perks

  • Shopkeepers and shop services in the Guild's network are cheaper, and you can sell items for more as well.

  • You don't get town-wide penalties if you get caught stealing in a house of an opposing faction.

  • As you help a guild grow, shops in its network can start offering more items for sale.

  • If you advance far enough in a guild, you can activate the home dimension's aleph conduit to access trade networks. This is a way to bypass the normal requirements (which involve dungeons and planes) to access alternate dimensions.

  • Similarly, at high levels of advancement you're able to access the Trading mechanic, which lets you move a lot of money around. This is lucrative for the Guild and helps it grow, but you can skim a good bit of wealth off the top for yourself as well.

    Guild Advancement Levels

    Guilds have several advancement levels, which tie into the kinds of quests you get. There will probably be titles or something, but for now they're represented numerically:

  • Level 1 -- The guild essentially doesn't trust you at all. The only quests you can get at this level are low-level fetch quests for the robotic shopkeepers to try to build up some cred.

  • Level 2 -- At this level, questlines get a bit more interesting -- you'll start to see some low-level sabotage and doing some quests for low-level NPCs that belong in the guild in order to improve their loyalty. These quests come from low-level NPCs in the guild.

  • Level 3 -- At this point you've actually helped the Guild to a certain extent, so you're trusted to be part of their campaigns. This is where guild questlines start to really pick up -- you'll be able to take donations from guild members, maintain the loyalty of subgroups within the guild, do some higher-level sabotage, and try to gain alliances with disloyal subgroups of other guilds. These quests come from certain NPC's within the HQ's of a Guild.

  • Level 4 -- At this point, you're a vital member of the Guild and have repeatedly proved yourself. So at this stage you'll meet with the upper echelon of the Guild -- the people who live in outposts and ruins and control the guild at the highest levels. This is the point where you can go to alternate dimensions if you couldn't yet, do the Trading mechanic, sabotage outposts/ruins of competing guilds, and essentially go to open war with other guilds to try to gain more territory. The ultimate goal here is to get yourself elected to Level 5, which requires multiple people in the upper echelon of the guild to support you in that.

  • Level 5 -- At this stage, you are a member of the upper echelon and your tasks shift away from fixed questlines to gain influence and more towards open-ended tasks whose ultimate goal is taking over all the other guilds.

    Conclusion

    This post should lay out the fundamentals of how Guilds work. I still need to lay out some of the more detailed specifics (particularly around questlines), however that is going to tie too much into Quests and Outposts. So sometime after I get drafts of those systems in my notes I'll be able to pull this project up again.

    Ultimately, all three of these systems are tightly connected, as is a good bit of the Lore and Story, so I'm being careful in my approach to this set of notes. This is fortunately the last set of systems I have to make notes for -- after this, all the work is going to go into actually programming my notes and integrating things together (including lore and magic, which are really integrative systems more than anything else).

  • March 17, 2021
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Quests/Guilds Notes Draft 2

    This set of notes should simplify several things (like Guilds) while allowing more of the emergent procgen feel to come through.

    Basic stuff

  • The identity system is heavily in play -- I have some ideas for more categories (like families and ancestral families that tie into lore), certain things will be simplified, and I should be pretty close to fleshing that set of notes out.

  • The end result of the identity system is that each NPC has a set of relationships with other NPCs, their town, their work, and their life. The most conflicted ones of those turn into "Quests".

  • Quests are a system that make you do some set of tasks in order to resolve that conflict. The tasks should be largely procedurally generated if possible -- that will require analyzing a lot of other game questlines and generalizing.

  • Whenever the questline concludes, the actions taken in it cycle back through the identity system, changing things permanently. Because of this, some quests might become uncompleteable as you finish other quests -- you could probably return to the quest giver to update it, unless they have changed and don't want to do the quest anymore. Will need to explore this a bit.

  • These changes can then open up additional quests.

  • All actions taken affect only the provinces where people you've interacted with are, including the questgiver).

  • Actions can sometimes shift the balance of power in a town or province, which can have pretty dramatic effects.

    Value System

  • Buying/selling from shops or using services will increase their value.

  • Stealing from shops or moving furniture/NPCs around too much will decrease their value.

    Value calculations will go back through the Identity system and can have effects, beneficial or otherwise.

    The value system can affect shops as well -- make them sell more or less items, have a higher or lower markup.

    Advice System

    You can ask NPCs about a variety of topics. There might be areas of conflict in there where you can offer advice. If accepted (it's random), this will effect changes through the identity system as the NPC does whatever you want them to do.

    This is somewhat of a passive Quests system that happens as you're talking -- it should help make the world feel more alive without having those actions happen randomly on their own (which was my original idea).

    Guilds simplification

    You can't join guilds anymore -- you can however work for them. You can still do the same things you could in the old notes post, but this time they're general nonlinear objectives. This should encourage players to actually figure things out and also not be bound to whichever guild they decided to join.

  • Each Guild has 3 HQ's per province chosen at the start of the generation. These locations don't change, so as things change in the world, Guilds will get increasingly desperate as they lose power, offering more Quests.

  • Guilds don't offer Quests, they instead offer Objectives, such as making disloyal subgroups more loyal or making guild members happier. These objectives don't give you specific instructions -- you have to figure out how to accomplish them by making changes to the civilization via quests, advice and adding/removing shop value. These objectives can change as the world does, however any objective you've taken on that changes will mean you get the reward for it. You can only have one Guild objective at a time.

    Conclusion

    This system is getting a lot closer to a complete set of notes. I have some more work to do on specifics obviously, but the new version of this system should make it a lot easier to get there, and put the complexity in the Identity system where it belongs.

  • March 17, 2021
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    NPC Personality Traits: A very rough draft

    Things explored so far

  • Guild loyalty -- affects how likely they are to betray their guild's interests.

  • Guild fellow loyalty -- A separate metric. If they're high in this but low in guild loyalty they'd be willing to betray their guild but not if it hurts other members of the guild. Meanwhile if they're low in this but high in loyalty they'd be willing to sacrifice their own members to strengthen the guild.

  • Travel interest -- Determines how much the NPC likes traveling.

  • Travel amount -- The amount the NPC actually travels. If this is high and the interest is low or vice-versa they'll be dissatisfied. Additionally, the higher this is the more people/towns/etc they'll know.

  • Relationships with others of different guilds -- Complicated and hard to pin down; will probably be scrapped.

  • NPC/Job relationship -- half deterministic (based on personality match), half random.

  • Combative personality -- A metric that determines if an NPC has a normal reaction to people they don't match with, tries to be friends with them anyway for some higher good (which varies), or is excessively antagonistic towards them.

  • Dislike of authority -- If neutral will be cynical towards leadership, if low will make them very defensive of leadership actions, if high will make them antagonistic. Probably ties into a lot more too -- people who are both leaders and dislike authority will be a lot fairer with it. I imagine being in that position and being under the wing of a bigger guild would make you try to get out from under them.

  • May 18, 2021
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Nonlinear self-building questlines

    These are still just raw ideas, but I'm thinking of several things here:

  • The main component of the quest is delivering or fetching something to a particular NPC in a particular province/town. Might be right next door, might be 5 trade routes away in some isolated town (or extracurricular structure even). It may be a bit more complicated than that (deliver to multiple NPCs, pick up the item in transit (or build it) etc) but that's the basic idea.

  • NPC relationships to each other and guilds play a factor -- they can outright refuse to let you complete the quest, unless you do something for them first or maybe give them money or something. This can't be infinite -- eventually someone will just agree to it on a whim even if they hate the other guy.

  • The end result is increasing questgiver happiness (which might actually be bad depending on what your guild quests are, so maybe you get options where secondary quests are involved), money and/or blueprints for you, maybe economic or interpersonal impact somehow.

    I think this basic concept is enough to build on or refine.

  • December 31, 2021
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    NPC system Spitballing

    Okay so this one is definitely way too complicated in all my notes so far.

    The kind of system I'm trying to build with NPCs is one where they have more organic questlines based on their work, interests and connections with towns and other NPCs.

    A couple things need to happen to towns to make this possible:

  • The economy needs to have more depth/meaning, like the different guilds interact with each other and create products and perform services and contribute to society in some way.

  • There needs to be things for NPCs that aren't just work -- entertainment, vacations, cultural events, maybe religion (seems like it could pretty offensive if played badly). They need to have romantic relationships and strong friendships and all the stuff that goes into those .

  • There needs to be some kind of power structure. I explored this a bit with farms being where the elites live, which is pretty unique and I like it. The elites are also workers in this society and people probably don't have to work much overall because it's still a pretty technologically advanced society, just not as much as it used to be.

  • February 6, 2022
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Talking v1 Draft

    I have some ideas on how I want to lay this out, though it's definitely more complicated because of the large variety of things you can ask NPCs:

  • Personal things about themselves

  • Personal things about other people they're close with or know.

  • Things related to various quest types, including ones they start.

  • Things they know about the world.

  • Things that are kinda essential to gameplay like basic directions.

  • Things they're specialized in which use various info scanning systems.

    Having sections with their own separate systems might make sense or might just overcomplicate the UI. This will probably go through multiple drafts even while programming it. Got to start somewhere though.

    Things about themselves

    NPCs have personalities, interests, goals and ideas. I'm not sure how much of this is explicit or implicit, probably will be *very* explicit on the first draft so I can debug the systems easier.

    What I do want is a topical approach the way Morrowind does, ideally without the wiki maze that opens up other dialogue options. Maybe some better categorization. If I organize it well enough then maybe I can put all the talking systems under the same umbrella.

    Things like asking their interests should be pretty straightforward - they just list them. Maybe there are wiki links there so you can understand the lore better or from their perspective at least. Maybe they can recommend specific lore books that explain it in greater depth from different perspectives.

    NPCs will probably be the main access point you have to lore, so I should really structure the lore system around their interactions. I definitely like the idea of writing the lore from different perspectives - some overly analytical, some very opinionated one way or the other. It's a lot of extra work but it really helps flesh out the world and its overall immersion.

    So like, you'd ask an NPC about their interests, and they might tell you about some materials-oriented projects they're working on or maybe they just like spending time at lesiure forts. Leisure forts would be a wiki link where the NPC tells you what they think about them and what they know, and maybe recommends lore books. You could then ask around to find them, or shop booksellers or Libraries or unlock them in additional ways.

    NPC close relationships should be programmed on province load, and those would probably be explicit topics. You could however ask them about anyone in the province and that would double-procgen the NPCs to figure out their relationship, which would not be close. Possibly have seen them around, at parties, maybe have worked with them or picked up supplies from them depending on what the NPCs actually do. Could like or hate them, respect or disgust. Could be very one-sided.

    If you asked them about a particular personality stats, then in early alpha they'd explicitly tell you, both both the topic and responses need to be more disguised in the full game to increase immersion.

    Like early game you'd pick the "personality" category and then pick the "guild loyalty" option and they would say "Not loyal to their current Guild but is necessary for survival.". Meanwhile in the full game you'd get a topic like "what do you think about guild x" and the answer would be "don't really care about them but have got to do what I've got to do to survive".

  • April 10, 2022
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Identity System

    This system is a collection of procedurally-generated traits to civilization-based entities. It forms the foundation of Quests and Guilds, and also generally makes the world more interesting and worth exploring.

    This post lays out general notes -- actual details will come later.

    Basic Civilization Entities

    These are all procedurally generated, and form the foundation of later generation.

  • Guilds -- 7-10 Guilds are generated. These each uniquely focus on some aspect of the world or its economy, and are assigned a variety of "personality" traits that say how they treat their members, economics, competition, etc.

  • Towns/Cities/Nexuses -- These traits are generated when the province is loaded. Cities are assigned economic specialties that may not match the shops they contain (but are more likely to). Cities are also assigned province economic power rankings -- cities are more likely to have higher ranks (as are nexuses), though that's not universal. Lastly, they're given vague cultural traits.

  • NPCs -- All NPCs in the province are given personality traits, which will probably be a modified version of the way DF does this. Other things will be explored like overall loyalty or likelihood of travel. There will also be some traits that involve their relationship with others of different guilds, etc.

    Shops

    Shops are the basic entity of civilization. The generation here is half random and half based on the basic layer above.

  • Guild status -- Each shop, with the exception of the neutral shops (such as general stores) is assigned to a Guild. Neutral shops are instead assigned to their respective handcrafted guilds. Within a Guild, each one is given a ranking within it -- this is based on how close or far the shop is from the Guild's specialty and how close or far the town's specialty is from the Guild's specialty. Anything beyond that is random.

  • Guild Hub -- the top three shops of a guild become that guild's "hub" within the province. These have to all be in different towns however, so the algorithm is a bit more involved.

  • Guild Loyalty -- Each shop is given a completely random loyalty score to every single guild (including its own). Hubs will always have 100% loyalty to their own guild. Hub loyalties to other guilds if matched will be classified as "local alliances" and matched disloyalties as "local enemies".

  • Leadership -- Each shop is given a "leader" within it chosen based on the NPC with the highest leadership trait.

  • Jobs -- Each shop has a variety of jobs, which overlaps with other shops or are somewhat generalized. This depends on the overall shatterloop economy and I'll probably have to create some kind of post exploring the lore here. Jobs are assigned to the NPCs within based on priority. Guild hubs have some very high-priority jobs that involve managing the guild's economy.

  • NPC/Job relationships -- NPCs don't necessarily like their job. The trait here is based half on their personality and half random -- it's possible to have an NPC that appears perfectly suited for their job, but they still don't like it, and this can translate into interesting stories depending on what else is going on.

    NPC relationships

    Building on this, NPCs have some additional traits associated with them:

  • Their loyalty to their current guild. This is based on their loyalty trait and how close their guild's traits match their own. One can sometimes account for the other but if both are low enough they won't be loyal at all.

  • Their relationship with the city they live in. This is based on several things like cultural traits matching personal traits, the city's economic level matching their expectations of luxury, and their likelihood of traveling. Nothing here should be random.

  • Their relationship with other NPCs in the city. This isn't assigned from the outset, it's generated as needed. This is based on several things such as guild differences, combative personalities, guild loyalty differences, etc. I'll need to explore the other systems a bit before I can really do this right.

  • If the NPC has a job that requires travel or they like traveling, they'll also have relationships with the NPCs they're likely to meet. This also requires some exploring of how those jobs or traveling traits work.

    Political control

    All of the Guild factors combined together determine their control over a particular town or province and how strong or fragile that power is.

  • Town leverage is measured by a simple majority of shops within that town. Failing that, a town's links to other towns/cities are explored to add more power to that guild based on power concentrations nearby. This can be recursive but hopefully doesn't take too many steps to figure out.

  • The strength of that town leverage, meanwhile, is based on the loyalty of those shops relative to the loyalty of other guilds in the area.

  • Both town leverages and town leverage strengths are replayed at a higher level, determining who has the most power over the Province and how fragile that power is.

    Things built on this foundation

    The identity system will form the basis of questlines -- any area where there's conflict or disloyalty or just people hating their jobs or leaders will be explored by the quests and guilds systems. Solutions (or potential solutions) will also be based on the traits within the system -- like if someone hates their job you might be able to find them a new one in a shop that's lacking in that job. This should give the quests an emergent feel, particularly if you have to actually ask around to come up with your own solutions.

    One other thing worth mentioning is that actions you take should alter the balance of power slightly in the area, which when it runs all the way through the system again means that conflicts can be closer to escalating or guilds can be poised to gain more power. This should also make the late-stage guild questlines feel more emergent without doing a significant amount of work.

    A lot of this is based on what the system is actually capable of, however. I'll have to build it up and see how feasible these ideas are.

  • April 11, 2022
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

    Random Notes (needs reorg)

    A couple random things before I forget:

    Quests

  • You should be able to be in multiple quests at once, although quests can make other quests uncompleteable -- obvious stuff should maybe be checked and erase the quest as canceled. Only allowing one quest at a time would be kinda annoying for players.

    Civilization Stuff

  • I want to build out the Civ lore as I'm building the systems so that NPC talking integrates with it better and I can test the lore system out early. I can always make changes but this will give a solid foundation for the rest of the lore. Could make a conworlds post for it as well.

    Story

  • A lot of the story elements (particularly those for technology or information) should come from Pivots -- you're part of the maintenance guild so this makes sense, they're static objects so I can handcraft, and additionally, they're heavily connected to Tangle.

  • There could also be additional handcrafted NPCs like Asher -- appear where normal NPCs would but have a different function and purpose.

  • June 20, 2022
    Xhin
    Sky's the limit

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