Growing old and weaker with age in RPGs?

[SuicideBunny]

Can you get too old in any of the Fables?

you don't age in any of the fables.
they just have you as your younger self during the tutorials.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Chapters would be nice for generational leaps in time, but changes would have to be extrapolated from the sum of your previous characters' actions into a modularised set of distinct outcome forms for each area that still manage to cross-interact and fit together or you'll get people making train noises. Doing it once well for a game would be revolutionary. Any more and I think the scope would be quite untenable.

 

[commie]

Can you get too old in any of the Fables?

.

Don't know how much 'life' you can experience in a game that lasts 14 hours.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Don't know how much 'life' you can experience in a game that lasts 14 hours.

it is mr molyneux's singular genius that has distilled one being's life into such a short duration and yet retained all the complex characterisation inherent to decades of eventful living such as farting and tattoos

 

[Surf Solar]

Chapters would be nice for generational leaps in time, but changes would have to be extrapolated from the sum of your previous characters' actions into a modularised set of distinct outcome forms for each area that still manage to cross-interact and fit together or you'll get people making train noises. Doing it once well for a game would be revolutionary. Any more and I think the scope would be quite untenable.

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

 

[MMXI]

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

Why would you ever want cutscenes in the middle of the game?

 

[Johannes]

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

Why would you ever want cutscenes in the middle of the game?

Why would you ever want anything but a spreadsheet?

 

[Surf Solar]

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

Why would you ever want cutscenes in the middle of the game?

It doesn't really classify as 100% cutscene as it would be generated dynamically based on your actions and you got to play further based on this "cutscene", unlike other cutscenes like in BioWare games or whatever where everything is static and barely changes. But yes, like the poster above me said, why am I even explaining that to you...

 

[MMXI]

Why would you ever want anything but a spreadsheet?

I wouldn't.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Re: Chapters, and how to make them work without having a linear section of the storyline. How about recapping on past deeds. Say, every 5 or so years(of your character) you are honour/duty bound to report to your benefactor/order/lord/religious organisation to make an account of your deeds. It serves the purpose of recapping former deeds and glories, but also allows for specific opportunities to train in a specialised form/ability/skill due to the range of deeds (with an entire encyclopedia of variables to fuck over metagamers/munchkins that would require months of trial and error, or serious dissection of code) but also allows for a break in the gamepath, a definite milestone reached, a time to reflect on past accomplishments, and a bonus feat/ability reward for playing a certain way.

2:30am, and my brain has long since turned into soup.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

Why would you ever want cutscenes in the middle of the game?

It doesn't really classify as 100% cutscene as it would be generated dynamically based on your actions and you got to play further based on this "cutscene", unlike other cutscenes like in BioWare games or whatever where everything is static and barely changes. But yes, like the poster above me said, why am I even explaining that to you...

And who would make a game where you have Fallout-sized chapters and then divergent chapters after them based on C&C in previous chapters?

 

[Wyrmlord]

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

Why would you ever want cutscenes in the middle of the game?

It doesn't really classify as 100% cutscene as it would be generated dynamically based on your actions and you got to play further based on this "cutscene", unlike other cutscenes like in BioWare games or whatever where everything is static and barely changes. But yes, like the poster above me said, why am I even explaining that to you...

And who would make a game where you have Fallout-sized chapters and then divergent chapters after them based on C&C in previous chapters?

Hello 15-years-in-development game.

Any game trying to achieve such ambition would end up cutting corners on a lot of things. The end product will always fall short.

 

[Destroid]

Fallout 2 was made in maybe a year?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Whats with the bitching about time based linearity? Time is linear. While being forbidden to rescue the kings daughter because you haven't explored the forest of magic yet is indeed stupid, there is nothing stupid about being forbidden to rescue the king's daughter because she hasn't been fucking captured yet. It makes perfect sense that certain events in the world would only happen after other events you participated in. How else could anything you do have any result?

"God guys, Fallout is so lame. People don't become dead until AFTER I kill them. Why can't I make them dead before that? Stupid linear bullshit."

 

[sgc_meltdown]

As mentionend before, this can easily be done through global vars, so that player a has a totally different chapter than player b. All I wanted to show is that it is possible and could fit very well for some games, just like I always wished to have some sort of "midgame" slideshow like it was in Fallout, but keep on playing after that etc.

you should know by now that you can't please everyone on the codex

A break like this is the only way of showcasing both long term c&c effects for places with wholesale sequel-scope change (as has been mentioned) and then allowing the player free in the gameworld again, because the current implementation for a single character experience as everyone has seen is ending slides or less duration-dependent effects like existing npcs taking over another building, which does require less work and yet give more old school credit.

here is my cunning plan

go ahead with this but end your chapter with ending slides and then end the game

then store ending variables in savegame and allow for importing into your next chapter sequel for massive "lol your actions matter and change stuff for reals" existence points

now you only need to contend with people being very upset that they can't experience all the content in your sequel at once

 

[eric__s]

The Megatraveller games had one of the best character generators I've ever seen. It was pretty similar to Darklands in that you could voluntarily increase your character's age to give them more experience. At a certain age, their physical stats would start decreasing and once they reached 0 then the character had died of old age, making it possible to die before the game even begins. It was also possible to boost your physical stats so your character would live for an absurdly long time. I think I got a guy to be like 300 or something once.