Ah, I think we're defining beats differently. What I meant by the word "beats" is not what thing happens, but rather the emotional ebbs and flows of the story. For instance, it generally would be considered bad storytelling if one were to place the climactic boss battle towards the beginning of the story and leave the level grinding to the end.
But I agree with you - game events are the meat and potatoes of gameplay. Would it be okay if I re-labeled what you're talking about to "quest"? (Or in some cases, "subquest".) I think that any story really could be boiled down into a quest, which ends up being composed of several subquests, each of which may be composed of sub-subquests. (And so on.)
Take for instance this idea: An evil warlord stomps through a village in search for the mystical MacGuffin, an artifact said to bring great power to its wielder. In the process, the hero's family is killed, but she escapes alive. The overarching quest would be to kill the warlord, but to do so, the hero must first find the warlord's secret fortress, learn an epic combat technique from a hermit on a mountain, and complete a trading chain to get the Belt of Bling. For the first of those, finding the location of the fortress may include seeking an oracle, then completing various tasks for her to get the materials and currency to cast the scrying spell.
I think there may be some setup and teardown before and after the main plot, but certainly the meat of a story is what the player is supposed to do. Would you agree with my approach above where I use a main quest seed randomly composed of several subquests?
By the way, my ultimate goal for this thread is to end up with a python script consistently generating a non-stupid random plot. I just don't want to start until I can get something in my brain that sounds like it would work.
I think you're right that a good game has "beats", but they may not be the same as outlined in Save the Cat.
I'd have to disagree with you when you say that the "beats" should vary from story to story. I think the point of the beats is that they *shouldn't* ever vary, but there's many, many different ways to fulfil them. For instance I'll go out on a limb and say any good game is required to have the proverbial "big bad." What could the antagonist be? An evil lich. An army of orcs. A curse on the hero. An evil artifact that can only be destroyed in the fires from whence it was forged. But I think *every* story probably could start there.
Any disagreements on that point? I'd like to identify what beats are essential to every good game story so I'm not generating endless boring Skyrim-style quests.
Oh, Dwarf Fortress, how I loathe thee... (Yeah, I couldn't make it past the learning curve.) Note that DF has a TON of detail about everything. I actually think this can easily go *against* a well-done random plot. I think what actually creates a good plot (I may be wrong... correct me if I am) is giving *just enough* of a framework for people to know the direction the story is going and letting them fill in the juicy details with their imagination.
Looks really awesome up close! The small one's hard to distinguish without color. I'd be interested in seeing it rendered with colors and placed next to the cave assets.
Here's my feelings on randomly generated maps: they are an easy way to add endless replayability at the expense of final polish.
My favorite thing in games is exploring a well-thought out world where the locations are quite distinct. I've been playing Half Life lately and I get a kick every time I look at an area I can't get to and later find myself looking back from that area at the place I stood a level (or more) ago.
Don't get me wrong, a polished-feeling random map isn't impossible - Blizzard did well in Diablo 3 using macrotiles. (Though I still get bored of the maps in that game.)
Okay, now that I'm done explaining why I don't like random dungeons... I actually would really love a random dungeon generator feature. I think it wouldn't be hard at all to adapt a randomly generated map from the above-mentioned algorithm to Flare. If someone wanted to do it, I can definitely teach them how to use the Flare map format.
I can't find anywhere where the actual license is specified. All I could see was that it was "open source". Any way we could get an actual license? (Preferrably as a LICENSE file in the github repo).
Ah, I think we're defining beats differently. What I meant by the word "beats" is not what thing happens, but rather the emotional ebbs and flows of the story. For instance, it generally would be considered bad storytelling if one were to place the climactic boss battle towards the beginning of the story and leave the level grinding to the end.
But I agree with you - game events are the meat and potatoes of gameplay. Would it be okay if I re-labeled what you're talking about to "quest"? (Or in some cases, "subquest".) I think that any story really could be boiled down into a quest, which ends up being composed of several subquests, each of which may be composed of sub-subquests. (And so on.)
Take for instance this idea: An evil warlord stomps through a village in search for the mystical MacGuffin, an artifact said to bring great power to its wielder. In the process, the hero's family is killed, but she escapes alive. The overarching quest would be to kill the warlord, but to do so, the hero must first find the warlord's secret fortress, learn an epic combat technique from a hermit on a mountain, and complete a trading chain to get the Belt of Bling. For the first of those, finding the location of the fortress may include seeking an oracle, then completing various tasks for her to get the materials and currency to cast the scrying spell.
I think there may be some setup and teardown before and after the main plot, but certainly the meat of a story is what the player is supposed to do. Would you agree with my approach above where I use a main quest seed randomly composed of several subquests?
By the way, my ultimate goal for this thread is to end up with a python script consistently generating a non-stupid random plot. I just don't want to start until I can get something in my brain that sounds like it would work.
@bart:
Yep, I'd agree that the "illusion of freedom" is more important to a game than actually being free to do whatever. This article was really eye opening to me: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6582/learning_from_the_masters_level_.php
I think you're right that a good game has "beats", but they may not be the same as outlined in Save the Cat.
I'd have to disagree with you when you say that the "beats" should vary from story to story. I think the point of the beats is that they *shouldn't* ever vary, but there's many, many different ways to fulfil them. For instance I'll go out on a limb and say any good game is required to have the proverbial "big bad." What could the antagonist be? An evil lich. An army of orcs. A curse on the hero. An evil artifact that can only be destroyed in the fires from whence it was forged. But I think *every* story probably could start there.
Any disagreements on that point? I'd like to identify what beats are essential to every good game story so I'm not generating endless boring Skyrim-style quests.
Here's something on TV tropes that might be an intersting start to a randomized plot generator: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSevenBasicPlots
@MoikMellah:
Oh, Dwarf Fortress, how I loathe thee... (Yeah, I couldn't make it past the learning curve.) Note that DF has a TON of detail about everything. I actually think this can easily go *against* a well-done random plot. I think what actually creates a good plot (I may be wrong... correct me if I am) is giving *just enough* of a framework for people to know the direction the story is going and letting them fill in the juicy details with their imagination.
Nice! Should be easy to put this guy in-game...
Looks really awesome up close! The small one's hard to distinguish without color. I'd be interested in seeing it rendered with colors and placed next to the cave assets.
True, the pallet is amazing, but it takes a great artist to use it to its fullest. Once again, great work!
Congrats! We're expecting in October... looks like you beat us to the punch! You definitely deserve taking some time off to be with your family.
Wow! I really love this set. Are you sure it only has 16 colors? (I kid; you're just amazing.)
Here's my feelings on randomly generated maps: they are an easy way to add endless replayability at the expense of final polish.
My favorite thing in games is exploring a well-thought out world where the locations are quite distinct. I've been playing Half Life lately and I get a kick every time I look at an area I can't get to and later find myself looking back from that area at the place I stood a level (or more) ago.
Don't get me wrong, a polished-feeling random map isn't impossible - Blizzard did well in Diablo 3 using macrotiles. (Though I still get bored of the maps in that game.)
Okay, now that I'm done explaining why I don't like random dungeons... I actually would really love a random dungeon generator feature. I think it wouldn't be hard at all to adapt a randomly generated map from the above-mentioned algorithm to Flare. If someone wanted to do it, I can definitely teach them how to use the Flare map format.
I just clarified with the author, it's definitely CC-BY-SA.
I can't find anywhere where the actual license is specified. All I could see was that it was "open source". Any way we could get an actual license? (Preferrably as a LICENSE file in the github repo).
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