let's give more RGP depth to plug-ins

Hello, fellow denizens of the Coldstone web board.

At the Escape Velocity Developer's Corner forum, we recently had a thread dealing with ways to make missions (that are like quests in RPGs) more interesting and realistic, not just bring this to point A to point B and be well paid for it. Which made me react that we could learn from RPG and RPG scenario developers how to make missions more interesting, even just Fedex missions. So that's what I'm doing now.

I wish to tap from your collective wisdom, knowledge, and experience. What would YOU advise us to make our missions do, even regular, repeatable cargo runs, so that they really seem interesting and not give the player the impression he's just ferrying cargo.

To remind you, in Nova the player is an independant ship captain going from planets/stations to planets/stations in different systems through hyperspace. Missions are offered either in a dedicaced place of the planet, the Mission BBS (similar to a help-wanted ad panel), that lists "regular" missions the player can take, or missions can be offered via a text box expaining what happens (a man comes out of nowhere offering the player to "win a few bucks easily", but with no question asked, for instance) with answers yes/no (but the answers can be modified), in other places of the spaceport: the bar, the outfitting (place for finding stuff to equip the ship with), the shipyard (place to buy ships), the commodity exchange. Another text box with answer "okay" may appear after the mission has been accepted to detail what has to be done.

The player can be asked to travel to other planets, that can be random, in order (with text boxes at each stop), picking cargo here, dropping it there, etc, but there can be no cargo (and cargo itself has a wide meaning, it can be actual people). The cargo can be set to be considered illegal by some governments, whose ships will attack you if they find out you're carrying forbidden cargo. There can be special ships associated with the mission, to appear in some systems (such as the destination system) or follow the player around, they can be given behaviors (always attack player, or conversely protect him, etc...) and there can be mission goals associated with these ships (protect them, disable them, destroy them, etc...). There can be a deadline (counted in days, which are spent hyperspacing or landing), and missions can fail, possibly triggering completely new things (you're fired, for instance). On completion, a mission can give pay, and/or increase the player record with a certain government, and/or give some stuff such as a new ship. A mission can be set to be repeatable as long as the player wishes, or be done only once. The fact a mission has been completed can allow for other missions to be offered, or even start another mission rightaway (allowing for entire mission strings).

And remember the galaxy is dangerous, especially at some places: there are wars going on, pirates, there can be mysterious aliens. There can be strange uninhabited planets where missions can go. On a small scale, there can even be changes in the galaxy following some mission: a new station is built with help from the player, or thanks to a successful attack an ennemy station is captured, etc...

However, contrary to a RPG, there is no way to do an actual conversation tree. There are no real NPCs you can go to for a mission, just the places in the spaceport I told about. And remember that, traditionally in the EV games, there is no fixed path at the beginning, the player can end up making the whole story associated with a certain government, then start again and do a completely different one. He can even do none and live as a peaceful trader or a ruthless pirate, he travels space to earn his living, nothing more.

Now you have the basics, don't worry too much whether something is possible or not with the Nova engine, we'll find out.

Sometimes when the Player enters a bar, as you write above, you do have descriptions of a character who will talk to the Player. It's very novel-like in style, which is not a bad thing at all. But I find those story lines underdeveloped.

I suggest that you keep the basic cargo thing going as the way for the Player to earn money to buy the really cool stuff. I'm now creating a basic delivery system for the Player to earn money in rather safe ways, not unlike in EV. But it's secondary to the story itself and not the purpose of playing the game.

But incorporated in what you already have, you can develop either long story lines or what I call mini-stories. I know that when I play EV, I hope for a story line to appear when I enter a bar. Create some suspense, so that the Player doesn't know why the character wants him to do something. Make these stories longer. While EV has done some of this, it just is not clear how it changes the Player's life. Also, make the stories in such a way that they tie together and actually affect how a planet responds to the Player. As it stands, a Planet or a ship will say I did something when I didn't. Working the individual planets as NPCs as well as some ships will help you build your stories.

My two cents.

Zacha Pedro, on Sep 30 2004, 10:16 AM, said:

Hello, fellow denizens of the Coldstone web board.
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How about parts dealers and traders. The object being to trade for better upgrades on your ship. While this is still technically just trading, it gives the impression that you can get better parts if you do this quickly enough. (no time coding needed to get the bottom object to the top (best) object). They have to get there and deliver it that's all. Not much to start but there it is.

i.e. "We need a boiler2 for the plasma decimator. This will be available if to you if you can get this to the spacedock at earth in less than 2 days" (a boiler2 shows up there about 3 months later.)

You've got to guide the player but give them freedom. For example, you wouldn't say, "Go to the planet called **** and do ****, then return here to get ****". You need to generalise more. "I've heard a rumour that there is a ***** on a planet somewhere near ****." This means that the player has to think more. Also, with bigger things, make sure you try and make good use of what you already have. For an example, to find a hidden planet you could have to get certain artefacts together. These could be dotted around the EV Nova galaxy, and you could have people in bars who come up to you to help you with this.

Always have many possible endings to your "quests" (if you can). For example, if there's a mission where you smuggle people all over the galaxy, you could take them to where you should, and risk to be imprisoned in the dank dungeons of mars... Or, you could beat up the smugglers, and take them to some kind of goverment. Or, you could take the "human cargo" to some kind of goverment. Or, you could trash your ship with people in it. Or, well.. you could probably come up with loads of ways to end that mission, eh?

Keep them coming, those are already very interesting...

By the way, I forgot some things: There are NPCs who can offer missions, in fact, but these NPCs are actually in their ship in space, not on planets; it has not been much used so far for extensive mission giving (rather, more like "can you take care of this cargo for me?" or "can you escort me?), but it can be done.
Another thing: the mission destination is pointed with a red arrow on the hyperspace map, but the plug developer can make this arrow not shown if he wishes. Actually, if the player invokes the map when being offered a mission, a green arrow will show the potential destination, but it can then again made to be hidden, independantly from the red arrow: we can have the player discover the destination after having actually accepted the mission.

EDIT: more things; firstly, there is a mission info dialog that works like a quest log: it lists the names of the currently running missions with a quick briefing displayed when the player selects one (that then again can be made to say whatever the plug dever wants, such as "find the bioandronullification device" (thanks to Daniel Bester, Inc.), by the way, Pilky, we rather talk of devices instead of arctifacts ;)). However, there is no built-in note-taking system as there is in Pillars of Garendall, so we have to remind the player (and players who play Nova more like an arcade game may have a short memory...) about what he may have found out in the quick briefing text, that we can change over the course of a mission.
Also, the amount of decision from the player is more limited than in an RPG: dialog-wise, he only choices at mission offer if he accepts or not, but refusal can actually start another mission, so mission offer can be made to be: "I choose path A" or "I choose path B". But we can't add "I choose path C" at the same time. Gameplay-wise, once a mission is running, the player can fulfill it, abort it in the mission info dialog, or fail it (either by missing the deadline or destroying the ship before boarding it and rescuing the person inside), that's all. That said, we can make invisible missions launched at the same time as the main one, that can be made to success if the player brings the smugglers to some authorities (the goal of the main one being to bring them where they want), and this success can abort the main mission, it's possible.

This post has been edited by Zacha Pedro : 01 October 2004 - 10:54 AM