I'm creating a life simulation game.
The purpose of the game will be to live an virtual life there. You could have an array of jobs.
You'd start out as a small child, which needs to learn how everything works. As you learn more, your character will then grow.
Eventually your character will reach the age of a teenager. Your character is then able to do much more things, and is able to go into specific job classes.
Eventually, your character passes 18. Your character may then drink alcohol (effectivly making your screen woozy and messing up your view), and drive cars (need a licence to do so).
When your character is about 20 years old, he'll have learned enough things to start with a job. You then have the basic principal of making your character login everyday and do his job --- otherwise your character may get fired.
Of course, your character could always request holidays.
The world will be virtually NPCless. Some goverment tasks will be done by NPCs (as admins, pretending to be the goverment, don't have time to do everything at once), but most of the tasks (such as selling groceries to people and owning a factory) will be done by players.
I also plan to add in the media. There'll be a radio station, and a TV station.
What I'm going to "banter" about is that if it were possible for one person to create a movie system, wherein a movie could be played using a camera, a few turfs, and a few objects.
In basic, the system would need to be able to record all turfs and mobs in the area, and make constant snapshots of them. The system would also need to record speech logs.
Then, the system can create a "videotape" obj, which would then be used to view everything the system has saved.
To do this or not to do this, that is the question.
The system would cause emense lag if not coded properly, and believe me: it might!
Anyway, I'm just posting this to ask you guys of what you think about this. Do you have any suggestions on how to get started and some tips and hints?
ID:265370
 Feb 9 2005, 6:52 am
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Phoenix Man wrote:
When your character is about 20 years old, he'll have learned enough things to start with a job. You then have the basic principal of making your character login everyday and do his job --- otherwise your character may get fired. Very Very Very Very Very Bad Idea. No one would be able to keep up a job, and in the end no one would play due to it's insistence on you devoting all your time into it. | |
A few of the ideas are good, but overall, you need to think over the game design.
1. Why would a player drink in the game unless there was some benefit. 2. No player wants to devote all his time to a game. What if your comp crashes or power goes out for a few days. 3. The movie will cause lag, no matter how its coded, if there are alot of players, which there won't be, for reasons stated above 4. Even though the liscens to drive cars is a good idea from the coders viewpoint, unless cars will increase your speed and be used as a good weapon, players won't bother. 5. You said the characters will age. Does that mean they could die of old age and have to be reborn? If so, that will cause some players toleave so they wouldn't have to go through the childhood phase. | |
You know, even though it seems he is trying to make it a tad bit more complex, you are saying people wouldnt want to devote all their time to a game, which is wrong.
remeber virtual pets, or tamaghchis or even digimon. Those little bastards had to be monitored 24/7 or they would die, and you would have to start all over. Digital pets were a big thing for 2 or 3 years, made alot of money, and waste alot of peoples time, even some of the adults bought into them. I once had my Digi Kitty last a whole month, then die of old age, damn cat. The fact is, just because YOU dont like the idea of the game, dosent mean others wont. | |
ugh. I also had a tamogotchi and a digipet. Those are ok, but ones you have to do while on the computer? Like I said, power outages, comp crashes, something will come up. The tamigotchis and digipets required very little power and ran off batteries, so you didn't have to worry about power failure, as long as you had a flahlight, and since its not on a comp, you don't have to worry about crashing.
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Jamesburrow wrote:
ugh. I also had a tamogotchi and a digipet. Those are ok, but ones you have to do while on the computer? Like I said, power outages, comp crashes, something will come up. The tamigotchis and digipets required very little power and ran off batteries, so you didn't have to worry about power failure, as long as you had a flahlight, and since its not on a comp, you don't have to worry about crashing. Actually, it IS on a computer. Those digi-pets have computer chips, y'know! | |
Phoenix Man wrote:
The tamigotchis and digipets required very little power and ran off batteries, so you didn't have to worry about power failure, as long as you had a flahlight, and since its not on a comp, you don't have to worry about crashing. You did have a million other things to worry about. Jerks pressing the reset button, losing it, leaving it in your pocket when your pants are washed, etc. How often does your computer get put into a state where it's unusable for a long period of time? | |
Heh, been scarred, Darkview?
:P Yeah, tamigotchis can be carried around with you. Easy maintenence. A computer, and it's game, isn't. | |
We had a storm here in Memphis that cut everyone's power out, as well as cut off a few neihborhoods from the outside world... Anyway, what happens if you go on vacation? I dunno about you, but I usually can't take my comp with me, and you cant install stuff on the library's comp so that you can play while away.
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Jamesburrow wrote:
and since its not on a comp, you don't have to worry about crashing. Oh. I almost forgot. You've made a spelling error. I'll fix it for you: and since its not on a comp with Windows installed, you don't have to worry about crashing. | |
Jamesburrow wrote:
A few of the ideas are good, but overall, you need to think over the game design. Alcohol is widely enjoyed on Earth for several reasons:
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Well what about Animal Crossing? Which used real world time, and if you didnt log back into the game for a few days, or for even a week, you could seroiulsy get your whole game screwed up.
And I know 10 or 20 people that love that game, and play it on a daily basis. | |
Shades wrote:
Well what about Animal Crossing? Which used real world time, and if you didnt log back into the game for a few days, or for even a week, you could seroiulsy get your whole game screwed up. Hah, it's great! I shared mine with my brother, and my friend and his brother. I started up a mafia to take over the quaint little town. Then I left it and it turned into a desolate nuclear wasteland, almost all lifesigns are Zero. BUT IT'S GREAT! (oh yeah, and it's about 10 years before it's time, it really is 4D, and a master of it. I found myself getting up at 4 am before school (on a monday! :O ) to just attend Tom Nook's sale. (to find it was on at 7pm, instead. I was angry)) | |
Jamesburrow wrote:
We had a storm here in Memphis that cut everyone's power out, as well as cut off a few neihborhoods from the outside world... Is that a monthly event? My computer blows up a lot. In fact it's in parts right now. However with the frequent computer crashes I can still manage to be online for months at a time. People aren't linked to their characters in game. If they're forced to stop playing they aren't going to die because their character does. They'll be screwed out of playing, but when they get back they can start again. Frustrating yes, but only frustrating enough to stop you from playing all together if your computer is crashing weekly. Anyway, what happens if you go on vacation? Your character goes on vacation as well. I'm pretty sure that he mentioned that. All he'd have to do for a ooc vacation mode is make it so that it freezes your account. People play StarKingdoms and there's a good chance that at some point during a session you wont be able to get on once an hour. | |
Elation wrote:
Shades wrote: I used to love changing the date on my Gamecube to get stuff. But whenever I went far into the future, my house would be filled with bugs (Cockroaches to be exact) and there were weeds everywhere. But I paid off my debt and got a GOLD statue =D (By fishing =D, gotta love those charcoal fish and red snapper thingys!) | |
No its not a monthly event, but it took 2 months to get the power fixed. And we had an earthquake earlier, which is also unusual, luckily it wasn't too major or I wouldn't be talking to you right now.
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DarkCampainger wrote:
I used to love changing the date on my Gamecube to get stuff. But whenever I went far into the future, my house would be filled with bugs (Cockroaches to be exact) and there were weeds everywhere. But I paid off my debt and got a GOLD statue =D (By fishing =D, gotta love those charcoal fish and red snapper thingys!) Man, sometimes I can make a KILLING with those fish. But my favourite technique, one that can double/triple your money in about 20 minutes...: Empty your inventory out, then fill it ENTIRELY with fruit. Take it to the island using the GBA link-up. Drop all the fruit around the island. Go back to the mainland, and start playing on the island on your GBA. Make the character continually eat all the fruit (including the fruit on the trees) She'll start dropping bags of gold every time she eats fruit. Keep her distracted away from the cash, then come back over. Pick up the money, AND BE RICH! (we're talking about 30 bags of 1,000, 10,000 and sometimes (once I got three of these in just one island 'run') 30,000.) | |
As to the movies, who will want to bother with a crude tile based system like that when they could just go use Flash animation or video screen captures if that is what they want to do? In context of the game, you could always make film objects that characters can watch for entertainment or something, but I wouldn't bother making actual movies that "players" sit through. Unless, of course, that was the main purpose of the program.