Inroduction


Aha, have been rethinking the intro just now. Maybe it doesn't make that much sense to force the initial quest on the player after all.

@p Since I'm going to be generating quests as it is, how about one of the following:

@p 1 - Maybe the hero is transplanted into a house of a fairly ordinary NPC, i.e., the hero (or their background at least) is basically generated as an NPC would be, they are placed in a house, given a ship, and voila.

@p 2 - Maybe there is a small intro where the player reaches XYZ birthday and is given a ship. Somehow, this seems a bit less interesting than if the player could start out as a dishgirl asked to go collect some soap from the store.

@p I guess I should think about this and decide tommorow. It turns out to be sort of annoying to insert this initial quest into the game (tho not really that hard) There are a few reasons not to though:

@p - We are autogenerating everything else, why not the main plot and make it complete?

@p - There may be a kind of ugly contrast between the level of detail in the one intro snippet, and elsewhere

@p - Sort of makes it less engaging or interesting to start a brand new game when you know the basic quest is going to be the same. If you don't know who you are going to end up as, I think the process of discovery starts very very early and powerfully. Settings. Seed. Start. 1 hr delay while autogenerates. And now.......... you are some bozo clinician who is trying to make a living. Or, you are a girl who has lost her doll. Or, you are a space pirate who wants to make a good killing. Having these different main quests, and also a completely random player characterization means that not only the universe itself, but also the fundamental role you take in discovering it is very different each time.

@p Ergo, it's a good idea and I think I may just do it. If i do, then really I need to write the quest engine next. I would not have known this or understood it as well if I hadn't tried doing the intro, so it was still the right approach to take. But i need to sleep on it!

2004-01-16


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