Campaigns & Adventures

[george moromisato]

This is a follow up to "What is Transcendence?"
http://neurohack.com/transcendence/foru ... php?t=3179

Replies to that post mostly concentrated on technical difficulties with creating adventures--and rightly so. There are still many technical obstacles to doing so and other threads have started to discuss those.

In this thread I'd love to talk about the challenges to designing interesting adventures from a story perspective.

But first I want to introduce a taxonomy that hopefully will help us to have a common language.

A universe is a cohesive and consistent setting. The canonical universe of Transcendence is one such universe. In the canonical Transcendence universe, for example, St. Katharine's Star is always the capital of the Commonwealth.

[Of course, this is a fuzzy concept: e.g., the number of systems between Eridani and St. Katharine's Star isn't constant from playthrough to playthrough, so not everything is "canonical".]

A universe is roughly equivalent to what D&D calls a "Campaing Setting" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_% ... n_settings)

A campaign is a stand-alone adventure, set in a particular universe, starting with the choice of player ships, and ending in some fate (death or otherwise).

I'm going to start calling the current canonical campaign the "Domina & Oracus" campaign. The current campaign tells a particular story about Domina and Oracus in which the player is a principal participant. Along the way, of course, the player gets to visit all of Human Space and much of the galaxy.

Of course, the "Domina & Oracus" campaign is not the only campaign possible in the canonical Transcendence universe (to say nothing of other universes).

Finally, you can think of a campaign as being composed of a series of encounter modules.

Think of an encounter module as piece of content (stations, ships, missions) that can stand independently from other encounter modules in the campaign.

The entire Huari storyline is an encounter module (and happens to be packaged in a single XML).

The Charon system is an encounter module encompassing a single system.

The story of the Lamplighter project and the CSC Antarctica can be thought of as an encounter module that spans many systems and stations.

In fact, you can probably decompose the entire "Domina & Oracus" campaign into a set of independent encounter modules, some simpler than others.

Part of my point in the original "What is Transcendence?" post was that our ultimate goal should be to create lots of complete campaigns, some set in the canonical Transcendence universe; others set in other universes. That's what I meant by the Transcendence Multiverse.

Of course, it is hugely difficult to create a whole campaign--I estimate that I am only 1/3rd of the way into "Domina & Oracus".

But every campaign is just a series of encounter modules, so our first step should be to create more encounter modules that can be added either to the "Domina & Oracus" campaign or to other campaigns.

I see that I haven't even gotten to write about interesting stories, but I'll do that in another post with this taxonomy as context.

[Aury]

In terms of 'universe', TX2 is most likely a close, alternate mostly-parallel universe ... or same universe? Not sure how much i've diverged yet. More like... schrodinger's universe (taking advantage of the unsaid and filling it in). TX2's main campaign is the same as in Transcendence. The Wyvera campaign is different, as possibly will be some other future TX2 spin-offs.

And TX2 adds lots of encounter modules. (what I've been calling the 'minor and major story arcs/lines'

*reads on*

....

1/3rd? :O

The outside universe must be /big/ then.

[Atarlost]

Speaking of creating modules, A lot of modules that are possible in principle are very hard to create because of graphical requirements. Having at least all gunships rendered at 40 facings would make alternate viewpoints more doable. For instance nobody will want to play a militia campaign if it means flying a 20 facing ronin.

Also, "historical" works and some differently focused campaigns (eg a Benin campaign) will require meshes that match the D&O era in some respects but fill roles there are no older ships for at this time. Being able to use the proper Xenophobe textures if we need a xenophobe station or the proper Ares and Pacifica textures to fill out the fleets for a Syrtis War campaign.

[Prophet]

I like thinking of Transcendence that way and am doubly glad that you do as well George.

In this context, many adventure mods that I have semi-developed do not use the core rules set, in that I've tried to modify the functionality of some aspect of the game.

On the other hand, there's much opportunity for building an encounter module or even a short campaign relatively easily within the core Universe.

Personally, I have shied away from writing campaigns in the core Universe for fear that my plot would be invalidated by the official plot in the future. The timeline provided some inspiration and the tower defense mod grew out of the details about the civil war. There are many opportunities for interesting stories though.

1. Play as admiral Decker when he was fresh out of the academy. This would be a site based adventure (a CW outpost) and you run mutiple missions, ranking up in the fleet until you eventually become Admiral. This should be relatively easy to make, as only the missions need to be written. Everything else would be standard.

2. Transcendence Tycoon, takes place within the Sol system and the player must trade/build/fight to amass a fortune. This campaign would obviously be less plot driven. This is more difficult considering the scale of changes to required.

3. The first ship to travel through the Kuiper stargate and begin exploring the systems beyond Sol. This campaign would be nearly identical to the Domina & Oracus campaign, with lower tech, a different topology and different missions. The enemies encountered would be different, but the gameplay would remain the same.


I'm reminded of The Matrix and the vision of the Wachowski brothers, rather than simply make a movie they created an entire universe across different mediums, each describing a small portion of the setting in it's unique own way, the movies were simply the cash cows that got the ball rolling.

[george moromisato]

In terms of 'universe', TX2 is most likely a close, alternate mostly-parallel universe ... or same universe? Not sure how much i've diverged yet.

Either way is fine! I'm certainly not trying to force everyone into the same universe or push everyone out to their own universe.

My principal advice to you is to follow your vision--you clearly have strong ideas for how you want your universe/campaign to go and you should trust those instincts.

My secondary piece of advice (and it's only advice) is to diverge as much as you can from the Domina & Oracus campaign while still staying true to your vision. Why? To capture a larger set of players.

If the two campaigns are too similar, then someone who likes D&O may like your universe, but may feel that they've already seen it. And someone who doesn't like D&O may not like yours either.

Instead, if your campaign is different enough, then both sets of people may benefit. Those who like D&O may like something new, while those who don't like D&O may prefer your vision.

But either way is fine. You've already accomplished so much with TX2--it is a great example of the kinds of things that I'm talking about.

[george moromisato]

Speaking of creating modules, A lot of modules that are possible in principle are very hard to create because of graphical requirements. Having at least all gunships rendered at 40 facings would make alternate viewpoints more doable. For instance nobody will want to play a militia campaign if it means flying a 20 facing ronin.

Also, "historical" works and some differently focused campaigns (eg a Benin campaign) will require meshes that match the D&O era in some respects but fill roles there are no older ships for at this time. Being able to use the proper Xenophobe textures if we need a xenophobe station or the proper Ares and Pacifica textures to fill out the fleets for a Syrtis War campaign.

This is a great point.

I think before I started thinking about a Transcendence Multiverse (along the lines of a D&D-like game system) I would have resisted this suggestion, mostly because I felt protective of the universe that I had created and wanted to maintain control.

But I have a different perspective now and I think it makes sense to publish the meshes and textures for people to use.

I think the only problem is technological: all the meshes are in trueSpace format and I suspect they will be hard to move to other systems. But it's worth releasing anyway.

[Aury]

Thanks george! (to the models being released) - I do understand your earlier reluctance to release them


Also, as to TX2, thought the original idea was indeed to merely expand upon the transcendence universe, giving the player more things to do and see, I suppose that I should keep going in the direction I am with the focus on many primary story lines & even more minor ones, pretty much giving the player a whole galaxy to explore and do stuff in; not only that, but I have had in mind other victory conditions as well - none of which I've talked about before on the forums, but the idea is that there would be multiple campaigns to choose from (Though the player must discover them first)... so yes, the player can now resist domina (more obviously than they can now), if they do happen to recieve the calling... Afterall, TX2 stives to built a non-linear world.

[Song]

Heh. If it becomes easier to do adventures and campaigns, we'll eventually end up even more like nethack, with enough options and content that you can spend years seeing it all.

[Aury]

Thats what I eventually hope we do!

[george moromisato]

1. Play as admiral Decker when he was fresh out of the academy. This would be a site based adventure (a CW outpost) and you run mutiple missions, ranking up in the fleet until you eventually become Admiral. This should be relatively easy to make, as only the missions need to be written. Everything else would be standard.

2. Transcendence Tycoon, takes place within the Sol system and the player must trade/build/fight to amass a fortune. This campaign would obviously be less plot driven. This is more difficult considering the scale of changes to required.

3. The first ship to travel through the Kuiper stargate and begin exploring the systems beyond Sol. This campaign would be nearly identical to the Domina & Oracus campaign, with lower tech, a different topology and different missions. The enemies encountered would be different, but the gameplay would remain the same.

These are great!

All of these are hard--but I think we can tackle them one step at a time (or one encounter module at a time).

I also want to flesh out the current Transcendence universe--mostly to give people ideas. For example, I want to work on more detailed timelines to help people find stories at different points in time.

[Song]

I'd quite like to see a campaign as a test pilot.....over a long period of time.

Testing things like the Centurion/x, experimental scarab gunships (think AC-130 Spooky, only in space), experimental missiles, chase pilots on AI controlled drones that go wrong and have to be destroyed (yeah. Totally original I know )....

Just because there WOULD be experimental stuff, and it would have to be tested by someone.....new drives, new weapons, new ships, old ships used as testcraft (Manticores and the like, I suspect).....

(As an example: I'm currently messing with a modded osaka that has the highest top speed of ANY ship, and uses massive thrusters to get around...it is literally the hardest thing I have EVER tried to kill......Think Hornet, only a LOT faster, bugger, higher hitpoints...but it isn't as agile. Amazing enemy to fight.....if very frustrating. Until you use a device-damaging weapon, and it affects the thruster. BOOM.)

Plus it allows for some really novel stuff that could go into other areas.

....I'd also quite like to see more fleet stuff...fleet shipyards and the like.....although that's well into the no-go zone for me.

[digdug]

I had a few ideas in the past for adventure extensions:

- A clone of Sinistar: a frantic top-down shooter which require some tactics. The big Sinistar boss had speech! ("I am Sinistar!" is unforgettable)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinistar

- A clone of Asteroids, we can loop the space like in Heretic, and it could be really fun!

- A clone of Gauntlet. Just make ships with 4 facings,place a nice floor tiling, and some barriers for the walls (also use the Inertia Drive).

[Atarlost]

I thought gauntlet had 8 facings. Or maybe that was gauntlet ii. No real reason not to do a higher facing count really though. We're not trying to fit on into Atari or NES memory.

[Betelgeuse]

some more practical concerns here.

When creating an adventure we can only use one file for the adventure. This is extremely limiting.

We can't exclude content. Say I am making a trading adventure and the user has a standard mod that allows them to process wrecks for scrap. This would kill the trading adventure even if it is a good mod for the normal game. I would like to optionally exclude all other mods except those who say they are compatible with this mod.

Related to this is excluding vanilla content. The issue here is the random generators are very useful and powerful and it would be very useful to use in inbuilt tables without having to worry about incompatible stuff. For example you have an adventure that has all non strait shot weapons need custom configurations. Currently this would be done by overriding all of those weapons (and remember we only get one file we don't want to do this in the normal game). I am not sure the best way of doing this though.

[Aury]

The only reason TX2 is modular, is because it allows for nicer, neater XML's and for people to use each item independantly, but to use the actual adventure extension, all the modules will need to be enabled, and lots of the modules still are dependant on certain other ones for inheritance reasons.