After all that it turns out that my system can’t handle the demands of the Unreal 5 engine. I still plan to use it even though it will take a while to save money for a new rig. I am on a pretty basic $600 machine showing its age. To get to the recommended 64 GB of RAM, awesome video card and processor, and other specs will not be cheap. It’s unfortunate, but since I am starting a new job at least I have a path forward.
I am staying with the engine choice though as there is plenty of other development work that I can do. But it is time to move to production vs. this eternal pre-production planning and tinkering stage. So I would like to commit to myself that I create at least 4 assets a month, focusing on written and visual works. I will also keep reading and watching videos about Unreal 5 engine. Although I would learn faster by having access I can still progress. I need to understand the blueprint system since a lot of the gameplay is reliant on NPC behavior and a realistic economy. Without those aspects the game itself becomes just another adventure title, even though I feel the world building and literature aspects will still make it special.
The reality is that a total life sim that is actually fun, is very ambitious. I have to start one step at a time before I can add all the options I have planned. The feature creep is real even in the planning stages.
Humor
I keep thinking about easter eggs and how I want to work in subtle references, nods, and visual jokes like out of the Simpsons. This is again putting the cart before the horse. However, if I have to make something anyways, I may as well make it funny or interesting. So if I brainstorm a list of funny store names or something, I can still use it hand have it ready.
I want to keep a light touch. This is not Monkey Island where you have to know a pun to solve a problem, or a kid’s cartoon that slams you in the face with “this is a joke.” Thematically this world stays close to Dying Earth (notably The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel’s Saga by Jack Vance). It combined dark fantasy with dark humor, and was filled with satire. The humor came from the situations and dialogue, and was refined. Cugel could barely classify as an anti-hero because his motivations are entirely selfish or petty. He leaves disasters in his wake on accident, and doesn’t think twice about it. I don’t expect the player to be an amoral asshole in the same fashion, and maybe only Jack Vance could pull off making such a villain likeable. However I find the idea of the NPCs around the player all being a little Cugel-like in a Dying Earth inspired culture to be very fertile grounds for story-telling.
Parody is a more direct 1:1 mockery, satire is more general and subtle. Parody is good for cheap laughs but I don’t want to make things too silly. I want bizarre and funny pets, but a mount made out of chocolate with a ribbon on it is where I would draw the line (reference is to a recent Final Fantasy promotion).
Not every character can sound like the pretentious windbags in D.E. stories. And not everyone will be a sharp dealing con artist like Cugel. But this will be a departure from the “I’m a poor simple farmer and we need your help” quest givers. It’s also not “I’m an all-powerful wizard / head of the Chad knights, and you’re the Chosen One.”
Motivation driven gameplay
Each NPC is a person and can potentially be negotiated with. At first since the game is new, many NPCs will just refuse to talk to the player and have limited actions like any other game. It makes some sense, because in real life most strangers don’t speak to one another, and in dangerous areas it is often the safer choice. The game world has plenty of reasons why people wouldn’t share much, out of caution. But even if the options to interact with the player aren’t built out, I still want them moving around the environment doing realistic activities. Survivor settlements are usually rebuilt from ruins with improvised materials, and so don’t need to be heavily populated. Quality over quantity here.
Just as in good fiction character motivations drive the plot, the gameplay is driven by character motivations.
The concept is that each NPC has its own drives and loyalties. This will start simple as far as game development: basic needs like hunger and thirst. Even if they start as just placeholders that aren’t referenced yet, there will more meters like energy levels, relief, need for entertainment, religious activity and so on. NPCs keeping their bars full is what drives each local economy, with or without the player. There are no set prices worldwide, every vendor sets their own within the limits of haggling, including the player. Scarcity and demand will affect prices. Vendors may only want to buy a few of an item per day instead of a stack of 50. But there will be more demand and higher prices for crafter goods that take a lot of resources. Rare monster parts and magical or tech fragments can also command a high price but come with hidden consequences. The player will not always know exactly what to do with all of their loot, what to save or sell, but to balance the lack of precise knowledge there should be in-game ways to get at least rumors and advice about the value of objects. In the opening area there will be some very reliable characters that can help appraise and give a player understanding of value and other tips.
Alchemy and crafting are a huge core to the game even though not strictly required, they need to be robust systems that are still interesting on new playthroughs. In the full release, I would like a lot of procedural randomization for any new settlement areas visited and how their local economy works. Ideally I will have the option to spawn a new world (including new recipes, values, and effects) or start a new character in the same world, so the player can use familiar things. The tradeoff is that the existing world will still have the same population and have been affected by previous player character actions.
I would also like to remix what a lot of alchemy ingredients do each playthrough so their is not a set best recipe listed on the internet. There would be some patterns though especially having to do with the elemental nature of certain ingredients and objects. Some objects will not change much and others will only change a little on generating a new world. It is actually very fitting with the background lore to do it this way. Parallel but connected worlds.
NPC activity
Confident or desperate characters may initiate conversation based on needs, wants, and ambitions. Otherwise the player will have to choose to talk to them, and gain some basic level of trust in many case by conversation choices. I may be feeding needs, wants, and ambitions into ConvAI or a similar plugin and see how it does. But that may be reserved for only some characters if it is hard to tailor.
Let’s take a very basic NPC character. They don’t discuss personal details with strangers so we don’t finsh that part yet. This character ‘Sal’ owns a shack with plumbing, net, fishing rod, tackle, driftwood club, clothes, lantern, a few odds and ends.
Needs (basic human defaults): Food, clean water, sheltered bed
Wants: Warm coat, better drinks, rare shells, money.
Ambition: Buy boat he can live on, or a smaller boat and better house. Friends to rely on. Court a wife.
A cycle for Sal would be:
1: wake up early, pray, get ready for day
2: walks out to beach areas during morning to fish and scavenge.
4: heads back to town to clean fish and try to sell them.
5: returns to beach to fish and scavenge.
6: returns to town to trade fish for hot food and cold drinks at a bar.
7-10 sleeps in shack.
These times wouldn’t be on the hour exactly but that is the basic structure. Nothing revolutionary yet. But what happens if there are no catches, or Sal gets bit and needs medical care, or his shack is ‘accidentally’ burned down because of the player? Sal’s needs and wants have suddenly changed. This will change how activities and cycle.
The time cycle
10 time unit day/night cycle (canon-in world) will pass at a rate of 10 hours in real time. I will leave it vague on purpose for now if these are literal hours or 10 units of 2.4 hours. This is incredibly slow by most game standards, which have days passing within minutes sometimes. Many activities will cost time units and fast forward the clock, with a nice changing of the light as it fast forwards. This is at the direction of the player, but they need to find an activity or safe-ish rest are to do it.
The conventional method of a hyper fast clock is flawed. If you want to talk to every NPC in a tavern and it takes 3 minutes of real time, but 3 hours of game time, it is jarring when you consider all the urgent quests that are being neglected. This game will not punish the player for stopping to smell the roses unless the roses are mutated. This relaxed and realistic pace will be balanced against threats and multiple time-sensitive threads.
It won’t take just 5 seconds to build a forge or something, but you can pay people to do it for you while you adventure elsewhere. If the player wants it done immediately, they can help build it and fast forward the clock. Taking your time to enjoy the atmosphere, talk to people, or carefully plan designs shouldn’t punish the player with lost time. Time is a resource because it drains meters like food and thirst. Also, many events will resolve on their own at certain time points. It is not all gamey to make sure that the player sees certain cutscenes or that the plot moves forward in a particular way. For the most part, NPC and Player actions ARE the plot.
By the Red Queen philosophy, sometimes you have to run just to stay in place. It won’t be easy to make money or thrive, which makes success more rewarding. Just survival will be a challenge. The player could lose resources via theft or worse, or suffer a long-lasting injury, curse, or disease. Making enemies will be a thing as you can’t please everyone. If you donate to a temple or faction it might annoy their rivals if they found out. Joining a cause will make you friends and enemies both.
A lot of events and opportunities will depend on the clock, in a slower and realistic way than the majority of games. This is deliberate, for more immersion, and also to give the real player time to mess around at their own pace. The character might be pressed for time, but some of the more in-town or social experiences are designed to be more ‘cozy’ and relaxing. It should be a nice change of pace as both the character and player rest from hazards of exploration and combat. Of course, nowhere is entirely safe or free from potential incident in this world.
This is why I am replacing a quest list with time-sensitive ‘opportunities.’ The next part is feature creep, but it would be awesome if the notes in this section were based on character skill and background to an extent. Like, player skill in literacy or intelligence played a factor in how many details were written down. Characters without means or skill to take written notes would have memories that could change or fade based on circumstances. A lot of the fine-grain realism or gaming innovations I want will take time to develop. For now I just need to get the basics created.
The Chaosgerbil's Lair 