Recreate Unseen side events with NPCs?

[MustardJeep]

The difficulty of doing a replay of a event isn't in doing it, it is in the fact that Uru was not made to support the most likely options.

<>Video - Doing a video file is rather simple, all you have to do is mod the KI to play a bink file and you've got a platform for showing events.
Realistically all you need to do for this one is follow any number of tutorials for adding/playing bink movies "ingame", after that it's
just distributing the files.
<>NPC - Way more satisfying but I think would have to be a cheat to do it quickly. <Cough> Macro Explorers </cough>
Zandi is a NPC yes, but he also has been sitting on his dairy air the entire time hasn't he.... A standard client program can
run a custom avie and a macro can do the piloting as well as handle some very basic chatting. (Maybe )

[Lehm]

I've update the subject to match what we're actually talking about. I'm not talking about the "live" events which consisted of people standing around answering questions. I'd be kind of boring to watch recreations of those. Rather the side events we never got to see. What I'm talking about is very technically possible. The system already exists to control Yeesha and Zandi. Just needs a little expanding is all. Trigger the events at the right time along the journey. Somewhat simple. I know there'd be a bit work involved of coarse

[MustardJeep]

I'm not talking about the "live" events which consisted of people standing around answering questions.

Bah I never considered that dribble as a "Event".

I just don't know enough about how Uru ran it's two NPC's to hazard a guess on them considering how well known it was that Cyan went in to having real people do the driving.

[Gehn, lord of ages]

While some of these are interesting ideas, they defeat the main purpose of my suggestion. Making the story more personal to the player. Lets take an example from one of the earlier games. Riven: imagine the scene when you run into that one guy in the caves and he makes a run for it and takes off in the transport. Imagine reading about that instead, or hearing about it second hand.

For current or future events, I think more NPC animations and all would be good. Or NPC's walking around where they would (checking the water in Teledahn, running through the cavern on some errand, etc.) I'm not so sure on past events. I think the stream of videos/journals combined with more NPC automatic and acted events (even minor ones, like seeing them in the distance, or having one of them yell at you when you get something wrong in Kadish) in the present would sufficiently immerse the player without having to go through time.

[Mac_Fife]

Or NPC's walking around where they would (checking the water in Teledahn, running through the cavern on some errand, etc.)

Yeah, I always found a bit amusing that you could often hear the sounds of activity in Ae'gura but you never saw anyone actually doing any "restoration" . I suppose part of the problem with that would be that it might be necessary to enforce some distance between players and the NPCs (e.g. you only see them on some balcony or other area that you can't get to) in order that players ("newbies" in particular) don't try to interact with them and get frustrated when they don't answer. On the other hand, equipping DRC NPCs with "Ear Defenders" might go a long way to explaining that!

You probably wouldn't want those kind of animations being "run" on the server, but I guess they could be loaded at the client side and triggered from the server, so that everyone in an age "sees" the same event. Someone who knows more about the client architecture than I do will probably tell me I'm talking rubbish now

[Lehm]

I do agree the cavern would look a whole lot more lively with some random NPCs walking around. These should probably be client only so no server bandwidth is used. That would mean everyone would see different NPCs in different locations, but that would be alright, unless one player mentioned a specific NPC no one would know the difference. But that way it would problably be possible to have 100's of NPCs as opposed to a couple dozen. Oh and whose to say we couldn't impliment a simple system to click on an NPC and ask some basic questions.

As for journals being suficent for retelling the story. That might be suficent for the hardcore player willing to spend a whole lot of time reading them over to get the story. One of Uru's greatest failings was reaching out to the more casual player. Now true the game itself shouldn't be tailored to the casual player, but there's no reason why they should be completely alienated. I think cutscenes are a good place to make a compromise. They benefit everyone. Old players get to experince what they didn't see, new players can get caught up on the story as they play through the ages. IMO the benefits of them outweigh the relatively minor breaks in reality they cause.

[Gehn, lord of ages]

As for journals being suficent for retelling the story. That might be suficent for the hardcore player willing to spend a whole lot of time reading them over to get the story. One of Uru's greatest failings was reaching out to the more casual player. Now true the game itself shouldn't be tailored to the casual player, but there's no reason why they should be completely alienated. I think cutscenes are a good place to make a compromise. They benefit everyone. Old players get to experince what they didn't see, new players can get caught up on the story as they play through the ages. IMO the benefits of them outweigh the relatively minor breaks in reality they cause.

The thing is, Uru is meant to be quite realistic. People are normal people with no special powers or skill meters or anything to go through. To keep with this, Cyan came up with the idea of having an ever changing storyline - like what would happen in real life - that would play out mostly in real time. People would see their view of events - their own special perspective of a real time adventure. It would be realistic - past choices and events outside of your control would influence how everything worked. You, in turn, would influence the future of the adventure for those who came after you (of course, to a degree).

There were some problems, largely because of the amount and timing of events. I see the answer to this in better journals and videos, which would explain what happened before, and more and better targeted events (even if smaller or automated) in the future.

Another option would be a new Yeesha Journey. Yeesha would realistically be worried that all these new explorers and all might be confused, and so (with her powers to go through time and all) would send them on some kind of Journey through the Ages to view or even "participate" in some events in the past. This would not be for all events, but it would help for some. Furthermore, it gives a reason for the time travel instead of making it a game process.

[Lehm]

The thing is, Uru is meant to be quite realistic.

I realize that was its intention. It didn't work. The only way for that to work is for events to be going on constantly. Where each person gets to see a little bit of the story and then can talk about what they saw with other explorers. That is just far too ambitious. I applaud Cyan for trying something new, but it's time to give that up. Go back to a system that's been proven to work in the previous games.

[Gehn, lord of ages]

The thing is, Uru is meant to be quite realistic.

I realize that was its intention. It didn't work. The only way for that to work is for events to be going on constantly. Where each person gets to see a little bit of the story and then can talk about what they saw with other explorers. That is just far too ambitious. I applaud Cyan for trying something new, but it's time to give that up. Go back to a system that's been proven to work in the previous games.

Okay. So how about the Yeesha/Bahro Journey idea, so it has some explanation? Just like how Journey cloths, Relto books, etc. fill in needed game mechanics with a rational (well, disregarding how strange Yeesha/Bahro magic is) explanation. Some kind of Bahro stone thing that appears in certain places and lets you kind of go back to watch through events in the past. [If we don't want to involve too much canon, I would suggest mysterious stones popping up with no clue on who puts them - maybe some fringe group of bahro, maybe Yeesha, who knows?] Some explorers would definitely catalog what each stone went to (in in-game short journals or notes, and on forum and webpage lists). New appearances of Bahro Time Stones would give the community something to do (and give people time to program the needed NPC's and animations and all).

Also, add video and better journal coverage and add more NPC's around to make it less of a problem in the future.

[The stranger]

I'm sorry, but I will be very very sad if live events were gone. You said live events can't work well, unless you do A LOT of them. And I say: that's just what we need! more events! BUT NOT FOR THIS TIME. It will need a huge team on cyan side, and right now they have nothing. So yeah, if you ask me, for now, if I choose no events or "recorded" events I would choose no events. Unless it's fans story. I would like that very much.

BUT! I have an idea, which will help us to see "recorded"events while not REALLY being in them.Though I'm not sure you will like it, many people didn't like the serenian amulet thing. You see, along the ages, players would find some little "shiny blue stones", like 2 in an age. Very little stones. Now, these stones will work just like serenia mamory amulet: once a player touches them, he will see something which happened there. In public places, he may see a bit of the last "live event" which happened. In kadish tolesa vault, he will see kadish going mad, in the cleft he will see young yeesha (before she entered d'ni), in teledahn he will see the first arrival of sharper/a d'ni man in the age, and in jalak dador the player will see a d'ni game. The reason why I think it's important is because something important in a game is that you feel you are seeing the story, you are there. It was missing in uru: once 1000 people do the same journey, it gets strange. So, there are many ways to do that, and one is that. Of course, the stones will be small and there will not be many in an age, so people who don't want that won't mind, I think.