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First forays into game design and agent reasoning about uncertainty

Posted 9 years ago
POSTED BY: Michael Hale
5 Replies

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POSTED BY: Moderation Team
POSTED BY: Vitaliy Kaurov
Posted 9 years ago

Thanks, Vitaliy. I put the original post together via remote desktop over a mediocre WiFi connection while hanging out with a friend during their bar tending shift. After the connection dropped several times, I gave up on adding any new visuals. Now that I'm back on a good connection, I added one more image of the property influence network for the current full set of rules.

Thanks for the links. They are all interesting. I haven't played Heavy Rain, but I've heard people talk about it. Yes, I would say the goal is to get branching behavior of at least that granularity, but without having to hand script all of the possible outcomes. Perhaps an even more recent step in that direction was Until Dawn. Their marketing even refers to the engine supporting the "Butterfly Effect". I haven't played it though, so I can't personally comment on how intricate or responsive the game world is.

I'm hoping that this design process will identify the most interesting choices and branches a story could take early in development, to help allocate content creation resources appropriately. Probably the last big action game I really enjoyed was Bioshock Infinite. Ironically, for a story about intertwining character arcs in the quantum mechanical multiverse, the game was extremely linear. There were many cutscenes where I thought it would be interesting to make a different choice. Perhaps an approach like this could help developers identify and explore those options early on in development before they are already committed to a particular story or set of choices.

POSTED BY: Michael Hale
POSTED BY: David Gathercole
Posted 9 years ago
POSTED BY: Michael Hale
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