One of the ideas from GalCiv2 that got nixed was an epic story generator, which would basically recount the significant events that happened in a story-based format, along with screenshots. It got killed, because it required so much AI work to get it to generate realistic and meaningful stories and there wasn't that much time or resources to do so.
Out of this, though, came the log that does note when somewhat significant things happened. I assume at least the GalCiv2 functionality would be included in Elemental, but will this be expanded in any way? I'm horrible at taking screenshots to remember what I did, but if the game could do that for me (optional, of course) and tie it into these events, that'd be sweet!
Taking this idea a bit further, you could even tie in recounting the events (text log, screenshots, graphs, maps, etc.) and upload them into Impulse for others to see somehow to compare strategies, ask for advice, laugh about your losses, or even help trouble-shoot AI issues (possibly).
Being this game has RPG elements, being able to easily recount your game to others, if for no other reason than to write up the description on a blog post, would be very handy.
What say you? And how about it SD?
Like EU and KoDP, maybe you can just start off with giving us something that reads like a timeline, with varied 'fluff' text to describe a typical event. Then work towards your 1 million monkeys with 1 million typewriters thing.
While this, for example, isn't exactly a flowing story worth releasing as a novel, it still manages to GIVE a story.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.calay/badend.txt
I would LOVE such a documentation feature, rich with auto accquired media from the game that had an auto html export FTP function for website updates.
After reading Brad's and some journalists' posts about how they played their games in GalCiv2, I can only shake my head at how much time it must have taken them to record everything that happened. There won't be a system that does it all easily, but if you could pick and choose events that were recorded and export them into an HTML output, that'd be nice.
Dwarf fortress has something like this. You can go into the historic archives of a generated world and find the history of specific creatures. The raw data isn't formatted much but it does into very good detail. A dwarf for example might have been kidnapped at a young age and raised by goblins in a dark tower. Humans then come along and sack the tower and raise the dwarf themselves. Later on the dwarf actually becomes mayor of the human town and so on. It goes into suprising detail, it won't give you the nitty gritty details of things like combat but it list all of the results such as broken legs and the like.
If you could make a story generator that uses that raw history as a starting point I'm sure you could create something interesting if not epic. The biggest challenge is not processing power but keeping the story flow diverse enough so that your legends don't end up sounding too cookie cutter classic.
Well if there was ever a need to justify a 64b system for the game other then more graphics and an advanced econ system then this is surely a serious contender.
I would love to see a retell of events (as an epilog to the game). Brad mentioned that he would like to recreate the scope of some D&D campaigns and that the developer should accomodate a player who wants a year(or more) long game. A story generator will be a great way to end it. though would be increasingly difficult for larger and larger games.
If you won, wouldn't you already know the outcome? It'd be cool, but there's the potential there that they would say something you didn't like "and so, your Channeler got married, moved into a nice condo, and retired." OK, that's a bit too extreme, but you get the idea. I think being able to recount what happened in your game, turning it into a history/legend of sorts and to share your strategy/experience with others, would be amazing.
I'm sure some game reviewers would really go for this feature (it'd really make posting their impression a lot easier). And happy reviewers = better reviews, most likely.
Good idea. Sounds awesome to me
Epic Strory Generator = +$10 feature in Elemental
I really think that the ressources needed are at least equal to the time spend by Stardock to make their multiplayer plumbing.
I understand that Epic Strory Generator is going to be next most asked feature in Stardock games and it will probably take them the same time than including the multiplayer in their game.
Epic story generator ==
I was hoping such a feature would appear as one of the sins expansions.
Epic story generator == Devs killer fonctionality
I won't come for cheap.
I don't think we'll be seeing an "epic story generator", and I'm not sure I even want one.
This is still a 4x game. It's got RPG aspects, but it's still (supposedly) about building a civilization. I just don't see how something like this could fit in properly with the game, without the game becoming increasingly scitzophrenic.
This will be a really tough feature to balance. I think their original idea of making a story generator was too large in scale. However, I do think there are probably some innovative ways they could tie together a bunch of important events and make it easy to read, view, and post for historical/post-mortem features.
The cool thing here is that this function would not only be great for players and devs, but people like Brad who post really, really long summaries of what a game entailed could have that all bundled together conveniently for their own use or to share with the public. It would be very impressive to get to go through and browse games other people have played to see what strategies they employed, how the AI responded, etc. There would need to be a feature to specifically include/exclude events and maybe even add comments/screenshots inline.
Having something like this would set a new standard in gaming and certainly more feasible if SD will be hosting the games on their servers (so they already have the data).
Really, this might be better titled "Historical Gaming Review" or "Game Event Collector", rather than "Epic Story Generator" since making the summary use fancy adjectives and follow a book format is too over-reaching.
I don't see why it only HAS to be the million monkeys with typewriters cranking out literary master pieces model.
Something similar with greater refinement, similar to KoDP and EU would be appropiate and acceptable.
I'd be happy enough with an improved version of GC2's Timeline tab that provided sorts and filters and could export to XML or plain text. An option to take automatic screen grabs and assign them Timeline-based file names would also be swell.
I hoped and waited for the Epic Story generator in GC2 ... But maybe the dev work already done on that project could make it easier to include it here.
It doesn't need to be very compex - let the AI record some key events and just put it in an accessiable text format that the player can edit. You could have a special colour for the AI generetaed text and another for player additions so that you could still submit it like an "official" and "standardized" description to others.
If you play a long campaing it would be amazing to also have it traced like this. For me it would definately improve the actual gaming experience while playing, because when you play and know that what you do will matter in the recorded story (that you can keep for as long as you want, also after the game) it adds a new level of significance to the events in the game.
Just imagine the teras or even petas that the Epic Story Generator could create in a story log in one of those uber-ultra-mega-big-of-doom maps that Frogboy says that will be possible in 64 bits systems and that could last years... Ok, maybe exagerating (a bit?) but you get the point.
Considering all the things that are proposed for Elemental by the Stardock people, i'm not sure that a powerful Epic Story Generator could be done. Too much work for an already big task ahead. I would like one, just keeping track of the dates when i hire a hero, conquer a city, battle enemies... maybe even given the names of NPCs involved... but no need for uber fancy things because there are already many and many interesting ideas to be implemented/developed and that i consider more worthy of effort.
Maybe add an in-game notepad so we can write our own history/story while we play? That should be easier. If you add some capability to take and add screenshots, that would be cool. Hmmm Maybe a button here and there that adds to our notepad the current statistics of the screen associated to it? Like if i'm in my city i could click the button and get added data about population, buildings,...
One can always dream.
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