Story Mode
Motoki:
Spun off from the Questions/Tips thread
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 July 14, 15:47:20
I've already modified the fundinit rules to initialize them with more funds to simulate their pre-moving-to-your-neighborhood existences, so that older sims and larger households receive a larger chunk of starting funds, making it more likely they can afford an appropriate home, but THERE WILL BE NO HANDOUTS. Additional tweaks when I rewrite storymode will make it so the spawned sims will have a composition that better fits the neighborhood they are being spawned into...but again, I will never, ever, ever, give anyone a handout, as this is against my religion. I am taking an opposite approach to how EA and IndieMod are implementing story mode, however. Instead of the "Story" being driven by a heavy-handed top-down autobalancer that attempts to force the story to conform to a prebuilt image, I am writing it as a "ground-up" motivator, where sims function as active actors that CAUSE events to happen, rather than passive victims upon whom events are inflicted. The EAxis Progressor, for instance, arbitrarily decides a number of random events, then picks similarly random victims upon which to inflict them. Of course, this provides no sense of direction because the sims themselves are not steering their fates in any way, they are simply passive victims of an uncaring random toad machine. IndieMod takes a somewhat more advanced approach, in that it attempts to pay somewhat more attention to their traits, but ultimately is still a top-down driven model in which a dictatorial machine forces the sims and neighborhood to conform to a preordained average composition. IndieMod leans heavily towards the "Story" part of Story Progression, so will very visibly create a sense of STORY, if by "story", you mean "something you can be notified about in a dialog box". It also does a much better job, apparently, in maintaining viable neighborhoods over the long term, presumably because it is essentially a top-down driven balancer, cramming characters into predefined "stock roles" like "town bully", "slut", etc. The prototype driver for AwesomeMod, however, will not incorporate any such driving mechanisms, nor will it include a colorful and verbose headline generator: We focus on the "Progression" aspect, where sims progress according to their goals as determined by their wants and personalities, aimed at "show, don't tell" style where possible (for obvious reasons, this is not always possible simply because giving sims micro-directions is massively computationally intensive), but superfluous "random toadings" are to be avoided. A side effect of this is that I need more test victims, because without a top-down driven balancing system, there is no guarantee the results will be "stable": Your neighborhood could explode into overcrowdedness, or it could die off as a ghost town...and this will all occur likely because of the conditions you build.
In theory, I like the idea of a bottom up approach and show don't tell. In practice, I'm not so sure how this will work. I mean, I'd like to see the town floozy in action instead of just hearing about her, but at least in my game non controllable sims don't do a hell of a lot. They just sort of stand there until I interact with them most times. At best they'll play in the sprinkler or with the VR headset or something equally inane like that. :P
I feel like at least Indie fakes a living breathing town to some degree. I'm not sure I think the computer controlled sims can be pushed to do a hell of a lot more, but maybe. I'd like it if they were more autonomous but realistically I don't know how feasible that is.
Maybe at least those sort of town news notices that Indie does could be pushed into the gossip social so that it feels more natural and less like the omniscient voice of god announcing the events of the world. Right now gossip mostly just talks about promotions so I feel like that could be expanded more and provide a way to get news on the goings on in the town in a somewhat natural way.
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 14, 17:32:37
In theory, I like the idea of a bottom up approach and show don't tell. In practice, I'm not so sure how this will work.
Yeah, that's the issue, really. So my system will, instead of merely producing text-events that never happened, occasionally will push LIVE events, so that you will actually witness the sim doing that thing...and if you interfere, maybe it won't happen.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 14, 17:32:37
I feel like at least Indie fakes a living breathing town to some degree. I'm not sure I think the computer controlled sims can be pushed to do a hell of a lot more, but maybe. I'd like it if they were more autonomous but realistically I don't know how feasible that is.
Indie does a decent job faking a living, breathing town, yes. Unfortunately, when you see things from my perspective, you realize what a hollow facade it actually is. The town does not TRULY live and breathe, it merely functions as this kind of undead clockwork monstrosity that goes through all the motion to produce a semblance of life, without truly breathing at all. For many, this is satisfactory, and even better. But not to me.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 14, 17:32:37
Maybe at least those sort of town news notices that Indie does could be pushed into the gossip social so that it feels more natural and less like the omniscient voice of god announcing the events of the world. Right now gossip mostly just talks about promotions so I feel like that could be expanded more and provide a way to get news on the goings on in the town in a somewhat natural way.
Ah, yes, the promotions. Indie apparently hands them out like candy. Me? My plan is a bit more basic: I tell them to get a job. I set them to skill at work, and prod them to occasionally do something skilly when their personality and circumstances warrants it, like a low-intensity version of SupCom Work/School. From there? They are on their own! Show, don't telll.
Enelen:
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 14, 17:32:37
Maybe at least those sort of town news notices that Indie does could be pushed into the gossip social so that it feels more natural and less like the omniscient voice of god announcing the events of the world. Right now gossip mostly just talks about promotions so I feel like that could be expanded more and provide a way to get news on the goings on in the town in a somewhat natural way.
Maybe I missed some essential update to the Awesome Mod, but my sims keep gossiping about others that have romances and even mentioned someone that couldn't get to the loo in time (my bad, I kept trying to woo her with my active sim). One sim from my non-active family decided to get a career behind my back, but somehow that never came up. They're all having babies now on their own, though I was the one that got them married, so I guess if I played long enough without playing close attention to them, they would start to die out... I think I'll just go and do that, my brain hurts from reading MATY for hours. You guys are insane, but probably best viewed from the outside... err... never mind.
Motoki:
Quote from: Enelen on 2009 July 14, 18:07:31
Maybe I missed some essential update to the Awesome Mod, but my sims keep gossiping about others that have romances and even mentioned someone that couldn't get to the loo in time (my bad, I kept trying to woo her with my active sim). One sim from my non-active family decided to get a career behind my back, but somehow that never came up. They're all having babies now on their own, though I was the one that got them married, so I guess if I played long enough without playing close attention to them, they would start to die out... I think I'll just go and do that, my brain hurts from reading MATY for hours. You guys are insane, but probably best viewed from the outside... err... never mind.
Really? I wish mine had more variations in their gossip. I feel like all I ever hear is so & so got a promotion.. :P
phyllis_p:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2009 July 14, 17:42:57
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 14, 17:32:37
In theory, I like the idea of a bottom up approach and show don't tell. In practice, I'm not so sure how this will work.
Yeah, that's the issue, really. So my system will, instead of merely producing text-events that never happened, occasionally will push LIVE events, so that you will actually witness the sim doing that thing...and if you interfere, maybe it won't happen.
Quote from: Motoki on 2009 July 14, 17:32:37
I feel like at least Indie fakes a living breathing town to some degree. I'm not sure I think the computer controlled sims can be pushed to do a hell of a lot more, but maybe. I'd like it if they were more autonomous but realistically I don't know how feasible that is.
Indie does a decent job faking a living, breathing town, yes. Unfortunately, when you see things from my perspective, you realize what a hollow facade it actually is. The town does not TRULY live and breathe, it merely functions as this kind of undead clockwork monstrosity that goes through all the motion to produce a semblance of life, without truly breathing at all. For many, this is satisfactory, and even better. But not to me.
I've been trying to get my head around this concept of Indie being an "undead clockwork monstrosity," and how things like marriages and births could actually be witnessed. I may making too many assumptions here, but I think those two things are the "live events" that most story-minded people care about and why they feel Indie provides a "living, breathing town." Too many of us have seen our towns turn into retirement center ghost towns, with the only options for procreation being either fiddling about with making couples (and coupling them) ourselves, or enabling parthenogenesis.
I don't actually mind playing just one family and letting all but the heir move out, but when I move those young adults out and they never marry and rarely have children without my intervention, it gets sad. I don't care about Indie's messages regarding what's going on with other Sims (though I don't mind them, either) -- I can catch it in the newspaper, if I'm interested. What I care about is that the town isn't one huge, childless lonely heart's club and that I don't have to do anything to make it come about.
I find myself curious about what witnessable events you'd have come about, and how you define a living and breathing town if not by having a pairing, procreating, employed population.
Don't get me wrong; I think the things you do with Awesomemod are ... well ... awesome. This whole philosophical aspect of Story Mode is just interesting to me, that's all.
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