How do you sufficiently bring a world to life? What would fix 'open-world, sandbox' games?

How do you sufficiently bring a world to life? What would fix 'open-world, sandbox' games?

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A workable economy, money making should be one of the biggest challenges of a sandbox game, and thus being able to afford tour awards, cosmetic or otherwise

>How do you sufficiently bring a world to life?
By delivering a solid story and having the open world actually relate to it. Skyrim did it well enough with the ways NPC's would talk about the world in passing.


>A workable economy
No one ever actually wants this.
No one besides E.V.E. players want to sit in front of excel and work out how they can improve trade profits by 2%.

Let the player interact with people, have people interact with eachother in the background or something.
Add sufficient detail to the area, without reusing too many assets
Have aspects of the area such as civilains move and animate in such a way that doesn't feel robotic.
The most important thing is to convey the idea that the world operates on it's own without any input from the player.

Of course, making a game that hits all of these points isn't remotely feasible. As much as I dislike empty sandbox games I can't really blame some of them for ending up the way they do.
hello Gabe

I wasn't specifically mentioning MMOs or multiplayer, I'd just really enjoy a game were I can make money in a multitude of ways

>Add sufficient detail to the area, without reusing too many assets

how do you know when you've achieved this though? Im sure plenty of devs THOUGHT they'd done this but their game was a barren wasteland

Try to play dwarf fortress.
Just try and before you even get into the game, you generate a sandbox world with a rich history, factions, wars, trade routes.

Then you pick a nation, pick a spot on the map, and start building your fort.

It works in 2d when you can represent an entire fortress like pic related but in 3D that is almost an impossible feat.

>Im sure plenty of devs THOUGHT they'd done this but their game was a barren wasteland
I'd disagree with that. It's common for devs to go out of their way to add detail to areas only to find out they have to downgrade because it was having too much of a performance impact.

The only real way I can think of is going around the area yourself or having other people do it and see what they think. I guess "sufficient detail" can be subjective

>Add sufficient detail to the area, without reusing too many assets
Its next to impossible.
Until a program comes out that lets you type "chair" and instantly created 500 unique usable chair assets it just wont happen.

>What would fix 'open-world, sandbox' games?

Remove the open world and replace it with interconnected hand-crafted smaller areas that have actual detail put into them. There, fixed it.

>replace it with interconnected hand-crafted smaller areas that have actual detail put into them
So basically dark souls.
I like where you are going with this.

Procedural generation if used creatively enough can create assets on the spot that won't look like ass.

>play dwarf fortress.

This would be my perfect game, if it was in 3d. And maybe a first person view a la minecraft

>catgirls
>swimming
Are you retarded?

Were trying to discuss videogames here weeb

>cats can't swim
>human-cat hybrids would hate swimming because obviously the cat part would rebel

look up Tigers and Turkish Vans, my dumb nigga

thanks for the bump though

>tiger
>cock roach
Show me one catgirl in that picture who is either. No faggot they're all normal cats who hate water.

turkish van is next to the pink rabbit
tiger is at the very top

That's not a tiger you blind fuck. And I have no clue what a Turkish autism looks like, but I'll just say that's not one either.

GTA and TES systems together.

Every NPC has an inventory and schedule, but GTA has the population count.

>it's not a tiger because I dont want it to be!

okay then. But why do the cats bug you but not the rabbits, mice and squirrels in the image?

I actually think this concept is super underrated. One of the biggest issues with worlds not feeling "persistent" is that although we have day-night cycles and NPCs with basic habits and routines, there's not a sense that you're ever getting anywhere.

Most of the time the open world is just a static canvas that the dynamic parts of the game are painted on. It should be necessary to rely on interactions with the world for progression in the game, otherwise what's the point? Maybe this doesn't need to be as deep as a full-fledged economic model, but it should definitely be deeper than "pick these three colored plants if you feel like it."

You might look into Kenshi.
Its a 3D mad max dwaf fortress / fallout RPG.. thing.

Closest thing to a 3d dwarf fort iv ever seen.
Also proof that the DF devs are just awful programmers, because FPS death is not a thing, and its 3D.

>Sup Forums - Video Games

>Those hats
>Those masks
TRIGGERED

>Kenshi
>As much concurrent shit as DF

Bruh.
Kenshi isn't as detailed as DF but that's not a bad thing, it doesn't have to be.
Plus it runs like shit anyway.

Because rabbits, mice and squirrels don't hate water you retarded idiot.

I struggle to understand how people can really play this shit. I'm a turboautist with thousands of hours in MUDs and other text based games, so why do I hate playing DF after about 20 minutes?

Stop trying to model your world after an actual, real world.

Start making 3D metroidvanias, where the game is just a series of maps/levels that overlap and intersect with each other

In a typical metroidvania you could drop a circular barrier around any chunk of map and have an interesting arena for gameplay with a few challenges/obstacles. That should be the metric for an open-world game; if I dropped an arbitrary sphere anywhere in-bounds on the map, would there be something engaging for the player to do in it?

If not, it's wasted space and it can be cut.

The world should grow organically as the map content does, it shouldn't be specified as a statistic first and then the developers made to try and populate ot

a set of gameplay features that actually make some differences world-wide like in mountain blade or X3 is quite enough. I actually see no reason for a open world if you don't have at the very least some cool faction mechanic. Skyrim for example could very well have a menu of cities and dungeons instead of the open world, it would save a lot of walking and nothing would be lost.

...

you never see any of these animals willingly in water friendo

>I struggle to understand how people can really play this shit.
Iv never really liked MUDs but I have thousands of hours in Roller Coaster Tycoon and other sim games. Its a different genre of text game.

Not being anime related for starters

I miss faction systems, I've got no clue as to how the can be used well, most games always used them poorly.

t. I've never seen a bird bath

Lots of voice acting

In witcher 3 walking through a zone has so many voices and people talking to you it's crazy and feels like the people are actually alive and doing things rather than just standing there to be set pieces to make the world feel like people are in it.

>that crab
"no"

drinking water =/= in water
show me an image of a willingly submerged squirrel

...

I think little things like being able to sit down next to an npc and them talking to you, being able to climb and find a new area and activating a new event make it come alive a bit more

...

.

,

Will you faggots stop discussing if mammals can fucking swim or not, they obviously fucking can

Does that mean the catgirls would die if they ate chocolate too? And I would assume they also bury their own shit by your logic

ill give you the squirrel but that mouse and rabbit are both clearly terrified and trying to get away from something. Even cats do that

its just to bump the thread m8, we arent being serious. Are you new?

I think one of the games that really nails the alive feel is final fantasy xii
every NPC has something to say and there are tons of them walking around doing whatever
granted what really does the heavy lifting in that game is the music

The "story" behind these is so stupid

>I'm a sissified little bitch, please fuck my ass and I'll suck your massive cock.
Okay.

there's a story? I just liked the idea of a water-y world so I saved them

You don't know anything about the subject matter, do you?
catgirlcare.org/

This is amazing, thank you! I knew I was doing something wrong.

>Humanity (along with everything else on land) died away because the sea level rose for some reason
>All their achievements, technology, and overall traces of their existence are buried deep underwater
>But their last invention was >lel catgirls, and they spent all their efforts in saving the catgirls instead of themselves
>Catgirls don't even remember any of this shit
>No males, human or half-cat, to propagate the species, so the catgirls are just there for no reason, except to eventually die out sometime in the future,
Some ass-backwards shit, honestly.

is that from the artist or from some /tg/ thread?

Sounds like Solatorobo.
There's a reason to that, explained in that game.

>the redhead leaning out of the bus to take upskirt shots

noice

Author's explanation IIRC. I remember reading it a long time ago, might have missed some details but that's the general gist of it.

Still, guy knows how to draw fantastic backgrounds.

>open-world, sandbox
>ever being alive
By their nature those types of games will almost always feel like a soulless husk because when you ask yourself "what drives this world" and the answer is "I can do anything without consequences" then the make-believe collapses because nothing has meaning or matters.

To feel alive (for us humans) a world needs to have boundaries to differentiate the known from the unknown, basic rules so that complexity can arise and finally some obstacle or imperative to overcome. This post
is correct that even in very simplistic 2D games like these the world can feel alive and you can feel for the pixels living withing that world because it has the necessary ingredients.

I believe that isn't how npcs react to you the player, but how they fit and live within the rules of that game.

Characters with personalities, their own ambitions and backstories. As it stands most NPCs are dialogue dispensers who stand in one spot, or attack you. I think that NPC background characters have use in making a place not seem like an empty limbo, but important characters should feel like real people.

Nowadays everyone has to be voice acted, we'd be better off bringing back voiceless text. But gamers are lazy so a game like that might not sell that well.

Agree with voiceless text.

If you care enough about the world and story you are trying to convey then you can certainly reel in the player through text only. It's not much different than plunging in a really good book, before you know it you're too engrossed in the plot to notice.

kenshi is literally shite

it has many features and a huge world yet the depth of a puddle

the thing i liked the most about open world rpg games back when they was very dungeons and dragons inspired was the actual roleplaying

>dat pic
HHHNNNNNNGG

you bring a game to life by addidng life

WHERE'S OUR GENSOKYO GAME REEEEEE

Biggest problem I jave is when you can just tell an erea in a sandbox is destined to be a set peice, I'd rather those areas to be a puzzle to possibly solve or just explore, rather than having it blow up or whatever, the worst fimding something cool and it having nothing to do at all.

Good environments, characters, and gameplay.

>open world game
>can't go back to certain places after finishing some mission there

>closed world adventure game
>can't replay the game in reserve or go back to the very beginning

Video games fucking suck.

>open world
>fixed
SImple.
DO NOT MAKE THEM! THE MOST BORING LINEAR COWADOOTY INSPIRED BLAND SHITE MADE BY A RETARD AND FUCKING RPGMAKER IS 198487423980794598736221983322165495491654654624416549878914058494269894941542656415432164124564198476213519849649413198 TIMES BETTER THAN THE BEST """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""OBEN WURD""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" GAME THAT EXISTS OR WILL EVER EXISTS!
GET OUT!

Learn from games like Gothic or Gothic 2.

The world needs to be hand-made rather than procedurally generated and tell its own stories. Entities within the world must be deliberately placed and coherently fit within the world. The world needs to make sense. NPCs rather than standing around lifelessly should have schedules and tasks they follow and do what you'd expect them to do. In Gothic the craftsmen do their jobs, the priests preach to people, the hunter hunt, etc. - the locations need to make sense, a city needs farms to be supplied, there needs to be some local economy.
The world shouldn't scale to the level of the player since it ruins immersion. If you already know that nothing in the world can harm you there's no suspense in exploring. If you already know that no loot in the world significantly surpasses the items you already have because loot is scaled to your level there's no sense in exploring.
Exploration also needs to be rewarding, e.g. if you find a lost cart and goods scattered around and a trail of blood leading into the forest you can expect to find something dangerous at the end but also possibly rewarding loot. The world tells its own stories that way without a single line of dialogue or a single quest marker.
Lastly, the interface needs to be low-key. Don't make use of gui-elements to show the player the way. Don't allow random fast-travel. Have the player use the world itself and its land-marks for navigation, otherwise the player doesn't focus on the world itself and no matter how beautiful it is, it becomes pointless because the player's eyes will be fixated to the compass that indicates where he's supposed to go. Use NPCs to tell the player the way by describing how he needs to navigate rather than putting a marker on an auto-map or a big arrow in the interface. Of course that only works if the world is distinctive enough to actually have varied and uniquely looking terrain - but that's why I said the world needs to be hand-made.

>that second "pillar"
Holy fucking perspective batman that is awful

Not quite what you're asking, but Majora's Mask feels very alive.
The in-game time limit allowed the devs to give the NPCs realistic schedules and to have good timed events (such as a tourist getting to the city, etc)

It's already been done.
Look at what Trails in the Sky did.
EVERY NPC has a story. Their lives progress while the story goes on
Every RPG needs this

what an autistic post

Also known as: don't do open-world games. I mean, even open world racing games tend to suck.

why haven't you broken your cycles of guilt, user?

...

>How do you sufficiently bring a world to life?
NPCs and objects which you can significantly interact with.

Remember, kill the source of belief and kill the monsters.

Games like majoras mask that have time limits feel real.

>le autist meme
If you like open world you are a window-licking mouthbreating retard with a iq in the negatives. FACT

By creating a world with attention paid to every detail, a world with a believable and realistic world design and where everything it's connected, like Gothic 2

youtube.com/watch?v=AB5lfEZiwrE

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

tasty pasta dude

What's wrong with the humans? They're just fodder for those lewd youkais and other shrine maidens.

the "open-world meme" is just a stupid meme is just that, a meme.
Players don't want true open-worldness, they only think they do. It's boring.
What they want is to feel like they have a open world, a sandbox where they can do anything.
The game designer's mission is to give the illusion of absolute freedom to the player.

What is easier to kill off? Tens of thousands of instance of magical bullshit or a thousand or so baseline humans that also happen to sustain the above mentioned instances?

interactivity. its one of the best things you can focus on for an open world game.

>It's just a meme bro!

It's not mate, it's an actual genre

"the everything must be open world! Give FREEDOOM!! to the players!" is a meme

Who are you quoting?

The average idea of "what is open world"

Ding ding, VA has killed stories. Basically transformed videogames from potentially having book-tier stories to hollywood shit and really, really low brow hollywood shit.

You can't quote an idea bozo

of course I can. I just can't kill it