McGyver RL!

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

While being sick one tends to lurk around the house and watch tv more
than usual. As it happens they are again shoving the McGyver and I just
happened to see the (apparently) first episode.

Well, the show was much better zillion years ago, but it got me
thinking. What about making a RL with strong ephasis on the skill system
(including lore / knowledge skills) and building things. There could
be only one class and race and the player evolves through improving skills.

It could even be educational with real-world information of different
compounds and stuff.

Maybe not so much fighting as usual.

I also thought that it might be very interesting to make it to
"cross-over" from standard McGyverish setting to Lovecraftian horror
setting.

Surely there must be one McGyver RL around already?

--
Rami

 

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At Sat, 03 Sep 2005 19:46:28 +0300,
Rami Saarinen wrote:

>
>
> While being sick one tends to lurk around the house and watch tv more
> than usual. As it happens they are again shoving the McGyver and I just
> happened to see the (apparently) first episode.
>
> Well, the show was much better zillion years ago, but it got me
> thinking. What about making a RL with strong ephasis on the skill system
> (including lore / knowledge skills) and building things. There could
> be only one class and race and the player evolves through improving skills.

I think it could be much more McGyver-likeish if it wasnt skill based --
on the contrary, the player should come up with a way of using objects
around him, knowing the ways they can interct with each other. If you make
it skill-based, you reduce it to just a dice roll.

As I see it, it could be a kind of a puzzle game (with additional option
to solve some of the puzzles by brute force, involving risk and injuries),
with the puzzles randomly generated, using kind of a backward way: you
start with the goal and build the solution, putting all the needed objects
around as they are needed (you can randomly generate sokoban levels this
way, but they are hard to solve for a human player).

Of course, you'll also start with some additional objects, and if you
think up a way of solving a puzzle without actually using all the needed
objects (or using some of already gained objects instead of them), you
can keep the spare objects and use them in next puzzles.

Having said that, I must also say that the only 'logical' games that works
well with randomly generated content I know are 'Tetris', which is
partially reflex-based, 'Memory' which uses your memory intead of mind,
and 'Mastermind' which gets pretty boring after few tries.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(><) 3 Ouch!
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Are you familiar with the game "Survival Kids"? IIRC, it's a gameboy
game with a strong emphasis on creating things from standard objects
(rocks, sticks, mushrooms) found in the world. It was quite a good game
for the time. If you can *cough* find a copy anywhere, I'd suggest you
spend some time with it.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

At 3 Sep 2005 11:35:39 -0700,
Jesse Murphy wrote:

> Are you familiar with the game "Survival Kids"? IIRC, it's a gameboy
> game with a strong emphasis on creating things from standard objects
> (rocks, sticks, mushrooms) found in the world. It was quite a good game
> for the time. If you can *cough* find a copy anywhere, I'd suggest you
> spend some time with it.

I finished it several times, altrough I didn't manage to get to all the
possible endings. It's a nice game, but still lacks replayability.

I mean, most of the time you're actually trying out various things to
check what comes out. I imagine that in the McGyver-ish roguelike you're
supposed to know exactly what comes out (McGyver would know!) -- the
challenge is in applying it to the problem at hand.

Of course, it's always possible to simply advance by trial-and-error,
without any thinking, but you can effectively limit usefulness of such
a technique by limiting resources (careful here!) and making the number
of combination very large.

The number of options would grow exponentially with the number of objects
you can interact with. However, to make this complexity manage-ably by
a human being, a good and simple set of rules must be made, so that you
can easily foresee the results of your actions. Of course a certain degree
of similarity to real-world rules can greatly help out imagination.

Then the game turns into a sort of maze-solving puzzle -- you've got a lot
of paths before you, but you have to use your memory to foresee which of
the paths is best for you. Certain degree of freedom should be introduced,
however (ie. no "perfect" mazes),because human player will not always
choose the best path.

--
Radomir `The Sheep' Dopieralski @**@_
(^^) 3 Bee!
. . . ..v.vVvVVvVvv.v.. .

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski wrote:
> At Sat, 03 Sep 2005 19:46:28 +0300,
> Rami Saarinen wrote:
>
>
>>
>>While being sick one tends to lurk around the house and watch tv more
>>than usual. As it happens they are again shoving the McGyver and I just
>>happened to see the (apparently) first episode.
>>
>>Well, the show was much better zillion years ago, but it got me
>>thinking. What about making a RL with strong ephasis on the skill system
>> (including lore / knowledge skills) and building things. There could
>>be only one class and race and the player evolves through improving skills.
>
>
> I think it could be much more McGyver-likeish if it wasnt skill based --
> on the contrary, the player should come up with a way of using objects
> around him, knowing the ways they can interct with each other. If you make
> it skill-based, you reduce it to just a dice roll.

You are right on the spot. What I wanted to say is that the "skills"
could be "skills of knowledge of different areas of science". That is,
if somebody is very talented in chemistry he will know more and better
solutions.

This could come up with suggestions of what the given component could be
used on... or something like that. Or maybe it would work like spells in
traditional RL, you just need certain levels of knowledge to build some
artifact etc.

>
> As I see it, it could be a kind of a puzzle game (with additional option
> to solve some of the puzzles by brute force, involving risk and injuries),
> with the puzzles randomly generated, using kind of a backward way: you
> start with the goal and build the solution, putting all the needed objects
> around as they are needed (you can randomly generate sokoban levels this
> way, but they are hard to solve for a human player).

>
> Of course, you'll also start with some additional objects, and if you
> think up a way of solving a puzzle without actually using all the needed
> objects (or using some of already gained objects instead of them), you
> can keep the spare objects and use them in next puzzles.
>

Exactly so.

--
Rami

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.development (More info?)

Radomir 'The Sheep' Dopieralski wrote:
> I think it could be much more McGyver-likeish if it wasnt skill based --
> on the contrary, the player should come up with a way of using objects
> around him, knowing the ways they can interct with each other. If you make
> it skill-based, you reduce it to just a dice roll.

I agree on this.
From all RLs i know, Nethack is nearest to that goal. Things like
killing iron golems by luring them on a water trap, or pulling
yourself out of a hole with a grappling hook, or ...