Neverend
From Neverend
Neverend is an ideal MMORPG design. It relies on ideas and concepts that are refined and evolved over time, just as designs in commercial releases are. The game is intended for computers five to ten years in the future, from the present time and date. The overall design will evolve as present technology evolves.
In its current state, the technology to run the game would be impossible. As time moves on, it becomes more possible, but new designs may still be aimed at years ahead of the present. Thus Neverend will never be complete.
While Neverend is meant to encompass a wide range of ideas, it must fit under a theme, and one person's "perfect" idea may not be the same as another's. An editor must take into account what is intended in the design, and what the overall goals of the design are. The editor must know what works with that design, and what does not. The editor must understand that evolution is preferred over revolution, unless the current system is outdated, broken, or needs major changes.
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[edit] What Neverend is
Neverend is a 99% dynamic game that plays itself in order to maintain the world. Human players and GMs participate in shaping and living in this world. Static elements include character progression, skills, spells, items, and objects, though they may be customizable to an extent. The game plays on several "layers" including civilization, city simulation, household simulation, ecology simulation, and real time strategy. The player will play from an RPG level, which is the lowest layer.
[edit] What Neverend is not
Keep in mind what Neverend is not, in order to understand what should be excluded from its design.
- A pure levelling treadmill
- Battlecruiser 3000
- A linear story driven game
- A static world with static characters and plots
[edit] Overview
Neverend uses at least five game genres. Each genre is at a higher or lower layer that fits seamlessly with the entire world. In most games that are a higher level, the mundane details are abstracted to a point of irrelevance. Civilization rolls numbers to determine battles, rather than have each unit individually measured with its own equipment and abilities. This makes sense for a game that only has high level needs.
Neverend cannot abstract lower levels, because those levels actually exist. They are played as concrete details that make up a larger whole. This includes:
- Civilization and nation building
- City building
- Real time strategy
- Party based Roleplaying
- Individual Roleplaying
- AI simulation
- World simulation
- City simulation
- Household simulation
- Life simulation
- Ecology
[edit] Inspirations
Stealing from one source is plagiarism, but stealing from many sources is research.
Every game has some level of inspiration. Dungeons and Dragons borrowed heavily from Tolkien and various mythological stories. Take a look in the monster manual and you'll see creatures ripped directly with slightly altered names. Everquest borrowed heavily from Dungeons and Dragons. Take a look at its monsters and you'll some ripped directly from D&D's Monster Manual.
While stealing from everything can certainly fill your game with content, refining that content and intentionally excluding things will give a more concrete personality. For example, early Ultimas had elves, dwarves, hobbits, and orcs. Later Ultimas limited this, leaving mostly humans in a more defined world than the generic fantasy it once had.
Final Fantasy XI has a personality. It has a limited number of races and species that exist, and they exist for a reason within that world.
Neverend must have a defined personality, and a defined world. This is hard in a mostly dynamic setting. It might be possible to rely entirely on the player, but this system of player reliance may also fail.
Neverend borrows elements from:
- Ultima 6
- Ultima 7
- Ultima Online
- Arcanum
- Civilization
- Sim City
- The Sims
- Star Wars Galaxies
- A Tale in the Desert
- Horizons
- Saga of Rhyzom
- Shadowbane
- Warcraft
- Starcraft
- Command & Conquer
- Fable
- Sacrifice
[edit] Features
- Features:
- Variable landscape, modifiable on-the-fly with tools and spells. Land count is always the same, so destruction and creation of land simply displaces nearby land.
- Land scars: Textures include tracks, disturbance to ground, charring, blood, rainfaill, leaves, moss, and snow.
- Self-changing landscape: Based on nearby players, monsters, plants, buildings, objects, and spells. Land changes to grass, dirt, rocky, desert, snow.
- Self changing ecology: Based on nearby players, monsters, buildings, objects, and spells. Changes level, growth, training, and stats to keep in balance with surroundings.
- Level balance: Attempts to maintain a PVE and PVP balanced environment, using slow level progression, recoverability through spells and items, and reliance on objects and NPCs for assistance.
- Constant war and peace: Attempts to maintain a balance so that combat can continue nearly indefinitely, and peace/construction can aptly maintain itself.
- Automatic and manual construction: Using the slow construction skill or the faster construction spell, buildings are automatically built to default as long as enough materials are provided nearby and enough time is given. In addition, players may choose to manually create a building using available materials, and a 3D blueprint, where standard building parts are placed in any location in order to give a truly unique design.
- Territory system controls land, housing.
Customizable political system controls behavior, laws.
- User created objects and buildings.
- Neverend inspirations:
- Sacrifice: Variable landscape, land altering spells, balanced combat system, recycling life system, mana as resources, minions, slow level progression, building and object destruction, territory conquest, group allies and enemies, fast paced group and spell combat.
- Ultima Online: Trade skills, PVP/PVE, housing, visible items in world, non-combat style available, self-changing class and alignment system, guilds.
- Ultima 6 & 7: Trade skills, item creation, NPC schedules and jobs, NPC interactive conversation, good and rogue NPCs, roaming guards, food and reagent harvesting, world behavior manipulating spells.
- Everquest: Large world and levels, numerous monsters and NPCs.
- Dark Age of Camelot: Faction PvP system, dynamic quests, trade skill tree.
- Shadowbane: Territory combat, group combat, city creation.
- Warcraft II & III: Units as resources, balanced combat, building creation.
- Diablo II: Balanced skill and spell system, balanced equipment system, fast paced action.
- Challenges:
- Extremely efficient engine allowing dynamic landscapes, and numerous players, NPCs, spells, items, and objects at once.
- Extremely efficient lag-handling system, server clustering, and redundant data backup.
- Item/object/NPC/player/landscape clustering system.
- Seamless integration of multiple design concepts including MMORPG, Single player RPG, RTS, city/life simulation, action.
- Completely automated and self-sufficient NPCs, NPC groups, NPC territories, ecology. .
- Dynamic NPC dialogue, schedule, and quest system.
- Balanced combat, spell, and skill system.
- Balanced technology and city system- primitive, stone, iron, bronze, wood, magic.
- Monster and NPC customized commands.
- Territory and political system.
- Keeping track of individual stats, inventory, and skills for every monster, NPC, and player.
- Integrating MMORPG concept with RTS concept, best current example is Sacrifice.
- Natural and created objects.
- Spells for combat, creation, and enchantment.
- Application level support of game, including messaging, help system, menu system.
- Server level support of game including lag, clustering, data handling, database, backup.
- Systems:
- Spell types:
- Spell classes:
