Time
From Neverend
How will time be measured compared to Earth? Most games have 1 game minute equal 1-3 Earth seconds, but then you'd be spending game hours sitting or walking from one side of the city to the other. But a system that takes minutes into account, such as 1 game minute = 30 Earth seconds, would mean players rarely get to see Day change to Night. This may be a good thing, as the sun and moon won't have to change constantly in one game session.
Dates are important, and some form of datekeeping can exist. Not an exact date, but an estimate from some period or event after the cataclysm that starts the year at 1.
With a date system in place, all players can have a "account created" and "account deleted" date associated with their account. In this way players know when they are born, and when a character has "died."
Tombstones, graves, plaques and mementos can be made for characters that decide to leave, placing their name and end date as text.
Dates are also useful for chronicling major events. Most games are static, so that monsters never really take over a town, or players never really defeat all monsters in a camp or cavern. But when players affect the world, important dates should exist to give a sense of time and scale.
So assuming retail or even beta is year 1, then players can reference when they started and how long their character has been around. Actual age won't really be a factor, yet. Birthdate might be relevant to special items or events, such as a ring that increases luck if the date is your birthdate or wedding anniversary.
The question with player events is "what's important?" A mixture of game creator events can be recorded in timelines and website news, so a created plotline or event will be remembered.
Player events and accomplishments will be harder to record, and rely on a world creator actually witnessing the event to record it. Unnofficial timelines and text log output to the client can help players post relevant dates to messageboards, boasting accomplishments, but official dating will require some form of server logging.
But how does the server know what's important? Perhaps only major events can have a "date started and date ended" timestamp, with ongoing events marked as "ongoing" until the event ends. These major events are identified from a default list, consisting of:
City creation date and city destruction date Major NPC created date Major monster group slain date Monster utter extinction date to respawn date Player has slain a major monster Player has slain a god Guild or organization creation date to destruction date Marriage date
The problem is with specific players who arise to great power and accomplish great things. World creators will have to monitor them invisibly for any major achievements, and then determine what is major. This might be "player is the first to do x" or "Player does x with odds against him." Players will eventually do major things once thought impossible, such as slaying monsters or gods, so what counts as major or commonplace is debatable.
Respawning elements are also an issue. While uniquely created monsters can be a major accomplishment to be defeated, there will probably be incredibly strong default monsters that will be killed repetetively, such as a great dragon. This makes killing it less special if it's already been killed several times before.
Date logging can be saved in serverside read only text chunks consisting of one month or year, with a replacement of the whole read only file for that period needed to to overwrite a record if there are any corrections.
[edit] Time management
Some games require eight hours a day just to get anywhere. What does this game have for people who only have one hour a day to play? How much can they experience? What can they enjoy? What short or quick activities are there? What's something fun that can be accomplished relatively quickly in an hour?
If I use my assumption that the person has learned the basics first... then what can you do in only an hour?
- Go into a bar and get in a fight
- Pick up someone for some quickie sex
- Walk around sightseeing
- Read the in game "newspapers"
- Come in with a friend and have sex with that friend and enjoy the "bouncing tit" graphics
- Rent a vehicle and go for a joy ride
- Stop strangers in the street and ask them questions regarding the true nature of the universe
- Run around naked and hope someone creates an experience for you.
How about if the player goes to the casino (thats only 5-10 minutes). If that player wins big-time, it'll mean a lot towards how far he's getting in the game. It means he could buy something that he couldn't afford before, which could let him do something he otherwise couldn't do. Maybe he needed that bit of extra protection for the last part in the realm, where he might need to fight, maybe a huge monster etc. But without that money, he couldn't get that piece of protection, therefore couldnt reach the next realm. All this to consider just for popping in to the casino.
Wasteland Stagecoach
They could hop on the "WasteLand Express" a stagecoach sort of ride experience where up to ten players could get on a huge protected platform and ride out into the wasteland.
the destination of the wasteland express is up to the ticket purchasers. One destination is "Field of Broken Dreams" one of the last archaeological digs situated in the ruins of a old Earth City that was the location of one of the last battles of the Apocalypse.
Many Excavators choose that as a destination.
Outpost 13 is also another popular destination. Outpost 13 is the official government trading observation outpost in the wasteland. Many of the delegates from the cities of Taurans, Lycans, vampires and Mechans visit this outpost to have meetings and to deal with tech government Marshall located here (a TOUGH hombre i might add)..
The trip across the wasteland to Outpost 13 takes about one hour at the speed of the transport. There are a lot of strange things to see and be seen by on the way there.
Sightseeing The city of Nexus is broken up into many districts and sections. The red light district is fun. That is where tech vamps, Deimos, Lycanus and other denizens of the dark go to play.
It is a section of tech city totally shielded from sunlight. It is surrounded by a filter which eliminates the band of sunlight harmful to vampiros and other dark creatures from the light which passes through.
That means that at tech HEIGHT of tech midday sun, the red light district appears as a nighttime place with a dull red glow permeating tech obsidian dome surrounding it (hence the name)
The red light district is connected to Nexus proper through a guarded tunnel which opens up into the city.
One the other side of tech red light district is a huge gateway which leads into tech wasteland..
Other popular areas of Nexus include Neo Took and NoYoko.. (fashioned after Tokyo and New York, respectively)
Home of the new moderns.. The emerging technology masters and tech cyborg denizens of Nexus.
Here all sorts of augmentations can be found and performed on humanoid citizens. Eye implants, other surgical implants, etc.
Bots, droids, weapons and technology can be found here. Also Monobikes and other strange contraptions.
Magus is tech name of tech section of Nexus where tech magic users congregate and shop. This is also where many churches are located. This part of town is ironically tech hum of tech shadow government but also the only unregulated part of Nexus.
Angelus and Deimos can be found wandering through here as well as other creatures. It is a place where safety depends on which block you happen to be walking down.
This would be where a player can go for training.. or go for "special" tantrick services (the red light district being where they would go for all sorts of "other" sex services..
Scattered all throughout tech Nexus are various massage parlors and "meditation" centers for a variety of fetishes (robotic, animalistic, etc..)
Every character type has a hum in Nexus SOMEWHERE
in an hour of game time a player could almost get lost in the various locations of nexus.. or simply barter.. rob cheat and steal...
