Creating an Open, Living World

Ambition Online strives to be more than just a game, we intend for the world to be as open and interactible as possible, with NPCs that have their own schedules, needs, and desires. Creating such a world will be a huge undertaking, but a task that can be completed over time, with results at each iteration. For example (this is just off the top of my head):

Phase 1

Each NPC will have a daytime location, and a night time location. During the day, an NPC could be at work, or for enemies, out hunting/wandering. Then at night, the NPC would be sitting at home at a predetermined location.

Phase 2

NPCs will have more than just day/night locations, but also morning, afternoon, evening, night. This way the NPC could be at work morning and afternoon, go to the local pub for the evening, and go home at night. This will also allow the game to put the NPCs in their beds at night to sleep. All the times for these events could vary per NPC, so it doesn't feel like the lunch alarm went off and the robots do their tasks.

Phase 3

Days of the week could be added, giving variation in schedules per in-game day. In addition to that, perhaps random tasks could be added, like getting a drink, going out to lunch, potty breaks, etc.

Phase 4

Each NPC could be given needs and desires. This would be similar to The Sims, and the NPC would handle everything it needs to on its own. At first, this system will be pretty robotic, but could eventually turn into a dynamic life simulation involving friend and family NPCs, and perhaps even players.

. . .

Well, there you have it. Clearly, we are not calling this game Ambition for no reason. Some of these phases could take years to implement, but even at Phase 2, we have surpassed the majority of games out there in terms of a dynamic world.

Major Shift in Platform

Greetings, readers! It has been quite a long time since my last post. For personal reasons among other business, I have taken a break from heavy development of Ambition Online, but alas, as usual, I have returned. And since my absence, not much has changed in the industry as far as MMOs are concerned, but things in Ambition have taken a major shift. This shift comes from watching my own behavior with games, and my assumptions that there are others out there that follow my same patterns. Mostly, it's that I don't really enjoy sitting at my computer and playing games anymore. Maybe it's that I have an uncomfortable chair and only a makeshift office with no real space for my computer to go, but I really just want to sit back and relax on my couch when I play these days.

I am a huge fan of the old console games. In fact, during my break from Ambition, I starting diving into NES game development and all that entailed. I actually got pretty close to making something real, but in the end, I decided that all the effort would be lost in the end to a small group of fanatic developers and nobody else would really care, and why should they? Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about today! What I want to say is that I really like the old console experience, and I can still remember the good times I had playing on the NES and SNES with my brothers. What I'd like to do is be able to recreate that kind of feeling in people when playing my game.

I started out developing a console game, similar to my prototype game A Feeble Saga, and was really starting to enjoy the way it was turning out. I got the game running on my OUYA and felt pretty good about it. However, as I always do when making other games, I realized that I do not have the time to offer what is needed to produce a quality experience with a game like that. Things like compelling story, or lots of content, were things I don't have the manpower or even desire to accomplish. So I thought to myself, what can I do to make this a compelling experience for the users, without me having to create something I wouldn't have to go too far out of my abilities as a developer to create. My solution simply came down to making an open, player-driven world, like Ambition Online.

Now, I can still make the game I wanted, be able to play it the way I want, and also make something that makes sense for my abilities as a programmer. And with some goals in mind, I have some ideas on where to start back up in Ambition development and get something playable released in the coming months. I plan to continue updating this blog on my progress, though surely I will forget, or simply be too tired to write anything.