Notorious: Rumour System

In an attempt to kickstart my programming of Notorious, I had a look again at the rumour system for the game:


Rumour System

  As the player interacts publicly with the villiage or other players, the rumour system will transfer information between NPC’s to build their own world view. Ultimately this world view will generate the notoriety that each player needs to advance in the game. Players can also subvert, create or enhance events that others know about in an effort to manipulate the notoriety of themselves or others. 

World Views:
Each individual NPC will have their own world view  of the events that occur in the world. These events can either be picked up as primary sources (the character participated in the event or was an eyewitness to the event) or secondary sources if someone else told them about the event. Characters may have conflicting reports from different sources, but will attempt to resolve these into a consistent world view that they are satisfied with. Players will also have a world view of everything that has been revealed to them in the game, and can use this to compare against others for detecting or interrogating inconsistencies.

A world view consists of a list (or tree structure) of events. Each event will require:
Description: Written text describing the event / rumour.
Source: Person establishing the event / rumour. Primary sources would have their own name here, otherwise it will be the name of the person who passed it on.
Characters: List of characters involved in the event. May also include items if they are unattached.
Evidence: Direct evidence that was used to confirm this event / rumour.
Links:  Other rumours that are related. May possibly be the same event witnessed by others.

There will also be a way for multiple events to be collated into meta-concepts, with links and evidence used to support the concept. As an example, a farmer notices an ogre approaching, the ogre attacking his cattle, then leaving with the corpses. Instead of running to the village and reporting each individual event, they can combine it into an “attack” rumour to talk about and link to each individual event. Multiple attacks with similar characteristics can be combined to generate a “pattern of attacks”. Ultimately these can be used to guide the creation of quests for heroes, and the general notoriety of the player.

When a character interacts with another, they have a list of events that they wish to tell others (depending on their personality; gossipy types will have a long list) ranked by their assumed importance, as well as a list of questions to ask to attempt to resolve internal world view conflicts. If a character hears a new rumour, that rumour is stored with a confidence level of how well they agree with it.Confidence can range from 100% (fully confident, adamantly so) to 50% (happy to accept as true) to 0% (not sure) to -50% (Rejected) to -100% (absolute rejection). Events left between -50% to 50% are contested and are issues that the character will attempt to resolve through conversation with others.  [May need a sigmoid function for confidence]

Player interaction with the Rumour System
Any character holding a linked gem will give the player complete knowledge of their world view. The player can automatically merge this information into their own world view, bring in any consistent events / rumours and manually handle conflicts, or manually process each event. Even if the information is merged automatically, it should be up to the player to agree or dispute certain events to create a consistent world view. This would entail viewing all the known details of a conflict, highlighting what the general consensus is so far (eg: 3 in favour, 4 not sure, 2 against), and allowing the player to shift their opinion either one way or another.

Creating Rumours
To create a rumour, the player can inject a new event into the memory of a linked creature, then give the creature an action of gossip in town (if needed). If the new event is consistent with other NPC’s world view, it is likely to be adopted and spread.

If there is an internal conflict within the linked creature there will either need to be more changes to make space for the rumour, or more power to add additional certainty to an idea. Complex changes may have even more difficulty in conveying to others.
There should be a way of predicting whether the changes will “take” before accepting the use of power. Rejected rumours stay within their memory as an “idea” that was eventually thought to be inconsistent, which will make successive attempts even harder (and possibly even make the creature doubt themselves as a primary source)

This is also the technique for removing events or modifying events, although care will need to be taken to make sure that these events are not re-exposed to the creature through talking to others.   

To make use of the rumour system, the player may wish to use a reliable villager to start rumours. They may be able to capture a local farmer, give him a gem (in a ring), link to it, then modify the event of him receiving the gem so that he thought it was given to him from his mother. Once you release the farmer, they can then be used to keep track of what is happening inside the city, as well as injecting and denying rumours. The credibility of the character is damaged if injected rumours are found to be false, or they are disagreeing with the general consensus on a rumour. Reduced credibility makes it harder to get others to support their primary sourced events / rumours. This could be used for “boy who cried wolf” scenarios too. 

*NOTE*: Unsure whether power use should be continuous to support a rumour, or a once off that is either accepted and assimilated, or rejected.

GTX560 & PSU

Friday was also a good day. The new parts I'd ordered to help with my failing computer had arrived and was waiting for me when I got home. I only had a couple of hours between packing up at school and the staff Christmas party, but it was enough to install my new GTX 560 and NeoECO PSU. Not as big of a step up from the GTX260 as I'd have liked, but it definitely looks like it's solved the lockups 10mins after starting. Not sure if it was the PSU or the graphics card, but with the salt air down here, parts don't seem to last that long and both were the only things left from the last upgrade. 

Fans ... Lots of fans.

Last day

Open space ...

Last day at St Luke's came to a somewhat sad close as I packed up my desk. Everything I needed to keep all fit into my backpack, and a lot of paper went in the bin. I guess I'm lucky that most of my work is already digital and constantly with me anyway.

Thanks for the year must go to:
Chris: An excellent mentor and unfortunate neighbour to cope with all my questions.
Cassie: A great HoD who gave me a lot of support with my wild ideas for teaching. Thanks for all the help in verification, moderation and reporting.
Martin: Helped guide me into teaching when it was really only a wistful idea. His support and that of the school has given me the absolute best transition into teaching that I could have hoped for.

I know I'll be back next year in a limited capacity, but it really felt like leaving for good. St Luke's has been a wonderful place to work at for the past 6 years, and I'll have many fond memories & friends from the experience.

So why leave?

I'd been constantly asked that by all sorts of people at St Luke's. I had a standard response, and longer response and a how-long-have-you-got response, but really it came down to a feeling of entrapment. I've been heavily involved with computers and IT for the majority of my life, and even while teaching I would have put IT as about 2/3rds of my focus. Without the ability to teach IPT in the senior curriculum there's a big chance that I'd have to lose more and more of that IT experience as I become more heavily teacher focused. If I kept going, there would be a good chance that I would be teaching for 3 years or more, and that would pretty much rule me out of returning to the IT industry. I still like teaching, but resigning was a way to force me to look for other opportunities that may have both an IT and teaching focus.

There are many companies that are getting close to my vision of future learning and maybe I should be working heavily in that area. I know I don't have the entrepreneurial drive to go out by myself, but if I could guide some other companies a little closer to the end goal, then that would be a worthwhile contribution.

I'm still keen on giving University lecturing or some form of adult education a go. I have strong reservations about the way Universities are when MOOCs and open learning are becoming viable alternatives, but I'm not sure how to monetise the new breed of courses. What I definitely want to do is to put more work into my own model. Flesh out all the parts into a full design. Hopefully this will both force me to look beyond my own ideas and see what else is out there for referencing, and also help isolate specific opportunities to aim toward.

There is also some local opportunities to get back into tech support and business analysis. I must say that the best part about contract programming was getting right into the heart of a business and looking for ways to improve existing processes (whether that was through a program or not). If that opportunity comes up like I imagine, it will be a good change.

On the programming front, I'm also keen on getting back into working with Notorious. I'd made a bit of progress last time Andrew came down, but when I'm teaching it really felt like any time devoted to anything else was guilt-ridden. I think that'll be another post...

Like David, I'm also keen on getting back into more regular blogging. This one is a pretty good sign that being out of teaching mode will help.   

GameLog 226-227

I never thought I'd see the day when steam stats went blank. Admittedly I've been playing a couple of game outside steam, but the real killer has been the pressure to mark and report for the end of year. 65 hours. That'll be another story.

Grand Prix Story (6hrs) - Picked up this iPhone/iPad game after hearing a brief mention on 3 moves ahead. Plays pretty well, and lightweight enough that it feels like I'm not really playing while on a mini-break from marking.

Grepolis (3h) - Finally placed into vacation mode as it wasn't going to be an option with the workload I had.

Bookworm (1h) - been playing on and off for a bit, especially at the in-laws where sudoku and word games feel more appropriate.

Couple of other slight dabbles, but nothing to really report. Under 10 hours :/.

GameLog 224-225

Grepolis (20) - More war and development.

Space Pirates and Zombies (12) - Steam special. Been looking at it for a bit to see if it's like Space Rangers. More actiony and a different beast, but probably not a big attention getter with other titles on the horizon.

Heroes of Might & Magic 6 (10) - 2nd Campaign.

Skyrim (2h) - Veeyar Lv.2 - Picked it up for Sandy as a gift, but looks like it'll need to be run on mine. Doubt I'll be able to sit down seriously with it until school finishes.

Minecraft (1h) - New server for the LAN

GameLog 222-223

Grepolis (20) - Almost walked away, but now that there's a war on, it's getting interesting again.

Heroes of Might & Magic 6 (20) - Clean and slick, but somehow not as fun as what I remember the series to be.

King of Dragon Pass (14h) - Finally picked this up for iPhone as I'd baulked a couple of times at $10 for an indie title on that platform. Plays well, and has a good atmosphere to sink into. Very kind on the batteries, which is a good thing for long-haul trips.

Dungeon defenders (6h) - Looks like an interesting LAN game, but solo isn't too much fun

Terraria (2h) - Still can't beat the dungeon skelly

GameLog 218-221

Sengoku (70h) - 2 campaigns and a couple of AARs 

Fable III (35h) - Another steam sale weekend deals. Played somewhat poorly compared to the original Fable. There seems to be LESS open world than before, less control over what you can do, and even less valid decision making. I know they have also tried to go for a minimal interface, but there are some things that you want to know at a glance. How much gold do I have right now? (not in 3 minutes when I get more), how healthy am I? This leads to convoluted methods to just see stats that are usually readily available. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist, but google searches on the more irritating aspects leads me believe I'm not alone.

Grepolis (16h) - Still ticking along

Heroes of Might and Magic 6 (12h) - very slick, but feels a little devoid of emotion. Playing through the game on hard seemed, well, hard. Harder than it usually is, which just left me repeating the battles to get the most out of it. Might tone it down and treat it more like a walkthrough. Multiplayer and online stuff looks interesting, but haven't ventured that way yet.

Mount & Blade: Fire & Sword (6h) - LAN multiplayer fun. Wish it didn't randomly dump people out of the game though :/.

Civ5 (4h) - LAN game with Andrew. Played pretty well as a tag-team, but probably needed a step up in the AI even with Andrew just starting out. probably 2 vs 4?

Dwarf Fortress (4h) - More expansion while waiting for Fable III to net me some money. Outer wall complete. Now for level 2.

Terraria (2h) - Found another meteor crater, and nearly enough gold to start making fire armour.

Gran Turismo 5 (3h) - Andrew's visit in the holidays led to some racing with the wheel. Unlocked the TopGear test track after much frustration.

DiRT 2 (2h) - Tried a couple of laps with the driving wheel to see if it was different to GT5

First the worst, Second the best, Third gets the Golden Chest

Cam has been saying a little playground chant at home sometimes:

First the worst
Second the Best
Third gets the Golden Chest
...

It hadn't dawned on until recently that it describes Notoriously Carded quite appropriately. First does finish the worst, Second is the best for that round, but aiming for third will more likely produce consistent results, giving the final win at the end of the match.

GameLog 214 - 217

Crunch time of the year for teaching, so the games dried up. 4 weeks and the total game time is nowhere near my average weekely total :(.

Sengoku (15h) - Picked up Friday night on sale. Looks like a Japanese Crusader Kings, which is perfect to lose myself into for de-stressing. Played a couple of games and it seems a little easier than even Crusader Kings.

Terraria (10h) - Mainly in the weekend after finishing up. Cam's go-to game still.

CivWorld (5h) - Last part of the CivWorld game before shutting up shop. Ended up winning the game and making the 1000 point mark to get the top unlockable achievement.

Grepolis (2h) - Put myself into vacation mode to survive crunch month.

First the worst ... (Card Game)

[ A game of getting big, but not too big ]

This is a card game developed to test a high level game mechanic for the upcoming Notorious computer game. First play-through seemed to generate the desired reaction from players with many strategies in play, so it was good enough to be released in its own right.

Concept
A game is divided into 5 rounds, after which all but the top player’s points are counted toward your final score. Each round you may play a card either in front of you to increase your game score, or in front of another player to increase their score. Cards may be either face up or face down, however any card played face up generates a bonus point for the player that it is in front of for each round that the face up card is in play . These bonus points are counted no matter who has the top score for the game.

Materials
Players: 3-7+ players.
Cards: 1 card deck is sufficient for up to 7 players, 2 card decks can be combined if more players wish to play.
Space: Typical arrangement would be players sitting around a table. A dinner setting space per player is sufficient. A playmat is available to help organise card placement, but isn't mandatory.

Rules
1. A match is divided into 5 games, where each game consists of 5 rounds of play.
3. Nominate a starting lead-off player (or randomly choose using a card draw).
2. The lead-off player shuffles and deals 7 cards to each player.
4. The the lead-off player may play one card either in front of them or in front of any other player. The card may also be played either face up or face down.
5. Play continues clockwise for each player to play their single card per round (either in front of them or in front of another, either face up or face down).
6. Once all 5 rounds are complete, count up bonus points and game score (see scoring).
7. Highest game score is reduced to 0 and they are the lead-off player for the next game.
8. Winner is the person with the highest aggregate final score after 5 rounds.


Scoring
1. After the 5th round has finished, count up any bonus points first by tallying how many rounds each face up card has been in front of you and add them to your match total.

Eg: A card playing face up in the 1st round will have been in 5 rounds, so scores 5 bonus points, whereas a card played in the 4th round will have only been in 2 rounds, scoring 2 points. As a total, having a face up card played in front of you on rounds 1,2 and 4 would gain 5,4 and 2 points respectively, tallying to a total of 11 bonus points for the round.

2. Flip over any face down cards and tally up the total face value of cards in front of you. Picture cards count as 10 and aces count as 1.
3. If you have the highest points for the round, you are disqualified and score 0 points. Everyone else adds their points to their match total.
4. If there is a tie for the highest points in the round, both players involved in the tie can place an additional card onto their opponent’s score as a tie breaker. If it still remains a tie, play your final card onto your opponent. If there still remains a tie, continue to draw cards from the undealt pack and place on your opponent’s score until there is an eventual winner. This additional score is also counted in the match total for the eventual 2nd place getter.
5. Calculate and announce your new match point totals while the new game is being dealt.
4. The winner is the aggregate match point leader after 5 rounds.

Play Mat: To aid tracking of bonus points, you may wish to create a play mat by drawing 5 boxes in order on a piece of paper and labelling them from 1 to 5 for each round. Play your cards into the box for that round, even if it is on someone else’s mat. Make sure that each face-up card’s value remains visible, and that the number of face down cards is known.