Topographies

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18 March 2006

by Mike Rozak

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People usually associate "topography" with geography, but games can include a variety of topographies.

Alternate realities

Some avatar games include alternate realities:

• Nodal (Choose Your Own Adventure) - The fun part of a CYOA book is to explore alternate realities; "What would have happened if I had chosen door B?" Because it was easy to mark your previous page with a finger, this sort of exploration was standard.
  
  Alternate realities are enjoyable if their effects and causalities are interesting.
  
  
• Repeatedly-encountered scenarios (CRPGs) - If the same (or similar) scenario is encountered repeatedly, players can explore alternate realities without breaking the fiction. A typical CRPG employs this sort of exploration, allowing players to try different tactics the second, third, fourth, ..., thousandth times they attack an orc.

Random observations:

• History - History is about causality, which ties into alternate realities. Linear fiction is "history" on a personal level.

Geographic spaces

Several different geographic spaces have been explored in avatar games:

• Nodal (Adventure) - At its simplest, a CRPG, adventure game, or Diku-MUD is a series of rooms that the player can explore. To prevent the rooms from being explored too quickly, and to provide players goals, obstacles are placed in the rooms. These might take the form or puzzles (in the case of adventure games) or monsters (in CRPGs and DikuMUDs).
  
  
• Partitioned two-dimensional geographic space (Wizardry I) - Instead of nodal rooms of arbitrary and undefined size, the rooms can be given length and width, creating a continuous two-dimensional space with many obstructions. This creates a dungeon, which is likewise populated by puzzles or monsters.
  
  
• Two-dimensional planes (Ultima I) - Ultima I employed a a wilderness setting that was a continuous two-dimensional plane with occasional obstructions, like water and mountains. The freedom of movement was so great that other obstacles, puzzles and monsters, could often be avoided by cautious players.
  
  
• Two-dimensional height fields (Everquest) - Everquest's main world was a continuous topography with hills, valleys, rivers, and mountains. Mountains acted as movement and visual barriers. The rest were merely visual barriers since they didn't significantly impede movement, require special equipment to move across, or interact with the main sub-game of combat. Homogonous terrain isn't very interesting. Snow and ice should be slipper, water should have weight restrictions, steep slopes should be slow to climb, etc.
  
  
• Three-dimensional space (Flight Simulator) - In flight games, there tend to be very few barriers.

Random observations:

• Science fiction, fantasy, and exploration novels - These novels are often explorations of geography, although without player/reader participation.

Social spaces

When I have said, "NPCs are the game!", here is part of what I meant:

• Conversational space (Facade) - Conversations have rules that form barriers. Conversations start with a greeting, are followed by a "How are you?" question, perhaps an innocuous warm-up question, then the heard of the question, and completed by farewells.
  
  Non-sequiturs also form barriers; responses and questions must flow logically from what is just being discussed. Jumping back too far in the conversation, or switching the topic is seen as rude.
  
  Puzzles also exist, since conversations are context dependent. Ask someone how they are at the beginning of the conversation and they'll merely say, "Fine." Ask them how they are after discussing the latest flu outbreak and the might mention that they've been having some aches and pains.
  
  A person's mood and opinion of who they're talking to also affects the conversation.
  
  You can think of conversation space as nodal space (like text adventures) but with many more branches, and barriers that can be broken, but at a cost... Say too many non-squitters and people will think you're scatter-brained.
  
  
• Social space - People are connected via relationships, and affecting one person can affect that person's friends, families, and enemies.
  
  For example: To get an appointment with the king, you might need to first befriend his old schoolmaster, who still meets with the king every Tuesday for lunch. To befriend the schoolmaster, you might need to hang around with his pupils. Similarly, if you make one of the schoolmaster's pupils sad, this may ultimately sadden the king, but make his scheming nephew very happy.
  
  You can think of social spaces as being similar to nodal rooms, where each NPC fills in for a room. The NPC's opinion of a player's character affects what exits (social connections) are available to a player. Unlike a room, however, most of the exits are unknown until discovered; players don't know that the schoolmaster is friends with the king until they ask around.
  
  While geographical spaces might present eye candy as interesting-looking scenery, "eye candy" for social spaces involve interesting NPC personalities and relationships between NPCs.

Random observations:

• Novels - Novels often an exploration of social space without any player/reader participation.

Of course, the NPCs exist within geographic space.

Idea spaces

Ideas (and knowledge) have their own space too:

• Wikipedia - An idea space.
  
  
• Combining ideas/knowledge - Two different ideas can be combined together to produce a new idea.

Random observations:

• Science fiction - Science fiction can include an exploration of idea space, although without player/reader participation.

Ideas exist within NPC social-space. As per Chris Crawford's work, ideas and knowledge can flow through social space, affecting characters.