The History of CRPGs

[vyshka]

@BrianRubin

Wait, Starflight isn’t procedurally generated! I’m gonna print up a copy just so I can throw it out a window!

Are they talking about the fractal generator stuff for the planet surfaces?

[Clay]

There’s more about the Elite universe generation here:

Rabidgremlin's Soapbox

Here’s the source code for a text prototype of the proc gen model for Elite:

http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/text/

And then proc gen for Frontier: Elite 2

http://www.jongware.com/galaxy1.html

[Greybriar]

Thanks for the links, Clay! The CRPG Book brought back many happy memories.

[Alistair]

Just noticed he mentions my mod in the key mods for Gothic section. I am so proud :)

[Rock8man]

Unofficial Patch: Fixes most of the few bugs left.
Player Kit: A handy tool that allows you to run and
manage Gothic’s mods. Required for some mods.
Textures Patch: Offers higher resolution textures,
mostly made based on Gothic II’s textures.
Golden Mod: Restores cut content, adding alchemy,
a few new quests, items and a new area, while also
making the whole game less linear. Great for a replay.
The Trial: Adds a new short adventure about a Count
accused of massacre and allows you to recruit NPCs.
Dark Mysteries: A fan-made expansion for Gothic,
with new areas, quests, items, NPCs and features.
Diccuric: A huge mod with an entirely new campaign
and world, both about the same size as the original
game. Uses improved graphics, taken from Gothic II.

Which of these was you Alistair?

[Alistair]

The Trial was mine. I remember I leveraged the way NPC schedules were designed to change between chapters etc to let the PC assign tasks to buddies they could recruit. Then the quite nice AI handled everything else. So you rescued some bowmen and you could order them to ‘hold the bridge’ say, and they would troop off to the bridge and take up positions there as if scripted. It was a pretty powerful mod system but not trivial to use.