I quote this whole post because I think it's onto something, and in two connected parts:Der_Foe wrote: ↑Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:45 pmHave the universe simulating away, allowing to speed up or slow down the process, showing the most beautiful and/or busy parts of the given universe. On the side / a second screen is a list of different roles an ai agent can assume (or what the demo thinks what role ai agents play based on their equipment and activity). When a player selects one of the roles, he instantly takes control over an to that point ai controlled ship.
1. Show off the continuous activity of the game universe.
2. Let the player jump into that activity.
Imagine: a demo cycle starts off tightly zoomed-in on one AI-controlled ship, maybe showing the use of scanners and drones to mine a single asteroid. In a window, statistics about that ship's status, its net worth, and its current projects are displayed.
The "camera" then pulls back to show several ships also mining. Then it pulls back more to show many ships mining, and coming and going, in a large asteroid field. (Note that this is all still hands-off for the player.) Each time the camera sees more activity, the status window is updated to show a count of that activity: total worth, number of projects, etc.
Then the view is expanded more, showing traffic swarming between asteroid fields and space stations and colonies on planets, now including fleets trading and maybe fighting, and the status window again is updated to describe the total activity level. The camera smoothly pulls back again, and now we're seeing a schematic view of all the activity in an entire star system. (And still the potential player can only watch.)
Then with an appropriate flourish, the "camera" shows multiple connected systems in a sector, with activity (non-combat and combat) visually represented on the sector map in an abstracted but understandable format, and the Total Activity window is updated again.
And then the camera pulls back one more time to show a rendering of the entire known universe, with attractively-rendered symbols and fields moving in real time as large-scale simulated NPC activity alters the social structure of the universe. And the status window now displays incredibly large numbers to drive home the staggering amount of acivity happening all the time across the entire game world.
...and then, in a rush, the camera zooms back in all the way past sectors and stars and planets until it's just looking again at the original mining ship, calmly puttering away. And then the controls are unlocked for the player.
Obviously the timing on something like this would need to be handled well. I think you'd want to show each scene only long enough to let the player see the kinds of gameplay possible at that scope, and glance at the status window, before the next scene change. The idea is to hint at the incredible amount of activity being simulated at multiple scales before returning to the starting point and letting the hands-on phase begin.
Basically, I'd like to see potential players so stunned at the scope of an LT game universe that they forget to play when they're given control over a ship.
Please note that I'm not suggesting this instead of an immediate combat demo. That certainly should be available for potential players if that seems like what they care most about.
What I'm asking here is, what's an effective way for Josh & Co. to show other potential players that -- as per the Kickstarter promises -- there's a lot of other activity going on in an LTverse, and players can be part of that fun, too.
I've been enjoying the suggestions so far. Any more thoughts?