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Prioritized Event Memory Queue

#1
Have triggers that are tripped by particular events and whatever granularity is performant, with events nearby or pre-deemed influential on the player tripping at a finer granularity. Eg. In the same zone as the player an event that causes a distress signal to be sent out is flagged as "memorable". Record temporary metrics from the event until an event-ending trigger ( with an outside duration for safety's sake ) is hit. Once the event ending trigger is hit, process the metrics to classify the event and save the relevant metrics, including some sort of "Impact" metric. Put a link to that "memory" in the Memory Queue. Keep the Queue sorted based on "Impact".

Occasionally process the queue to degrade "Impact" values per criteria, probably including if the player has ever been or currently is in that Sector. These criteria can include the presence of a Quest Item, a Noted NPC, Tech Y-levels beyond the player, an encroaching Faction, etc.

These "Memories" can provide the basis for custom "set dressing". Coming too late to the origin of a distress call and finding only wreckage; the metrics recorded were the # of destroyed ships and # of attacking ships. This could give a % chance of a pirate base nearby; a Quest Item that is essentially undestroyable can have chance to be either in the debris or in an associated Pirate's hull. You could also have a data recorder / black box give some clues as to the attackers' numbers, faction, tech.

It can work the other way too, in an abstracted fashion. Notable memories created by the player could be in a queue, being processed every few minutes to decay, and have a chance to be "discovered" by a faction/group that could change how that group feels about the player, another faction, or in general. If somebody blows into town and keeps easily taking out patrols, the owning faction might keep sending out more ships into the sausage grinder. If they get the right info from a "memory", then that faction might start devoting resources ( and affecting the bounty board ) toward closing the tech gap that is letting some single Frigate fly through squadrons of Destroyers.

Thoughts?
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Re: Prioritized Event Memory Queue

#2
First of all, I like the idea of tracking memorable events within Limit Theory. I think it is important that some news is available to all NPCs (and the player) in a particular set of zones or systems. I also like the idea of allowing the player to sort these ideas by what they feel is important.

However, I disagree with the concept of 'quests' in the form which you describe them. I believe the events which occur in Limit Theory will be real. Events won't randomly occur because of some mysterious trigger. Instead, events will occur because the NPCs are actually participating in the event. So, if the player were to receive a distress call it would be because a ship is currently being attacked by hostile ships. If the player ignores the call and the ship is destroyed, its cargo, ship logs and other stats will be those of the ship that sent the distress call. Nothing is being randomly generated at this point.
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Re: Prioritized Event Memory Queue

#3
I'd personally say that everything is a "memory" entry, not just anyhow defined "notable" events.
(Which is how i think is already done in LT, remembering the days of josh announcing the itemised data system)

The current position and heading of a specific ship, position and composition of an asteroid, a note of a specific ship destroying another specific ship, a distress call, simply everything that can be broken down into a single line of data.

Because significance varies from person to person, context to context.

In a big fight the destruction of a scout ship is not noteworthy, if the scout is spying alone somewhere its destruction would be significant.
Despite the actual event is exactly the same (scout x shot down by fighter y in location z).

When everything is a "memory" packet we can handle all data the same and dont need special cases.
Trading map or surveillance data is no different from delivering news from a war or sending a distress call.


In that context a "chat" system with the AI could be built in a relatively simple way.
With a small set of "building blocks" for messages which are filled with specific data blocks.

With messages consisting out of [action], [location] and [data] parts which are assembled into messages.

So if you want to sell a load of ore, you assemble a [sell] [station where you unloaded the ore] [type and amount of ore] signal and put it into the "web" where it can be seen by others and being acted upon.
The same system could be used for direct messaging of ships in the surrounding area, instead of putting the message into the web, it is broadcasted from your ship and received by ships in range.
Same method for broadcasting distress signals, which would may be mapped to a qauick control to broadcast [distress][location][possible details on what is needed]

Unifying market interaction and general NPC interaction.



something that would be interesting with the generalised data packet system would be world/timelines.
If you have multiple recordings of a ship, you can arrage the data in a way that shows the interactions through space and time
If that system gets generalised enough it could be used for many things as well.
Analysing of market data over time, fleet movements, pirate attacks, the players path through the universe, etc.
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Re: Prioritized Event Memory Queue

#4
Not to try to end this conversation, but hopefully to add to it, here are some threads where the form and function of in-game "events" have been discussed, with some interesting possibilities emerging.

From April 20, 2014: Unethical Behavior and Information Warfare. The idea here was to have a bit of a think about how "significant actions" (basically, events with a character origin) could be an important kind of content to play with.

On December 17, 2014 (about a year ago now), Josh had some comments in a devlog about events:
[color=#BF0000]JoshParnell[/color] wrote:We don't just need working stuff. We also need working, visible stuff. So along with colonies, I'm going to vow to push further into the game's event system and the visualizations thereof -- in particular, the news feed. I have had the concept of events implemented in the game for quite some time, where an event is basically just an encapsulation of "X did Y at Z with W" kind of thing. Fundamentally, in describes how things in the universe are changing. More importantly, it gives us a way to see, and, ideally, even understand those changes. Well, that is, if we actually had a way to see them :roll: Enter the news feed. The news feed is simply an aggregation of local events of significance. I've always known that making the dynamism of the universe visible would be a critical part in making it matter. But it's only recently occurred to me that aggregation of events is a remarkably simple and effective way to do it (and a way for which some code already exists!) To me, only one major question comes up here: what are the criteria for an event becoming 'known'? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does Freeport 7 have a headlining story about it the next day?

I have actually considered the possibility that knowledge of events is, like other knowledge, encoded in physical 'data' form. That is to say, if we witness the destruction of an Imperial Star Destroyer, we may automatically have that event recorded in our database. Certainly one could see how this opens up the possibility for a lot of interesting gameplay (from inter-system news-runner to factional spy gathering information about enemy activities). But it is, IMO, a luxury. So for now, I will likely proceed by registering events above a certain significance threshold with a system-wide news buffer, which will be displayed at station / colony news boards. From there we can always add more nuance.
And from January 16, 2015: Rumours, Regional Events and expanded System Information, in which asod suggested some ways in which rumors and other event-based information content could help flesh out distant worlds to make them feel more alive. This system could tie into an event-based quest generator pretty neatly.

I hope this thread gets more eyes on it!
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Re: Prioritized Event Memory Queue

#5
In reference to a previous comment: A quest item would be some macguffin that would have a special need to be tracked beyond a normal "thang" that can come and go in the game. "Lord Hastymustachio's Plush Spaceshark Toy" might be the item, that when returned to the Royal Vaults, prevents the "Irreverent Stoic Monarchy" from going Expansionist-Totalitarian and trying to conquer all adjacent sectors. Making sure the game does not lose track of it after it is included in the first Raider's hold was my point. Even if it is left drifting in space after the last holder's ship got blown up.

One of the biggest problems with recording events and data, is that you have to know when to let go. Otherwise the ( file ) system will get clogged up with kruft.

As per Josh's comments quoted above: Although what the simulation produces is static data points, having a sense of "events moving" suggests that we at least look at the first, and maybe in some cases 2nd, derivative, so-to-speak. When possible, including a rate-of-change measurement in a news-report would be useful. If the rate of pirate attacks is constant, that might be good/bad/indifferent, but if the rate of pirate attacks is significantly changing, now that is news! If the influence of a faction is dropping, but the rate it is dropping changes, then that is also news. Looking

Expecting players to easily pick up on rates when they just get dry shapshots of data is asking too much, I think.
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Re: Prioritized Event Memory Queue

#6
"Quest items" don't have to be special. The game is already tracking where all items are located, be it on a station, or in with the cargo of a ship. Something like a stolen blueprint for crafting a type of weapon would indeed have the effect you are asking for. If a blueprint is stolen, once all assembly chips are used up the technology would become unavailable to the particular faction. So, huge battles could take place with the goal of reclaiming the stolen blueprint.

Let the player decide when and what data should be deleted. Treat it like email, with each message being able to be pulled up and read at any time, and also with the ability to delete the message. For those who don't want to go through and delete a bunch of notifications, let the player select a timer which determines how long a message should stay in the log. This way anything that occurred over 4 hours ago (in game time) could be deleted. While we are at it, add a save feature which prevents deletion of notifications by the time deletion feature.
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