Infinite Arcanum - I would love to see this.

Anyone who plays Neverwinter Nights and is familiar with the Infinite Dungeons premium module will know what I'm talking about. If you're not familiar with it, it's basically a random dungeon generator that allows you to play a "different" game each run through. Really it's just a hack-n-slash module that generates random environments, random enemy encounters, random loot for chests and enemies, random puzzles, and random NPCs handing out random quests. Oh did I mention it's all done randomly?

Anyway, I'm proposing a challenge to any Arcanum modders to incorporate this format into an Infinite Arcanum module. I'd direct it more towards rroyo personally, but he's on hiatus and I wouldn't expect him to just drop whatever Arcanum project he was currently working on to fullfill my inflated pipe dreams. But I digress.

As mentioned before, the NWN Infinite Dungeons is more hack-n-slash based. I admit the genre is a little more than a guilty pleasure of mine, but in a setting such as Arcanum, role playing is the premium experience. So I would propose a format with a bit less attention on combat and more on PC/NPC interaction. But regardless, the whole premise is to niftily code a small masterpiece that gives us players a new experience everytime we start a new game in the module.

Thank you. I'll be holding my breath.

 

Holy shit. I demand someone makes this! *drools*

 

Random Arcamum? For me a lot of better idea is to create big world, and create a lot of ways to finish the quests in it. Random dungeon... well not good idea...

Maybe is possible to make just a lot of quests to each NPC and on the begining of every game just give to them only some of those quest and make it random... But still for me... well... it's Arcanum, not hack-and-slash Diablo!

Well, when I am working on Zakon Świtu right now, I really try to take a lot of good ideas from orginal game and FALLOUT... not simple Diablo-game. Random Dungeons and Quests is something what works good in H&S... but not in full cRPG game like Fallout...

 

Wow, so THAT'S what Elidrin was making out of his RDG. I'm proud of that mother-fucker, I should send him an email.

Arcanum is a poor medium for such an idea, I've been designing one for D&D 3.5 if your interested, although due to the freeform nature I can weave in non-hack and slash too, which is nice.

 

That's what I was trying to get across before. I think it would be possible to remove the hack-n-slash heavy elements and incorporate a more roleplay-rich environment into a Random Arcanum mod. Granted it would be considerably trickier to code because it would consist of more than just creating a bunch of random areas and checking random flags to spawn random creatures in those areas. For this project, more emphasis on NPCs and Quests would be given.

Physically, the world/continent itself would not change. It would stay the same. It wouldn't just be random dungeon after random dungeon. There would still be towns and wilderness to interact with. NPCs as well. What I'm thinking of would go like this: The continent is constant. City "X" is always found in at the same coordinates. But which NPCs are found living in that city are random. And their roles and quests are random each time you play through the module. So you wouldn't always find Mr. "Y" and Mrs. "Z" living in the same house in the same city time after time, and they wouldn't always play the same role in the same plot each run through. Maybe in one game, they're allies who seek your help. But in a new game, they're actually the antagonists of the story.
Quest items would be treated the same way. The Dagger of Xerxes (just as an example, I'm not saying we rewrite the original Arcanum itself) wouldn't always be found in the same duneon game after game. Maybe in one game it is. But in a completely different one, some ancient relic collector is in possession of it and you have to convince him/her to give it to you.

So how to accomplish all this? Well that's why I'm posting in the Modding forum. Someone with a better understanding of Arcanum script could tell me if this is possible. I'm thinking that there would be 3 or 4 huge "reservoirs" of data. One for NPCs, one for enemies, one for dialogue/quests, and one for specifically placed items. I would somehow "tag" each entry in each database with a number and when the module/area is loaded have the script pull a random number from 1-N (where N is the total entries in a given database that is calling for the corresponding NPC/enemy/dialogue..etc) and whatever number is called is what you experience at that point. I understand this would be a complete hurricane of a script, but I also think the end result would be pretty spectacular.

But, NO, I'm not just asking for a random dungeon/hack-n-slash generator. I agree that would not fit into the Arcanum format well at all. I'm suggesting a mod that gives you a whole new role playing experience and plot each time you start a new game in it. I hope I've made my point a little clear. I have a feeling this something that could go either way. It might seem just pointless and stupid right from the start but really suprize you as the finished product is unexpectedly addicting. Or, it may seem really cool right now, but just come off as a total dud when finished. Regardless, I still think it would be too interesting a concept to not give a little serious consideration to, even if to just convince yourself that it could or could not be done from a technical standpoint.

EDIT: The scale of this endeavor is negotiable. It doesn't have to start out as a huge, epic mod. If I could mod Arcanum effectively, I would start out small first. Create just one town to experiment with the forumla and go from there. Who knows? Maybe that's all the broader the scope needs to be. This concept could be just as much fun as a small 2-3 hour play through as opposed to a huge, epic 20+ hour playthrough.

 

I think that's an excellent idea, but randomizing the scripts would be EXCEPTIONALLY tricky, and probably take a very great time to do.
Side note: I've actually been working on my dnd campaign and adding random merchants to it, quite interesting.

 

Papa likes.....!

Provided I haven't burned out on modding by the time I finish what I'm doing, I'm going to have a go at this.

 

rroyo: you were actually who I had in mind when the idea hit me. I consider you quite a definitive source of Arcanum modding (on English speaking boards at least). I'm just sorry I can't help you better beyond the idea itself, what with my lack of understanding of WorldEd and restricted time to put forth a learning effort.

Should you, or anyone else, decide to pick this up some day and like some help, I could at least contribute to the dialogue/quests and NPCs "databases."

 

Fair enough. I'll keep you in mind.

As for being a definitive source - I'm still a student, but thanks for the thought.

 

There's something sad about that.

 

I mentioned in a previous post that we're not rewriting Arcanum and that dungeon romping would be kept to a minimum. This would be a completely new module set in the Arcanum universe, since after all we're using WorldED to do this. Role playing (PC/NPC interaction) would still be the number one priority.

But like I said, I'm no WorldEd guru. If someone could miraculously write a generator to randomize what dungeons there would be in the game, that's fanfuckintastic. But for someone, like me, with minimal experiece modding Arcanum, I would make a stock of about 10 or 20 predesigned dungeons, and when the character is about to leave the world map to enter one, have the tile he/she steps to make the transition teleport to one in our stock randomly. It's an ugly way of doing things, but compared to what's out there already, which is...um...nothing, I'd say it's better than, well, nothing.