Expanding the content: Distributed Storytelling for UETF

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Chicago

If you've been reading the posts in "Changing the Focus", you'll have noticed we've made a number of changes in the way we're building UETF Chronicles. This post is a summary of why we've made these changes and why we think it's going to create a better UETF Chronicles experience for you.

I might have titled this post "Distributed Content Creation" to be more technical, but I think "Distributed Storytelling" expresses our purpose more clearly. To put it simply: All computer games should be about telling some kind of story. When we started UETF Chronicles, the original intention was for us, the creators, to tell a story. But as we released the game, the stories became less about the story we were telling as the stories that were being created. Chapter 1 basically showed you a very basic universe-a generic space-like environment, generic characters, an unknown generic enemy and lots of props. The interesting stories were created by the players-the one time your entire team got wiped and you held off 3 rocket bots using only your pistol, or the time your friend went one on one with a tank and only one rocket, the time you ran through a hail of plasma fire to deliver an emergency re-supply-anyone who has played UETF has had these kind of stories, which in all honesty pretty much beats anything I could dream up. That's why the upcoming versions of UETF are going to focus on helping you create those great stories.

A word on content-first and foremost, creating content for games is tough. For anyone who cares to know, we spent almost a year building about 6 levels for the final version of UETF (one of those being the loading level!) and for a general total of about 10 hours of fresh gameplay. You could maybe stretch it out if you were fanatical and wanted to try the entire campaign on a different difficulty level. The same goes for the multiplayer-the co-op campaign was fun the first couple of times through, but quickly became stale. Under the hood, each mission was held together by duct-tape and spit, and each mission was a tremendous pain to plan and implement. Every mission required custom graphics, actors, an entire custom gametype, even requring us to add in code on several different classes just to add in a line of dialog. In short-we just could not provide enough content for the level of effort we were putting in.

How we're changing this-Our new goal is to make it easy for everyone-for our team, and for you-to create new content. I'm not talking about just being able to change your armor color either (ironically enough, that's not one of the options). Instead, we're giving you the tools to set up your own story environments. For starters, we're giving you the choice of the gametype (what your team is doing), choosing from a set of acceptable maps (where your mission occurs) writing the mission briefing (why you are on this mission), and selecting the enemy set (who the mission is against). You'll also be able to link these missions together into campaigns so you'll be able to play several missions end-to-end, retaining experience throughout.

UO Noob Joined: 20 Sep 2004 Posts: 43 Location: Chicago

Ok, Part 2 of distributed storytelling:

In part 1 I outlined the basic elements that we wanted content creators to be able to manipulate. This section will describe how it will be implemented, and how the entire "distributed" concept is excecuted.

The basic interface will be as simple as possible. Using a series of simple menus, you will select a gametype, map, select your enemies and friends and write your mission briefing. At this point, you can save and launch the mission to play, or opt to add it into a campaign. Once you complete a mission or campaign, it is stored in the standard UT data format on your HDD.

The eventual goal is (I'm not sure if this is possible yet) to build a web-interface for this mission creation instead of using the UT interface. You will logon to the UETF mission creation site and build your mission or campaign. At this point, you will be able to submit your campaign data into the general pool of all created campaigns for other players to view. You will be free to add in extra comments/pictures on your campaign description. You can also specify if this campaign branches off a previously created campaign or is part of a specific campaign storyline. Servers can then download your campaign and open it up for other players to play. Eventually I would like to be able to broadcast servers for a specific campaign, so you could just click on a link by the campaign to jump in and start playing. In this way, different mission creators could have a collective area to display and inspire other creators in building content-henceforth, distributed storytelling.