h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah - sounds fun, yes...

The emphasis in this one will be on realism and roleplaying, not on levelling up - in fact there won't be levels, as such. The only way to improve your skills will be to use them or to use related skills - everything will be connected via a (hopefully) realistic system.

There won't be much in the way of customization - it'll be a fantasy world... you'll be out to survive, trade, fight, politic, etc...

I'm definitely interested in Everquest kinda games - but I plan on doing this one first

I think it should be customizable to the effect that the entire civilization is built from scratch by the inhabitants. Also, the people should be influenced by everything that happens to them, such as scars from fights and muscles from workouts, that kind of thing.
>8^B

Well... we're going for the realism aspect... but not the customizable one...

Are you planning on having some kind of theme? Or just generally letting people build what they want?

Well, the letting people build their own society w/ a government run by the players if they chose to have one was what I was thinking about. You know, everything would have to be formally submitted to one of the creators of the game before being placed, using some form like those HTML forms controlled by CGI only it wouldn't have to be. But, yeah, I wanted people to be able to customize the WSOGMM
>8^B

I REALY want it to be 3D Graphics, because text based has been done, and ALL of the work is in the 'levels' or front end, and the engine is easy to push out.

let me know what the plans are, perhaps you could make a page in H2G2 were we could keep tabs on whats going on, (I might even be able to put a link in the PC),

I've played MUD and yet because of the dificulties with the game, it's more of a connection then a game, so I stoped because I lost the conection information and it was hard to get that kind of information.

Settings (Graphical, Audio or General) are needed in any game or program, please don't forget them, or I will have to inform M$ that your copying there idea.

-- DoctorMO --

Hmm, well, I'm sticking with text based... one like this one hasn't been done before

The customization principle is a good one - we're certainly going for letting players determine what goes on in the world as much as possible... which may well involve creation of things with admin approval to some extend. We'll have to see...

Incidentally, I figure I'll release the source under the GPL... hmm... maybe I should set that up so's I can release it as I go along... that way you can certainly see what's going on...

Why have I got the feeling that there is more than one project being discused here?

-- DoctorMO --

Because there are two

Mine, which I'm already working on with someone else doing design work... and Calculator Nerd's.

Mine is the text based one...

Hmm, there's one bit that's separate and might be quite good fun if either of you wants to do it...

I need something to convert English to some number of fictional languages, to simulate not being able to understand someone in the game...

So what I want is a routine that takes a string in English, the number of the language to convert to (there should be 5-10 noticably different languages), and a rating 0-1 for how well you understand the language... and returns the mixed up string.

It should scramble the text in some way that it's unreadable for a rating of 0, approaches being readable as you get to 1, and looks like a foreign language..

Doesn't have to be in Java, provided I can port it easily...

Anyone interested?

now THAT sounds like my cup of tea!
maybe we could just have it change some letters with random letters.

here's my routine for scrambling it, but it's in JavaScript and all those tildes are for spacing

var hex = new Array("0","1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9","a","b","c","d","e","f")
function checkstring(stringvar,language_ability){
~var newstring = ""
~for(var letter = 0; letter < stringvar.length; i++)
~~if(Math.floor((Math.random() * language_ability) - (language_ability / 2)) == 0){
~~~newstring += unEscape("%" + hex[Math.floor(Math.random() * 15)] + hex[Math.floor(Math.random() * 15)]
~~}
~~else(){
~~~newstring += stringvar.substring(letter,letter + 1)
~~}
~}
}

hope this helps, of course with more time I could get a good one done, but that one was slow enough
btw I hadn't figured out that these were two different projects,
>8^B

who is M$?
>8^B

Well, I figured since you want to do a graphical one and I want to do a text-based one it'll kind of have to be two projects

Hmm... you could just randomly switch letters... but does it end up looking like a proper language?

There also need to be several of 'em, which should be possible to tell apart...

Not an easy task, I admit

What you do is, you get the input, put it into an array of strings, each deliminated by spaces, get a char array of your letters you want to include, change a persentage of the words with scrambled letters from your 'alpherbet' char array, and change the length in a random way, i.e from -3 to +3, no more that 13 no less that 3 char per word, string it all together again and return, it you like I can put it in a DLL for you...

-- DoctorMO --

M$ is the Term used for Microsoft because to most programmers and tech IT people, it's insulting, and so we use it like a swear word

-- DoctorMO --

Hmm, I dunno how to use a DLL from java

The basic idea isn't too complicated... but I want it to look *good*...

Has to be tough for people to just decode themselves, too.

It's a shame, Java is one of my least experanced lanuages, now VB C++ CGI BASIC or most other things. even English... hmm... Is there no way you could try, or would you be able to convert from C++ because there pritty close... or would I beable to convert to Java?

-- DoctorMO --

Sure, I can convert C++ to java..

Right, I'm currently working on it, take me a few days because of time limits and I don't have c++ at home...

-- DoctorMO --

nice use of swear notation, but how am I stealing their idea?

...if you make it too much like Everquest, maybe? I dunno, I wasn't really paying attention