It’s been a long time since I’ve really played in a scenario-based world and I’m not sure I’ve ever even done so publicly, but considering I just love keeping tabs on Jessica’s C3/DS scenario world, I’ve been inspired lately to try out a scenario of my own.
When I mention scenario worlds, I'm referring to worlds that are created with a certain set of self-imposed rules and concepts in mind that control various aspects of how the world is run, including who lives, who dies, who lives where, who gets to reproduce with who, who gets the best cheese, etc. One could argue that the Story of Bibblita took place in a Creatures Monarchy scenario, in which a pair of norns was considered to have superior priority to the rest. Project Battlestance is an example of a much more elaborate scenario that follows a seasonal cycle of war and peace. And of course, the DS world concept at Discover Albia, probably the most well-known example of how intriguing and complex scenario worlds can be.
Of course, this is me talking, so you know there's going to be some form of elaborate and probably unnecessary CAOS involved somewhere. So I've been pondering and playing with some ideas behind a number of scenario scripts.
Scenario scripts (as I guess I'm also unofficially dubbing them), are scripts that essentially enforce a number of rules on the world without my needing to interact. For example, a Creatures Monarchy scenario script might randomly select one female and one male and make them the only fertile creatures in the world. Another script I’m considering is a Soulmate Scenario, in which each creature has a mate pre-chosen for them by a script, and cannot mate with any other creature but their destined mate. There would be no telling who a creature’s soulmate is until they find each other and produce offspring.
But the idea that has my attention right now is a scenario that I used to play by hand quite often a long time ago. I would essentially run an all-female world, which allowed me to directly control the population, and at my own discretion, occasionally artificially inseminate the female whom I thought was displaying the best traits. Sort of a very slow selective breeding, I suppose. So I’ve been working on a script that first of all, keeps all creatures in the world female, ensures all eggs hatch female, and any males that are forced into the world are auto-exported. Secondly, a script runs that regularly checks creatures’ drive levels and basically calculates a numerical score that reflects how well they are caring for themselves (or how well I’m caring for them in a nurturing world, which could in turn reflect how much I am attached to each creature). In addition, it also tracks how far the creature has moved since it was last checked and factors that into the score, meaning that creatures with a tendency to wander will have a better score as well. As a side effect, the script also routinely reduces homesickness to promote wandering. Whenever the population drops below the limit as set in DS, the script will pick the two females with the best scores, cross their genetic samples, and impregnate an adult female that is alone or has the least amount of creatures around her, hopefully helping to spread out the population as much as possible.
To add a little interest to the whole thing, creatures youth age and older occasionally have their life chemical adjusted according to their scores. The adjustments should be minor, but overall creatures with better scores will live longer than creatures with bad scores.
My plan here is to run a world using this script for a few generations, documenting tales of interest here, and tweaking the script as necessary. When the world has run long enough that I either get bored of it or determine that the script is working effectively, I’ll stop documentation and release the script to the public. Hopefully this will be a lot of fun for everyone involved!
In the meantime, I ask you all, do you ever run scenario worlds? What sorts of rules do you, or would you like to impose on your worlds? Could these possibly be made easier with scripts, or do you prefer taking on the responsibilities of maintaining the world concept yourself?
My scenario worlds over the past year or so have all been based around trying to breed a population of Norns that migrate. It's always been nearly impossible due to the lack of seasonal foods and the Norns disinterest in doors and teleporters. Homesickness has always been a little limiting too.
ReplyDeleteWith the Garden Box I hope to have more success. A script that reduces homesickness would also be helpful, although I guess I could always just remove the correct genes from the creatures.
Agreed that homesickness, while a nice idea in theory, can be pretty frustrating when you're trying to encourage creatures to travel. But in several test runs with seasonal foods, I've found that a lack of proper CA linking between rooms is probably another hindering factor of travel in C3 creatures-- if a creature isn't following a smell, it's not even going to know where to navigate to. But I'm hoping to solve that problem eventually, too.
DeleteI suppose you could say I run a scenario world. I only have one female and when she dies a new one is injected. I also hold IQ tests when the population reaches a certain number and shows no sign of decreasing. Any norn who wanders away from the tribe is automatically set in the history books as a great explorer for their people.. of course there aren't as many rules as you listed so I don't know maybe you might not consider mine a scenario world.
ReplyDeleteActually I have had worlds with more rules than this. Back when I played actual C2 I only had one female and one male who could breed and their children. I picked one female or male from the kids to keep while the rest got exported, then imported a fresh, new norn to breed with that one, thus keeping the genetic line pure and having only one "Married" couple at a time.
Anyways my real reason for writing this comment was to say I love your idea for scripts that do such things. I'm not so much in to a script that would do all the work for me, but I love the idea of having one that keeps a pair of norns only able to breed with eachother! I've wanted something like that for a long time. The number for how they are caring for themselves and thing sis also something I would love in my world, sort of like a score to tell me whom to keep!
Haha, I suppose one could argue that any world is a scenario world to some extent, and for that matter, wolfling/feral runs may just be considered the most popular scenarios.
DeleteOnly one female though-- that's probably a good way to keep the population from exploding. Do you export any naturally-born females or do you use CAOS to make sure all the offspring are male? That could be an instance where a script is useful.
Your method of C2-playing seems pretty logical, actually, considering C2, if long-term memory serves me correctly, was a very difficult game, especially if you had a lot of creatures to juggle. Keeping only one family at a time must have made that easier.
Yes I export all the females born and import them in the order they were born back into the world once the current "queen" dies. The males can do what they want.
DeleteThanks for the mention of my world concept! It's still getting tweaked, but that's one of the nice things about manually setting the rules for a scenario world. Especially in the beginning, I find that my ideas usually need a couple of fixes in order to function properly. I'm pretty happy with how my population is advancing... Short plug: There should be a video out this weekend featuring the next alpha couple succession!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, taking on these concepts manually and without scripts seems to be a double-edged sword: It's easy to make changes, but that can pose a problem. It's easy to end up far from what you planned. The idea of having scripts for certain scenarios sounds amazing to me! It's another way to play, and wouldn't require constant monitoring and intervention from players. The scenarios you mentioned also seem very intriguing: The soulmate script sounds awesome!
I can't wait to read about your all-female world scenario! I would definitely be interested in seeing how the script playing out. I agree with Kittie in that I'm not a huge fan of scripts doing all the work for me, yet this sounds like it has parameters that would help run a scenario with or without the player taking an active role.
Speaking of having married couples: Mike L. Anderson has the Marriage Project for C2. I haven't yet tried out the couple and the COB, but it seemed quite interesting!
One of my goals in writing the female scenario script was indeed to make it possible for use in an unattended world; maybe even for LNA sometime. Luckily, tweaking it on the fly isn't too difficult for me, but I can understand what you mean about wanting more personal control over a scenario, especially in a case where things aren't exactly objective (hand-picking a breeding couple might be more desirable than having a script do it for you)
DeleteDoesn't a script already exist somewhere for C3 monogamy? Maybe I'm dreaming that up. It doesn't strike me as something that would be too hard to write, however.
I have known about the C2 monogamy script though I never used it back when I played C2... but I don't think there is one for C3. If there is I want it really bad D:
DeleteI've searched and searched for one for C3/DS but couldn't find any.
The thing with setting up such a specialised world, though, is that I'd be worried I wouldn't dismantle it properly for my other worlds, so I'd end up with worlds with 'things going wrong!1!1!1'
ReplyDeleteI remember when I first released my C3/DS shortcuts cosfile, and some people just dropped it in their bootstrap folder and forgot about it, then proceeded to botch up worlds by accidentally using the "freeze all creatures" shortcut and having no idea how to fix it, heh. I felt kind of bad about that. But no worries, any scenario scripts I release will be injectable per world. I certainly learned my lesson ]:
DeleteIt does strike me, though, that scenario scripts could be very useful for running norn experiments such as Ettina's:
ReplyDeletehttps://sites.google.com/site/ettinalabs/studies/brainswitchtest
Something like the brainswitch test, where loneliness and crowdedness levels are recorded, the location of the norn is recorded, and 'number of norns nearby' (at the same location) is recorded every five minutes could really be helped by a script that automates some of this.
Yeah, that *would* be a big help. Although what I'd like most is a script that reads a norn's mind and records what actions they do to which objects.
DeleteBut something that records location of norns would be awesome too. I really wish I didn't suck so badly at CAOS.
Beyond wolfling runs and worlds created with certain creatures in mind, I don't run scenario worlds. If I'm not using a world to make something (a breed, an agent, etc.), I usually just hatch some creatures and watch what they do. I'm not the kind of guy who mollycoddles his creatures (heck, I don't even bother educating them most of the time, as I find educated creatures much more annoying when they're in groups).
ReplyDeleteI do like the idea of a scenario script, though.