Context Stacking

_{Only makes sense if you've read this post on simplifying complex content creation. It has a flash "game" that is the topic of this post.}

While it's easy enough to create fun brushes, and it wouldn't be hard to make a fun little doodling program, there's really nothing interesting in it on its own. A doodling program is just a doodling program, regardless of how fancy or friendly it is.

But the point behind creating "brushes" is that they come with context. Something like this is no fun unless you can say "this svirtziwhatzit I just drew will (captivate audiences worldwide/eat villages/let people fly to the moon)!" And then you can watch it happen. This effect will be enhanced because the NPCs in the game can interpret what something is based on the metadata of the brushes that created it.

There still has to be a something for it to interact with, of course. And the idea is that that something will ALSO be built using this kind of brush strokes.

Obviously there would need to be some kind of base "atomic" level: "this is ground." "this basic brush means 'soft and floppy'." "This is a human." Etc, etc. But the majority of the content could be built using brushes that form and affect these baselines. "A fern is something attached to the ground made out of the soft and floppy brush" or whatever.

Build ferns, the people will interact with them. Soft and floppy and not a weird color? Edible. Large and aggressive with big teeth? Run!

Simple stuff. The real strength comes from being able to create new contexts out of what used to be simply a collection of brush-strokes. Your people can become canvases, allowing you to create clothes, tattoos, hairstyles. Your monsters can become canvases as well, and you could create clothes, tattoos, and hairstyles for them. Weapons too, of course.

Or a brush might go the opposite direction. Instead of painting using an elemental brush tweaked for paths, pressure, and color, you might instead find yourself painting using a "people brush" which drops people where you drag it. Or a fern brush. So on, so forth.

Depending on how carefully the elements are chosen, you can probably paint inside people's (or monsters') minds, changing their personalities and preferences. You might be able to paint fairy-tale storylines. All of these canvases can interact in straightforward ways.

For example, you might make a house of some kind of firm physical brush, then splash it with a homeyness brush that would make people want to live there.

Exactly how these elements would intertwine I haven't figured out yet. But the basic idea is that the things you build become the context for the things you will build later.

Also, everything will to some extent be alive and reproducing, slowly mutating. If you paint a fairytale plot, it will try to have children and they will spontaneously attach themselves to various people/things. The children will be slightly mutated. Sexual vs asexual reproduction will have to be tested...

I'm also thinking that this is not only a 2D system, but an UNANIMATED 2D system, where 'walking' consists of bopping along muppet-style. I know roughly how I would animate things - it involves pseudo-3D with a mirroring algorithm, don't forget that I know the joints and so forth - but since I'm thinking Flash, I know that kind of computation would slaughter it.

What do you think?

"Virtual" Unequal Information

_{Yeah, okay, I'm really getting ivory tower in this one. It's so minute...}

Last post I talked about unequal information. Basically, I said that differences in what information various characters, factions, and players have is what brings context to a game and to a story. And context is something that computers are extremely poor at.

However, meta-context is very important as well. For example, in a tabletop RPG, players think - contextually - that they are uncovering a story with the help of a GM. If they begin to think that the GM is generating the story on the fly (rather than just adjusting it somewhat on the fly), this can change the context and render all their information worthless.

Sure, it can be argued that players are always just exploring the GM's mind. But there is a contextual difference: a scripted story exists on its own, largely separate from the GM, even if it was written by him. It's a different context, a world of "solid" information instead of "fluid" information.

Of course, players often like playing a generative game just as much. It's not that one is better than the other (although an (at least partially) scripted story is more efficient at luring players in), it's just that they have very different contexts, and the players will collect information in a very different way.

Context can completely change everything, even if viewed the same way. For example, the big reveal in Fight Club changed the entire movie, and watching it again with foreknowledge of that reveal makes it a completely different movie.

The context differences between characters, players, factions, and so forth are what drive games and stories. If you play Crackdown to leap from rooftop to rooftop, you're going to have a completely different game than if you play to kill bosses. You're in the same city, but experiencing it in another way.

Hey, I played killing bosses by kicking them in the face lots, and my office mate played by shooting them and grenading them. We had very different experiences.

Computers are really poor at handling context... but I wonder if that's just because nobody has really thought about it in those terms before? Is it possible to build a "context engine" that can manage this kind of thing? Not just to manage the player's context, but also the character contexts within the game?