So here goes my summary on what I think are the best points in an easy(ish) to read post.
On the stages of a childs life, and what their limitations are:
Just A Bill wrote:I would rather see the baby be an Object for a number of years requiring whatever sort of care is appropriate
SekoETC wrote:Umm, children couldn't do any damage with their little fists, they would just be laughed upon ohh darling, you're so silly. That's it, stop it. Don't you punch mommy again or you'll get - that's right, in the corner with you.
And remember some things are as easy as taking candy from a baby. Children wouldn't have untouchable inventory. ...but depending on the character strenght, it would take lots of tiredness to take away an item.
SekoETC wrote:1. Period of automation. Duration short. The baby is an eating object which may make a noise when mistreated.
2. Period of dependency. There is a human player behind the child, but the character's skills and abilities are limited. Things like stealing all the notes and running away until getting beaten to death are made impossible. This might require the programming of pain. The level of helplessness fades with time.
3. Maturity. After the period of dependency, the character has reached the level newspaws have today, but is most likely equipped, clothed, has a social network and has been working for a while. The character is now free to run off to explore the world, but the question is are you ready to leave your parents after all they've given you. There are different families and different children. Some kids might hate their situation and run away as soon as they can, while others are completely happy working on their parents' potato farm for the rest of their lives.
Doug R. wrote:That's all well and good for spawnlings, but it ignores younger children, something which I would very much like to see in the game. Two characters should be able to create a child together.
- It should be an object until it is 3 that needs to be taken care of
- At three, an experienced player can take them over (yes, limit it to experienced players.)
- Skills progress to their 20 year level over time with no training, or faster if they practice.
That's really all there should be to it.
Sicofonte wrote:The baby phase should be non-playable, the first weeks after born, until the baby gets a character.
The child phase would begin after being controlled by the player, from 3 or 4 years of baby phase (2 months taking care of the tamagochy)
During that phase, the character could be handicapped in some way during some time (maybe an extra week) avoing weird behaviour (for example having a really small inventory and not being able to start machine projects, besides half his strength and a limit for every skill) and giving time for parents and child to meet before she can start with her pranks, until the child gets 10 years old or so.
Then begins the teen phase, when the project creation becomes available. The limit for the inventory, and the strength' and maybe some skill's handicap, could last until some specified age (16 for example), being relaxed each 2 years from the beginning of the phase.
And then begin adult phase, exactly the one we now.
The system should be combined and coexist with the current one, allowing always to newspawn new characters no matter the availability of babies, and allowing players to play orphan characters as until now.
The possibility of search the child for anything he took (without the need of killing him) would be useful also.
Miri wrote:2. about 2 weeks of pregnancy (3/4 of a year = 9 months): not too long for the waiting child to resign (but long enough that only people that realy want to RP a kid would make this kind of char), not too short for the woman to have fun RPing being pregnant
3. the child is 'born', there's an automation period of... hmmm... 1-2 years max. Maybe the waiting player could get access to the char here, but only to read, what's happening around - it would keep him interested, and there won't be the 'early childhood memories problem'.
4. kid, age 5-13
5. teenager age 13-20
On how the parents are chosen:
Alexander wrote:Then, of course, there has to be a button or something that one would click to have intimate relations. Because obviously the program itself won't see the roll playing going and won't know that a couple is actually being intimate.
Sicofonte wrote:- After some short time, the woman of the couple receives the message "you feel faint in the morning" or something like that.
- After some time everyone can see that woman is pregnant in her description page.
- After some time the woman gives birth to the baby.
(My personal favourite part about how the parents are decided, with a diagram
, pure genius Seko!)SekoETC wrote: I'd suggest that a person can select people that are in the same location, select them as "I want to breed with this person", but the choice would be totally invisible to everyone but the picker him/herself. Pregnancy could happen only when both parties have marked each other as a possible breeding partner.
Here's a picture to clear things up a bit
Legend:
1. A "normal" relationship, the woman has a chance of getting pregnant.
2. Popular guy's wife, has a chance of getting pregnant
3. Popular guy himself
4. Popular guy's mistress, has a chance of getting pregnant
5. A confused newspawn testing buttons, can't impregnate anyone because the "relationships" are one way only
6. A gay couple, can't get pregnant but might get STDs if those are implemented
Informing the other party that you're seeking such relationship would be totally left to RP. The downside is that you couldn't be sure if someone has really agreed to breed with you even if they claimed so, but that could be compared to using birth control or being barren.
On how the player chooses what type of character he wishes to play:
Solutions Maximus wrote:What if there is an option for a player to choose whether or not he/she wants to be born to parents.
Let me explain...
Joe and Jane decide that they want to be parents. Joe selects and option in the people list (similar to whispering) that says "Procreate" or something similar. Jane must accept this (to protect from abuse of such a thing).
Jack is starting a new account. When creating his first characters, he is able to choose "birth" or "adulthood" (the latter is what we have now). If he selects "birth", Joe and Jane are immediately notified that they have a child, and they can see his name automatically from creation. ...And his upbringing plays a strong part in what he is like as an adult. Parents must be at least 25 to have children.
John is also a new player. When creating his first character, he chooses "birth". At the time there are no characters that wish to have a child. So, John's first character is qued until two characters of opposite gender decide to have a child. When two characters decide to have a child, John's character is pulled out of the que, and he can now begin his Cantrian journey.
Missy wrote:I think that I deserve the right to spawn a character or be born to two parents who specifically request my presence. If I want to play a child of someone, I don't want to spawn into a town where there are no people that give a damn about children. What's the point of implementing something where everyone spawns and "looks like so and so." It still isn't children and still people are allowed to ignore that people are related. BUT it doesn't neccessarily give a person the right to play a child if noone in the place they turn up at is going to play along with them. I do think playing children should be an option however.
On the particularities of a child as it’s born and grows, (as always Seko's put a lot of thought into it):
SekoETC wrote:I suggest that when a baby is given food, it will eat it instantaneously if it hasn't eaten enough that day. Items in the baby's inventory could be taken by anyone (except maybe not when the baby is carried by another person) but thanks to the method described above, people couldn't steal the baby's food just before eating processes so parents wouldn't have to worry about staying online to prevent that. This would stop people from loading the baby with inedible resources so that it couldn't eat. A nice addition would be random dropping of items in inventory to simulate tossing things around and to make sure that parents can't use the baby as a free container.
If holding the baby would prevent taking items from the baby's inventory, there should be a random chance for the carrier dropping the baby if attacked. The chance of dropping would be increased if the carrier is wounded or tired, but could be reduced by a sling. Using a shield would be impaired if you're holding a baby, unless the baby is tied to your body. Hits aimed at the carrier have a chance of wounding the baby and vice versa.
Oops, but we forgot about one thing. Breastfeeding. We can assume that if the baby is carried by a woman and that woman has given birth within a year, she will also lactate. No public event is created but when the feeding cycle happens, you will eat a bit more than normal (still less than 150%) and it will mention that you feed the baby. It would be possible to feed two babies at once (but no more than that).
It should be possible to put a baby down, have them crawling around your house all day if you want to but outdoors they would be more vulnerable to animal attacks and could be killed by one strike so it's better to keep them in someone's arms unless you are in a confined space with no dangers around.
...If someone complains about the waiting period, bare in mind that the mother also has to wait! It's only fair that you (as the baby's player) do so as well. If you want everything fast then create a newspawn instead.
"You see a woman give birth to a baby. The baby is blue (and unusually small)."
Item "Corpse of a baby" will appear on the ground. Using the eye button will reveal cause of death to be suffocation or being born prematurely.
When the parents are picked, it should naturally check that neither one of them is the same as the player who wants to play the baby BUT ALSO I'd prefer that it would check that the player doesn't have any characters currently in town with the parent candidates, because it's possible that for example a gay couple would ask the services of a friend because they can't make a baby among themselves and if only the biological parents were checked, it wouldn't take into account that maybe one or both of them is in fact meant to be a substitute parent. It would be a bummer if you were born after a long wait only to notice that you're in fact playing your own stepmother.
It would be kinda funny if the baby could learn to recognize voices (limited to the voice of the mother and people talking privately to her). They couldn't hear the words but you could dynamically name voices to recognize them later on. A deep voice for men and a silent voice for women since high frequences are filtered out. Maybe it could count the occurences of talking and purge away one-time entries before birth.
I think aging should be linear but the player should be allowed to start playing the baby from 2 years on if they want to. You can already have somewhat meaningful conversations with a 4-year-old although they don't understand everything while 6-year-olds are capable of making plans for the future like running away from the daycare centre and travelling short distances alone. Don't underestimate kids.
Dressing and undressing babies (if allowed) should be a lengthly process since it's like stuffing an octopus in a shopping bag. Making it a project would give parents time to step in if someone is trying to strip their child inappropriately. But once the child character has been accessed by the player for the first time, it could no longer be dressed or undressed by anyone else. Parents could still rp dressing the child but they would just give the clothing to the child, and the child's player would have to click the wear button in their inventory to put it on.
Weight gain should also be somewhat linear, no sudden jumps from 10 kilos to 40.
In some cultures like among the Jews, a boy is considered an adult in the age of 13. 13 year olds can do a lot of stuff, like play Cantr. Even 10-year-olds can do a lot of stuff and should be able to survive alone in Cantr, except that they would suck at fighting and defense. So there should be no artificial limits for setting up projects or working on them after a certain age.
Projects can be divided into a few groups: harvesting resources, machine projects and manufacturing projects.
- Let's say that a 2 year old can only work on harvesting resources if the project has been started by someone else.
- A 3-year-old could start harvesting projects on their own, like digging for mud and potatoes, but they would have a solid penalty in grams (for example -50 grams a day) which would make high finesse projects (like gathering diamonds) automatically produce less than 0. In addition to this there would be a percentage penalty on the part that goes over the solid amount.
- A 5-year-old could work on machine and manufacturing projects started by someone else, penalties would apply.
- A 7-year-old could start manufacturing projects.
- A 10-year-old could start machine projects.
I feel there should be some measures to separate high strength or finesse stuff from more simple tasks, but maybe that can be bound to skills. Smith's apprentices used to start around age of 10 to 13 but they were not allowed to touch the metal, they just observe and worked the bellows.
But I also think there should be the option of play a baby from an early age or just playing as a 20 year old newspawn as it is now.
So if the player doesn’t want to play a child, then the following changes to the current system to allow familes and generations:
sanchez wrote:In an attempt to avoid the minefield of issues on which most players will never agree I make the following alternative parenting proposal:
Voluntary known single parent genetics of 20yr old spawns.
The spawn system can work the same as it does now with the only change that players can opt to 1) spawn with a known parent, or 2) be a known parent.
Parenthood determines half your genetic skill/strength attributes (as well as 'race' if implemented), with the other half determined by random contribution from the local population. This can avoid the ugliness of eugenics, while similarly obviating mechanised reference to sex and gender. Couples, of course, gay and straight and polyamorous, will be free to rp the complexities of their relationships, and can each sign up as a potential known parent, though only one will have a known contribution.
This also means the the only new feature necessary would be a notice upon spawning that X made a contribution to your genetics, and X would get a similar message. The rest left to rp.
Sicofonte wrote:I mean...
- Babies/childs are non playable (cantr-bots) until they get both enough age to be played, and a player to play it.
- The baby-bot has needs to be attended like a tamagochy (several suggestions about this before in this very thread, and in others I think) but not binding the players to login too often (this is a game simulating life, not real life).
- Some importants facts about how the parent(s) take care of the child get recorded.
- Once the baby is took by a real player, that player receives in his first event a brief overview about how well his parents treated him (if he was hungry/cold/hot/ill/dirty often or not and things like those)
Then, the (new)spawn has comething in "his" memory that relates him to his parents.
Sorry for the large post, but I wanted something that brings together all the points mentioned. And I hope it bears some resemblance to what ProgD are planning.
