Short Summary
I have been working on virtual reality worlds since I was a kid.
I taught myself how to program in BASIC on Sinclair ZX Spectrum, in 4th grade primary school. After that, I soon migrated to PASCAL and assembly language, up to the point when a few years later, I was able to create and code a large scale RPG game that by today's standard would classify as an 'open world' game: Legends of the Land, 80's ZX Spectrum Open World RPG
Even then, the primary goal of my research was to create large, dynamic virtual worlds that have a life of their own and, in terms of gameplay, offer a countless number of solutions.
In the 30 years that followed, I began to focus more and more on procedural generation. I started off with generated worlds, but I soon realized that without stories and/or intelligent inhabitants, any generated world will sooner or later reveal itself to the player as inherently empty.
If any substantial progress is to be achieved in the field of procedurally generated worlds, the focus will have to shift off the material world that is being simulated, to its inhabitants and events taking place within it.
And that is not easy at all. Not if your goal is to maintain any kind of narrative integrity, because as a rule, most procedurally generated content will sooner or later deviate into something akin to informational noise.
What I Need & What You Get
I live in a small Karstian village, owning an old house and a large garden next to it allowing me to grow my own food: Mediterranean Garden.
Still in order to continue my resarch, I could do with some additional funding. Since any amount can be helpful, I decided to try with my project here on indiegogo, setting what I hope not to be too large a number for such a small scale project.
The funds will help me create more experimental games in this field and improve on my core storytelling engine.
I cannot really offer anything substantial in return for your contribution, but eventually everyone may benefit from what I can come up with. I have already made large portions of my work available for free, such as games, open source code (geeny engine, est. value $900000) and coding techniques (c++ encapsulation technique).
The Impact
The dream is to create a game where reality functions independently, yet does not devolve into chaos or mess, and is still presented to the player in chunks that can be comprehended and consumed into a meaningful sequence.
This, of course, just happens to be the holy grail of game development, if not computer science in general, so I couldn't possibly claim that I have the solution.
But I am reasonably sure that I am on the right track and the goal can be achieved by further expanding and refining on the principles exposed in my games so far:
Risks & Challenges
As already said, this is one of the holy grails of computer science, so what possibly could I add to the table in this regard?
I am a self-taught coder with almost 30 years of experience, and I have been coding since I was a kid. I also studied linguistics and literature, and have some insight into theory of storytelling and narrative. I think I have a number of solutions, some already proven to a certain point "in the field" but this is a very novel field of research so it is hard for me to guarantee anything.
But it is one of my deepest interests and I am willing to pursue this matter pretty much until I manage to find the solution.
Having completed or nearly completed a tiny number of projects that tackle the matter, I think I have gained enough experience and insight into it to be able to make at least some minor advance in this field.
I have created a small prototype of the first iteration of what I hope to become a general purpose narrative generator, mostly for games, but I suppose the potential uses are more varied.
The two games built around it, Daily Chthonicle and Terry Winter, show off some of the prototype's potential, but my plan is now to refine the engine to its final stage, basing one of my next game's playability entirely on its storytelling foundation.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you like what I am doing and trying to achieve, you can also just pay a visit to one of my sites, you will be welcome there!
