| Generators In the original game Uplink there was the concept of Generators. These were basically single modules running in memory during an Uplink game, which would keep an eye on the game and generate new stuff when necessary. For example, if they saw you hacking a Government system then the News Generator would generate a news article to that effect and post it into Uplink. Then a Consequence Generator would figure out that the target company are angry and want to catch you. Then the Mission Generator would generate a new "Trace Hacker" mission, to try to catch you. There was also an overruling Plot Generator which would drop in occasionally and set things up to advance the plot. In a massively multiplayer game of Uplink, it is difficult to imagine how this would happen. Ultimately it would be nice if these generators were the people who played Uplink Online - so if someone hacks a major site then somebody else running a News Server would write a story about it. Real people would post revenge missions. However, I do not believe this would work. Ultimately Uplink:Online will need some kind of News Server - so people know what is going on, but figuring out how to run it is quite difficult. There is no way that a News Generator could watch the whole game world and generate stories. Ultimately, a massively multiplayer game like Uplink needs full-time gamesmasters generating new content for the players, as well as role-playing various characters within the story. It would be fantastic if real plot lines developed between players of the game, but most of the time these would boil down to rivalry between groups. It needs story writers working and adding new content every week to keep it interesting. There is no way we could provide this support - we would have to hope that volunteers could do this job for us. |