The Project

Introduction

After playing the boardgame Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective I was inspired to start a little project to use the map, characters and Victorian theme of the game and try and generate cases that can be solved by uing the map, directory and a computer program that generates the cases and handles any interactions with characters.

I'm now 6 months into the project, using my spare time to develop the ideas and the code. I'm now at a point where I actually believe that the project is feasible. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The project is way more ambitious than when I started. I've found myself sucked into the Victorian World and trying to procedurally generate a city that feels real and has depth to the characters and their interactions.

Given where the project is at, I felt I needed some input from others with an interest in this idea. This blog documents the status of the project and I would greatly appreciate any feedback.

Given the licensed nature of the base material, this will not be a commercial program. I intend to make it freely available to those who love playing the boardgame and want to extend their experience.

Project Status

At the moment the program can generate a reasonably realistic city environment with over 1500 characters, waking, going to work, socialising, interacting with other characters, buying and selling items, stealing items, criminals being caught, convicted and jailed, characters getting health problems and then seeing a doctor, dentist or hospital for treatment and medicines.

Over the course of 1 weeks simulation, foes and friends emerge for each character. Over longer periods these get more intense.

I can debug the program by jumping into the world at any time and checking on any character or location. This feature will be truned off when running an actual case, and it will be up to the Detective to explore and question characters using the same 15 minute periods that the characters use.

1. Procedural Generation Framework (80%)
2. Map (80%)
3. Characters (50%)
4. Properties (80%)
5. Businesses (50%)
6. Items (50%)
7. Travel (80%)
8. Occupations (20%)
9. Goals, Plans & Actions (30%)
10. Character Interaction (50%)
11. Memory Model (50%)
12. Crime Model (40%)
13. Health Model (60%)
14. Events (0%)
15. Motives (5%)
16. Murder Generation (0%)
17. Character Questionning (0%)

Project Details

The project is being developed in Visual Basic and will run on a Windows PC.

The base datasets of information are included in a number of CSV files. These are easily editable.