Scratch it. Treat the player as a player, like in dice or card games. Or make him get into the character telling his history before. More or less what you said, I don't see a good solution.

Maybe just don't make the player interact with the piece through a character, that could be interesting. Or through a simple character, we could be the character's pet, or his subconscious (someone was working ond this, right? ).

I find impossible to get completely identified by a character with own life, so I wouldn't try to do so.

I have not played it for a while, but when I did mostly it was about modifying your environment to make it to your pleasure. I used to sculpt terrain around my town to make it look like a castle, or something else I had then in mind . I think you could play it just this way, and probably there are not much games that let you modify the server in real time.

Music forms come from poetry and literature. Music for voice is still the most developed and worked, and it use to get it's form from the text directly. This has been this way from greek times .

On most instrumental works, wich I think might be more interesting as they have no references, those forms are inherit and used but matching the game of tension/relaxation, exposition/development of the music.
Most common forms are binary and ternary (A-B or A-B-A). Those can be reworked on hundreds of ways, specially the ternary form,  but basicaly still the same. A form that could be very interesting for a game is the Rondeau, A-B-A-C-A-D-A... wich pretty similar to pop songs and baroque arias, with the difference that those usually are more like A-B-A-C-A-B-A.

Also there are plenty of very strange forms in the XX-XXI centuries, some very interesting, that try to fly away from sections and make something unitary, like a one scene film. This happens when instrumental music starts to be considered on its own, from about the second half of XVIII (Mozart, Haydn) to today. Vocal music is still the most worked one.

EDIT: Forgot to say, I really enjoyed your video, God at play (Josh?)! I think it's an awesome idea being able to interact with music as it plays. Maybe we could even modify music as it plays, wich would be a bit more complicated but stil doable . This remembers the "musical massages" that I gave to my ex-girlfriend: We started a symphony and I interpreted it over her head with my hands, following the flow of music . Pretty enjoyable on both parts!

About "brushstrokes" and graphicFX, check this game:

http://quelsolaar.com/love/screen_shots.html

I think you can still check it for free .

There are plenty of games taking use of procedural generation, and is a very interesting technique.

First of all, there is .kkrieger, probably the smallest 3D game in the world, just 96k. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger
There are also the old Elite games wich generated a whole galaxy procedurally, and you could interact with it. You could even land on planets! There is a game underwork that tries to retake that spirit: http://infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php

I think there are plenty of games of this kind. I remember one wich was pretty much a notgame, small in size and wich only goal was to explore and catalogue fauna in the galaxy, but I don't find it

Hello!

Your engine makes me remember Wurm Online, but with more coherent graphics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GEyxIPOIbs&feature=related

Just answering while I read the rest of the forum .

I'm not sure what do you mean, but I think a Major in USA is the lead teacher or something. I'm from Spain, and I would have to change my whole career. The worst part for now has been talking to my parents: "I think videogame engines have a lot of potential for artistical expression. Mind if I leave my career after two years maintaining me outside of home to get on 3ds and photoshop and make something that newspapers tell you it's for nerds and loosers?".

But I'm passionate about computer visuals so, at some point, years ahead or next month, I will move on to it.
For now, if you don't mind, I'll follow this forum trying not to make much noise and maybe giving some thoughts on aesthetical discussions. And, of course, playing your notgames . Again, I'm not a developer or skilled artist, so sadly I won't be able to participate in any as crafter.

And excuse if my english is not very good, still learning.

I am composer, currently studying, "clasical" composition, while we learn everything from IX century to XXI. This year I'm starting with computer tools. Also I play classical guitar, piano and old plucked instruments like vihuela or tiorba.

I've modded a lot for Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2, mostly on the artistic part (level design). I've also done some 2d art for Freecol, an open source remake of an old game.
Also I've designed levels for a lot of games wich had editor, most unknow.  Nothing relevant actually.

I have an old portfolio if you are interested, almost got hired by Obsidian for an "Oficial Mod" wich they never started. http://www.neverwinteros.com/cielososcuros/web/erthel/
The host page is not even mine, it's from one of the mods I was working in.

Lately I'm in some kind of vital chrisis because I find visual arts more suited for expressing myself than music, while I love both.

While I'm not a game designer or developer, I love gaming and the artistic part of games. Lately, I'm more interested in that part that in the games themselves.
I think it's the most interesting form of expression right now, and I feel sorry too that it gets wasted on videogames.

About myself, I'm a young music student and I'm trying to start on notgames, while for now I just mod videogames and well, play them too .