I don''t know if this is like Neverwinter Nights/etc., but Fallout had a decent conversation system. It would give you several different things you could say. So, the things you could say were pre-set, but ninety times out of a hundred there was something that matched exactly what I wanted to say. .9 times out of the remaining 10 there was something that was close enough. The remaining 1 percent was annoying, but didn''t destroy the game.

I do think the Captain Blood idea sounds the most interesting, though.

Well, if you wanna go with this Captain Blood thing (I''ve never played it) you could consider having your guy learn new words as the game goes on. Which could lead to nifty little sequences where you and the guy you''re talking to don''t totally understand each other and have to teach each other words to be understood. You could even have it so your guy learns what he thinks is the right word but it''s the wrong one and he ends up insulting King Flotso and getting thrown in the dungeon. Now THAT would be fun.

If a squirrel is chasing you, drop your nuts and run.

quote: Original post by syn_apse
i realize that this will be, by far, the most difficult aspect of the game to implement, but if it can be done correctly i see no reason why it would not greatly benefit the gameplay.

I am not sure you actually realise how difficult. There are major corporations and universities attempting to do this stuff and failing. My main points were that unless this is industrial scale good then it is just going to get in the way of what people want to do and cause annoyance. Then on top of that is the issue that the market has already shown it is not interested in typing. People are generally bad at typing and that is why the industry moved away from such systems - people don't like using them.

Of course if you are making the game just for yourself that is fine. If you want people to play it then I would think again.

quote: however, when you say that this allows the player to discuss things that their character isn't aware of yet, what exactly do you mean by this?

You play the game and then for whatever reason re-start. You now have knowledge that your character doesn't have and a system that allows you to ask about these things. That means you have to design your game to not only have valid responses to everything but also valid excuses why something can't be asked until it is supposed to be.

quote: thus a question like "where is the lost sword of nihility?" can be pared down to "where", "sword", and "nihility".

So if it can be pared down why bother. Why force the user to type in full when it can be done more effectively with a menu selection. You're coding a natural language system and a state of the art AI system that will force people to do something they don't like (type) in place of a menu selection system that is both more effective and more user friendly - You would be surprised how many people will have trouble typing Nihility or the Swamps of Sqwarn.

Remember you also have to cater for every possible varient of a question.
"where is the lost sword of nihility?"
"The lost sword of nihility, where is it?"
"Where can I get my hands on the sword of Nihility"
"How do I find the lost sword"
"How do I find it"
"Give me directions to the lost sword"
and on and on

If your system doesn't understand all these then it makes the game less playable not more so.

Lastly there is the simple question - what is the point of giving the user total freedom to ask about things the game doesn't contain? The game only contains certain objects, people and places. All of these can be included in a menu discussion system and any conversation can be adjusted by use of an emotion selection system.

By giving them total freedom you allow them to ask things the system doesn't understand at which point their suspension of disbelief fails. They bump into the glass walls at the edge of your world and realise that what is beyond them is just a painted backdrop. Your freedom is exposed as just a system without the actual world to back it up.

Almost forgot - I have been in the games industry for 14 years and have seen the rise and fall of text adventures. You are the only person (gamer or industry person) I have encountered in the last five years who has wanted a return to typing. The last person was the creater of MUD who stood up at a conference and said that we should return to typing in games. Not a single person there agreed with him.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

[edited by - obscure on July 26, 2003 12:00:39 PM]

The last major game I can remember that used a typing system for conversation was Starship Titanic. It seemed to work quite well there, although again I think it just picked out key words.

EverQuest uses typing to let players talk to NPCs. The problem with menus are that the user sees all his alternatives just by looking at the menu.

Everquest marks some words that the player knows he can ask the NPC about, words that would be appropriate to put on a menu, but also contains some hidden conversations for hardcore players. Those conversations reveal details about über-quests etc. but the player has to come up with the question that triggers the conversation, possibly from figuring out clues in books and from hearing rumors.

[edited by - HenryAPe on July 26, 2003 1:05:26 PM]

The point of the menu system is to allow the player to see all his options. If you learn about the lost sword for traveler your probaly going to want to ask people about. The idea is though that as time goes on the player is going to aquire alot of nouns. The game should filter these for you as relevent but if the player wants to ask everyone they meet about the lost sword, they can but not everyone will know anthing about.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

syn_apse,

Sounds like you''ve got very similar goals to my own. I''m pretty far along on a text-based conversation engine myself which has the same goals in mind. While there is no menu system per se, I use what I call pre-emptive parsing to ensure that the player is only allowed to type something which makes sense to the game, and I have included a mechanism for the player to see what words/phrases are currently acceptable, so there is no guessing on the player''s part on what the game is expecting as input.

I have intimately linked knowledge, conversation, and behavior. An NPC''s behavior and conversation are driven by dynamic evaluation of his knowledge base (and personality). I''m not using quest triggers of any sort, nor am I using any scripted conversation. Obviously, it''s going to be a challenge to refine and expand the system so as to make events and conversation compelling, but I believe the base is sound enough that with enough effort and creativity, my system has as good a chance as any of achieving the elusive combination of open-endedness and decent narrative.

If you''re interested, I can provide more details or send you a demo of the conversation engine.

Sean

thanks anyway but I all ready have a system in mind for handle in coversation I call it the Banter system. There two kinds of batner files a global file and a number of local files. Essentially the files contain all the keywords and questions, as well as a number of responses. When the player ask that question and keyword combination the NPC responds with one of the possible responses. The local bantar file is used to replace any global banter with relvent local bantar.

example:
where is Duke Leto?
Global response: He lives in Fan.
Local response in Fan: Duke Leto resides in the grey blimp over the Golden Goose Casino.

There are also script files, which carry the game relevent covestation such when your talking to an important character, or someone who has knowledge on that subjuect.



-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote: Original post by Sean99

I have intimately linked knowledge, conversation, and behavior. An NPC's behavior and conversation are driven by dynamic evaluation of his knowledge base (and personality). I'm not using quest triggers of any sort, nor am I using any scripted conversation. Obviously, it's going to be a challenge to refine and expand the system so as to make events and conversation compelling, but I believe the base is sound enough that with enough effort and creativity, my system has as good a chance as any of achieving the elusive combination of open-endedness and decent narrative.

If you're interested, I can provide more details or send you a demo of the conversation engine.

I'm interested in seeing that. Would you mind emailing it to srekel @ mnag . net (inserted spaces to fool dumb spam-bots - I dunno if it works)?


Anyways, about typing. It may be ok once in a while - for example Fallout 1 had an Ask About-button, which allowed you to type in a word (or phrase) and sometimes you'd get more information than you could get from just clicking the dialogue choices. They removed it for Fallout 2.

The thing is, that when you have to type in "where is the lost sword of nihility?" for the tenth time because the previous NPCs didn't have a clue - it just sucks .

I'm guessing the idea is that the player has to remember everything that has been said - it's unrealistic that his character can do it. Or something.


Now - what I wanna implement - is a system where every line of dialogue (of course scripted ones should be included for the main quest and so on) should be generated from what the character speaking knows about the thing that is being discussed, how he feels about the thing, and if it's an NPC - how much he likes the player character.

This is difficult, but it feels like it shuoldn't be THAT difficult - mostly just like it's gonna be a lot of work
But the end result could be amazing.

[edited by - Srekel on July 26, 2003 5:03:32 PM]

quote: Original post by Obscure
I am not sure you actually realise how difficult. There are major corporations and universities attempting to do this stuff and failing. My main points were that unless this is industrial scale good then it is just going to get in the way of what people want to do and cause annoyance.

look... i'm not trying to make an android here. it will be hundreds of years before you can talk to a computer like you would a person. what i am saying is that putting the conversation in a list gets in the way of what i want to do because there are only so many things that you can fit into a dialog box. i don't want players to have to scroll through a thousand different questions and answers in order to get their point across.

quote: Then on top of that is the issue that the market has already shown it is not interested in typing. People are generally bad at typing and that is why the industry moved away from such systems - people don't like using them.

Of course if you are making the game just for yourself that is fine. If you want people to play it then I would think again.

i think you have underestimated the whole game idea. it isn't based on typing. you could get a full game's worth of gameplay without ever asking a question of an AI. this is a system to enrich that gameplay, to make it more personal. when a desinger designates what a player can and cannot ask of his AI counterparts it severely limits the scope of the game. I don't want this game to be about this one quest where you go off to save the world and everything happens because it's just another part of the story. *yawn*. i can't stand it how when i'm playing an RPG and i approach an AI, that AI already knows what i want to talk about. what the hell is that? i've never talked to that specific AI before, so why does he know all of these things?

quote: You play the game and then for whatever reason re-start. You now have knowledge that your character doesn't have and a system that allows you to ask about these things. That means you have to design your game to not only have valid responses to everything but also valid excuses why something can't be asked until it is supposed to be.

first of all, if the character already has the information, then asking about it is redundant. secondly, not all AIs are created equal. my plan is to have AIs generated randomly (except for certain characters deemed essential), and their abilities to answer questions and hold conversations are dependant on a host of intelligence attributes and local vocabularies. thus, if you ask a question that the AI doesn't understand, then that AI will tell you that he doesn't know and that you should ask someone who does.

quote: So if it can be pared down why bother. Why force the user to type in full when it can be done more effectively with a menu selection. You're coding a natural language system and a state of the art AI system that will force people to do something they don't like (type) in place of a menu selection system that is both more effective and more user friendly - You would be surprised how many people will have trouble typing Nihility or the Swamps of Sqwarn.

once again, people do not have to type if they don't want to. it is simply one of several means of extracting information. and for the life of me i cannot picture in my mind a menu system for the type of information exchanges that i am trying to accomplish. in this game, your character exists in the world, and that's about it. everything else that happens is background noise and you can either choose to be a part of it, or you can choose to make your own noise.

what is important in this regard isn't the question that is being asked but why it is being asked in the first place.

and frankly, if people can't type...too bad. the engine will recognize common misspellings, but if someone is really that bad at spelling, then perhaps he shouldn't be wasting his time in front of a computer screen all day long.

quote: Lastly there is the simple question - what is the point of giving the user total freedom to ask about things the game doesn't contain? The game only contains certain objects, people and places. All of these can be included in a menu discussion system and any conversation can be adjusted by use of an emotion selection system.

By giving them total freedom you allow them to ask things the system doesn't understand at which point their suspension of disbelief fails. They bump into the glass walls at the edge of your world and realise that what is beyond them is just a painted backdrop. Your freedom is exposed as just a system without the actual world to back it up.

this is still a fantasy world. as such, everything in it must be created specifically for this world. thus, if you ask a question like "you wanna play basketball?", the AI isn't gonna know what you're talking about because basketball doesn't exist. it doesn't matter if a game has a language system or not. i'm ALWAYS bumping into these glass walls. sometimes i want to perform a certain action with a character, one that i logically should be able to do, but i can't. you know why? because some game designer has decided that it doesn't fit into the storyline. in most games you can't even get your character to sit down. all you can do is run around with your sword hacking illogical little creatures to bits. and when it's over your reward is... what? you gain a little experience. great, now you can do the same thing you did before, only a little faster.

this freedom does not come without the world to back it up. the world was concieved long before the idea of two-way communication ever occurred to me. the whole point of the language system is to allow the player to appreciate the game world to it's fullest extent. the game world is just that, the world; continents, oceans, mountains, valleys, the whole works. there will be more objects, people and places to discuss than any game released thus far. i do not want to be limited by a plot where the player has to jump through hoops just because i say so.

quote: Almost forgot - I have been in the games industry for 14 years and have seen the rise and fall of text adventures. You are the only person (gamer or industry person) I have encountered in the last five years who has wanted a return to typing. The last person was the creater of MUD who stood up at a conference and said that we should return to typing in games. Not a single person there agreed with him.

you keep referring to this as a text adventure... this is not a text adventure!!! this is true interaction. in other games you are limited to playing a certain type of character who can do a few certain actions and little else. if you think of a better way to solve any given problem, there's nothing you can do about it because all you can do is run around killing people.

look, i'm glad that you have a gaming job, and i appreciate your comments, but i am none too impressed with the gaming industry right now. games have become, just like every other form of entertainment, a disposable commodity. the industry has become complacent, driven by a desire for profits and market share rather than pushing the boundaries of what is possible. maybe your company is different, and i won't fault you for having an industry job even if it isn't. but i am not driven by money. i am, in fact, changing my major from computer art to journalism precisely because i've seen the way that the entertainment industry works, and i refuse to become a corporate whore pushing out product after inferior product in a quest for ever higher profits.



[edited by - syn_apse on July 26, 2003 8:32:48 PM]