Interesting idea...
So, each goal for each NPC could alter according to the situations. Just looking at the money situation:

We could keep track of how much money each NPC has, and how much food,water, etc he has. Then according to what kind of information the NPC has, he will perform different tasks to attain the money to buy food.

With using stats, like you said, we could determine basically what the NPC is likely to do. If farming is his main source of income, that''s what he''ll do. If he''s more of a criminal he may choose to do something more illegal. At least we''d have more control there.

Very nice start

I think those are good ideas, and definately worth looking at for the generation of interesting circumstances...
The only problem I still have is "why does the villain want to be king". This is one of the main questions always asked of Pen and Paper roleplayers - what is your motivation? "I want to be rich" is no motivation, but "I want to be rich enough to buy me that castle I always wanted." is.
"I want to be king because I want to be able to tell everyone what to do" is a good motivation too.

But should we hardcode these into the "plot blocks" or should the motivations be randomly decided, and then the action decided from that?
[ For instance, you create the "powerhungry villain", and the AI decides that the long-term goal of this villain is now to become King of the Realm. ]

People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

I would rather have the goals created in response of others NPC Actions, for example the King have prefered to give some power to X rather than to V so V starts to plot to overthrow the king... This way the motivation are logical and dynamical.

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius there was an age undreamed of..."

MadKeith : hey I was describing omething about databases as well on another thread here ... maybe you wanna check it out ?

As well, I love this idea of network, that''s very good ! But I don''t agree with the Villain Izonogoud trying to become Khalif in place of the Khalif (sorry, french comic reference)... it''s a bit artificial, unless you actually put in the memory (or whatever keep track of the NPC memory) of the NPC why and how he came to become like that. I would rather make an NPC be a farmer and be powerhungry, and let him evolve by first becoming mayor, then sheriff, then count, and take over the king after some conspiration ?

Well, anyway, I think if we can decompose all this into basic elements, everything would kind of happen naturally ... now the question is to allow this to happen

God, I am gonna have to think a bit more on paper

quote: Original post by DungeonMaster

For example the King have prefered to give some power to X rather than to V so V starts to plot to overthrow the king... This way the motivation are logical and dynamical.

unfortunately, you cannot do that, because the king needs motivation as well... somewhere you need to define or decide what the motivation for something is, and not all of those can be inferred from others.




People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

quote: Original post by MadKeithV

unfortunately, you cannot do that, because the king needs motivation as well... somewhere you need to define or decide what the motivation for something is, and not all of those can be inferred from others.

Of course, the foremost motivation of a human (or any other) being is survival. You could derive all other motivations from that basic one, but that would be way overkill. Let''s think from the king''s viewpoint instead. King''s motivation to support X instead of V could be one of the following:

- The king thinks X is more loyal, or X is a friend of his.
- He thinks V is dangerous if he get too much power
- X gives the king something in return.
- X has threatened or blackmailed the king
- V is more powerful than X already, and the king wants to keep a balance between his underlings
- etc etc

I think there should be some key characters (or character classes), like the king, whose motivations have been predefined (but they can change during the game, too). Or maybe all characters have some predefined motivations, such as survival.

-Jussi

NPCs can have some character traits like "hunger for power" or "greed", from these, I think you can then make the character react to some events to derivate new goals.
Moreover, a virtual GM could find the characters corresponding to some plot templates and "inform" them of some events to make them react...

I think that you should take the role of human in the equation. I don''t think I''d like a game to be totally under computer control (in the case of MMORPG), and key NPC such as a king should be granted to human player, that would be part of the admin team. Basically, admins would be guardian entities (or gods, or whatever your universe accept), that could take over the AI of any character (including a PC) to do, or say stuff ... I can imagine a player starting to speak in a loud and thundering voice on the market place, and trying to explain afterwards that it wasn''t him it was God

Mmm, too much ideas, I need to code !

quote:
Let's think from the king's viewpoint instead. King's motivation to support X instead of V could be one of the following:

- The king thinks X is more loyal, or X is a friend of his.
- He thinks V is dangerous if he get too much power
- X gives the king something in return.
- X has threatened or blackmailed the king
- V is more powerful than X already, and the king wants to keep a balance between his underlings
- etc etc

I'd favor this approach because, in terms of AI, it can be systematized. For instance, you could make loyalty a stat and have the king do a search on the most loyal character (heh, which could be the player too ). With this sort of key and lock approach, the king AI might be able to look at X in the same way a player looks at heroes in an empire game (as a modifier for armies or cities or some other important post). On a basic level, the king really seeing solutions that will fill a puzzle (which we'd hardcode as his motivation, too keep the kingdom running).

It seems you'd get interesting conflict when you juxtapose a character's skills and abilities. V wants to be powerful (a measurable stat). If his loyalty (measurable) was high enough, he would have been picked and there'd be no problem-- or story, for that matter. But the stats don't mix right.

Again, for the purposes of AI, V (and everyone else) has a "pathfinding" problem thru and around measurable obstacles. Maybe V sees that X's only support is the King (so we then need a support stat); he can choose a number of ways to attack that support stat. Now if you have all characters solving toward their goals I think you'll get the kind of conflict you see in a strategy game, but the actions the characters take will be storylike.



--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on September 12, 2000 5:34:16 PM

quote: Original post by MadKeithV
[ For instance, you create the "powerhungry villain", and the AI decides that the long-term goal of this villain is now to become King of the Realm. ]
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

The only thing I keep coming to is that the only real randomness would be that a different NPC would perform the actions each time you play the game. The actions would be the same each time you play the game ''cause the story pieces and actions would be hard-coded. The most randomness we may get is that a different NPC is doing action perhaps for a different reason.

I think this would be just as transparent (perhaps more so) to the players as using somewhat pre-defined divergent pathways and doing what ahw was saying about when an NPC is supposed to be doing something, he''s actually doing it and the player can intervene in what way he/she wants would IMO give the designer more control plus it would feel just as real if not more.