quote: Original post by Sandman

MKV.

1. Your alignment axample is slightly unfair, since you denied the ''Evil PC'' a career.

You call it a career, but it''s really a form of motivation. Giving a career along with an alignment is a form of motivation, albeit still pretty limited.

quote: Original post by Sandman
In any case, this is an admission that motivations alone are not enough either. Since when was aggression a motivation? My argument that you need some form of personality description holds.

But is "evil" a personality description? I don''t feel it is ( I never have ). Emotions to me form part of the motivation. What kind of emotion a character feels is important in characterising the actions.

Hrm, I guess I am trying to get towards a specific characterisation of NPCs. Most NPCs will have a very limited space within which they operate. A baker will rarely stray far from his shop, and his motivation will largely be getting the cheapest components and the best price for his bread ( to make a living ). Instead of saying "this is a good baker", just let the NPC try to satisfy the goals, and some kind of behaviour will emerge. In this case, with the goals I''ve described, it would probably be a pretty neutral character, not involved with anything else.


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quote: Original post by MadKeithV

Hrm, I guess I am trying to get towards a specific characterisation of NPCs. Most NPCs will have a very limited space within which they operate. A baker will rarely stray far from his shop, and his motivation will largely be getting the cheapest components and the best price for his bread ( to make a living ). Instead of saying "this is a good baker", just let the NPC try to satisfy the goals, and some kind of behaviour will emerge. In this case, with the goals I've described, it would probably be a pretty neutral character, not involved with anything else.

But what kind of morales does the baker adhere to as he attempts to fulfill his goals? Is he devious when he bargains? Does he not give a second thought to purchasing stolen goods?

Now I don't beleive some kind of classification system is the answer, but their needs to some kind of guideline to use when simulating his behavior.

I think a more flexible system than a basic classification system would be a hierarchy of compatible and possibly mutually exclusive traits.

Hard worker
Lazy

Lower Morales -> Underhanded
Higher Morales -> Honest

Intersested in job
Not interested in job

Craves adventure
Prefers the domestic life

Anxious
Subdued









Edited by - bishop_pass on November 14, 2000 10:23:19 AM

Combined with the motivational thing that could work, but at the risk of becoming over complicated - how much detail do you have to go into to get a miserable unscrupulous baker? If you are planning to populate your world with a large number of NPC''s (and assuming you as a designer want to have some control over their attitudes) then do you really want to select 50 different traits for a humble baker?

Don get me wrong, I like the idea. I am just playing Devils Advocate.

I elaborated my game''s plot for you dwarfsoft, over in the game writing forum.

How about using a similar system as used to define personality in the sims? Several personality based traits that have a scale to them. Diferent stats that dictate how well the character follows the law, how nice they are in everyday encounters with people, how lazy/hard they are etc. It seemed to work rather well in the sims, and it wasn''t too hard to create many varied and different characters. Of course the stats themselves would have to be changed to fit the game, but the system was simple enough for my 6-year old sister to figure out, and yet worked to create a large variety of different characters.

quote: Original post by Sandman

...how much detail do you have to go into to get a miserable unscrupulous baker? If you are planning to populate your world with a large number of NPC''s (and assuming you as a designer want to have some control over their attitudes) then do you really want to select 50 different traits for a humble baker?

It wouldn''t just be for a baker though. It would be about capturing the essence of a person, generic enough to apply to past, present, future, and alternative realities which have people.

I would perhaps go to great lengths to get a miserable unscrupulous baker. I think I would find it more interesting to interact with one miserable unscrupulous baker than an army of cardboard cutouts which do nothing other than recite some canned mantra they don''t even know the meaning of.

quote: Original post by Saluk

I elaborated my game''s plot for you dwarfsoft, over in the game writing forum.

How about using a similar system as used to define personality in the sims? Several personality based traits that have a scale to them. Diferent stats that dictate how well the character follows the law, how nice they are in everyday encounters with people, how lazy/hard they are etc. It seemed to work rather well in the sims, and it wasn''t too hard to create many varied and different characters. Of course the stats themselves would have to be changed to fit the game, but the system was simple enough for my 6-year old sister to figure out, and yet worked to create a large variety of different characters.

That''s a good idea.Until now I programmed a specific behaviour for every NPC, but for unimportant ones this might work very well.Would be rather easy to code...hmm, I think I ought to get back to AI programming one of these days, I used to be good at it.



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Hmm, I don''t believe the setting 50 traits argument is a valid one... it can easily be contourned with a couple of helper functions to make less important npc''s quickly creatable, and major characters extremely flexible.

Considering the thing about there not really being games where you''re playing good vs evil, I think of two in particular: deus ex, which does go reasonably deep on morals. And thief, where your morals are essentially flawed, but you seem to be the good guy...

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