Original post by NickGravelyn It would stand to reason, then, that if you did something to an argonian, nearby khajit would not find out until later than other races in that area (due to the racism).
The funny part is that it took a while before I figured out why, mostly because I assuming a "deed" that was seen by others. I guess how they react to it might outweigh how soon they hear about it. Assuming an Argonian is telling someone from another race it might still reach the Khajit and be spread even faster among them (making the Argonian beating/killing/stealing player quite popular).
Of course my "perfect" system would have all NPCs keep track of a couple variables describing their relationship with other known NPCs. Sympathy, trust, rivalry and whatever my fourth factor was that I can't remember (attraction? I think it was respect). But that might quickly result in a whole lot of data. Though the good thing is that it wouldn't be extra work as you'd already do it for the player. Even though it would be quite crude to use the same default values and assume everybody starts out the same with a stranger and then adjusts. Would pretty much ignore the rather instant effects of looks and pheromones. And let's not start simulating everybodies immune system to find out about their pheromones and initial attraction.
An idea: for distribution of information, you could have individuals keep track of an ever growing list of information. For example, "the player killed this person in his house" could be one piece of information, or "somebody killed this person in his house" if there were no witnesses to the murder and someone just happened upon the body (maybe guards could do some detective work to figure out the culprit?)
The AIs would carry this information around until they forgot it (certain information, like memory of a murder, could last a very long time), and would exchange information in the form of gossip. NPCs could exchange information between them depending on their personality, their disposition towards the specific character, and the importance of the information.
If you extend it a bit further, you could get some interesting stuff happening. NPCs reporting a crime could rush towards a guard, with the intention of giving the information and having them deal with the incident. Guards, if working under the same system, could then send out messengers to the rest of the town guard, giving the person who committed the crime (the player, lets say) a short window to get out of the town before the guards catch on and come for him. This could go for good news, too... if the player was fairly famous and well liked, the first person to see him could go rushing off to tell everybody so they could greet him and smother him with autograph requests!
Original post by starstriker1 An idea: for distribution of information, you could have individuals keep track of an ever growing list of information. For example, "the player killed this person in his house" could be one piece of information, or "somebody killed this person in his house" if there were no witnesses to the murder and someone just happened upon the body (maybe guards could do some detective work to figure out the culprit?)
The AIs would carry this information around until they forgot it (certain information, like memory of a murder, could last a very long time), and would exchange information in the form of gossip. NPCs could exchange information between them depending on their personality, their disposition towards the specific character, and the importance of the information.
If you extend it a bit further, you could get some interesting stuff happening. NPCs reporting a crime could rush towards a guard, with the intention of giving the information and having them deal with the incident. Guards, if working under the same system, could then send out messengers to the rest of the town guard, giving the person who committed the crime (the player, lets say) a short window to get out of the town before the guards catch on and come for him. This could go for good news, too... if the player was fairly famous and well liked, the first person to see him could go rushing off to tell everybody so they could greet him and smother him with autograph requests!
Thoughts?
That sounds pretty good. As soon as I get near that level, maybe I'll try putting it to work. As is I'm just learning a lot about AI so it'll be a while :).
