I really like the ghost idea, Diodor. If the ghost followed the same rules as an NPC, the player might be able to count on what he knows about the world and its workings in order to implement some strategy (e.g., player thinks, "Better get moving, this guard will be noticed missing in 10-20 minutes" because he knows the guard''s route)

Another factor to possibly add: How routine is the NPC? If the NPC is always jetting off to Paris or Myth Drannor or whatever, his absence could have another excuse.

I''d love to see something like this implemented for a murder mystery cRPG



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote:

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Original post by Wavinator

Another factor to possibly add: How routine is the NPC? If the NPC is always jetting off to Paris or Myth Drannor or whatever, his absence could have another excuse.

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And the cool thing is the ghost should be responsible for knowing how routine it''s NPC was. The ghost will send the NPCs it meets in Myth Drannor messages like "Hey, I should be here, but don''t worry, I could be in Paris as well." - the NPCs can even pretend to be smart after such messages: "Hey, have you seen Korba lately?", "No, but don''t worry, he prolly is in Paris again!". And if for instance the killed NPC used to travel a lot but would always come back home after a week or so, the ghost would know that and start spreading worrying messages only a week later.

a very nice idea..
but i would imagine something like this would use a TON of system resources..


-eldee
;another space monkey;

The ghost and spirit ideas are both excellent. The spirit idea in particular, could be incrediably usefull to simulate NPC''s assessing weaknesses of buildings. In the thief example, a successful spirit could represent the planning before the theif executed a job. Whilst for fixed structures, weakpoints could be calculated beforehand, if a structure was to be built by the player (think Dungeon Keeper) this could be very effective.

Diodor,

Is this your original idea? If so, do you realize that you may have just revolutionized NPC behavior in games??? *I* plan on using this technique as needed!

RJ

quote:

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Original post by eldee
a very nice idea..
but i would imagine something like this would use a TON of system resources..


-eldee
;another space monkey;

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Not if it was done properly, I think. Think about it... The ghost would use the AI time left over by the dead NPC, and replace things like targetting and stuff with deciding whether a friendly NPC was close enough to "talk to". Also, the ghost would not have to be rendered. I think the whole idea is really cool.


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I finally got it all together...
...and then forgot where I put it.

Wow, great idea!

quote:

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Original post by Anonymous Poster,

Diodor,

Is this your original idea? If so, do you realize that you may have just revolutionized NPC behavior in games??? *I* plan on using this technique as needed!

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Thank you! Apparenly, as bishop_pass pointed out, much of the idea isn''t new. As for revolutionizing the NPC behaviour, the merits go to those that do all the hard work of implementing the system. I don''t believe there is any simple magic solution that will make the NPCs intelligent, but every bit can help. Good luck with your game and keep us informed about how it works out!

Sounds cool...reminds me of a thread we once had a long time ago about things dropping triggers only this would be kind of like autonomous triggers I suppose

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A CRPG in development...

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That is beautiful!

I wanna'' ride on the pope mobile.