Just curious if anyone has tried this, and how far they''ve gotten... Has anyone had any experience mapping out a detailed tree of reactions and events for their game world? An example would be:

quote: There''s a murder --> Group A kills Group B --> Evidence is created, depending on -----> Skill of the murderer(s) -----> Location / visibility of the crime scene -----> Presence of witnesses --> If there are witnesses... --> A murder can look like an accident if... ... There''s an accident --> Group A damages Group B --> A repair force is dispatched... ...

Basically, this is nothing more than a big list of consequences and chain reactions, with the intent that it can somehow be incorporated into scripting or AI of some sort. The biggest problem I''m having right now is organization, and slimming down the size of the list. Just wondering if anyone has tried tackling this. -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Don''t you think that it''s more probable that someone tells authority that a few people are missing since a few days ?

That way you do:

if ( character.missing )
warn authority NPCs in 1d4 days.


of course that mean your NPCs should have a kind of database of related NPCs.

For the crime scene, if you support dynamic terrain or something similar, you could add a ''combat scene'' flag somewhere.

Most of the times, tricks work best and are easier to come with, after all, we are playing games, so that doesn''t matter how it works as long as it''s beleivable.


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Wavinator,

You might want to look at the thread on "ghosts" as an AI mechanism if you haven''t already... I believe these "ghosts" might provide a more flexible solution to your problem, if I''m not mistaken.

-SpittingTrashcan

You can''t have "civilization" without "civil".

I think the combinatorial explosion could be huge if you do it that way. Sorry I don''t have more to say, but it just leads down the philosophical road of AI. Actually, probably to your surprise, I am not in disagreement with you regarding quick simple solutions for AI in a game context, but some things can be overwhelming.

[Personal note to Wav below]
On a side note, somewhat related to AI similar to the AI in the game Thief, are you checking your Yahoo email? I wanted to bounce some ideas off of you via email related to the AI and game development in general and software jobs. In the event you are not checking that email regularly, check it tonight if you can.

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