Also, another nice post about conversation by Wav

A CRPG in development...

Need help? Well, go FAQ yourself.

One more thing about simulating behavior: Dungeon Keeper did it. The monsters in your dungeon had a life of their own (if you didn''t interfere) and got tired, hungry etc. If the player let them be they chose their own life style driven by there needs.

Wouldn''t this be a good concept for NPCs in a RPG too? I imagine NPCs like that:
- They have needs, like wanting to eat, wanting to sleep, socialize
- They have a memory. They can talk to each other and when they do the transfer a bit of information to the other NPC. Memory could be a FIFO queue so they could remember for example ten informations.
- When NPCs talk to each other the player can eavesdrop and hear the news they have to share.

Imagine a typical encounter:
1. NPC A is tired and going home. B is hungry and going to the next inn.
2. They meet and suddenly (because they are close) start to talk. A tells B that the King is ill. (B looses his oldest information and gains the new one) B tell A that there are new mosnters near the graveyard. (A gains this new info)
3. After enough chatting (when their need to go to sleep/eat becomes greater than the social part) they both decide to go on, say farewell and are on their way.

The only thing the game has to do is place the really new bits of information in the game world. (Well, someone has to start the topic *g*)

This would make for quite real NPCs, wouldn''t it? If there are many topics this would make the world more realistic, on the other side few information would make the game be more focused on really important things.

Of course the game engine would simulate the NPCs when they are far away and really "play" them when they are near the player...

What do you think?

I totally agree with rgbrg. I''m gonna implement a similar system for my rpg NPC''s.

------
GameDev''er 4 ever.

Perhaps a simpler way of adding variety of people in towns would be to have NPCs that travel between towns. They might spend half a RL day in each town. Assuming this is an MMO game that spans many towns and cities this would be conceivable. You may not see one particular NPC in a tavern of a particular city more then once a week or twice a month. You could make scholars, healers, merchants, knights on quests, peasant farmers, peasants making a pilgrimage. They would be leading their own independent lives and have their own relatively unimportant conversations. Once in a while hold a festival in one place and have this as a signal to serveral of these traveling NPCs to detour to this festival. Then continue on afterward, that would change the routine a little. I cant see this as being a whole lot more complicated or proccersor intensive then anything thats already out there.