I don’t normally post but I do read quite a few of them. Let me give you a little background. I’m one of the people who want to be the GWH. My friend and I want to develop what we call “The Big Game” this game would be the game to end all games and would be just short of a sim life which allows a player to be any thing he would want in the past present or future. We prize functionality over eyecandy any day. In our game we want to give the avatars a programmable AI because you are not allowed to remove the charters from the persistent world. That entirely aside I was looking at programming an instant messenger client that would popup when your charter was in trouble. The messenger would only give you the text that would normally scroll by in your game window and a few simple options like “flee” and “fight” and what ever you preprogrammed. This would give you the ability to override your AI if need be. Would this be a good Idea? Did I do some thing stupid by posting it now so other people could use it? Please feel free to flame me or what ever I thought it was a very neat Idea. “Those things that do not kill us only get lodged in our scalps and slowly suck our brain dry” Phil Henry “Functionality before eyecandy” Me

quote: Original post by Mercwrought
That entirely aside I was looking at programming an instant messenger client that would popup when your charter was in trouble.

Most people don''t spend their lives online.


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quote: Original post by Mercwrought
I don’t normally post but I do read quite a few of them. Let me give you a little background. I’m one of the people who want to be the GWH.

GWH??

quote:
My friend and I want to develop what we call “The Big Game” this game would be the game to end all games and would be just short of a sim life which allows a player to be any thing he would want in the past present or future. We prize functionality over eyecandy any day.

Sounds a little* on the ambitious side.

*a lot.

quote:
In our game we want to give the avatars a programmable AI because you are not allowed to remove the charters from the persistent world. That entirely aside I was looking at programming an instant messenger client that would popup when your charter was in trouble. The messenger would only give you the text that would normally scroll by in your game window and a few simple options like “flee” and “fight” and what ever you preprogrammed. This would give you the ability to override your AI if need be. Would this be a good Idea? Did I do some thing stupid by posting it now so other people could use it? Please feel free to flame me or what ever I thought it was a very neat Idea.

The idea of a programmable AI isn''t particularly new. It is a reasonable idea, but it assumes a level of technical knowledge that 90% of players probably don''t have. Unless the AI interface were very well designed, this would be a bad thing. Also, the very existence of a AI development interface will intrude on the immersiveness of of the game.

As for the Client idea, it is not a bad idea, but as Kylotan says, most people do not spend all their lives online, so it will be of fairly limited use.

GWH = "The Great White Hope"


The programmable aI would be very simple you would have levels of fight /flee/ perform normal skills this gives people the ability to perform tasks that are very boring and time consuming. One of the Items we consider important is Time this helps us limit the speed of advancement and gives the game a little realism. We are able to give charters very powerful abilities, which are limited by the time necessary to perform them. Requiring the charters to stay online all the time gives the players a less monotonous way of performing some of these actions and will cut down on the need for the building of third party programs that do this. The messenger would only serve to alert you if your charter is in the danger of immediate death (which for the most part would be permanent) and allow you to override its current AI.

“Those things that do not kill us only get lodged in our scalps and slowly suck our brain dry” Phil Henry

“Functionality before eyecandy” Me

rather than having a user-programmable AI, you could have the game itself learn the patterns and trends of the player and use that to control the character when the player isn''t around. i.e. a player that runs from most battles would automatically run when offline, or a player who generally hacks everyone with his sword and occasionally casts a spell will do the same by itself.
of course this will be hard to implement, but it is possible i think. that way, the game wouldn''t be restricted to people who know about AI or have a programming background. perhaps you can override this with AI if the player wants to, but they aren''t forced to (if they just leave it alone the game does it''s best to approximate what the player WOULD do). does that make any sense?
as for the messenger, why not? it won''t be oh-so-hard to program, and people don''t *have* to use it (if they are worried that their character might be killed while they are away from the computer, they should "stash" the character in a safe place (hopefully you will have some).

quote: The programmable aI would be very simple you would have levels of fight /flee/ perform normal skills this gives people the ability to perform tasks that are very boring and time consuming. One of the Items we consider important is Time this helps us limit the speed of advancement and gives the game a little realism. We are able to give charters very powerful abilities, which are limited by the time necessary to perform them. Requiring the charters to stay online all the time gives the players a less monotonous way of performing some of these actions and will cut down on the need for the building of third party programs that do this.

i''m not sure what you mean exactly here... do you mean like raising stats and combat skills by having a built-in macro thing? or do you mean more along the lines of other skills and stuff, so people don''t have to spend six hours point-n-clicking to "make" arrows one at a time? either way, this would be nice i guess, but to me it sounds like a workaround for a problem that could be avoided altogether. if the characters want to do such boring monotonous things in the game, let them... but don''t make it an essential part of the game. i mean, what you are basically doing is wasting time including something that sucks for gameplay, and then giving the players a way to "cheat" around it. just leave it out in the first place, and focus on fun things.
just my 0.02!

Had someone who wanted to make player programmable AI.

I just have to ask, do you want to research your illnesses then prescribe medicine to yourself? No? Then why do you want mailmen, doctors and waitresses to program?

I don''t care how simple you make it, it will never be simple enough if you want it to be powerful enough to be worth a damn.

BTW, how big were you planning on making these servers that will handle complete AI for hundreds of characters? How much were you going to charge for this game, $100/month?

I''m sorry to be down on your dreams and I''m sure that you''ve heard all this before, but reality is that to do what you''re talking about would either require several quad+ processor systems for every hundred users or a rediculous number of the blade-type servers. You''re looking at spending probably close to $500/user just on servers for AI. I''m sure that it''s simple and the AI won''t take that much processing power, but reality is that if the AI is worth even bothering with it will be that resource intensive and it will be that complex.

God save you when someone''s level 157 Mage-Planologist dies in the middle of the Brickabrack Plane while they''re away on vacation. You will lose more customers to the fact that they aren''t controlling their character most of the time than to the monthly cost of the game. I can just hear "I would never have done that and the way I programmed my avatar it would never do that either" now. Hope you were planning on charging for customer service calls to because they will be a nightmare.

quote: Original post by Kylotan
Most people don''t spend their lives online.

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Heh. Have you played many MMORPGs or MUDs? You''d be surprised how many do! (I''m not saying you''re not right that most people don''t but there sure are a hell of a lot of people that do!) BTW that idea about the little client is not that new. There was some game I forget the name of it that would like call you on your cell phone, or send you faxes...

-=Lohrno

quote: Original post by Lohrno
BTW that idea about the little client is not that new. There was some game I forget the name of it that would like call you on your cell phone, or send you faxes...

Majestic. That''s different, though, because that was the game, not some additional "feature." It got recalled/cancelled/suspended early due to 9-11 fears.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

quote: Original post by Lohrno
Heh. Have you played many MMORPGs or MUDs? You''d be surprised how many do! (I''m not saying you''re not right that most people don''t but there sure are a hell of a lot of people that do!)

*sighs and shakes head*
Lohrno, I run a MUD.

Even if, like I did, you would spend 16 hours logged into the game, that still leaves 8 hours of AI scripting which you''re gonna be unable to respond to. Even total addicts are not going to find the client useful, because they''re likely to be logged into the game whenever possible anyway.



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The game is being worked on with the thought that when it is implemented there will be a sufficient technology to handle it. Take Current systems a year ago there were only 1.3gig computers and now there are 2.2 over clocked to 3.7. We hope to have millions of NPCs and as for funding we have considered ways around charging large fees. I believe that an extrapolated charter Ai is a better Idea and I thank the posters who have posted.

“Those things that do not kill us only get lodged in our scalps and slowly suck our brain dry” Phil Henry

“Functionality before eyecandy” Me