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I suggest using a needs-based AI approach, utilizing Maslow's heirarchy of needs:
Self-Actualization - sense of indentity, strive for uniqueness, self-fulfillment, etc.
Esteem - positive attention
Social - acceptance
Security - safe environment
Physiological - physical health
Dump the needs into these heirarchy levels, prioritizing the needs in each category. We then define a minimum level of satisfaction for each need. As we travel through the list of needs for one level of a heiarchy, we attempt to satisfy all needs that have not met this level of satisfaction. If all needs located in a particular level of Maslow's heirarchy have been satisfied, we move up to the next level. The final level, self-actualization, never has a minimum level of satisfaction, and thus, if the NPC has all it's needs met, it strives for self-actualization, which would be finding a sense of identity (i.e. striving to understand the world, acquiring knowledge, interpretting the world through expressive concepts, think cultural anthropology here).
Next, we pull out the needs that we need to satisfy and breakdown these needs into simpler needs, until we reach a accessible level of detail. By accessible, I mean something that the AI can interpret and execute on.
We allow for specialization of three major properties of needs-based AI:
1) breakdown of complex needs
2) satisfaction for simple needs
3) minimum satisfaction levels of needs
The specialization can be done by applying specific species, personality-type and even individual soft or hard code.
For example, an artist personality may have low minimum satisfaction levels, thus explaining why the particular artist personality has such a strong need for self-fulfillment, or interpretation of the world.
You could even have each NPC have a set of generated personality traits, and have needs specialization code pertaining to each personality trait. A need's specifications are derived from a composition of all specifications for that particular need expressed by each personality trait.
For example, an aggressive NPC may have a low satisfaction for social needs, and a high satisfaction level of security needs. But an aggressive artist would have an incredibly low satisfaction for social needs, a normal level of security needs, and a low level for all other needs, making him strongly adamant in his needs based from the self-fulfillment level in Maslow's heirarchy.
Brian Lindahl
Development Director
The Cathyle Project
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