Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > Mud Development and Administration > Advanced MUD Concepts
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 07-25-2002, 09:53 PM   #1
Burr
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 123
Burr is on a distinguished road
On the old forums there was a lot of talk about dynamic evolution, about which a lot focused on making NPCs more real.  I was wondering if there were any ideas on social interaction between NPCs besides that of a group of villagers acting together from time to time.

Even on non-dynamic muds, evil NPCs are often near other evil NPCs...low-level NPCs are with other low-level NPCs...gnomes are with gnomes...etc.  Such organization makes sense from both a gaming perspective and a roleplay perspective.

The way this is accomplished is by either confining each group to a particular area, or less often having them follow a defining member of their type and setting the leader adrift.

Would it be feasible to make this work more fluidly, allowing you to set all NPCs adrift (except with major goals such as their profession in mind) with certainty that they'll find groups they belong in?  For instance, if two NPCs just happen to be traveling on the same road for a certain distance, and are of races that might trust each other, maybe they'll group together and then quit the group when its time to split up again.  If things work out well that way, they'll do it again next time they meet this way by chance.  Or if one happens to be a thief who gets caught stealing, and a fight between them ensues, then maybe the next time they meet will throw insults at each other, and possibly get into another fight.  (And if one happens to lose both times, maybe he will try to find a new route.)

If an Ogre with a badass reputation enters a bar, maybe all the evil wannabes in the bar will try to follow him, and he will group them and use them in his fights until they die, or mutiny.

My examples are probably a little too complex for starting out, but if you got a basic system working wear likeness attracts likeness, you could tweak it for certain activities such as traveling, resting, fighting, and working.  Then you could tweak it a little bit more for particular NPCs, such as the Ogre, and so on.

Edit: Here's another idea along these lines. If you have a nature-friendly class (such as the typical druid class), animals in a certain area could be drawn to them somewhat. This would serve not only for atmosphere, but it also helps set up an RP situation. If animals are near druids, and you are hunting animals, then you will likely run into a druid. One way to do this would be coding it so that, if a druid is in a wooded room, each animal mob in the surrounding rooms as a certain chance of walking into the room the druid is in. That way new animals will come in and drop out as the druid walks by, so that it will look more real than animals simply following the druid. The same implementation could be applied to most PC types: fishes gravitating toward aquatic races, goblins toward orcs/ogres, birds towards winged races, children towards bards and good warriors, other citizens toward certain priests, etc., etc., etc.
Burr is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2002, 10:53 AM   #2
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
thats a very good idea, i just ran an idea to my programmers about Dynamic AI. now the feature i wanted to have them implement into the game is this.

NPC's are immune to hunger and sleep or so it seems, what if the npc's had to eat and drink and yes sleep.

now lets just use this weaponsmith as an example.

He starts off in his shop. ok now he started in the game with some money to buy his supplies he needs to make his iteams for sale. now he takes the time to explore his surronding area.
later on he finds that from his shop if he goes 4 east 2 north hes at the town well. he can now fill up his barrels for water, and he knows 4 east 2 south and 1 west is the downs bakery. so he will buy food to feed himself. he would close his shop when its time to sleep. wake up and eat and goto work.

now this would realy change the game, what if evil NPC's started to burn crops of wheat? would the bakery get the wheat it needs to make some of its food? would the weaponsmith afford the price changes? or would he die of starvation? this could realy affect the game.

another thing is about the AI learning would be great. this one is my programmers idea. this will be a cat for example.

someone buys a cat for a pet. later on the cat runs away or they left the cat someone and didnt come back for it.. now the cat needs to search for food and something to drink.
the cat finds a fish market somewere and learns to steal or run faster to survive. then it gets into fights with dogs and learns to claw bite jump hide sneak..... now it would be a smart cat or capble of learning if had to fend on its own. and it would keep all those skills until it dies.
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2002, 02:43 PM   #3
Crystal
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Name: Crystal
Location: Pennsylvania
Home MUD: Advent of the Mists
Home MUD: Advent of the Mists
Posts: 134
Crystal is on a distinguished road
When you try to develop that type of AI though, how far is too far? What if an NPC starts burning down too many fields and people can't eat?
Crystal is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-15-2002, 04:46 PM   #4
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
then the world starts turning into a barren wastle land... But some AI's would be more advanced then others, maybe a knight goes around looking for big bad villans to arrest or kill.
most kingdoms tho would have there economy soly based on Agriculture products, maybe one kingdoms has an army protecting it but out in the vast worlds there will be times that small villages will suffer. but the case i was talking about would be a small village or town, a kingdom would keep a close eye on there economy and Agriculture wealth. a baren or Lord would hire mercs. hopefuly that answers your question.
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-17-2002, 04:16 PM   #5
Kallian
New Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 9
Kallian is on a distinguished road
Sweet! An arsonist! RP opportunities galore are created by this, and the hack n' slashers can run around trying to find the villain and slay him.

Sounds like a fun time to me.
Kallian is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-17-2002, 09:29 PM   #6
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
yes its a sweet thing that will be appart of the new mud we are creating.
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-18-2002, 08:33 PM   #7
Alexander Tau
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 101
Alexander Tau is on a distinguished road
Some interesting ideas here.

To address the initial post the main problem I see is that you are mixing fairly high level thought with simple basics. Sure you can teach navigation and give NPCs a way to look for similar creatures but beyond that it gets a lot more complicated. Simulating high level thought is just not an easy thing.

My approach to NPC AI has been to give them a set of base needs (food, water, sleep, play, etc) and to teach them how to fulfill those needs. From these simple things you get more complex behavior that is somewhat realistic. If they get hungry they go to look for food, if they do not need to eat or sleep they head out to work. Add in some speech so they can communicate what they need/are doing and you have a NPC that seems to be alive.

One thing to consider for the person working on the new Mud is that NPCs are active 24 hours a day while the players are not. If you give the NPCs the ability to damage the player economy it is very likely that the world will become a wasteland very quickly, and all the NPCs will die out. Once that happens you do not have much of a world anymore.

What is needed for this sort of system is an overall control system that monitors conditions and keeps things running smoothly. If the NPCs and players need food, then some sort of monitoring is needed to make sure the level of damage is not critical unless the players are available to handle the attacks.

A.T
(-)
Alexander Tau is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-18-2002, 10:02 PM   #8
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
thats very true, i dont know yet on the control system but right now its just an idea but when we figure out the dynamics of it and have the stucture set it will be included in our code. not all of the npc's will have higher AI settings because as you pointed out they need to be controlled. most of them will stay within a certain area and never leave, they would have a definied limit so when making these areas , one would have to plan out ahead of time , so they would not construct a problem.
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-23-2002, 06:57 PM   #9
OnyxFlame
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 153
OnyxFlame is on a distinguished road
Post

OnyxFlame is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-24-2002, 08:39 PM   #10
Alexander Tau
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 101
Alexander Tau is on a distinguished road
There are a few ways to add useful knowledge to NPCs, one that I have worked with a couple of times works via a collective database.

The Data needs to be grouped based on location and perhaps a social control (station, guild, profession, etc. As NPCs move about they can occasionally spit out a line from the database.

As the social situation changes, new information is added to the Database and other lines are changed. So when Fred takes over, the NPCs living in the city will know it. If you add a simple query function to the NPCs (ie a player can say 'What do you know about .

We tend to look at everything from the point of view of a player driving all the events. Personally I try to build the world from the NPC POV. I am actually more interested in making the NPCs interact with each other, including speaking, than I am about the players. If two NPCs are standing around talking in some fashion, the players can just listen in to learn.

As far as the Shopkeeper idea in the previous post, the idea is great but it would require a large population of NPCs. Few games support enough NPCs to have a pool to draw from. If you could overcome that limitation it would work just fine. The other little hitch is that most games do not have enough stores to allow some to be down for any real length of time, so if the search/training takes too long other problems could crop up.


A.T
(-)
Alexander Tau is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2002, 02:25 AM   #11
OnyxFlame
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 153
OnyxFlame is on a distinguished road
Post

Well I dunno how most muds do it, but on the one I play, some of the shopkeepers don't respawn at all. Actually most of em don't. Because if they did, people would keep killing them so they'd repop with money, and everyone would be rich in a really short amount of time. So I figure the npc training thing would be a nice way to cause some inconvenience, but not total breakdown of the system.

Anyone know of any muds with balanced player-driven economies, or have any good ideas about how to make them? In fact that sounds like a good idea for another thread... *wink*

Edit (5 minutes later): Oops I meant the shopkeepers don't respawn until the mud reboots, which tends to be upwards of 10 days. This is what happens when I try to post when half asleep.
OnyxFlame is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2002, 11:09 AM   #12
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
i dont plan on have shopkeepers respawn, in the begining of the game they will be placed, but as npc evolve, not all but some, new shops will open most comming thing to see tho is peddelars on the street, pushing a art of iteams around, maybe that npc got enough money saved to open a real shop.
what realy depends within the whole world is how the players react and what they do to affect it, but players will face perm death also. o if they pick a fight with the wrong npc....
the new code my programmer team is making will be very dynamic and will be meant for advanced player or people willing to learn. theres alot of other things that we plan to include, but this was just one of the things.
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2002, 12:14 PM   #13
OnyxFlame
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 153
OnyxFlame is on a distinguished road
Post

OnyxFlame is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2002, 06:05 PM   #14
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-25-2002, 10:43 PM   #15
Alexander Tau
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 101
Alexander Tau is on a distinguished road
OnyxFlame the thing is that some players only care about more and more for themselves, but there are those who care about the entire game, and others, as well.

It is kind of like a Trap that you stock with Bait. The kind of trap, and type of bait you use determine what it catches, if anything. Character PermaDeath has usually be the domain of pure RP Mush-like games where it is real cooperative play. Death has to be agreed to basically.

In the more code-driven styles of MU* some form of return to life is usually adopted by games. The level of loss inflicted varies a lot, and some, like myself, believe time out of play is the proper pain to inflict to make 'death' something to avoid.

Creating a Group project like a MU*, that is open to the public and hopes to have 100 or more players, is a complex tricky thing. Rules and Laws have to deal fairly with the players and Staff and still be effective in preventing abuse. But when applying them each tightening of the controls effectively reduces the overall number of people who will show up to play.

In the golden time of initial creation, many games start with death penalites/styles that are very harsh. But it is not uncommon for those to lessen as experience with the design does not lead to the playerbase, or general play, they were wanting to see. MU* Directors are an odd lot, we want to make the toys, and then have them played with in the way that we desire. On the other hand, as players, we wish to be able to pursue whatever we find enjoyable.

A.T
(-)
Alexander Tau is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-26-2002, 02:40 AM   #16
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
yes perm death is mostly on RP muds but the code were creating and style of our mud will fit all sections of the mudders out there, weither it be hack & slash , pk & rp.
players will be able to build there own kingdoms or even become a gods. Hopefuly we will have the beat version ready within 6months.
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-26-2002, 11:24 AM   #17
OnyxFlame
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 153
OnyxFlame is on a distinguished road
OnyxFlame is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-28-2002, 05:21 PM   #18
Alexander Tau
Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 101
Alexander Tau is on a distinguished road
Well Xanferious. I wish you luck, but in my experience games that try to be all things to all people rarely work. The fundamental differences between real RP players and normal Hack and Slash players are rather sharp and cause constant OOC conflicts.

Just like PermaDeath, it sounds good at first, but once you actally have to deal with players you will probably realize it is better to focus on one style of play if you really want to develop a strong playerbase.

OnyxFlame I do not dispute some Mud style games have PermaDeath but it is VERY rare. 99% have some sort of respawn after a player is killed. Only on MUSH type games is it fairly normal. You play on a fairly unique place.

A.T
(-)
Alexander Tau is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-30-2002, 04:08 AM   #19
Xanferious
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: The Void
Posts: 490
Xanferious is on a distinguished road
Send a message via AIM to Xanferious
thanks i know it will be diffuct but hey its worth a hot, its been a dream of mine for the past 10 years, i have gathered a very will group of programmers and still searching for more, but i wont get into that here , anyway i was also thinking about npcs and this might be going to far now and i dont think it realy could be done, well not sure on it, but npcs share a pool or commo use of speach. instead of mpogs unless put into it for that char , but the avarge npc depeding pn what trade he or she or even it was could have a huge list of speach, maybe one signs a song or the other complains about the weather, all random realy but whne a player is persent maybe that nps will strike a conversation?
Xanferious is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-30-2002, 07:23 AM   #20
OnyxFlame
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 153
OnyxFlame is on a distinguished road
Post

OnyxFlame is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


social magnetism - Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
wanted RPI: reallistic social envoriment kleftis Advertising for Players 2 09-21-2002 01:53 AM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 05:42 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022