[...] great example comes from this Raph Koster blog entry where he discusses (under “Faking You Out”) some shenanigans pulled by UO. Stagecraft [...]

[...] by Michael Chui on Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:07 pm Scopique wrote:And don’t forget the stuff that didn’t MAKE it into UO, like the dynamic ecosytem.If you have no idea what he’s talking about,http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uo … ce-system/http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/04/uo … em-part-2/http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/05/uo … em-part-3/Also,http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/09/why-dont-our-npcs/ [...]

[...] Raph’s blog and what he is saying. How I forgot to have Raph Koster’s blog listed eludes me. But recently he talked about the ecology that was originally planned/attempted in the early UO and the reasons that it didn’t work (Part 1, 2, 3).Which is very interesting to me, since I have been reading up what I can. In a strangely related piece UO had helped me while reading “Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity”. In the preface Dr. Holland uses the word “untrammeled”, which is a word that I never expected to see in print and only know the meaning because of the facet debates (putting it nicely). Someone had found and listed the definition of trammel: literary restrictions or impediments to freedom of action and is the name of the non-pvp facet in UO (I can only guess that the designer that came up with the name might not have liked the idea of non-pvp facet). Side note, the book is pretty good, but it can be hard reading for a layman and probably a bit deeper than what could be workable for a game setting.Raph also has a great write-up about NPC’s. Where he compares them to “pellet dispenser”, which isn’t far from the truth. Also nothing breaks the suspension of reality when you have a NPC with a big green “!” above their head.I can only hope that the right people are reading Raph’s ideas (despite my desire, I don’t kid myself about being able to build something so complex). Who knows, maybe someone with lots of money to throw around could get Raph and Richard Bartle together to design a MMO. [...]

[...] here is an interesting article about NPC’s http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/09/why-dont-our-npcs/ [...]

[...] I wish I had known about Mr. Koster’s blog a long time ago, there have been some great posts there. In particular, I love this one: Why don�t our NPCs� [...]

[...] My favorite is still the stuff that surrounded the wisps in Ultima Online. I wrote about it in a blog post about NPCs: Stagecraft definitely has a huge place; not everything must be modeled to a high level of detail. My favorite system I have ever done along those lines is the nonhuman script in Ultima Online. As a primer, you may want to read A Grammar of Orcish by Yorick of Yew. [...]

[...] In games where even spear-carriers are promoted to special status, by features such as more varied NPC conversation systems, capabilities to give rumors, persistence (such as persistent randomly-named but killable shopkeepers, like UO had), or even procedural quest generation, then you end up wanting to make even your spear-carriers have these characteristics. If Falstaff happens to be rolled up, has something memorable attached to him, and hangs around in the bad part of town for six weeks until he is killed and never returns, that can be of real value. His hat can still be a trophy. [...]

[...] After a week in Coalbrookdale, near Ironbridge, near Telford playing with iron casting, smelting and liquid metal, my thoughts are much more situated in the natural world than the computerised one. To ease back into my technological side, here’s a strange structure which bridges the gap between the two: an animal-controlled version of Pac Man, with crickets acting as ghosts (look for graduation projects from 2003/2004).From creator Wim van Eck’s colleague’s blog:In his project he build a Pacman game, in that the player can play Pacman against real crickets, that controls the ghosts in the Pacman maze. By doing this he analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of real-time behaviour of live animals in comparison to behavior-generating code in computer games. A very clever approach to examining AI in computer games. More of a trawl through the bursting RSS feeder exposes that Raph was thinking along similar lines (without the crickets) in an essay he posted about what we need (and should start to expect) from NPC characters. He focuses heavily upon MMOGs, but the points he raises are relevant across the gaming spectrum. Via his blog:Players objected quite a lot to seeing the fictional dressing stripped away from the modern quest dispenser NPCs in SWG, seeing them as actual metallic terminals. And yet, that’s how our NPCs act today anyway. We should swing the pendulum back a little bit. I, and I think many other players, would gladly trade some inconvenience for a world that feels a little less like a pellet dispenser. There are still a few issues to work out in Eck’s project before crickets become the benchmark for in-game AI, however. At one point, a bug shed its skin thus rendering the colour-detection system completely ineffective. Game over. The NPC challenge still remains, and is one of the hardest nuts to crack in the mainstream acceptance of gaming as an artistic and respectable medium. [...]

[...] FFB: Raph Koster recently posted a post on his weblog with great examples of making NPCs something MORE than just random quest dispensers. Certainly, most of these examples are things that we probably won’t see for some time in an MMOG, at least not all of them together. But can you tell us if there are any plans to make NPCs in PotBS more immersive? For example, I read that it will be possible to actually get relationships with certain NPCs, do you still have things like this planned? JL: We have a very extensive and dynamic single-player storyline planned for PotBS. And by dynamic, I mean that the choices you make as a player will change the way the story unfolds around you. For example, if two NPCs offer competing missions, then there will be rewards and CONSEQUENCES for the choices you make. The NPC you help out will develop a relationship with you, treating you as a friend, while the one you snub will treat you as an enemy. Certain new missions will be open to you, while others may close. Beyond the single-player experience, there will be an element of diplomacy to the overall game as well. If you make it your life’s work to hunt down the Bloody Arms Pirates, then they’ll likely, well, hate you—which means they’ll target you whenever they get the chance and never offer you any missions. But at the same time, the British Navy might smile on you for cleaning out the riffraff (even if you’re not a member of the British nation), offering protection on the high-seas and special missions in their ports. Of course, in persistent areas you’ll also see NPCs going about their daily lives. In pirate towns, NPCs can get into fights. In military outposts you’ll see soldiers going through drills. In the taverns you’ll see drunks, well, getting drunk. You can expect a lot of pirate-themed activity on the wharfs and in the towns. Gambling, cat calls, street-musicians, peddlers, swimmers, fishermen . . . nearly anything you can image happening in a town in 1720 you will find. [...]

[...] I� WAS� exited about nwn2, but recent news has been turning me increasingly off. First there were the allusions to the memory footprint of outdoor areas. Since the amount of memory that 32 bit windows (64 bit is explicitly unsupported) can support in a single process is rather small, this puts an instant kibosh on large worlds unless you go to a server cluster rather than a single server. This is still viable, true; but considerably more expensive to support than a single server. The issue with the lack of DM client at launch seems to have blown over, but two other things haunt me. A regular on the bio boards pointedly asked if there will be a standalone server and as yet, a few days later, no dev has given an definitive answer. That gives me the impression that it is on the �to do if there is time� list and there is never enough time in software projects. The pessimist in me expects nwn2 to ship without initial support for a standalone server. Having to host a PW from the player or DM client makes it that much harder to host one 24/7. Lastly, it is not yet clear exactly what must be pre-downloaded by the players before they can connect. In any case the walkmesh will have to be downloaded. If it were just the walkmesh, it would be annoying, but not the end of the world. It would mean that server updates could not go online at will, but would have to be announced in advance so everyone could get the new files downloaded. If it includes other info beyond the walkmesh, then we are in for a new era of enhanced metagaming. What I�d like to see in general (not limited to any server): Everyone mentions dynamism. Dynamisn is HARD to implement. Real dynamism� http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/09/why-dont-our-npcs/ You can kind of fake it with a couple of things: [...]