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From: d91fe@pappa.pt.hk-r.se (Fredrik Ekman)
Subject: Re: Some further thoughts on NPCs
In-Reply-To: d91fe@bengan.pt.hk-r.se's message of Mon, 7 Mar 1994 23:31:05 GMT
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Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci. Soft Center, Ronneby
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Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 16:48:13 GMT
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First of all, I fully agree on your input on my original message; nor
did I mean to imply that the NPC should have a set of n _random_
actions and thereby appear to be intelligent. What I mean is that even
if every action the NPC takes is perfectly sensible in the light of
its built-in (and very limited) set of actions, a player will soon
tire of it if that set is, say, less than ten. Perhaps this is not
true and just me rambling. I, for instance, love to make the NPCs of
"The Hobbit" do stupid things, ie to use their very limited intelli-
gence to create new exciting ways to win the game.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this would be even _more_ fun
if Gandalf and the rest of the bunch could do more things _and_ do
them in a more intelligent way.

Perhaps my original question was poorly formulated. Suppose that an
NPC is extremely intelligent within the limits given by the situation.
For instance, it will be able to learn if a given object is edible or
not and it will always be able to find the way back to where it's
been before. These two actions, in spite of being quite intelligent
(as normal NPCs go) will hardly be enough to cause a staying interest
from the player. How about trying to impelement NPCs who are having
quests of their own (perhaps competing with the player) in addition
to the gnome that smashes everything in sight? A number of different
NPCs, one or two very complicated and a dozen or so rather simple,
ought to be able to create very interesting situations, but I don't
believe that simply limited intelligence is enough; a multitude of
personality is also needed in order to make an interesting game.

Hmm... hope I don't sound too confused. :-)

  /F


