I've been working out corner cases ofr Memotica stimuli before I code the Angela's stimulus module. Mostly, this involves the wierd voodoo you would need on the backend to streamline things like disguises, illusions, visual customization, etc as well as NWN style conversation trees. (I like it when the data structures are generalized enough to handle the unexpected and you can use a single tool)
I'm basically looking for feedback and the "how would you handle such and such" scenarios.
I posted it this afternoon over on MMORPGMaker. Since it is four posts with images, I decided to link it here instead of reposting it.
http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=9556
Working out the Corner cases of memotica stimuli
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hallsofvallhalla
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Re: Working out the Corner cases of memotica stimuli
Sorry for my delay on replying..
I honestly love this approach. I live the way NWN does it and from what I can tell you have a close to the same build.
Some things I do not like about the system is the mass work it takes to build a realistic conversation. Regardless of the time you put into a conversation as the designer, the end result is often only a hair away from linear. This is not a design flaw but the reality of how far we are behind in the terms of AI and speech as a generation.
AI speech for some reason is a technology that is passed up in games far too often. It however is more important to players than developers will give credit for.
The only thing I can say I would like to see you add is a Randomi Stimuli
A section somewhere along your flow chart where it can randomly choose another path. Not just in the speech but in textures and meshes too.
I honestly love this approach. I live the way NWN does it and from what I can tell you have a close to the same build.
Some things I do not like about the system is the mass work it takes to build a realistic conversation. Regardless of the time you put into a conversation as the designer, the end result is often only a hair away from linear. This is not a design flaw but the reality of how far we are behind in the terms of AI and speech as a generation.
AI speech for some reason is a technology that is passed up in games far too often. It however is more important to players than developers will give credit for.
The only thing I can say I would like to see you add is a Randomi Stimuli
A section somewhere along your flow chart where it can randomly choose another path. Not just in the speech but in textures and meshes too.Re: Working out the Corner cases of memotica stimuli
A friend of mine is working on an NWN style conversation editor, which is a good thing as hand writing Memotica in a text editor is a pita.
I think I have an approach for your random nodes. When the NPC initiates the conversation, a new conversation the NPC’s opening statement, along with the possible player responses will be sent to the player. When the player responds, he would send some sort of “ConversationPlayerResponse” action with the UUID of the desired response. That action would then look up the appropriate response node and go from there. Adding links between entities is possible with Memotica’s pyton script API, so it would be easy to build a set of responses on the fly.
I think I have an approach for your random nodes. When the NPC initiates the conversation, a new conversation the NPC’s opening statement, along with the possible player responses will be sent to the player. When the player responds, he would send some sort of “ConversationPlayerResponse” action with the UUID of the desired response. That action would then look up the appropriate response node and go from there. Adding links between entities is possible with Memotica’s pyton script API, so it would be easy to build a set of responses on the fly.