Chatting with NPC's, and making them violent...

This is probably going to be a shorter update than the last one...

I re-architected the part of the dialog database that allowed me to provide multiple answers to single questions based on "scoring". Basically, that was limited in an approach that relied on a database structure, and I needed to go well beyond what that could provide. Instead, I changed a thing or two and now i can do several things stemming from dialog interaction. One of which is checking for which answer to give, like the previous iteration of the chat feature- but more importantly, I can call arbitrary functions by talking to the NPC's. These functions can depend on nothing or everything, and have variable amounts of arguments. Sure, it adds CPU cycles, but on the other hand, an NPC punched my character tonight because he didn't like the question I asked.



That output there also signifies the beginings of the combat testing. I have user-agnostic action functions in the game which allow NPC's as well as PC's to call the same exact action. This is basically for laziness, but it works great, especially when you tie it into the chat system like above. If I had switched to the combat screen, I could have punched back, but it was too much fun goading NPC1 into killing me.

And with that, the chat feature is getting close to being where I want it to be- at least initially. It's sufficiently complex that a lot of testing needs to be done on it, and the volume of which that would guarantee all those strange scenarios you need to account for won't be provided until an alpha or beta testing session, which is far down the road. By then, though, it should be a lot more mature.

So from here, I have a number of things I want to jump on before IMGDC, even if it's in a preliminary sense:

1) Combat: It's no fun when only one person is doing the fighting, so a super-simple system is getting thrown together in the next few days. I don't really need to concentrate on it beyond basics right now because: a) The 2D testbed will show it's limits for what I want to do, and b) The combat system really isn't the hardest part of what I'm doing, and I want to show off my progress on the hard stuff. standard MMORPG combat is old hat. Chat is not.

2) Inventory: It's not difficult to implement, but it's needed for other systems, should I get them in place for the conference.

3) AI: This is another big one. Luckily, I found this awesome book named "Writer's Guide to Character Traits", which contains a ton of information on behavioral profiles of all kinds of people. Combined with the character-trait-based AI I was already wanting to implement... I don't know. It's going to be a test that will pass, fail, or need some sort of work. Probably the latter, but that's just fine with me, as long as it works right, otherwise I need to find another way.

4) Conditions: I had this working in concept last week, except I sort of scrapped it with the changes to the conversation and action systems. Getting it back up and running shouldn't take long though, and it's designed to have conditions ("kill dire rat") that are dependent on conditions ("get sword from Mace Windu"). I only tested a simple condition though, so I'm refraining from any news on that.

5) Mission Generation: This is the biggie, and it depends on everything else falling into place in the next two and a half weeks. At the least, if I get the inventory system in with basic conditions, I can rig up something along the complexity of Anarchy Online's missions in a day or two. If I can pull off a miracle, I can do something more complex. As it stands, however, I'm in doubt as to whether I'll have any of this feature to show off in time. Worst comes to worst, it will show up here as screenshots later in the spring.

So that's just about it for the update on Epic Frontiers. To those who have asked last time, I am still thinking of "weaponizing" the chat system as a code pack, but the specificity of it means that that will have to wait a few months if it is going to happen.