Artificial Life Engine

I remember in 1996 there was discussion about putting an "Artificial Life Engine" into UO(a RG game that is still running today). Someone on the staff at the time described the engine like this:

It sounded awesome and I have to admit I absolutly loved the "Artificial Life" of the NPCs in Ultima 7. During lunch they would be at the taven. On sunday they would be in worship. It just gave a sense of life to the game.

Has the team talked about implementing an Artificial Life Engine? If not... I would like to request it.

EDIT: I wasnt sure where this should go, I kinda figured here in NPC... but could also have fallen int othe "Lore" section.

 

There have been several requests for NPCs to have schedules.. a realistic ecology is another matter. They actually tried something like this easier in UO but nobody noticed it was really going on because players would just kill everything in their path.

The dual map system with instancing opens up some interesting possibilities though. The ecology of the world itself could be 'instanced' in a way.. where each player's computer basically manages its own ecology.

The concern I think people would have with this though is probably something most haven't thought about yet in regards to all harvestable resources.. and that being the virtually unlimited supply of resources. No one would ever run out because they essentially have their own personal supply. If that supply is balanced for each individual player though I think that'd solve the problem.. as the cumulative effect should be about right for the larger world economy.

I think most people probably assume from past MMO experience that the Portalarium server would manage all the resources. Where as I suspect it will be less involved than people think.. but that's speculative on my part.

 

im not as smart as u guys but i want wolf to eat deer and then sh*t in the woods, then eat more deer. thats ekologey.
subscribed to thred will read

 

iirc, there was something like this in 1998. not sure how it was tho. But guards in outposts certainly fought monsters and I think orcs and lizardmen and such sometimes fought animals. not sure tho.

 

NPC Engine
The NPC schedules of ultima 7 were down right awesome. I can see them being important in a multi-player game too. I couldnt STAND the 'stale' feel of WoW. It all just becomes generic and the NPCs are not really something to role play with like a NPC a Dugeon Master would make, in WoW they were just kind of quest giving objects and otherwise in the way. I really hope to see that.

ALE Problem
As for the Artificial Life Engine (ALE), as you mentioned all the ecology being killed before it could start is why they ended up stopping work on it. But I want to argue that it didnt take it far enough. Here is what I mean...

It wasnt a "circle of life". Thinking of an exampel Starr gave; let's say you have rabits which are eaten by wolfs, but were killed off by players, now the wolfs eat the deer, however they might be killed off by players and dragons eat deer. Now the dragons come out, and let's say the dragons are kileld by players... in the sinulation... what prayed on the players.
The ALE didnt seem to calculate how to deal with a spike in a resource... humans, in this case. I think it is 'do-able'. But the players need something that feeds on them.

ALE Solution
I would propose that should they implement it here, they make the engine more agresive against Humans. Here is how my 'circle of life' would be for ALE: herbivores(for example rabits) eat the forest and plants, playerskill of rabbits, leaving wolfs who eat rabbits to feed on deer, players kill deer and wolfs, leaving dragons to feed on players, players kill dragons, and forests grow wild... and kill players. In otherwords, all those deer and rabits and other herbivores, were keeping the forest from becoming an over-grown death trap.

With out the herbivores and other animals to keep the forest tame the forest eats players. Once the players stop venturing into the forests, the forest starts to die back, and rabits and deer apear to eat it back further, then wolfs and dragons apear to eat them, and so on.

Anyway if the Artificial Life Engine were put in, that would be awesome. and with many of the players from the first team around... I think it would easy to put back together. Seems like simple cause and effect calculations. You can even do kewl things like make it so when the forest is a man eating mess, it gets dark and misty venturing into it. And maybe NPCs in near by towns that refer to it will speak about it being dangerous.

Oh maybe it gives out diferent quests for tyhe different stages it is at. So if its a man eater, the quest might be, "capture and release rabbits and deer into it", or if its overrun by rabbits and deer, release wolves. Or if the wolfs and dragons are terrorizing travelers, "Get me wolf hides" or "get me dragon teeth". My mind is racing with all the kewl things that can be done with the ALE. I'll stop now.

 

Sir_Tim 10/10 post!

 

Something for you to consider.. with the dual scale map.. each individual hex essentially has it's own ecology.. and every instance of each hex will probably respawn the local ecology fresh. There is scenario here where the players can simply wipe everything out and have an adverse effect on the ecology elsewhere. Unlike UO where everything was on a single persistant and somewhat overcrowded map.

SotA simply wouldn't have the same problem by virtue of the map system.

 

Perhaps for the ALE to work in SotA, keeping track of each player's ALE stats would be something that is sent to the authentication server each time a player leaves a hex or logs out.. so it can update everyone's ecology experience to reflect every player's changes. step-by-step.

 

I think that's a lot more data than the server needs to deal with. Would players really notice?

 

If NPC quests are created based on these numbers, then the world will seem to be dynamically changing around the player, based in part by their actions in the game. So at the least, they'd notice that it's not a static world with the same mobs spawning consistantly. At least, that's how I see it being used effectively.

 

I can't speak for everyone else - but I'd notice! The more life like they can make NPCs and the ecology, the better!

 

Good point, it can be reduced to a hex. But I thought it could still work for a whole area. I assumed they would be making a world management server to manage each hex for consitancey in the whole world.

Personally, as someone that manages servers myself, it would make sense to me that they would be designing a system where multiple servers can load and off as many hexes as they can handle. This way if everyone went into one hex for an event, the server handling that hex could off load all the other hexes to different servers. This is what we do with our virtual machine enviroment... I assumed it would be applied here. But now that you bring it up... I dont know. :/

I think they would, more importantly, I think it would be apreciated, and I dont know any other games with somethign like that.

If I went into a forest one day and it was a dark and deadly forest, and I was getting quests relating to that enviroment then I came back a few days later and it was bright and viberant and I was gettign quests related to THAT enviroment, I would notice and would be impressed. Wouldn't need to re-design the forest either... simpley adding man-eating plants and spiderwebs with a fog effect and darker shades and light would be enough.

Now Im all excited about the idea of this and all the different ways the game can use ALE... I need to distract myself with something else before the team responds "cant do it".

 

"Come see me when my shoppe's open!"

Kinda surprised no one has mentioned Ultima V yet. It had NPC schedules and it definitely made the world seem more alive. If you went into the town late, you had to wait for the shoppe keeper to wake up, go eat breakfast and then go to work. It also meant that cities had to be explored twice; once during the day and once at night. You may find that someone is a night person and has their most interesting hours when the sun is down. Guards had shifts. The larger cities also shut their gates at night so you had to either sleep out the night or sneak your way in/out (*cough*or*cough*hold*cough*space*cough*).

I think schedules are great, and I expect them to be in the game. Sieges have been mentioned with the NPCs changing their behavior depending on what stage it is. I could see schedules being an extention of that.

 

If the server managed everyone's ALE status collectively than you risk running into the same problem UO had. Some kill happy players who you never see in your game come into a hex.. kill everything in sight and leave. You enter that hex 10 minutes later and can't see an active ecology because the server recognizes that it's been killed off.

I should think it would be a lot more noticable if everyone's ALE was done separately. The only time the server would need to step in is in areas where instances are shared.. the status owner of the instance being hosted would override anyone else sharing that instance.

But say some kill happy kids don't run through and kill everything off.. you enter and everything looks normal. How are you going to tell the difference between your local ecology vs a global one managed by the server? As far as I call the best case scenario is that you wouldn't notice. Worst case scenario is you run into UO's problem of people you don't even know killing everything off for kick.

 

Awesome. I was first introduced to this kind of a game(the kind that eats, sleeps and works) in Ultima &(my first RG game).

I understand, but that is why i suggest an agressive "Nature" element to it. Once the players have killed everything off, the overgrowth kills off any players that remain(man eating plants and what not), then the players stop going, the animals return.

But at any case... ALE being implemented to any scope would be kewl!

 

Here's the problem I see with that. Some players would kill everything off for the expressed purpose of fighting whatever it is that's supposed to kill them off. Especially if it means harvesting any rare components should they win.

If ecologies are managed on the local level (that is each individual player has their own).. there would simply be too much for even a large group to kill off and doing so wouldn't seriously effect anyone outside of that group. Everyone else sees a normal ecology and it's less work to impliment, less work for the server.

 

Alright. I still think those challenges can be managed through balance. For example, the things that kill off the players dont need to carry rare items and dont need to be easy to kill.

But again, however it would be executed... I would be happy to see an ALE in there. The rest of it, like anything added to the game is all in the balance.

Making wooden chairs seems to be easy in the game, so couldnt one just pile up the chairs in the street and make a blockaid? But if you balance malicous behavior with consiquences, its not so bad. Maybe guards attack chair spammers or maybe you make chairs something really large or heavy, or maybe if there is an exaustion bar moving funiture exausts you quicker. Seems almost like I got off track, but what Im tryign to say is that there are a million reasons to not do something, but if you balance it, it isnt so bad.

Maybe the problem you propose is bad, then maybe they do make it more instance based. I dont know. I just dont want to shoot the duck before it hatches...

 

I think any version is going to be exploited to some extent or another. The challenge is to mitigate the exploitation to either a small timeframe or require way more work to do it. If you have A->B->C->A relationships, perhaps instead they should be A into B and C, B into C and D, C into D and E, D into E and A, E into A and B.

A more complex system is harder to design, especially one that doesn't break when one thing falters. You don't want the system to never be affected by change, otherwise just scrap the whole thing and make it all static. The idea would be to make it so that the change doesn't throw the system out of whack, or that it takes a more coordinated effort (read: fun social interactivity) to 'take it down.' Another key point would be that it has to be able to recover, or reach some sort of general equalibrium when the outside forces are removed.

 

I cannot wait until this happens in the game. Of course, they have stated that any dropped items will deteriorate, so it depends on the time. Imagine if there were a schedule for all NPCs. Blocking the route would cause them to have to find another way around. It might be a fun meta-game to get NPCs to do silly things by blocking their paths.

We'll drive @Chris batty. He'll have to come up with a street cleaner design.

 

Obviously they wouldn't be easy to kill.. but that in itself is reason enough for some to want to fight them. They don't need to drop anything but it's unsual to put in a tough fight with no rewards.

I'm usually the one screaming balance.. and there are right ways and wrong ways to do everything. (Incidentally those chairs will decay).. but before you get to balance to you weigh the pros and cons of every decision.