Autonomous NPCs and Artificial Personality

Autonomous NPCs

Members of the SotA community should consider lobbying for the liberation of NPCs. As it stands now, they are all chained to one spot, or otherwise doomed to walk the same path for eternity. I am not talking about mere schedules, but the ability to choose their own action at any given moment, to know what they are doing and why, and hopefully also to be able to communicate these with you, that you may, for example, win their approval by aiding them in ways that they need or want, or influence their interests through your interactions.

One requirement would be that the system would have to spawn new NPCs as roles become vacated. Special story roles would be accessible for as long as the NPC remains in the role. Perhaps all NPCs could have a variable finite natural lifespan, or a finite number of resurrections, or could be permanently slain with enough effort, and could have more than one age level (child, adolescent, adult, elderly), and could earn their own money running errands even as children, and their knowledge levels increasing as they talk to people, read and explore. In addition to system generated NPCs, it should be possible for children to be produced between any (one male / one female) combination of PCs and NPCs.

Maszlow's Pyramid

The first aspect of this type of system would be that NPCs would make decisions from time to time based on the hierarchy of needs. Aside from real (or perceived) immediate danger to their life which would be a separate top priority, they would have need levels which would be advanced since the last timed check. Depending on these need levels, they may choose to meet:

Biological needs by drinking, eating or resting;
Long term security needs by attending to their job during their scheduled work hours;
Social needs (according to their specific social need) by interacting with people at work or leisure;
Leisure needs by engaging in a pastime, suited to their interests, outside of work hours;
Achievement need, as opportunities arise, to change profession based on their specific character trait levels.

Personality Traits and Motivators

Aside from biological needs, NPC decisions would be influenced by fairly rigid levels of specific personality traits, which for new NPCs should be weighted toward moderation, but with extremes possible. Some possible categories, in no special order, might include:

Industry, as in how strenuous this NPC prefers to work;
Ambition, as in to what degree the NPC is drawn to positions of power and esteem, for its own sake;
Pleasure-seeking, as in the draw toward activities which please the senses, such as food, music, etc;
Excitement-seeking, as in being drawn to extremes, such as arguments, fights, loud noises, etc;
Attention-seeking, as in acts of exhibition to get others' attention;
Hoarding, as in the desire to accumulate wealth for its own sake or to qualm security concerns;
Gregariousness, as in the tendency to avoid being alone, whether or not you like others;
Curiosity, as in the desire to observe, read, study, converse and explore;
Predictability, which determines the degree of randomness of NPC choices or decisions.

Interests

Another set of factors that would influence our choices for work and leisure would be interests. Rather than break down specific activities into the fundamental traits that draw you to them, there could be levels of activity interests to act as a supplement or alternative. Together with traits, interests would influence the preferred choices for work and leisure activities, and might include:

Socializing
Fighting
Crafting
Travel
Reading
Trading
Hunting/Fishing
Meditation
Exercise

There may be overlap or conflict between traits and interest concerning where they choose to live, to work and pastimes. For example, some people like strenuous work but sedentary hobbies, and vice versa.

Attitudes

Another category of characteristics is attitudes. This would include the NPCs specific attitude of each PC, whose change would be tracked by our journals. In addition, each NPC could have a limited number of relationships such as their boss, their charges, their family relations and a few NPC friends and enemies. The scale for attitudes about individual people as well as people in general could be from extreme positive to indifferent to extreme negative, while most other attitudes would vary from extreme positive to indifference. Some examples may include:

people
plants
town
nature
the sea
the world
clothing
food/drink
wood/trees
stone/ore/metal
religion

Fears

There are also fear levels that could influence choices, some common examples might be:

death
pain
burning
falling
drowning

Professions

There are different ways to categorize professions by common features, these are my suggestions:

Gathering (Farmer, Hunter, Fisher, Miner, Woodsman) - moderate to heavy labor, solitude, specific nature interest
Crafting (Smith, Carpenter, Mason, Tailor, Cook) - interest in crafting, interest in a particular material
Trader - interest in a particular material, social interaction, pursuit of wealth and comfort
Public security (Lords, Marshals, Guards, Captains, Soldiers) - service to people, fighting
Public service (Criers, Couriers, Preachers, Trainers, Healers, Innkeepers) service to people, other specific interests
Crime (Boss, Assassin, Robber, Burglar, Cutpurse) - callous to malicious feelings about people
Miscellaneous (Adventurer, Forager, Beggar) - independence from society

Autonomous Societies

If each NPC is dynamic, the same would apply to the entire social structure. There would be a limited number of seats of power which NPCs or PCs could aspire to, with accommodation for both peaceful succession and violent revolution. Lords could make choices about who to hire for what roles at what pay, renting out land and tax collection, the administration of justice including variable prison "time out" for both PCs and NPCs, foreign relations including trade, subterfuge and war, communication including bulletin boards, criers and couriers, capital projecs, public education, and the management of spontaneous riots and rebellions.

As players, we might have the chance to be part of such organizations within the game, whose members might included PCs and NPCs, led by lords who were either PCs or NPCs as well.

 

You expect that from a small indie project?

Maybe by episode 5 if hugely successful but...

 

As an exercise I suggest you determine how many permutations you've proposed, what are your edge cases, which combinations, if any, will produce undesirable affects and how one might compute the actions and attitudes of hundreds of NPCs while still allowing the entire game to run on a personal computer.

You say you've been pondering this for years. You must then know the progress (or lack) made in natural language processing and that determining context, metaphor and aphorism is beyond current capability. The alternative is to map all the permutations and construct the appropriate responses. Can you say "combinatorial explosion"?

Even Big Blue stumbled on some of the Jeopardy questions. See "Time flies like an arrow."

P.S. "Fruit flies like a banana."

 

Interesting topic, Shucky. Thanks for the post.

The premise seems to be that NPC needs should be simulated so that they go do things on their own to fulfill those needs?

The big question is .... why? Other than for improved world simulation, for game play purposes why would we need NPCs to do that? How would that additional simulation (and the cost to create it) be more fun than what we have now? Would the improvement we see just be going from having one farmer NPC standing in a field plus one in a tavern, to those roles being combined into one NPC who works both the farm by day for food and the tavern at night for socialization? Is that more fun? Is that worth the cost to program?

Automated NPCs would be cool. I agree with Mugly on the permutations and also suspect there is some fun vs cost factor that goes into it. But I would not want to lobby for this at a time when the game lacks basic exploration content, for example. The good news though is that I think the team still has NPC scheduling plans on the horizon. That's not the same as automated, I know. But it will give us a chance to get a small glimpse of what you are talking about. Anything is better than an NPC as smart as a sign post.

 

This particular thread wasn't dealing with the conversations issue, but since you bring it up, I would prefer a menu system that gave us a wider variety of choices to a natural language approach that yields "I don't know" most of the time.

As for system resources, random checks could be done only when there is a lull in system activity. When players weren't rushing around so much, the NPCs would appear more active. As for the number of decision choices, there would a limited number of default positions available, and a limited number of leisure activities, and places for those activities. Just "knowing" what they are doing at any given time, their "attitude" about this or that, etc, and being able to answer when asked, would be a step in the right direction. It would be helpful if you were to ask how something in particular could be accomplished. The goal would be behavior that is a better illusion of sentience than what is there now, not entities that come anywhere near our complexity.

To answer your question, a poor natural language system would be a worse alternative to a well developed menu driven conversation system. I talk about such a conversation system in my other thread. In a menu system, you could have a choice [fill in the blank] like [fill in the blank]. The language database might recognize the nouns in each phrase, and compare characteristics. If a set of characteristics include if the noun can move, and how, a match could be made, and the computer could answer [time] is like [arrows] because they both [only move forward]. It would have to be in the program, as we have been. Where there is a will, there is a way.

 

Perhaps because, from my viewpoint, graphics and combat AI are already beyond my expectations, but non-combat AI has hardly advanced since the 80s. As they say, you've killed one orc, you've killed them all. Also, I've seen other games such as the Sims or Civ with something along the lines of flexible personalities and non-combat interaction, and more could be done still. I don't expect it to be a true native intelligence, just a well-crafted illusion that feels real, in terms of NPC behavior. Over the years playing mmorpgs, however interesting they may be in real life, players in the game do not behave as though they are invested in the game world on its own terms, because the game world is stagnant. The same NPCs will be doing and saying the exact same things a year from now. By now, we should expect far better.

 

I thought they already raised more than $7,000,000. Anyhow, I am talking about a better illusion, not minds even beginning to match our own.

 

But Ultima 7 had realistic NPC schedules and that was back when PCs were waaay less powerful than say, a modern smart phone... And my flat screen TV probably has more computing power now than my 1993-era PC ever had then... Something like this would be really cool! Not seeing why at least some of the important NPC's can't have realistic behaviors in 2015 (don't some of the guards have shifts already? A step in the right direction). Maybe I misread, but your argument that it would take a supercomputer to run all those NPC's around seems a little over the top, lol.

...They would be funner than NPCs who just stand around all day (as you said, like a signpost) waiting for you to come talk to them I guess. I totally agree with Shucky that MMO game worlds are so stagnant because it feels like NPC's are an afterthought, the only purpose for their existence being to buy/sell/trade or award gold and items for completing their errand-quests... Also, you might've answered your own question- am I missing something, or isn't creating "improved world simulations" an overarching goal here?

Yes! Creating the illusion that NPCs are a living, breathing part of the game world has already been done in AAA games like Assassin's Creed and GTA (loved chasing that pickpocket across the rooftops lol). There's some real talent over at Portalarium, I'll bet they could pull it off if they wanted to. Two thumbs up on the suggestion!