Recap: Developer Chat 6/14/13 (FOCUS ON CONVERSATION)

The team discovered Google hangout effects today...

Today's developer chat about the conversation system included Lord British, B, Chris, Gina, Rick, and Scott (Lum). Below is my recap of the hour. As usual, I can make errors or mishear something, and there is always a lot of good discussion in the video which can not all be recorded here, so I urge everyone to watch the video for the full details:

Hangout of the Avatar ~ 6.14.13

The talk focused on two points:

1) Lord British wants to go old-school with the conversation system and do away with menus. You will type responses in natural language, the game will translate what you say into relevant tokens and you will receive a response. (They are not attempting AI or anything very sophisticated.) LB feels that modern games have lost a sense of exploration by having everything handed to you and wants people to once again learn to explore and pay attention in games. (Yay!)


2) NPC knowledge. Your virtue, fame, how well liked you are, if they know you by name - all things that each NPC may track and respond to. Groups of NPCs may share knowledge - for example, if you anger a guard in town, all guards in that town may know about you, while guards a few towns over may not have heard.

Rumor mills may be started and spread through a region... or you may hear rumors or NPC opinions about people on your friends list.

Each NPC will have generic things to talk about like their name or job, and then will have specific conversation important to the story/that NPC, be it quest info or geographically based information they are privy to.


Additional Points:

- They are still working out how to handle NPC conversations in a multiplayer environment. If the NPC is engaged, you may need to wait until the player is done with them before you can talk (though this can be griefed, or can just be annoying.) Or they may just give each player their own instance of the conversation in private. It has not been decided yet.


- A fan suggested that words you type that are relevant glow, to give hints when talking to NPCs. They are fine with this idea, as it will help you learn how the conversation is working, but Lum says it is only feasible if the words glow on the screen after you enter the sentence (rather than glow as you type, because then it would have to constantly scan and interpret your text)

- There will be some NPCs that can be taunted to attack you, but otherwise it does not sound like important NPCs can be permanently killed.

- There may be a game sanctioned form of "marriage" that will allow resource sharing.

- They will consider implementing romantic relationships/reputations with NPCs, though this can be tricky in a multiplayer game.

 

Thanks, Lori!

 

Reputation and rumors take many forms. I like it.
There will be a lot of data to consider for npc's at all times. How would they react face to face with a group of red guild players that have invaded their city?

I think one of the earlier questions LB dodged was to what extent might the actions of 1 player effect the npc attitude (of either a region of npcs or all npcs) towards either a guild of players or all avatars.
The question here of course not really aimed from those who wish to be a paradigm of the virtues, but those who practice in exorbitant acts of theft, murder, and overall debauchery.
Could a region become semi-permanently aggressive towards a group of players? Could a change occur in a region if npcs were to reject the help of avatars due to passed transgressions of other players?

 

Thanks Dame Lori!
Your works are great!!

 

I agree also, the cliff-notes from dev chats are fantastic. A thank you from me as well.