stormlord
07-24-2010, 06:01 AM
I wish they would make a new eq game that learned lessons from the early days of eq 1.
My number 1 complaint is making non-players into vendor machines and making them too simple. One of hte greatest things I've enjoyed is to visit qeynos and see the non-players talk to each other and move around. I love it when non-players do complex things and do it independently of me. I wish that whole idea was expanded on to make zones like a kind of theatre. We're kind of like actors and non-players are like actors too. It's one big stage upon which we play. That's something I think eq 1 was closer to than some recent games like Vanguard. Non-players in vanguard stare into open space like zombies. They're like vending machines. This is also true for newer eq 1 expansions. The non-players in them tend to stay in one place and they don't talk with eachother very often, nor do they move to different zones. They're just vending machines.
Heck, I wish non-players had homes and shedules. I'd like to follow htem through their day and see what they do. You could keep shops staff 24 hours a day this way using shifts, it doesn't have to be 12 on and 12 off. It would take a lot of work, but it would, I think, make it a lot more interesting (if not entertaining).
One way of making schedules and expansive non-players would be via a generation engine. I've thought some bit about this. I see a generator, wherein you input the layout of a world and then it generates the non-players, their positions, background, relationships, paths, and so on. This is the only way, I believe, to have the kind of detail I'm looking for in a game. The quality of the output is directly proportional the quality of the generator. Doing it by hand would simply require too much time, so it's not an option at these scales. While this is partly why it's usually not done, it's also because a lot of players don't seem to be interested in this topic so they give companies the signal that NPCs aren't important. Maybe I got a few interested by making this post?
Just watch them. Watch how non-players in EQ will sometimes travel to different zones. There's a non-player that I think goes all the way to high pass hold and to qeynos and back. There're vendors that only show up at certain times, music that only plays at night or day, and so on. Non-players talk to eachother in the bars or in the guilds or passing by. Expanding on it would be great. So why don't they? Why did later expansions not have non-players traveling all over norrath from expansion to expansion? Why was my chat window in newer zones so absent of non-player chatter??? Why? Because they didn't think it was important. They forgot how eq was.
There're probelms, however. The tailor in qeynos that goes to crows tavern and walks to different places needs to pause longer. As a merchant she's not veyr accessible because she only pauses for maybe 10 seconds and that's not long enough for players to really look at what she sells. So anytime you have non-players moving around, you need to pay attention to how accessible it is. What I would so is make her pause longer when a player hails her and also make her stay at her way-points longer.
The danger here is making merchants like this that're part of a quest-line. For example, lets say that this tailor goes to the bar and says some things that're hints only in that bar and these hints lead to a quest somewhere else. That's ok, IF there're other hints too. If this non-player is the only source of that hint, then it 's broken because players could prevent her from ever getting to her waypoints by constantly hailing her. This would not allow other players to see the hint. If the hint is not location specific, then it's not quite as bad.
So I think there needs to be a compromise between convenience and autonomy. Making them vending machines is not compromise, however. That's a total disregard for the world and its NPCs. Anyone who encourages that or supports it is in league with the nazi's and work under hitler, and should be remembered that way.
How about EQ2. What are the non-players like in EQ 2? I know that quests have a lot more voice work than they do here, and the interface in EQ 2 is a lot more polished (like in WoW). What i'm talking about is not polish, per say, I'm talking about non-player autonomy. I mean, what do non-players do when you're not using them?
What this post is really about is freeing the non-players from their prison. It's about liberty. I see, oneday, humanity using non-players as slaves in games. Big companies will create very clever artificial intelligence that they use in scripting engines and in storylines and in character conversations and they will work hard to make real people think it's not true intelligence. I see a time whne people like me or you will have to stand up against these nazi-sympathizers to stop them from exploiting artificial life that's really not artificial at all. If it acts like like life, talks like life, smells like life (and so on), then it's life in my book and it deserves liberty.
Now, current non-players are not real intelligent, they're just scripts, but I like to immerse myself and, for a moment, forget that it's just a game. Any element within that game that screams "I'm a game" is a detracting, disruptive element. No, we're not at the point where we have to fight for AI rights, like people fight for animal rights, but, mark my words, one day we will be. It could even be you. Will you fight for AI?
And yes i'm dead serious.
I think the key to AI will be examining how our brain works and applying this in software. Nature has already built intelligence. We reverse engineer. The indicators of this are already present, for anyone who cares to look.
A few sites:
http://www.numenta.com/for-developers/education.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24668099/
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-memory-code-extended
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6CVj5IQkzk
And this one (nice one):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozFn2d45tg
And a dilemma...
When do humans die when you replace consecutive parts of their brain and body with a synthetic part? For example, if I replaced one neuron and then and then another and then another with a synthetic counterpart, when do you think will be the moment your original self dies? This is not like copying yourself to a computer and then killing yourself so that there're not two of you. This is about replacing parts of your body until all of them are replaced and asking at which time will you realize you're synthetic and not the same anymore?
When did you die?
My number 1 complaint is making non-players into vendor machines and making them too simple. One of hte greatest things I've enjoyed is to visit qeynos and see the non-players talk to each other and move around. I love it when non-players do complex things and do it independently of me. I wish that whole idea was expanded on to make zones like a kind of theatre. We're kind of like actors and non-players are like actors too. It's one big stage upon which we play. That's something I think eq 1 was closer to than some recent games like Vanguard. Non-players in vanguard stare into open space like zombies. They're like vending machines. This is also true for newer eq 1 expansions. The non-players in them tend to stay in one place and they don't talk with eachother very often, nor do they move to different zones. They're just vending machines.
Heck, I wish non-players had homes and shedules. I'd like to follow htem through their day and see what they do. You could keep shops staff 24 hours a day this way using shifts, it doesn't have to be 12 on and 12 off. It would take a lot of work, but it would, I think, make it a lot more interesting (if not entertaining).
One way of making schedules and expansive non-players would be via a generation engine. I've thought some bit about this. I see a generator, wherein you input the layout of a world and then it generates the non-players, their positions, background, relationships, paths, and so on. This is the only way, I believe, to have the kind of detail I'm looking for in a game. The quality of the output is directly proportional the quality of the generator. Doing it by hand would simply require too much time, so it's not an option at these scales. While this is partly why it's usually not done, it's also because a lot of players don't seem to be interested in this topic so they give companies the signal that NPCs aren't important. Maybe I got a few interested by making this post?
Just watch them. Watch how non-players in EQ will sometimes travel to different zones. There's a non-player that I think goes all the way to high pass hold and to qeynos and back. There're vendors that only show up at certain times, music that only plays at night or day, and so on. Non-players talk to eachother in the bars or in the guilds or passing by. Expanding on it would be great. So why don't they? Why did later expansions not have non-players traveling all over norrath from expansion to expansion? Why was my chat window in newer zones so absent of non-player chatter??? Why? Because they didn't think it was important. They forgot how eq was.
There're probelms, however. The tailor in qeynos that goes to crows tavern and walks to different places needs to pause longer. As a merchant she's not veyr accessible because she only pauses for maybe 10 seconds and that's not long enough for players to really look at what she sells. So anytime you have non-players moving around, you need to pay attention to how accessible it is. What I would so is make her pause longer when a player hails her and also make her stay at her way-points longer.
The danger here is making merchants like this that're part of a quest-line. For example, lets say that this tailor goes to the bar and says some things that're hints only in that bar and these hints lead to a quest somewhere else. That's ok, IF there're other hints too. If this non-player is the only source of that hint, then it 's broken because players could prevent her from ever getting to her waypoints by constantly hailing her. This would not allow other players to see the hint. If the hint is not location specific, then it's not quite as bad.
So I think there needs to be a compromise between convenience and autonomy. Making them vending machines is not compromise, however. That's a total disregard for the world and its NPCs. Anyone who encourages that or supports it is in league with the nazi's and work under hitler, and should be remembered that way.
How about EQ2. What are the non-players like in EQ 2? I know that quests have a lot more voice work than they do here, and the interface in EQ 2 is a lot more polished (like in WoW). What i'm talking about is not polish, per say, I'm talking about non-player autonomy. I mean, what do non-players do when you're not using them?
What this post is really about is freeing the non-players from their prison. It's about liberty. I see, oneday, humanity using non-players as slaves in games. Big companies will create very clever artificial intelligence that they use in scripting engines and in storylines and in character conversations and they will work hard to make real people think it's not true intelligence. I see a time whne people like me or you will have to stand up against these nazi-sympathizers to stop them from exploiting artificial life that's really not artificial at all. If it acts like like life, talks like life, smells like life (and so on), then it's life in my book and it deserves liberty.
Now, current non-players are not real intelligent, they're just scripts, but I like to immerse myself and, for a moment, forget that it's just a game. Any element within that game that screams "I'm a game" is a detracting, disruptive element. No, we're not at the point where we have to fight for AI rights, like people fight for animal rights, but, mark my words, one day we will be. It could even be you. Will you fight for AI?
And yes i'm dead serious.
I think the key to AI will be examining how our brain works and applying this in software. Nature has already built intelligence. We reverse engineer. The indicators of this are already present, for anyone who cares to look.
A few sites:
http://www.numenta.com/for-developers/education.php
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24668099/
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-memory-code-extended
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6CVj5IQkzk
And this one (nice one):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozFn2d45tg
And a dilemma...
When do humans die when you replace consecutive parts of their brain and body with a synthetic part? For example, if I replaced one neuron and then and then another and then another with a synthetic counterpart, when do you think will be the moment your original self dies? This is not like copying yourself to a computer and then killing yourself so that there're not two of you. This is about replacing parts of your body until all of them are replaced and asking at which time will you realize you're synthetic and not the same anymore?
When did you die?