[MUD-Dev] Re: Character evolution

[Richard Woolcock]

Brandon J. Rickman wrote:
[snip, I only want to respond to this bit]
> A "lie" command would imply that the player-character is knowingly presenting
> false information.  Have to practice those skills.  There is a chance that
> other characters might catch the lie which might lead to a situation.
> If all the player can do is just "say" things then any action of lying is
> almost impossible to detect (short of a natural language parsing AI).
> By using "lie" it is clear what the _intention_ of the player-character is,
> which might just maybe be a tiny little bit useful in some extremely rare
> situation. :)

It depends how far you want to take the code.  My solution will be as part
of my player-recognition code, which will also store various bits of info
about the person (as well as if you know them).  Thus you might have the
following situation after Fred sees his friend Bob kill someone...

>ask fred did bob kill joe?

['ask' code grabs the word 'kill', and the names 'fred' and 'bob', noticing
 that 'bob' comes before 'joe'.  Checking Fred, we see that he knows Bob,
 and that he knows bob killed joe.  The details of the last question are
 stored on bob]

You ask Fred 'Did bob kill joe?'

(fred)>say no!

Fred exclaims 'no!'

[As this is the first thing Fred has said since he was asked the question,
 and he has responded within X seconds, his statement is considerered an
 answer.  'no', 'nope', 'no way' etc would all give the same responce...]

You sense that Fred is lying.

Of course this system has many flaws, but IMO it is far more reliable than 
expecting honesty from players.

KaVir.