[MUD-Dev] Chatbot, NLP and explaining away NPC limitations

[Robert Zubek]

Erin Mulder writes:

 > In the NLP thread, someone pointed out that NPCs are a lot like
 > immigrants in their understanding of PC speech.  They react to
 > certain key phrases and respond with rote replies, while staring
 > blankly at any conversation they don't understand.

well, the idea was that it may be okay to limit natural language
understanding *if* the npc could make a good use of context. the
point is that even immigrants, though not knowing the particular
language, still know how to live in a society in general - how to
behave in public, how to buy things necessary for survival, etc.

in comparison, our bots have no idea how to do any of that. so it
may be a good idea to first teach them how to behave, before we try
teaching them how to converse.

 > I'm not sure he meant to suggest that NPCs actually be portrayed
 > as immigrants in the game (since how many foreign shopkeepers can
 > you have before things begin to look a little fishy).  However, I
 > find it rather interesting to look at this the other way around
 > and suggest that the PCs are the immigrants who don't know the
 > native language, and the NPCs just happen to have learned enough
 > common to buy/sell from these wandering adventurers whose pockets
 > are lined with gold.

great idea! i was thinking of it more as a general AI problem, not
worrying about how to implement it in an actual playable mud, :) but
that approach sounds very promising.

 > Are any muds out there using this?  Do players find it more
 > believable?

i'd also love to hear if there's been any work in that direction...

rob


--
Robert Zubek 
rob at cs.northwestern.edu
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