FW: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[david.l.smith at home.com]

[holding99 at mindspring.com wrote:]

> The player would then effectively make suggestions to the character,
> which the character would usually (but not always) act upon. For
> example, if a player instructs the character to jump off of a cliff
> (for whatever reason), the character, knowing that such a fall would
> result in his death, refuses.

Interesting idea, it could be the start of some other uses too. For
instance, suppose the character is an insanely evil and drooling
madman. Ordering the character to act urbanely towards another
character (be they pc/npc) might just not work.

Separating the Player from the Character would in effect make all
characters in the world identical. It removes (mostly) the distinction
between PC and NPC. Ultimately, the PC representation would most
likely be some sort of NPC AI that takes "hints" from the player as to
desired actions, etc.

This would let you (among other things).

> Easily have *persistent* characters (characters who do things while
> thier players do not) Enforce character traits as they affect
> character action (alignment, quirks, etc) Assume more correctly that
> the characters "fit in" to the world they're a part of Treat PC and
> NPC in similar manners (anyone want a PC that can be easily
> scripted?

Player AI's that could *probably* be created *by the players*)

Overall a really d*mn cool idea, and one that I'd love to hear more
thought about. Basically I think that the more closely you can combine
the concepts of PC and NPC in a system, the easier it is to program
effects that treat them both logically. But the AI system that
interprets player suggestions and creates character actions would have
to be fairly advanced. In addition it should probably be able to adapt
the "personality" of the character to the play style of the player
over the long run. For instance, the good paladin character shouldn't
possibly attack the old woman the first time the player tells it to,
but if the player spends some time making the paladin do increasingly
evil things, there might come a day when the paladin's AI relishes the
suggestion to attack the old woman.

-Dave

David L. Smith
  <stolen>: "C code, C code run, C code crash.... Bad code, bad."
  e-mail: david.l.smith at home.com

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