[MUD-Dev] TECH: Complex NPCs

[tryguy74 at hotmail.com]

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Original message: http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2002Q2/msg00012.php

On Mon,  1 Apr 2002 12:10:03 -0800 (PST)
John Robert Arras <johna at wam.umd.edu> wrote:

> I think the mobs need to have certain goals and needs like "I need
> to go to my house and sleep when its' between 10pm and 6am", and
> "I need to stop and eat at certain hours.." which could be given
> as general actions that any NPC should undertake on a regular
> basis. (Except as overridden for nighttime guards and so forth...) 
> There should also be some ?hardcoded? ability to fight or run away
> as needed. Group level tactics should be dealt with on a different
> level, however.

Yeah, I intended to have schedules for individual npcs. It didn't
occur to me to have a global governing schedule for classes of
them. I like the idea -- it's probably analogous to accepted
community standards. And to make the schedules goal-based instead of
absolute directives is also a good idea. This will make it easier to
compare the relative benefits of community vs. individual goals, in
terms of a set of criteria (such as a smart, ambitious character or
a lay-about character. I'll probably use these ideas in some
form. Thanks.

> To be a little more detailed with the breadmaking, when the farmer
> collects the grain (when the ground starts sending the "harvest
> me" message as opposed to the "till me" or "weed me" or "water me"
> messages, then the farmer gets a unit of wheat for each unit of
> area in the farm. The reason the wheat gets created is that the
> same object on the ground that was giving the "harvest me" message
> knows that when the harvest method is applied to it, it reverts to
> barren ground and a unit of wheat pops up in that spot.
 
> Then, the farmer wonders what to do with the wheat. Well, the
> wheat not only has a "made_from" process attached to it that tells
> how it's made, it also has a "turns_into" list attached to it,
> that tells what it can be turned into. For wheat, you basically
> have "turns into flour". So, the farmer references the "flour"
> item and looks at its "made_from" process. And, it finds that it's
> "made_from" wheat that has been "milled".

This is very similar to the approach the game "Settlers" has for a
working community. I've played Settlers 3 (I think it was 3), and
most of the community's products are derived through doing a lot of
the kinds of behaviours you described. You should play it -- it's
pretty fun for a while, but then gets boring because there isn't a
lot of variation on the theme.

Thanks for outlining your idea though.
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