[MUD-Dev] RE: Mob (NPC) behavior

[Mike Povoski]

William Murdick wrote:

> The goal is to simply get the feel of guards going about their
> duty trying to locate a criminal.

we will be implementing this as well, but will most likely cheat:
once a "protected" NPC is attacked, a task will be queued up for the
"law enforcement officers" to start tracking him.  he won't have to
talk to other NPCs, or players, to get info, but he may appear to do
so, to make it look good.  ( it is rather annoying when players kill
the NPCs that they aren't supposed to kill...but hey, that is
reality.  and so is a posse coming to hunt the player down! )

our NPCs also have to ability to "record" anything that happens in
their location.  We will probably only record lines of text that
contain certain predetermined phrases, or perhaps everything if they
are in "spy mode".  So, if we really wanted to, we could have them
regurgitate that to, well, anybody.


> what are people's opinions on this idea and potential
> implementation?

i think it is a great idea :) ... our NPCs have keyword
phrase/response pairs, so when someone asks the NPC about a keyword
phrase, they reply with the corresponding response.  couple that
with their "memory" abilities above, modify the keyword/response
pairs in real time (selecting only the juicy bits, like phrases with
the word "attacks" e.g. "Dwingle attacks the shop keeper"), and you
have a pretty good witness.

our NPCs can perform any task that our players can, and it can be
scripted as well.  this means that NPCs can conceivably start
conversations with each other, as long as they are both interested
in the topic, i.e. they both have common keyword/response
"knowledge".

as far as subduing and dragging them off to jail, well...we haven't
gotten that far yet! our guards would probably just kill the
scoundrel before he had a chance to surrender.

-mike
ixion at guardianwall.com
murpg.sourceforge.net



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