[MUD-Dev] Re: Point of View

[justice at softhome.net]

listsub at wickedgrey.com writes:

> Give players a world that presents situations and knobs to
> twiddle.  If there are a fair number of PCs in a remote mountain
> mining village, attack the village.  Don't have someone run and
> shout "The goblins are coming!  The goblins are coming!  You, as a
> Hero, must save us!"  Just do it and let the PCs do whatever they
> want.  If they run, they run.  When they hear later the fate of
> the village, they will either mourn the town, be glad they didn't
> get caught in the trap, wish they had stayed and helped, think it
> didn't matter because the town is fine, whatever.  If they stay
> they either become a hero, a slave or a corpse.  If the humans
> lose, then metal prices nearby go up from loss of the mine.
 
> It doesn't even have to be simulated - just script that if the
> humans control the town, prices for metal goods are normal.  If
> the lose the town, prices go up by X%.  Conversely, if you have
> goblin players, give them the same incentive.  Or make it
> different - perhaps the goblins don't care about the mine's ore,
> but instead use it as housing.  You don't even have to time the
> attacks - just provide players a way to initiate a hostile
> takeover and let them do the work.

Me and Scion once talked about a layered AI system for handling
things like this.  Scion tends to bend toward simulation/political
social aspects of a game and I tend to bend toward "faking" certain
systems and combat/strategy aspects.  Together I think we make a
balanced team.

Anyway, we talked about a game-generated world where NPC's were more
or less "spawned" and gathered.  The AI was a need system.
Creatures needed certain resources and would seek them out, groups
of creatures would form bands or villages.  Villagers would seek out
other villages and form trade routes, bandits would seek out trade
routes and prey on villages.

This is applicable because for a "questing" system we'd allow
players to participate in the need society.  A convoy would be
heading out to a nearby village to trade their widgets for the other
villages gadgets.  There's been bandits in the area so the villages
decide that they need protection.  Some NPC's of course would have
the role of "guard" but a player could be accept the task.

It was an idea that sounds good, but requires many prequisite layers
before we can create it.  The key to this system was a layered AI
driven by wants/needs.  You go from an individual to the group.  And
the group level may propogate up many levels before reaching the
top.

Consider that 2 nations are at war.  People in one nation will
either fight or flee if soldiers of the opposing nation arrive in
their village.  NPC's conscripted into the army would then still be
part of the nation's AI but would instead of village->nation AI they
would have squad->regiment->army->nation AI

It's an event based AI mostly, events happen and propogate down the
AI tree, highest to lowest.  The lowest AI (individual) always has
last say in a decision.  Higher group AI's are more stable and less
likely to modify from the events since they're pooled amung every
member of that AI.  Smaller groups are more volatile, changing more
rapidly, based on their needs.

 -- Kwon J. Ekstrom

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