[MUD-Dev] believable NPCs (was Natural Language Generation)

[Robert Zubek]

From: Michael Sellers

> Believable characters OTOH -- with or without NLG -- will=20 make
> gameplay much more immersive and consequential.  Imagine=20 asking
> a tavern keeper NPC for info on where to buy good=20 weapons.
> Consider how his responses might differ based on=20 whether he's
> seen you before, whether you tipped well last=20 time, whether and
> how he's heard other NPCs (and PCs) talk=20 about you, and, say,
> whether he heard you were flirting=20 heavily with the
> blacksmith's daughter (whom he happens to be=20 in love with), or
> were the one to save her from ruffians.=20=20 This goes way beyond
> script- or knowledge-based responses,=20 but provides much more
> interesting player-related context for=20 even the simplest
> menu-driven interactions.

Speaking of which...

I'm working on believable social characters right now - building a
system that participates robustly in real social interactions via
natural English text. Unlike chatterbots (Eliza, Alice, etc.), it
actually contains knowledge of the long-term structure of human
interactions; it tries to make the conversation coherent in the long
term. And it concentrates on the more pragmatics-heavy kinds of
interactions.

Here's a paper about the system, that'll be presented at this
summer's AAAI Challenges in Game AI workshop:

  http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~rob/publications/character-participation-in-social-interaction.pdf

I'd be curious to hear what everybody thinks of the approach or the
system... :)

Rob

--
Robert Zubek
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~rob/=20
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