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

[cruise]

Sam Mason wrote:

> One possible, and probably easier to implement, idea I've just
> had; is to use something similar to the paper Robert Zubek just
> posted, to recognise how the player is playing the game and
> customise the world for their current style.

> If they're just running around madly, then it's a safe bet that
> you can start missing NPCs out of the room descriptions; if the
> player, on the other hand, is spending longer in each room and
> looking at more of the items in the room, it may be prudent to
> display more complete descriptions by default.

Interesting idea...

Initial first concept: Rate each piece of possibly displayable
information by importance. Exits first, Basic room type second,
perhaps visibility next. Whatever. Then measure and average the time
between commands (ignoring things like help/fight which naturally
would take a long time). The longer the time, the more information
you display. Typing "look" displys the current room with a slight
boost, so a player who is following a mostly remembered set of
directions can type look just to quickly check the room title to
make sure he's still where he thinks he should be. Maybe have a
"look all" extension, for when the player wants to look thoroughly.

Thoughts?

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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