The reason a game like this doesn't work in single player is because no-one has emulated the randomness and emotional actions/re-actions of humans well enough yet. If I say Turing Test hopefully some people wil understand what I'm talking about.

There are only two reasons why playing something like second life only works with real people instead of NPCS -

1) People like to be better than other people. Doing better at somehting, owning a better house, having more money etc doesn't work against a computer. against a real person (be it online or in real life) is much more reqarding

2) The psychological fact that you're interacting with real people rather than a computer.

If you write an NPC that can interact with you exactly as a real person would, with emotional reactions, and non-linear thought processes, then you can fool someone into thinking they are interacting with a real person. And even if they know it's a NPC they will soon overcome the phsycological barriers.

Exmaple - in the 1st Matrix film, when Cypher is eating the steak, he knows it isn;t real and is only electrical signals sent directly to his brain. But he still enjoys eating it.

Environment is another one. In San Andreas, when you drive a car into a building, the building isn;t damaged. You don't get whiplash or crippling back pain or a broken leg.
But then if it was very realistic it wouldn't be much fun. Some rules of reality need to be ignored in games in order for them to be
a) Enjoyable
b) Not impossible
c) completable
d) Include acheivable goals

Not that I'm flaming anyone's idea here. I myself am working on making certain aspects of my game's design very realistic, including cause and effect, and very complicated NPC AI. I realise though that there is a fine line between ultra-realism and somehting that is unplayable. That line will be reached one day. Or maybe the Sims already did it :)

Quote:Original post by cornflake
If I say Turing Test hopefully some people wil understand what I'm talking about.

You mean... there are people who don't know what the Turing Test is? ... you're kidding, right? :-P


eh... for those of you who don't know, it's where you have three computers in seperate rooms, a users at two of them, and AI running on the third. User A chats or plays a game with TestComputers A and B, and then tries to figure out which is the person, which is the AI. i'm sure that could be varied, but that's the basic idea of it.


not insulting anyone's intelligence, just thought it was worth an explanation. also, if i'm confusing my tests, please let me know so that i can feel like a jackass. thank you.

You're right. There are a line of terminals, and behind each one is either a human or an AI program. Testers sit at each each terminal, and have conversations with the terminals, using text-based chat.

If a tester thinks that they are talking to a human, but it is actually a program, then the programmer wins lots of money - $500,000 or something. And infinite cred.

No-one has passed yet, although a few have come close.

The test was devised by Alan Turing in like the fifties or somehting. Some people say that when someone wins, that means Artificial Intelligence trully exists.

Quote:Original post by ifeelsodumbrightnow
And wow were they shot down.

Well, where's the game in it? The problem is that most of Real Life (tm) only works because you get to interact with other real people. Going to a bar in real life can be fun. Doing it in a game is pointless. Studying serves a purpose in the real world. In a game, it'd be a waste of time. You wouldn't learn anything new. You wouldn't find anything that interested you. Being with your friends is fun, but playing a game where you're with some NPC's who's said to be your friends is less so.

And then there are all the parts of real life which are *not* fun. Would you enjoy a game where you had to spend 7 hours a day sleeping? And another 8'ish hours working? And an hour or two eating? Never mind the bathroom breaks.

Part of the problem is, as Cornflake mentioned, that it's currently impossible to simulate real people. Another, and bigger problem is that even if you could, it still wouldn't be all that interesting. Wouldn't you rather have a friend (or girlfriend) in real life, than one who only exists when you're at your computer?
A lot of the stuff we do in real life are social activities, that isn't really fun in itself, but serves to bring us together with other people, and have fun with them. If you take the "other people" out of teh equation, you're left with a boring activity.

GTA didn't come close to your idea. They did the only sensible thing. They carefullly picked out one interesting aspect of real life, exaggerated it, carefully tweaked it, and focused all their attention on that. They didn't sit down and say "Ok, lets come up with 500 real-life activities, no matter whether or not they're fun, and add them to our game".

Now, apart from the fact that the game wouldn't be worth playing, it also wouldn't be possible to make.
First, you'd need more processing power than currently exists on the planet (Rough estimate) to simulate something this complex. Second, you'd need to spend the next 50 years coding, and then another 200 years adding all the content, from furniture to weather, to people, to groceries.

Tell me one thing though. Why would you want to play something like this? Real Life is a lot better at being Real Life.