Just a quickie...

Sometimes superfluous conversation serves the purpose of establishing the personalities and convictions of the people in a village. Later you may have the opportunity to save them from a dire fate, or, if you decide to go another path, let your perception of the people in the village decide what course you choose.

This is especially true in a non-linear storyline where the player''s decisions are based on what relationship they want to have with the NPCs they come across. Those players that know they won''t get the Blackstar life-stealing sword unless the Village of Denahom gets trampled by the Behemoth won''t care much about conversation.

As for Wavinator''s original question, I don''t mind NPCs talking about non-essential stuff provided these three points are satisfied: 1) Their conversation is entertaining or adds to immersion. 2) It doesn''t take too long to figure out I''m listening to non-essential information and have the choice to end the conversation if I get bored with it. 3)I can make an educated guess as to who can and can not provide essential information, so I don''t feel like I have to start a conversation with everybody just to make sure I learn everything I''m supposed to.

As for the conversation-engine tangent in this thread,

quote:Assume it''s multiplayer and several people are able to hear conversations between others if they are close enough. What should happen when several players attempt to talk to the same NPC at the same time?

I would like to find an alternative to having NPCs "multitask" conversations (like in Diablo), I want a more realistic approach.
NPC would queue a question and respond when he''s done answering to another player. It would also be possible to interrupt conversations.

I''m putting the finishing touches on a conversation engine that does just that. There is a conversation queue which holds each character''s intended contributions to the conversation. Each of these intended contributions has a priority. Questions are given a lower priority than statements of information, which tends to keep everybody on the same topic until it is played out. Priority is also adjusted by social rank so that characters with higher social status will usually get in whatever they want to say first. The player''s contributions to the conversation are queued just like other characters'', with the exception that the player can choose the priority of his speeches. A speech queued at the highest priority will interrupt the current speaker in mid-sentence.

I fooled around with using auto-complete and settled on an almost-auto-complete solution that I refer to as pre-emptive parsing. I have the forward slash set to work like hitting the tab key once at the Linux command line (completes as much of the word as possible), while hitting the tab key cycles through all the remaining relevant possibilities. This works because the engine evaluates the command line at every keystroke, and always knows what kind of word to expect (a command name, a character name, a spell name, a resource name, etc) based on the previous word. There is a hint beneath the command line so that the player knows what kind of word is currently allowable.

A lot of these ideas for conversation engines are very clever, but I don't see them being implemented in a mainstream game in any kind of viable way. Command lines, text parsers, selecting verbs and objects for those verbs...it's all very interesting stuff from an intellectual point of view, but I'm afraid I'm having some difficulty imagining the average gamer being willing to sit through having to use them. Text parsers worked well for the Infocom games, because that was the only real structure upon which to base that type of game. Command line interfaces seem unnecessarily anachronistic.

It's fine to come up with a lot of ways and means to accomplish something, but if you and your friends are the only ones willing to use it, the system becomes nothing more than a fancy technology demo.

I don't mean to come off as critical...I think a lot of these ideas are very clever. But how will the average gamer feel about them?

Chris Crawford's Erasmatron is a good example of a complex and innovative system to support multilinear storytelling and conversations through the objsect/subject/verb paradigm, but it's just way too complicated for most people to be able to pick up easily.

Just my two cents...

R.

[edited by - Tacit on May 7, 2002 11:58:22 AM]

In response to those who said scripting conversation trees and building knowledge bases for all the NPC''s in a game would be more effort than its worth. . .

Alot of classic RPG''s used a system that could still be useful today: Most NPC''s use a simple method of conversation (ie click for a one-liner), while the important "Character" NPC''s had a more complex mode (ie conversation tree and/or knowledge base). This method makes alot of sense in that it does not waste developer time in crafting indepth non-essential conversations, or the player''s time in pursuing indepth conversations that are tangenital to the plot (unless, of course, the conversation or character is inherently interesting for some other reason).

Which NPC''s are there for "flavor" or "background" and which are important characters to the plot can be differentiated by unique appearance, highlighting, seperate "portrait" screen, (in case you''re not familiar. . .alot of these classic RPG''s took you to a different screen for important conversations, with a close-up of the character''s face. this method was of course far more useful in those low-res no-polycount days than today) playing a .wav when the character approaches, and I''m sure there''s more.

-----------------

quote:Tacit said:
A lot of these ideas for conversation engines are very clever, but I don''t see them being implemented in a mainstream game in any kind of viable way. Command lines, text parsers, selecting verbs and objects for those verbs...it''s all very interesting stuff from an intellectual point of view, but I''m afraid I''m having some difficulty imagining the average gamer being willing to sit through having to use them. Text parsers worked well for the Infocom games, because that was the only real structure upon which to base that type of game. Command line interfaces seem unnecessarily anachronistic.

I disagree. There is a solid niche market for deep RPG''s, which has been quite impoverished until very recently. If a game like Morrowind can sell well in today''s gaming climate, I don''t think these players will be scared off by clicking a verb and an object. As far as using a command line with IntelliSense/AutoComplete. . . It''d be a risk. That much is true, but I have enough faith in the average hardcore RPGer''s intelligence that if (and only if) the system added significantly to the game''s roleplaying possibilities (which is pretty much the idea), they would embrace it at the very least as a necessary evil, if not actively enjoy the change. Command line interfaces are known for their capability for expressivness, so its a natural fit.
--------------------

And in direct response to Wavinator''s original post- I for one have been noticing a real dearth of interesting conversation in modern RPG''s. Even the conversation trees in Fallout & Fallout 2 would be an improvement, if only because a great number of the NPC''s had interesting personalities and your conversation choices had a real impact on gameplay (unless you''re a quickload junkie ).

It seems like the RPG market is more or less split into two camps. For clarity, I''ll refer to them as the "PC camp" and the "console camp", even though there''s some crossover.

The PC camp wants to see depth, more non-linearity. These are the people who''ll munch your command line interface for breakfast and ask for seconds. These people are the escapists. (still a very nice nomenclature ) They want to live in your world, and in-depth conversation with NPC''s is practically a requisite.

The console camp wants an accessible interface, nice graphics and cutscenes, and a solid plot. They play RPG''s as a kind of hyper-extended movie, with a beginning, middle, and end. As far as conversation with non-essential characters go, it''d better move them further along the plot or lead to a quest, or they''re not interested. Of course, these people are your finishers.

So as far as conversation goes-

PC/esapists: The more indepth, the better. As long as the conversation''s interesting, they''ll keep talking.

Console/finishers: Keep it short, and to the point. (hmmm. . . looking at the length this post, you can probably tell which type of gamer *I* am ) Character exposition of main characters is ok, plot development is obviously ok, but "flavor" text should be kept to a minimum.

If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

quote:What if someone tries to "queue" the same topic many times? This definitely shouldn''t be allowed.

If character tries to queue a topic more than once, I just increase the priority of that speech.

Sean

Sorry, I forgot you were talking about a multi-player game. I was referring to NPCs wanting to queue the same subject more than once.

Sean