PlaneShift
Support => Technical Help: IN GAME bugs (after loading world) => Topic started by: enderandrew on March 19, 2009, 04:47:43 pm
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I have placed the following bug report which I'm sure people are going to have varying opinions on.
http://hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/index.php?do=details&task_id=2821
I went to Harnquist and asked "Do you have a quest for me" and he can't understand that phrase. He does however understand "Do you have a quest." I know some might say this type of behavior isn't a bug, but I believe this to be problematic. What are the odds that I'm going to miss the dialog written in the game because I can't EXACTLY phrase the question the way I need to. If I didn't know from the Player Guide that I'm supposed to get a quest from him, I might have given up after the first attempt. What about other NPCs? The game is set to often apparently ignore one word answers/questions, but the parser can't fully comprehend English. Non-native speakers also might phrase things differently and have trouble with the game.
Here is a sample data file for a really old chat parser, called The Guru (http://cvs.synchro.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/ctrl/guru.dat?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain). It looks for an expression contained within your input, and it goes from the top of the list to the bottom, searching for the first hit. At the top of the list are various forms of goodbye. If you typed in something from the bottom of the list, and also said goodbye at the same time, it would register the first hit. You'll note that sometimes there are several responses for each expression. It randomly chooses from those to vary dialog.
You can do logical operators, such as EXPRESSION-FOO and EXPRESSION-FOO2 or EXPRESSION-FOO and FLAG-Y.
Changing how dialog is parsed might also mean changing how dialog is stored for all the NPCs, and this is no small task. However, ultimately it may be a necessary move.
The example I provided is really easy to implement, and extremely old. I'm not saying we have to use that formula per se, but shows that even something really simple might be better than what we have currently. By the way, I linked to the data, and not the actual code to parse it, but it is in the same CVS repository.
I'm curious how people feel about how NPCs respond to dialog currently, and thought this might make for a good topic of discussion, hence I'm opening a thread here, and not just a bug.
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please keep bug reports on the tracker for easy of tracking. this bug report has been assigned to settings to comment on and close when needed. there are no plans on changing the way npcs parse text.
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Might i ask why there is an entire sub-forum to discuss in-game bugs, if we're not supposed to discuss in-game bugs here. I'm confused.
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this forum is for bugs that can be solved quickly not bugs reported to the tracker, it is for people to ask for help with issues related to how to view the game ingame and get it running on their system.
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Fair enough.
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The quest dialogue system and the way it is being presented is being changed we're working hard to get it done and you may see a big improvement in the next release.
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Sounds good. Thanks!
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The quest dialogue system and the way it is being presented is being changed we're working hard to get it done and you may see a big improvement in the next release.
but that does not mean the old method is being replaced.