PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Peeeevs on May 07, 2003, 02:55:57 am
-
if the rest of the quest is as hard as find the person to talk to....geesh it will be next to impossible!! :P
-
Cool, I cant wait to try it, just installed XP, not I have to reinstall EVERYTHING!! >.< Dont give too much away 8)
-
oh dont worry i wont!!! nobody can evin find where to start it at!! X(
-
I think the reality of the situation is that the developers just forgot to add the quest, as an oversight, and that\'s why it\'s impossible to find the character who provides the quest :P
-
Peeeves found it....
-
Oooo I didn\'t see this quest thing till now. And good, I\'m glad it\'s hard, I get so annoying when quests are so easy that people just point to so-and-so, say \"start here\" and even mark the phrases you are supposed to use in brackets.
I wonder if I can sit up long enough to get on the other computer and give it a go...
-
So has anyone found the right NPC yet? ?(
I\'ve talked to all the NPC\'s and can\'t find the quest....
You don\'t have to say which NPC it is, just tell me if you\'ve found him/her... 8o
-
Found him/her.
Just can\'t get on the game anymore ;)
Wow, it says 96 people on line right now! Is that right?! Never seen anywhere near that many people on. 8o
-
Yea yea, I found him/her/it as well.....
*Pokes Kada* Who is it? :D
Btw, the server is down :P
-
Hehe, it\'s that new guy who sits on top of the Temple Grono ;)
It did take me ages and ages to get on the right track, but don\'t lose hope people, you\'ll get there........ BTW the next bit does indeed seem even worse ;( ;)
I briefly got a nasty looking page (http://www.gaboby.plus.com/server.jpg) before the server went out completely :(
-
Well yeah I got that page too heh. I was wondering then why there was this sudden spurt in activity on the server and was wondering where it was all coming from. Looks like the admins were just doing some work on the database and restarting the server daemon. You guys didn\'t let up though, and ran our Apache through the roof.
-
Kada-El, how come you\'re the only one that actually found him/her, even though multiple people have spoken to all the NPC\'s?! ?(
In other words: I don\'t believe you, you must be joking. 8o
-
Well, skizzik, it\'s not a question about speaking to all of them, it\'s about saying the right thing, to the right NPC.... And I certainly had my problems with that :P Took me like 3 hours to find the right 4 words to say to that STUPID STUPID STUPID NPC! But I finally found it, and as Kada says... The next part is even worse. :(
-
I have to back Kada up as I have also found the quest NPC.
-
Mkay, I have to believe my guildleader ofcourse. :D
I thought it would just be \'give me a job\' or \'give me a quest\'... ?(
-
Well i found the right npc its just that he dosnt answear almost on anything i tried everything e can understand any way X(
-
The days of text adventures, like Zork and Hitch Hiker?s Guide, have been long faded into the past. The technologies we use in our games have changed enormously since the days of the text adventure, so why when it comes to NPCs, am I still playing ?find the right verb??
Let me give you a hypothetical Example:
Bob the Baker, an NPC, is very sad, because he has lost something. Now I like Bob and the bread that he makes, but when he is sad his bread takes away my HP instead of restoring it. I want to help him out so that I can buy Bob?s happy bread and restore my HP.
The obvious solution is to find out what is wrong and set it right. Seems simple enough, however, at this point I am dead in the water until I can figure out exactly what verb the game is waiting for me to type; Ask? Question? Cross-examine? Pry Into? Inquire? Demand? Interrogate? Request? I sit and type into the wee hours of the morning and my greatest success was getting the NPC to say, ?I do not understand, WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM.?
In reality the puzzle is rather simple, go out back of Bob?s Bakery and find his lost puppy. A quest that should take no more than 5 minutes, but I never got that far, because I am still trying to find that Mother-%&*#ing verb.
A lot of games today, as well as the games of 20 years ago, have this problem. An obstacle which can only be overcome in one way; it demands that the player read the designer?s mind. Which is the most boring and biggest waist of time, and most casual gamers will run for the door screaming, and they will take their money with them. This ?find the right verb? problem has ruined many games and turned away almost all but the die-hard game fan.
So maybe this PlaneShift game could provide some other interactive way to communicate with NPCs. I know that developing another way of NPC communication is costly in both man-hours and resources, but if you take the time to do it, you are going to open many more opportunities for the future of PlaneShift.
Just a thought. Mostly, what I have seen so far I like.
-
The devs could use keywords, but the problem is that players will just ask Bob the baker \'problem?\' or \'lost?\' instead of making a whole sentence... 8o
-
yeah i know..that danm bob daosant understand anything :rolleyes:
-
Game Designers create games to entertain an audience (the player). Interfaces that are not intuitive slow the game play down. This removes the player from the fantasy that a game provides, making the game less engaging and enjoyable for the player.
Look at what Skizzik said; ?players will just ask Bob the baker \'problem?\' or \'lost?\' instead of making a whole sentence...?
Look at what Peeeevs said; ?yeah i know..that danm bob daosant understand anything?
This is exactly the problem when using text as an interface for interacting with NPCs; Bob dose not understand $#!%. This NPC text-talking interface is very un-intuitive for the player. As humans we rarely speak using complete sentences or proper English. Most of our conversations consist of phrases, fragments, run-ons, slang, and/or single words. Therefore, if the player can not type to the NPC using their fragmented bad English and get a reasonable response for which they are looking, then they are going to be drawn out of the fantasy that the game has created, and the game fails to deliver on the fun. Especially, when all the player is going to receive for all their time spent verb hunting, is an answer (Answer A, Answer B, or Answer C) from a list of responses/options that the NPC can give. Dose not the current Planeshift NPC communication interface, use to a certain extent, some form of keywords? Which in turn gives a predefined response? At this stage it?s basically a list of options. Instead of providing the list from which to select a question the player has to type it.
Typing text, as an interface with which to speak to NPCs, at its current stage, is a rather unforgiving tool of interaction, which alienates a large portion of the total possible audience, as well as, removes a chunk of fun from the game. I look forward to the day, when typed fragmented bad English, can be used to interact with NPCs. On that day I will be more than happy to type away with an NPC. Until that day however, I do not see why we have to interact with NPCs, in the same fashion as we did 20 years ago.
All I am trying to say is that their must be another way to do an NPC talking interface which can be very intuitive for the average or new player.
-
geesh Licker you didnt have to include my typo!!!
\"daosant\" :P but yeah good point..it is rather hard to think of what to say...after you get to thinkng about it so much you start thing about why not?? and why wont this work...and takes fun away from the game...but yeah the npc\'s of 20 or so years ago were horrible (not that i was around that long tho ;) ) but i have played some old games...and one of my favorite quotes..altho not really from a npc...
:evil:ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US :evil:
-
> Which is the most boring and biggest waist of time
I thought that was mine. Well, \"boring\" -- dunno about \"biggest\" ;-)
Oh, sorry, does poking fun at speling mistakes constitute flaming on these boards?
Speaking of which, one problem with keywords is when they\'re hard to spell. It\'s even more problematic if the game designer is the one that can\'t spell. EverQuest, anyone?
-
yeah..spelling and ....do you have to use proper grammer?.. well ne way that is a big problem cause people barley EVER talk in proper english as Licker said..
Licker:Most of our conversations consist of phrases, fragments, run-ons, slang, and/or single words.
and most of all... Dialect (is that how you spell it?? ;)
like from different parts of the country or evin the world..
ex.
South western pennsylvania: \"yuns\"
Texas and virgina and a bunch of other places: \"Yall\"
and a whollleeee bunch of other stuff..but that is anouther problem..
-
Licker, your points are well taken, but as the guy who designed and implemented the NPC dialog system we have now, I can tell you the problem right now is a lack of vocabulary data in the NPC dialog engine--not a fundamental design flaw.
We recognized from the beginning, that in the beginning, the NPCs would not recognize very much. This is because it is impossible to predict HOW people will actually try to use it. Instead, the dialog manager tracks and stores EVERY single non-understood statement in the database. Periodically we go through that table and improve our responses.
I think people who were here from the beginning of MB will testify that the NPCs (however bad they are now) are much better than they used to be. This improvement will continue to grow and add-on to itself as we go.
This is a DEMO remember? :-) It is a real-world science lab for us to test our frankenstein outside the petri-dish we call the dev team.
Thanks,
Venge
-
Vengeance,
I am well aware that MB is a technology demo, and not a completed masterwork. :) I tell new players that almost every time I log on to the server.
I was not trying to attack your position on the dev team, as the immortal programming god of all knowledge and technology concerning the NPC dialog system. I apologize, if you took any of my comments as such. Nor did I mean you to think, that I was saying, YOUR npc talking interface has a ?fundamental design flaw.? For that is also not the point I am making. If this was something you thought, I apologize again.
This goes well with my point:
?We recognized from the beginning, that in the beginning, the NPCs would not recognize very much. This is because it is impossible to predict HOW people will actually try to use it. Instead, the dialog manager tracks and stores EVERY single non-understood statement in the database. Periodically we go through that table and improve our responses.?
I am glad to see that you are taking steps to making a better NPC text typing interface. Your efforts should vastly improve this type of NPC dialog interface. As for myself, I shall continue to wait patiently, for the day when this sort of NPC interface switches from S.I. to A.I.
FYI: I was curious so I jumped the wall of the city, ran off the edge of the world, and now my character is sunk up to his waist, and stuck, in the vast desert of Jell-O that lies beyond. I guess I need to create a new character.
Sincerely,
Licker
-
Hi,
the major problem of speaking with NPCs now is that multiple discussions are not supported.
I will make an example to make this clearer.
P1= player 1
P2= player 2
NPC = the NPC both players are talking to
This is a discussion with one player only:
P1 = \"Hi\"
NPC = \"Hi P1\"
P1 = \"tell me about you\"
NPC = \"I am Gorratoleds, I love eating meat\"
P1 = \"which kind of meat?\"
NPC = \"red meat mainly\"
This is a discussion with two players:
P1 = \"Hi\"
NPC = \"Hi P1\"
P1 = \"tell me about you\"
NPC = \"I am Gorratoleds, I love eating meat\"
P2 = \"Hi\"
NPC = \"Hi P2\"
P1 = \"which kind of meat?\"
NPC = \"what? I can\'t understand.\"
In the second case the NPC discussion what reset by player 2, so the NPC was no more able to follow the discussion with player 1 and any further questions about meat will fail. Player 1 has to restart the discussion from the beginning.
This is a bug we have now in MB release and is lowering a lot the chances of players to talk to NPCs. I\'ve seen 10 people talking to the same npc at once, so in this case there are very few chances he can follow a proper discussion. We plan to fix this bug allowing multiple discussions at the same time. I will let your know when this bug is fixed.
About having a text interface or a mouse driven one, I have no doubts. The text interface gives endless possibilities for a decent NPC interaction, while the mouse driven one just give to the players the option to click on all that is available till they find the good one.
When the bug is fixed and as soon as we add more knowledge to the NPCs the text interface will be playable and rich.
-
Licker, I didn\'t take your post as an attack. No apology required.
Type /spawn to reset your character position.
- Venge
-
yeah Vengeance i have ben having that problem!! lol i cant talk to the npc and get my questions answered..lol :D
-
thats also a problem in *the*gamE*that*shall*not*be*name*
only 1 person at a time can talk a npc at a time
which can be a problem soon as a quest comes out
because tons of people will be talking ot the same npc at a time and nobody will accomplish anything!!
-
talad,
multiple discussions are a very nice idea ...i haven\'t seen it before in an MMORPG ...and it would improve the game quite a bit
-
yeah or try to make it so when one char is talking to the npc it blocks all other chat requests to it
-
Talad has fixed this now in MB. The NPC will not get confused by multiple people talking to it now.
-
w007 for Talad w00t w00t w00t !!!!!!
-
2 words: Dagger fall
check out the dialogue system there, very comfortable
-
Oh, you are so right... Daggerfall was a very good game. They should create a sequel to it, the graphics are kinda out of date... :)
-
Umm, they made a sequel, morrowind :p
-
Originally posted by Rulzern
Umm, they made a sequel, morrowind :p
And they already made 2 expansion packs for that game... Looks like Johan McFo is kind of uninformed... ;)
-
Uhm....
Kinda
:rolleyes:
-
There is nothing wrong with a text-based interface. Many people prefer it in adventure games and curse the day that game companies switched to a mouse interface with icons. The problem of verb hunting is not caused by the fact that it\'s a text interface, but by the quality of the text interface.
It\'s a horrible thing to require one exact sentence. The game should allow a whole range of verbs that more or less have the same meaning. The parser should be very forgiving about sentence structure; words like \'the\' should be allowed to be omitted, etc.
If the text commands you enter can be intuitive and make sense, that is: you want to ask this NPC a question and \"ask about problem\" comes to mind immediately, triggering the correct answer, stuff like this is awesome. Don\'t throw away a good thing; improve it.
-
but that\'s the thing, the text interface has to be pretty damn intuitive for it to replace point n\' click, you should be able to lead a natural conversation with the NPC, and each of them should have their own personality, it would be possible, and ground-breaking, but it would require some thinking.
One way to solve it was to create a speech engine that all the NPC\'s shared, but used in different ways based on their \"personality\", so that you just have to plot in the things it knows (not in sentances, but what it knows) and it should be able to answer freely and understandably, it would require massive amounts of work to be worth it, but if it was made it would be truly groundbreaking.
As I\'ve said before, the current system is pretty useless from the foundation up.
-
Originally posted by Vengeance
Licker, your points are well taken, but as the guy who designed and implemented the NPC dialog system we have now, I can tell you the problem right now is a lack of vocabulary data in the NPC dialog engine--not a fundamental design flaw.
We recognized from the beginning, that in the beginning, the NPCs would not recognize very much. This is because it is impossible to predict HOW people will actually try to use it. Instead, the dialog manager tracks and stores EVERY single non-understood statement in the database. Periodically we go through that table and improve our responses.
I think people who were here from the beginning of MB will testify that the NPCs (however bad they are now) are much better than they used to be. This improvement will continue to grow and add-on to itself as we go.
This is a DEMO remember? :-) It is a real-world science lab for us to test our frankenstein outside the petri-dish we call the dev team.
Thanks,
Venge
So you\'re not going to add any more NPCs to the game (as you need months of alpha testing for every of them)? And here comes another question - will the final version of PS contain only the city avaible in the demo? Dont get me wrong but its a bit small - it\'d be great if it was Baldurs Gate size ;)
And sorry but no, I didnt notice any NPC improvement recently - actually most of them cant even anwser for simple \'bye\' or \'how are you\'...
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
yea, it was great :D
-
The city you walk around in now is nothing compared to how big PS will be when it gets to a decent release.
The PS world is in a giant stalactite hollowed out at and the inside this stalactite the are levels the city your walking around on now is on the top level and i beleave when the top level is finished it alone will be 100 times bigger than what you have now
(http://www.planeshift.it/pix/yliakum_map.jpg) this is from the main site and that bright light at the top of the picture is the azure sun its a giant crystal that lights the cavarn
-
If the world on the top level gets a hundred times bigger I hope they will reduce the view distance, or at least add some fog!! or the lag will be unbearable! (well, at least on my cpu :D)
-
And what about correct spelling. I mean which one would you say?: conscientius, consciencious, counscientious, or conscientious???
This is only one example, but there are many other. What if one doesn\'t know how it is spelled correctly, or even how to start the word? Then the conversation will turn into a dictionary look-up, grammar books, etc. - all that will pull out the player of the game to the \"real world\", but most people play MMORPGs to \"escape\" a bit from the real world... (it\'s a bit paradox) And of course it may happen, that your word differs with only ONE letter from the correct word that the NPC would understand - then you will move on, and possibly NEVER be able to get what you want.
I perfectly agree with Licker.
The map is relatively small now. Others said, it took HOURS for them to find the right character (and the right word). What if the map will be bigger, and the two key NPCs of the quest are at the absolute opposite ends of the world - I don\'t even want to imagine it... :(
I think the click-based interface should be combined with the typing interface. (it was pointed out in another thread somewhere) Common tasks must be placed into a list, and be able to select from there. Special speech however would still be possible. For example: if you go to a blacksmith, then \"Repair weapon/armor\", \"Buy weapon/armor\", etc. should be in the list, but if you want to ask for a beer, then you could type it (\"I would like a beer\" )
What do you say?
--
Greetings,
E.
-
I agree 100% with you on that, Elminster...
-
yeah, but a click/ type interface.. might be a bit to complex...or a bit confusing... althoughit might be a great idea if you can come up with a good stystem..
For example..how would you know what npc\'s to put it on.. or what phrases.. you could make it easy or simple.. but chooseing could be hard.... *humm*
-
I don\'t exactly understand you ?(
But anyway:
Whenever you begin talk with an NPC, a chat-dialog would show up. It would consist of three parts: a chat-history, the predefined list, plus a single line editor at the bottom, like the one that is present in the game now. The list would contain COMMON sentences, that you would probably do with that NPC (ask for beer from a bartender, ask for weapons, repair from a blacksmith, etc.). Whenever you click one of these, it would have the EXACT same effect, as if you had typed that in and pressed ENTER. It just saves you the time, as writing COMMON things a thousand times can become really boring after some time - not speaking of typos...
Here is some ASCII-ART for a chat-dialog:
This d.a.m.n board removes spaces :( - I needed to use points ( \".\" )
/-------------------\\
|Message history... |
|___________________|
| ................. |
| 1.Predefined text |
| 2.Predefined text |
| 3.Predefined text |
|___________________|
|You say:.......... |
\\-------------------/
So, what do you say?
--
Greetings,
E.
P.S: Is it intended, that the board replaces \"d.a.m.n\" with \"dang\"?
I wrote here D.A.M.N.E.D: DAMNED ?(
-
now wait a minute gnomistt thanks i know who it is , when you said stupidstupidstupidstupidstupid i knew exactly, now just got to find the right words
-
lol that didnt help me any..
-
whew, just got back from the World (i got segfaulted!!!), but i\'ve just managed to solve the quest!!! =) :D :D :D :]
do i have to tell it to the devs? i mean, i don\'t intend to flood their mailboxes, which are already full, so i\'m asking first :)
-
I dont think that they give out prizes any longer..
-
they did say they would give something to all the completed but i guess not
-
Originally posted by Caldazar
I dont think that they give out prizes any longer..
well, anyhow, i\'m just happy i solved it :] ...although some reward would also be ok :)