PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Yalzin on April 16, 2004, 11:57:04 pm
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I\'ve done a search and this was brought up quite a while ago but it seems no solution was suggested. Well here\'s my idea:
Instead of doing ridiculous amounts of typing trying to find out what your supposed to type in order to get instructions for the quest (which is very frustrating as clumsy typers like me almost always make a mistake and have to type out the whole thing again because the NPC doesn\'t understand), surely it would be much easier, and save everyone a lot of stress if when you targeted an NPC and clicked \"talk\" or whatever, a list of the different lines of conversation appears (like in great point and click advertures of the past such as the \"Monkey Island\" games). This way there is much more scope for interesting conversations with them and you save yourself ripping out your hair with frustration.
This would be very simple to implement and I would really like to see it in future releases.
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Why degrade to that? Its much better how it is now than all the other games\' options talk system. It gives the quests a much more realistic spin to it, it feels like you are actually having a conversation with the NPC. If you are a clumbsy typer, then you need the practice :D
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No, I have never agreed with typing to NPC\'s and I never will.
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They just need to improve the *range* of questions which NPCs respond to. I mean, you could ask the exact same question in different words and if the devs didn\'t think about stating it that way, well, you\'re S.O.L.
They *could* put in synonyms (I think that\'s the term). Where all words that equate to the same meaning can be interchangable and long as the structure is roughly correct.
Today\'s system:
\"Where did the robber come from?\"
\"Huh?\"
...Shit.
\"Where did the thief go?\"
\"You talk funny.\"
...SHIT.
\"Where bandit, plx?\"
\"I saw him go to the south.\"
FINALLY!
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I don\'t believe NPC\'s can be made artificially intelligent enough to react properly to normal human speech.
People always say something that NPC\'s don\'t understand.
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i totally agree... typing yourself when in conversation with npc is just NOT going to work.
there was a small quest some time ago, tough the devs deleted it. But there you could try and talk to the npc by typing yourself. I have typed at least 20 lines, all saying the same before the npc finally understood what i was saying.... well.... not really.... it responded, but it still wasn\'t the right answer. It took me about 1 hour untill i finally made a correct sentence that the npc understood that gave me some more info that finally was usefull.... it was booring as hell.
it was just like mentioned before. i used a different word, and the npc didn\'t understand again and again and again and.... i got bored and let the quest be.
tough if you have pre-made questions/answers it will need less programming code, it is easier to handle, and you dont get bored by the \"i dont understand\" because you misspelled 1 word or because you used a different word or some words more(because you were asking formally for example) and thus didn\'t match the programming. You would also get your answers more easilly, tough before a question is \"unlocked\" you would have to ask something different first. So you start with 2 or 3 questions like \"what is your name\" \"how are you\" \"i am looking for a quest\" or so.
Just that a converstation isn\'t:
you: \"what do you want\"
it: \"this bla bla bla that\"
you: \"ok\"
but more something like
you: \"hi there\"
it; \"hi\"
you: \"how are you today?\"
it: \"not so good, we were robbed\"
- and then you would have a question unlocked like \"what happend?\" or so, and the conversation easlilly builds itself up piece by piece.
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Thats exactly what I mean. If new areas of conversation were unlocked gradually it would make talking to the NPCs much neater and more interesting.
I\'m sorry to say that typing like that is more realistic is tripe because you generally only say something once to someone, and you usually only ever have to repeat things once, whereas with these NPCs you have to repeat things 10+ times before you get a response. It\'s like talking to someone with no-ears, your better off not doing the quests in the first place.
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This is one of the things I LOVE about PlaneShift - when it\'ll be done you won\'t be able to tell an NPC from a player :] ...you\'ll talk to them both equally ...beat that in a MMORPG!
I always found it wierd that players were roleplaying and talking \"lolz j00 n00bz ...pwnz0r!!\" while being a high-class elven cleric in the \"middle ages\" (not PS) O_o ...and that the NPCs, while they\'re in this world also people just as players are, can only understand those 3 sentances you can click on ...never know how come I couldn\'t ask a sailor about the wind and the weather, or were a certain ship was, or even an inhabitant where the main square lay. o_O ...that\'s what I\'d like to see in PS :]
Of course the AI of the NPCs at the current stage is very simple, but I think once they get intelligent, it\'ll be a very nice feature! :] ...which would put us up in front of other MMORPGs - Ha!
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Originally posted by Typhorean
They just need to improve the *range* of questions which NPCs respond to. I mean, you could ask the exact same question in different words and if the devs didn\'t think about stating it that way, well, you\'re S.O.L.
They will improve this in CB. You can\'t judge the system right now because its not completed yet...
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i love this system. its not that hard to talk to the npc\'s unless your a moron, even right now with their limited ai. i usually get what i want to know after the 2nd or third try. i think it is so much more fun and realistic than that stupid click what you want to say junk they have on games like spoonscape.
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Originally posted by hook
This is one of the things I LOVE about PlaneShift - when it\'ll be done you won\'t be able to tell an NPC from a player :] ...you\'ll talk to them both equally ...beat that in a MMORPG!
That is just not going to happen. It has been proven in experiments where a human has to talk to two poeple and one advanced AI program (by typing and without seeing them), and the person always identifies the computer. Yes i agrre it would be great if this was possible, but it\'s not, and until it is we should stick to methods where you can actually have an interesting and productive conversation with an NPC.
You\'ll only ever be able to chat about what the NPC has been programmed to tell you, so isn\'t it far easier to not pretend that this NPC is a human character (which you will instantly be able to tell it wasn\'t anyway) and communicate with it in a way that is simple and least time-consuming? Yes i think so.
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Originally posted by Yalzin
Originally posted by hook
This is one of the things I LOVE about PlaneShift - when it\'ll be done you won\'t be able to tell an NPC from a player :] ...you\'ll talk to them both equally ...beat that in a MMORPG!
That is just not going to happen. It has been proven in experiments where a human has to talk to two poeple and one advanced AI program (by typing and without seeing them), and the person always identifies the computer. Yes i agrre it would be great if this was possible, but it\'s not, and until it is we should stick to methods where you can actually have an interesting and productive conversation with an NPC.
You\'ll only ever be able to chat about what the NPC has been programmed to tell you, so isn\'t it far easier to not pretend that this NPC is a human character (which you will instantly be able to tell it wasn\'t anyway) and communicate with it in a way that is simple and least time-consuming? Yes i think so.
i strongly disagree ...i agree that it won\'t be perfect for quite some time - but you have to keep in mind that (if all goes well) PlaneShift won\'t stop developing ever ...so, when the devs will learn more and more about AI the NPCs will get smarter and smarter.
it being impossible? far from it! ...ever heard the statement that \"512KB will be the maximum amount of memory that a computer will ever need\"? ...do you see a PC (yet alone a super-server, bladerack or beowulf cluster) running less then 2MB ram? ...even a telephone has more memory now. would you believe it 25 years ago? ...guess not ...neither would you that you could carry with you and use your telephone and computer.
just have a little faith :]
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Originally posted by Taurenthefirst
i love this system. its not that hard to talk to the npc\'s unless your a moron, even right now with their limited ai. i usually get what i want to know after the 2nd or third try. i think it is so much more fun and realistic than that stupid click what you want to say junk they have on games like spoonscape.
Exactly what I think :D More fun, and more realistic. Maybe the NPCs will never be able to compete with real people, but that isn\'t the point. This topic is about what is better: the way it is now? or runescape\'s way...
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Originally posted by hook
i strongly disagree ...i agree that it won\'t be perfect for quite some time - but you have to keep in mind that (if all goes well) PlaneShift won\'t stop developing ever ...so, when the devs will learn more and more about AI the NPCs will get smarter and smarter.
it being impossible? far from it! ...ever heard the statement that \"512KB will be the maximum amount of memory that a computer will ever need\"? ...do you see a PC (yet alone a super-server, bladerack or beowulf cluster) running less then 2MB ram? ...even a telephone has more memory now. would you believe it 25 years ago? ...guess not ...neither would you that you could carry with you and use your telephone and computer.
just have a little faith :]
So you\'re suggesting that the current system should be kept in the hope that in 25 years we will be able to hold a conversation with one of the NPCs?? Thats nuts. Have you any idea how complex the human brain is? Computers won\'t be able to even get near emulating that for a very long time!!! So in the meantime why should we all have to put up with the current trial and error system of typing hundreds of sentences until the NPC reckognises one??
And Icefalcon if your idea of fun is trying to communicate with something you know is not a human character, yet you still have to try and communicate with it in the same way, then . . . . . well your weird :) And no way is that more realistic, since when do people say \"either my hearing isn\'t working or you\'re not making sense\" thousands of times to you???
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AFAIK the system the devs use can produce fairly believealbe behavior. If im not mistaken they use a approach similar to this guys http://www.alicebot.org/index.html (http://www.alicebot.org/index.html)
Try it out.
It depends mainly on the size of the patternbase. And im sure it will impove greatly over the time for PS. Ie the more you try, the more examples the devs will get, how one can ask the question. Those the devs find correct, will be added as patterns to trigger the answer. In result each iteration of the NPCs will get better.
So in 25 years, even in 5, this system will be very good. Im pretty sure it wont be a simulation of the human brain, but it dont need to. It is enough if it can simulate the talking behavior of a human for a limited number of themes.
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NOOOOOO!
Its good the way it is!
I love this system!
Yes, its much harder, but more fun at the same time. You have to think it out yourself not just click on some options. It gives a bigger variety. Not just kill this and bring me that quests! Or fine the murderer quests are ussualy too easy... you just go there talk to him (click 5 clicks) fight him and quest compleated.
The first quest was very fun! Too bad its not solvable right now :( With clicking it would suck, because there would be no challange. The second quest isnt relay hard...
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Originally posted by zinder
AFAIK the system the devs use can produce fairly believealbe behavior. If im not mistaken they use a approach similar to this guys http://www.alicebot.org/index.html (http://www.alicebot.org/index.html)
Try it out.
It depends mainly on the size of the patternbase. And im sure it will impove greatly over the time for PS. Ie the more you try, the more examples the devs will get, how one can ask the question. Those the devs find correct, will be added as patterns to trigger the answer. In result each iteration of the NPCs will get better.
So in 25 years, even in 5, this system will be very good. Im pretty sure it wont be a simulation of the human brain, but it dont need to. It is enough if it can simulate the talking behavior of a human for a limited number of themes.
yea, i think that\'s close to what\'s used in PS ...an almost self-learning system - the more you try to talk to it, the more possibilities it remembers, the more it understands ...the only thing is that, AFAIR, the devs don\'t change the AI untill the PS version jump - i wouldn\'t be surprised if the NPC AI in the CVS is a lot better then the one we\'re used to.
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Nice to see your posts again Abemore.
This time I have to disagree with you Abe. The point and click definately has advantages. From a pure \"gaming\" stand point the menu options are the way to go. It is easier to code and severly cuts down on the players frustration. Shadowbane has the drop down menus, and as I remember DAoC has them as well. You would like it. BUT! quests are non-existent. It does nothing for roleplay. Query language gets better all the time. I don\'t think NPC\'s will ever be so smart as to fool you in thinking that your talking to a human, but they could be made good enough.
As a compromise, NPC\'s should have a help function. Typing, help me, or I need help, or any thing like that should have the NPC give you a speach on how you can talk to it.
As I understand it, the PS game will be aimed at the roleplay crowd. Trying to pick up the EQ players that got bored with it because it was not geeky enough. Most of the new MMORPG\'s are trying to make their games more flashy and faster paced. They most likely will all have drop down menus. PS can be different and use the retro text based style with a new AI.
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I think thats a good idea derwoodly. People would find it easier to find what to type if there was some sort of help on the subject. I still favour the quicker menu-based communication, but if typing is going to stay it\'s going to have to be made more user-friendly. Maybe an auto-complete function that helps you choose which verbs etc to use. Anything to prevent people from having to type hundreds of sentences to find the right one.
The NPC AI would only be updated every version release (unless there was an update function for the program files) and so it would make the NPC s incapable of learning anything until they are updated in the next release. And I don\'t think it would be possible for the devs to go through every single line of people\'s typing that didn\'t produce a result, there would be just too much.
Maybe this typing way of communication appeals more to the \"hard-core\" RPG fans, but for me it\'s just an unecessary complication that doesn\'t add at all to the playing experience.
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Well put derwoodly (good to see your posts as well).
Thanks for the fresh perspective.
How could I have been so closed-minded as to have not seen the \"gameplay\" vs \"roleplay\" viewpoints. Roleplayers want to type to NPC\'s for better immersion, where as gamers would rather just click through conversations and get to the gameplay.
This also explains why we all can\'t agree on this.
Thanks derwoodly. I probably would not have seen this if not for your post.
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but still, i rather click \'n talk instead of typing. Not only because it is easier. If you want to ask (like said before) about the weather or so, it will always have to be implemented first, wheter you type yourself or you click. Only real difference between clicking or typing is that typing costs you more time. And really, what do you prefer more: typing typing or clicking and still have time for the game.
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typing, enjoying the role-playing AND having time to enjoy the game :]
*grunt* i knew all this clicky-pictures, rodents and \"idiot-friendliness\" will spoil our youth! *grummble* ...in MY days, we used to play MUDs and adventures with pictures you couldn\'t click!! and sometimes you didn\'t even have pictures! ...you had to type your way around! ...AND we enjoyed it!!!
some of these legends:
leisure suit larry
zork
a great number of MUDs
alice in wonderland
cave
...
> move north
> move west
> open door
> show finger to the salesperson
> shut door
> move west
> open fridge
> get cake
> eat cake
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leisure suite larry?? Now that definately had pictures !! ;)
There definately does seem to be a difference in opinion between those of us who prefer the actual gameplay and those who love the immersion and atmosphere. I like to think I like a bit of both, but on this I\'m definately with the \"get the npc communication over with so you can get onto the more interesting stuff\" crowd.
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Originally posted by Yalzin
leisure suite larry?? Now that definately had pictures !! ;)
it depends on if you played the first versions of LSL 1-3 or the remade ones :]
larry1 had CGI graphics (mostly white on black) and was purely controlled by typing in commands - what you may think of is the later VGA-remake of the larry1
larry2 (and 3) had already VGA but were still mainly controlled by typing - but you could already move larry around with the mouse
...but the main idea is in the TYPING, not NOT-HAVING GRAPHICS
even the first king\'s quests and space quests had graphics, but you had to type your way through
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Heres an old Typie, Leather Goddesses of Phebos, nothing like going though that \"Change in Life\" *wink wink* and having a sex filled typing adventure to fill the mind\'s eye. Also another good one was Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy.
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Hmm so what your saying is that we should all be forced to type because of the nostalgia for the old typing games. I\'m sure if there had been other ways around at the time many of these games would have used better menu based systems instead. I think we shouldn\'t dwell on games of the past and look to the future and use more slick and modern methods of communicating with the program. Typing is sadly not very practical.
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No. Once again, typing to NPC\'s is for roleplaying.
You and I see it as needlessly wasting our time and energy because we are not roleplayers.
We like efficient well designed games.
Roleplayers like roleplaying, regardless of its efficiency or practicality.
Your arguments are valid, but wasted, because this game is being made by roleplayers for roleplayers.
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I couldn\'t agree with you more Abemore, but also, typing could give you many more options than just a list to choose from. I like it because it makes you think about what you are typing, part of the quest is talking to NPCs. Like Abemore said, its all roleplaying. You hack-n-slash types can got play runescape if you dont want to roleplay in Planeshift.
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look, guys ...we have nothing against you (personally or otherwise) ...it\'s just that this world IS lacking a good true roleplaying game ...and, now that we have it, we won\'t give it up ...we\'re not trying to take over the world or anything ...just let our role playing game stay a role playing one ...pretty please :( ...and we promise we won\'t go and try change Ragnarok, Lineage or Diablo into a true RPG :]
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looks like we are not getting out of this... so how about a poll??
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Well the post was dying down until you ressurected it again... We can both have our wishes, but the system isn\'t changing now...Acraigs post showed that they are working very hard on making the NPCs more intelligent...
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Originally posted by Xanaroth
looks like we are not getting out of this... so how about a poll??
A poll would be useless as nobody cares about the majorities opinion. The devs want to make a roleplay focused game, so the devs are going to make a roleplay focused game. Complaints be damned. :)
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look. its easy. Planeshift is open source. Sooner or later someone will make a hack n slay version, why not? Like that you have the choice. Thats the thing i love about open source
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Originally posted by Asraniel
look. its easy. Planeshift is open source. Sooner or later someone will make a hack n slay version, why not? Like that you have the choice. Thats the thing i love about open source
word.
not sure if someone will actually do that step, but if someone will, i wouldn\'t mind - on the contrary, i think it would improve the 3D open-source MMORPG situation even further ...choice is always good :D
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An interesting approach to the typing-vs-fixed-menu problem that I\'ve seen (at least once) is that all NPCs respond to standard questions (look, name, job). From there, additional words that they respond to are *mentioned* by them in conversation.
The downside is that this really constrains the dialogue writers. Also, under the surface it *is* a menu-driven situation - you just have to guess what the relevant words are.
NPCs could also respond to other words - say if NPC A said to \"ask NPC B about cheese\", asking NPC A about cheese would produce some meaningful answer. Perhaps some compromise could be worked out between the menu and keyword systems - a menu of fairly \"regular\" choices (e.g. talking to a guard about local crime) and then keyword questions for more elaborate conversation.
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in any case i believe the devs will make an excelent NPC AI ...i mean, you can download free irc bots that have AI that good that in most cases you can\'t even tell it\'s a bot when talking to it. ...i guess we\'ll just have to wait and see how far it\'ll be in the CB
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I think a compromise is needed. Im to tired and hung over to suggest one right now though.
If you want to play MUD\'s then im sure you can go find some dos based lan cafe, where they\'ll serve your drinks in a goblet and you pay for the services in gold pieces then go home via horse and cart. Hint..hint.
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Originally posted by Cirque
I think a compromise is needed. Im to tired and hung over to suggest one right now though.
If you want to play MUD\'s then im sure you can go find some dos based lan cafe, where they\'ll serve your drinks in a goblet and you pay for the services in gold pieces then go home via horse and cart. Hint..hint.
and i\'m sure hack\'n\'slash-ers can go to some penny-arcade and play some whack-a-mole ;) ...it\'s no use insulting anyone.
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(http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7258/7.GIF)
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I think a poll is a great idea. Although yes it\'s ultimately the devs who will have the last say, they should try and respect the views of the Planeshift community. Surely you want PS to be popular, because then it has a more lively and productive community, which ultimately makes it a better game in the long-run (it bein open-source n all). So doesn\'t it make sense to find out what the majority want and go with that. It seems a bit stupid to customise this part of the game for die-hard typing fans (who just cant get enough of those little pale keys), when it pisses everyone else off :)
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im not a roleplayer and i like this system. i like it because it makes you have to think about what you want to say. the other way,you dont have to know what you need to get it. you just choose one of the options. if its the wrong one to get anything, then you just choose the next one after you are done talking to him and started talking to him again. with this typeing way, you actually have to know what you want, so that you dont just randomly go asking npc\'s stuff not knowing what they are talking about.
[edit] note my name... tauren=warcraft=not roleplay:)[/edit]
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Unless you can have a smart AI that can recognize the semantics of sentences well enough to match the quest, menus are the better option.
Nothing can be more frustrating that trying to get an NPC to talk to you when you get a word or two wrong. In EQ they use brackets to highlight words you can use to ask about the quest, but it\'s not conveiniet.
A better method to do is to use smart and dynamic menus.
For example, you might go to an NPC, and he\'ll only talk about a quest when you meet some criteria (level, race, skill, alignment, item you have in your inventory..etc).
Imagine the following:
Fextina: Hello!
Boortak: Oh Thor son of Odin, what have I done to deserve this?
(NPC then performs some crying animation, then looks at Fextina)
Boortak: What do you want stranger? You better leave me alone!
[1] What\'s wrong, Boortak?
[2] Okay, I\'ll leave you along, bye!
Then the quest/story goes on. I don\'t think menus will take out any of the role playing experience. If they\'re done in a smart and dynamic manner, they can in fact enhance the experience.
My two cents.
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i dislike menu-conversations a lot, because of a simple reason: people fast-click their way through the conversation without reading the full story and in some cases even their own sentences.
and, fextina, as you said yourself: *unless* we have a smart AI to recognise the right sentences ...what makes you think it\'s impossible for the devs to make one?!?
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Obviously they fast click through the menus because they choose to.
You say what you dislike, then use other peoples situations and or circumstances as an example. If you have to conform with what other people do then I can understand why you would say that.
Im more than willing to give an example of the above applied to another situation.
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Because developing a _good_ AI system that accept different sentences that ultimately mean the same thing is very hard to do.
Human language is a very complex beast. What you almost have (like EQ) is simple if-then conditions, and users will use \"Who/What/Why/How + keyword\" to get the NPC talking.
Some people think menu sysetms take away from the roleplaying part of the game. The truth is, unless you\'ll have NPCs that can talk like humans, it\'s going to be that way. The discussion here is on form. You can use text and guess, or you can choose an item from a menu.
I favor the latter.
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english langage is actually pretty simple ...and the AI doesn\'t actually need to understand all of it ...just understand sentences - you can understand someone speaking a totally foreign language even if you\'re not good at it, right?
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Originally posted by Cirque
Obviously they fast click through the menus because they choose to.
You say what you dislike, then use other peoples situations and or circumstances as an example. If you have to conform with what other people do then I can understand why you would say that.
Im more than willing to give an example of the above applied to another situation.
This is true. If you didn\'t like the text would you want to have to use it to comunicate with the npcs?
I think they should have both and you can chose on the fly. That way you can ise menu if you get stuck or if you really want to you can just speed click. It wont help you to speed click however beacuse then you dont know what to do to complete the quest.
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For those of you that do remember Zork, you should remember that it had a system that parsed the input line into a sequence of tokens that were then matched to an expected set of commands. for instance: \"go to the west\" would equate to the same thing as \"go west\", \"pick up the damn screwdriver\" would be the same as \"get the screwdriver\" and \"get screwdriver\"
IIRC how it worked was that it first removed all unnecessary verbiage such as \"the\" and \"it\" and broke it down to mostly verbs and nouns. It then converted synonyms to a single word to make it easier to find the action to take. for instance \"toss\", \"chuck\", \"hurl\", and \"fling\" all were converted to \"throw\". By using something similar to this you can get quite good results.
One example of how a parser might work for a game can be read at the following website http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/commpars.htm
If you took the suggestion from that page to create an object-oriented parser for an input line that would be quite interesting.
If you further added some kind of soundex breakdown of the parsed line you could catch some of the common misspellings that people make and increase the accuracy of the server to recognie what people are saying. If you don\'t know what soundex is then check out http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/numbers/soundex.html for a good description of it\'s uses. I would expect the soundex to only be used as a last resort if it wasn\'t caught by normal matching.
For the point-n-click crowd, it would be easy enough to populate a list of automatic reponses to a specific NPC and cache it on the client\'s end for those that choose to have a point-n-click experience. The role-players could turn off the point-n-click functionality whenever they want to (or Turn it on if it defaults to being off).
No matter which way Planeshift goes I think that it will be pretty cool :)
p.s. I do hope that the developers put into place some kind of logging of discussions with NPCs so that they can fine tune the conversations as well as the soundex method to catch common misspellings and sound-alike words. That would be truly amazing to see!
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Yeah, Planeshift will have a good system like that. Its not like it will be that the NPCs can never understand you, thats no problem. The point these non-rpers are trying to make is that having the whole conversation by typing in your own sentances should be eliminated and replaced with a boring option click system.
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Sorry for digging out this old topic, but I guess this still is an issue.
I dont mind that NPCs currently say $@! instead of \"you\", which seems to be minor bug anyway, but the current dialogue system is really painful.
I see the roleplaying aspects of it, but its just too complicated and exhausting. You will find a normal Poin & Click like Dialogue system in almost every MMORPG today, no matter if its more focused on RP than on gaming or not. I know that Planeshift is going to be different in several ways, and I like and appreciate that, but some things - like the dialogue system - would better be \"copied\" from the majority.
Don\'t forget that a better dialogue system would make the game a lot friendlier for newcomers too, and before you start implementing thousands of new keywords, a normal dialogue system would save time longterms.
However the devs will decide, keep up the good work!
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Effectivley, your trying to build an AI that will pass the Turing test, soemthing hich decades of computer scientists having been unable to do.
However, NPCs in planeshift don\'t even have to come close.
A better parsing system needs to be developed. any words that the ai doesn\'t know will be removed, and any nouns/words left should be included in the \"I don\'t understand\" remark.
\"Go give this hammer to guildmaster bob\"
becomes:
Go * * hammer * * *
Go is a know verb, therefor, the ai reapeats the understandable parts of the sentance back o you:
\"Go do what with the hammer?\"
Not a task to be taken lightly. I believe it is a ridiculous amount of work, but with an English major, you could do it. too bad my major is Computer Science :)
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well, before doing this for each and every dialogue, a menu based communication would be better and saved time.
Those who are interested, will still read what NPCs say. Those who are not that patient every time, feel kinda forced to something they dont want the way it is now.
I am not a roleplayer, still im interested in the storys the NPCs tell me, but not in every single one. And by now I havent even managed to get a single quest, because its seems something is broken (words get randomly replaced by $@! ). And without quests, all I can do is running around and enjoy the view, basically.
A menu based system would
a) make the game far more newcomer friendly
b) save time for the developers (im pretty sure about that), they could invest in some other parts of PS
c) it would not stop roleplayers and interested ones from fully reading what the NPCs say. I mean, this system works in other MMORPGs too, even on the RP only servers.
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The dialog system first searches for groups of words that it knows (e.g. \"sword\", \"give me\" ) and ignores everything unknown. Synonyms are recognized and translated. Then it compares this simplified sentence with sentences it has in its database. If it fails, it tries to generalize parts of the sentence and tries to find the generalized sentences e.g. when you type \"where can I buy mace\" it could generalize that to \"where can I buy weapon\" and recognize that. The problem is probably that the database is lacking enough generalizations and synonyms etc. or quests are bugged. Everything written by players that was not understood is saved into database, but I don\'t know if anybody is reviewing these records.
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NPC: We\'re having a serrious problem in the mines.
Player: What sort of problem?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What is the problem?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: what problem?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What\'s wrong with the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What problem are you having with the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Problem in mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What is the problem in the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: The mines. What is the f%$&*# problem in your god #$&* mines?
NPC: You kiss your mother with that mouth?
Player: What kind of serrious problem are you having in the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: How serrious?
NPC: Oh, it\'s really bad. The workers refuse to go in because they\'ve heard rumors that the mine is cursed.
Player: What kind of curse?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Do you need more workers?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: How do you break the curse?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Who started these rumors?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What about the curse?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Where are the workers now?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: You\'ll understand when I shove my axe up your butt!!!!
NPC: I would be so greatful if you would retrieve the sacred pick-axe for me.
Player: I don\'t understand!
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A text-based-system will never be as precice as a menu.
The thing i dislike most is that i do not even know if it is worth the time trying dozens of possibilities.
Try to improve the actual system, if you will manage to do that it will be great. Just let me see it when a NCS does not have anything more to tell me. thx :)
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I think we should reflect on how you dialogue with NPCs in everquest. they talk and talk, but put vital information that you should repeat; or put into your sentance/question in brackets.
an Example:
Player: hello
NPC: hello, i am name name. i am looking for my [lost book]
Player: \"lost book?\" or \"what lost book?\" or simply \"lost book\"
NPC: Yes, i was fishing one day at the [docks] and i did not notice it was gone until i got home.
Player: What docks?
NPC: the docks near the inn, will you help me [retrieve my book]?
Player: Yes, i will retrieve your book.
NPC: Thank you, I will look forward to seeing you and my book again very soon.
_____________________________
A nice compromise between the people that want to click, and the administration that wants to keep typable dialogue am i right? As well as clearing up such unneccesary confusion.
(edit) and while we\'re on the subject, i believe you should add a quickbutton to greet an NPC and begin dialogue, a hail, or greet button. just a neat little idea :)
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Originally posted by hook
english langage is actually pretty simple ...and the AI doesn\'t actually need to understand all of it ...just understand sentences - you can understand someone speaking a totally foreign language even if you\'re not good at it, right?
Don\'t be too optimistic. Technically English is one of the easier languages, but you can say the same thing on tons of ways.
Ex: the Blacksmith/Gold Ore quest:
- Here is your ore.
- Is this enough ore ?
- I give you the ore.
- I have it.
- I mined it.
Those 5 sentences (I skipped variations of them by different wording) are completely different, in sense and wording, but all leads to the same: giving the ore to the smith. (If I thought more than a single minute over it, I\'m sure I easyly could create 10-12 of them, without duplicates in the sense. - And this is just a cheap give-ore-to-smith-task.)
The fast-click-through-problem can be reduced a lot if you don\'t give the reader the 50 pages epic story with a yes/no at the end, but a way to choose details to read by itself. Whith a good choose on the detail hirarchy the user didn\'t get bored on details which aren\'t interesting (to the user).
Greetings
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Originally posted by hook
english langage is actually pretty simple ...and the AI doesn\'t actually need to understand all of it ...just understand sentences - you can understand someone speaking a totally foreign language even if you\'re not good at it, right?
actually, the english language is one of the HARDEST languages to learn. The Latin-based languages are one of the easiest ones to learn. and I mean languages like Spanish, French, etc... English is the most widely used languages in business today, but it doesn\'t mean it\'s the easiest one to learn
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i don\'t know if french is easier then english...
it\'s got gender for things...
i find english easier then a lot of other european languages...
i am not saying it\'s better....just easier
actually a lot asian languages have much easier and stable grammar then european... ok...that\'s whole different story though
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Well, implementing a neat multiple-choice dialogue system will be 10 times faster than getting this text based thing to work at least averagely precise + you have much more work on implementing new quests and so on.
And I guess it is impossible to make it work newbie friendly enough, so not half of the new players wont be scared away by it.
TEXT BASED
+ more realistic
+ RP friendlier
- complicated
- time intensive
- newbie scaring
- will never work totally precise
- harder to implement, more work in long terms when adding new quests and stuff
MULTIPLE CHOICE
+ Simpler
+ newbie friendly
+ easier to implement. less work in long terms
+ cant really work imprecise
+ time saving
- not so much RP feeling
well, do the Cost/use calculation ;)
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@grand_diablo
you also can out \"uses up a lot of CPU-Time\" to the negative points of text based list.
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you know what would help the text based conversation....a conversation log.... each quest should have ... the exect conversation concerning a quest... Now as far as i know each quest has only a short description....
either expend descriptions of quests...or just log the conversations concerning the quest... so if i don\'t play a game for a while i am able to come back and refresh my memory.
let\'s say the scribe quest...at the temple... after i go to the library the first time...the guy working there...Jayose, i think... tells me to tell the priest that the price has doubled... now if i stop playing at this point... and come back in week... i might not be able to remember what Jayose said...with a log..i could go through quest related conversations...and continue where i stopped.
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Originally posted by digganob
NPC: We\'re having a serrious problem in the mines.
Player: What sort of problem?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What is the problem?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: what problem?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What\'s wrong with the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What problem are you having with the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Problem in mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What is the problem in the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: The mines. What is the f%$&*# problem in your god #$&* mines?
NPC: You kiss your mother with that mouth?
Player: What kind of serrious problem are you having in the mines?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: How serrious?
NPC: Oh, it\'s really bad. The workers refuse to go in because they\'ve heard rumors that the mine is cursed.
Player: What kind of curse?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Do you need more workers?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: How do you break the curse?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Who started these rumors?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: What about the curse?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: Where are the workers now?
NPC: I don\'t understand.
Player: You\'ll understand when I shove my axe up your butt!!!!
NPC: I would be so greatful if you would retrieve the sacred pick-axe for me.
Player: I don\'t understand!
This is perhap the best example of how scary a text based quest can be.
I\'m not a so good english speaker, and I\'m unable to complete the holy script quest, no matter what I say to the priest, I\'m unable to find the rigth combo of words.
Tell me where is the role playing aspect in it.
The only thing that I\'m figure out from the priest was that him is old and have old ears.
Sorry my bad english.
Salu2
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Anyone else feel like they\'re on the phone with some big corporation. I can\'t imagine anyone wanting to talk to a machine like that. I always preferred the \"press 1 for such and such\" menu\'s before they added this voice activation system that never understands you (especially when you have a speech impedement). I pray to god that they give up this fancy idea of an inteligent AI that responds to sentences and phrases - it will never work and if it does I will find the game that doesn\'t use it! I love this game because it shows so much promise, but if they are afraid to use what works they will not get verry far. If nothing else they should have a generic question like \"What do you want?\" that will always give a list of commands. So far all this does is make the NPC insult my ability to speak. FEW people really like typing all the time, but if you do you can always play one of those text only games. (There is an idea - a text only MMO. Someone can incorporate that for those people, but I\'ll stick with the graphics.)
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I agree with those of you who think NPC\'s are almost impossible to communicate with. However a fun quest is something of an oxymoron, and the fun part is never when you are communicating with NPC\'s.
So enjoy your pain! You can tell newbies, \" I remember when quests were completely broken and the NPC\'s could not understand simple two word questions!\"
Perhaps on your third \"I don\'t understand\" response the NPC could respond with a \"are you trying to ask me about the mines?\" Then you could follow with a yes or no answer and then get the next part of the quest.
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If we could eventually create something akin to this in our game...
http://alice.pandorabots.com/
Or an even better one
http://www.jabberwacky.com/
And everybody keep in mind this game is gonna be done a long time in the future, so in a few years AI technology will be better and who knows what the standard will be!
People never believed they could go to the moon.. See how wrong they were.
Edit:
Holy c**p. http://www.jabberwacky.com/j2conversations
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heh. about that jabberwacky thing. it\'s not a bot at all, its just a chat interface tricking people into talking to other people. if you try using it, you\'ll see that the \"bot\" seems to think you are also a bot. :D
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Really? I don\'t think so it\'s been awarded as most human chat bot in the world, won the Loebner prize..
Actually I told George I was human and he said he was human too lol
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I take it back, it\'s just a very human-like bot. It made me very paranoid for a while..
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Hahaha :P
Yes it does that..
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Originally posted by Lutz
actually, the english language is one of the HARDEST languages to learn. The Latin-based languages are one of the easiest ones to learn. and I mean languages like Spanish, French, etc... English is the most widely used languages in business today, but it doesn\'t mean it\'s the easiest one to learn
Hmm, I dunno. I speak english, german, french, slovene (of course) and had both latin and ancient greek.
From all those languages I\'d say english and (maybe) german are the easiest. For a very simple reason: the grammar is not as
It\'s not only as already mentioned that the difficulty with genders, but the real mother are the cases - latin has 6 (counting vocative). And getting anything with cases to work with AI is really hard - just compare an english spellchecker with a slovene one (slovene has 6 cases, 3 genders, 3 numbers, etc. etc.).
I do agree though that any language (english including) can get complicated if you take into account literaly everything.