the quest

[Peeeevs]

yeah or try to make it so when one char is talking to the npc  it blocks all other chat requests to it

[Vengeance]

Talad has fixed this now in MB.  The NPC will not get confused by multiple people talking to it now.

[Peeeevs]

w007 for Talad w00t w00t w00t !!!!!!

[Rulzern]

2 words: Dagger fall

check out the dialogue system there, very comfortable

[John McFo]

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 They should create a sequel to it, the graphics are kinda out of date...

[Rulzern]

Umm, they made a sequel, morrowind :p

[Skizzik]

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...  

[John McFo]

Uhm....
Kinda
 :rolleyes:

[Midivar]

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.

[Rulzern]

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.

[macellarius]

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

[kyp14]

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
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

[Xalthar]

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 )

[elminster]

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.

[Xalthar]

I agree 100% with you on that, Elminster...