slicker NPC communication

[Masato]

@grand_diablo
you also can out \"uses up a lot of CPU-Time\" to the negative points of text based list.

[Kaseijin]

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.

[Aldaron]

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

[jhessin]

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.)

[derwoodly]

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.

[Neryam]

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

[odd2k]

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.

[Neryam]

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

[odd2k]

I take it back, it\'s just a very human-like bot. It made me very paranoid for a while..

[Neryam]

Hahaha
Yes it does that..

[hook]

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.