Advanced NPC Creation, Part 3: NPC Actions

Jim Fisher — Mon, 02 Jul 2001 05:00:00 GMT

Verb subroutines do it all. They enforce gravity; they differentiate between light and darkness; they decide where a character can travel. These little routines implement the laws of physics in our game world and govern what can and cannot be done. Yet for some reason, historically they only affect the player character. The game world laws that restrict the player do not bind NPCs. The following code exemplifies:

Advanced NPC Creation, Part 2c: More Advanced Knowledge and Conversation

Jim Fisher — Tue, 05 Jun 2001 05:00:00 GMT

In the previous section we discussed various methods of sharing knowledge between characters and customizing the dialog to match a character. This section will cover additional techniques, such as topics that change content.

Morphing Topics

A common practice when developing NPCs is to have the character say random things at various points in the game. Embedded somewhere deep in whatever daemon controls the NPC can be a couple of lines of code that c

Advanced NPC Creation, Part 2b: Advanced Knowledge and Conversation

Jim Fisher — Sat, 05 May 2001 05:00:00 GMT

In the previous section we discussed various methods for developing NPC conversation and reviewed techniques for implementing the most widely used of these. In this section we will expand upon those methods with much more powerful techniques and begin to develop reusable classes for NPCs in the process.

Uniting Knowledge and Information

In the previous example, a character's knowledge of something and his ability to talk about it are not as tightly rel

Advanced NPC Creation, Part 2a: Basic Knowledge and Conversation

Jim Fisher — Thu, 19 Apr 2001 05:00:00 GMT

As developers, we can put forth a great deal of effort while trying to make an NPC appear believable. We can make the character walk around randomly. We can make him steal items that are lying around. We can even program the character to scribble graffiti on walls at significant locations. It's true, a character can be designed to do just about anything imaginable, but there is one aspect of NPC design that will, above all others, make or break the believability of an NPC: conversation.

Advanced NPC Creation, part 1: Pronouns on Steroids

Jim Fisher — Thu, 12 Apr 2001 05:00:00 GMT

In this segment of the Advanced NPCs series, we discuss techniques for adapting the descriptions you write for use with multiple NPCs and likewise adding subtle variations to make your narrative flow.

Common Print Rules

Sometimes writing reusable code is a hassle. This is especially true in the case of pronouns. When creating a simple NPC, one may be tempted to hard code gender phrasing into text. Sentences like

The waiter

Advanced NPC Creation: Introduction

Jim Fisher — Thu, 15 Mar 2001 05:00:00 GMT