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EverQuest Next: Building a Better AI
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Storybricks team is working hand-in-hand with the EverQuest Next team to design the AI that will control the game when it is released. Recently, they produced an in-house interview to talk more about what Storybricks is and how it came about. It's a fascinating interview that gives a lot of insight into the innovative process.
Recently we have heard a lot about what the future of Storybricks may bring to the gaming industry. But something we have not heard much of is the company’s beginnings. What led to the creation of Storybricks?
The company had a rather simple beginning. We came together because we wanted to see an improvement in games. Rodolfo Rosini, the CEO, is an avid MMO player with a tech background and was disappointed after he’d defeat raid bosses and none of the NPCs in town recognized his achievement. Stéphane Bura brought his ability as game designer and AI expert, eager to bring new stories to a new medium. Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green has over a decade of MMO development experience and a frustration with the stagnation of MMO development. There are many more talented people that have joined our company as well.
Read the full Storybricks on the EQ Nexus site.
Comments
We started with a very wide and fuzzy statement about the “illusion of life” that came from an old book about Disney Animation. It turned out that we saw similarities between the state of computer animation pre-Walt Disney and the games industry today.
Oh dear .. they just had to bring a very sensitive topic up again. Yay StoryBricks. (4th question)
The problem is that you have to script it manually and because of that all these different possibilities have to collapse to avoid combinatorial explosion. And the outcome of that script is usually not saved anywhere so it can’t affect future relationships.
Decisions don't matter
Here's hoping SOE grabs the data to make their own scripts meaningful longterm, such as with Rally Calls, quests, dungeon hacks. The saving grace is "Letting developers (and NPCs) access this data can alter the gameplay experience in new ways.". Hopefully SOE takes advantage of that with the themepark aspects of EQN.Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Great way to quote stuff out of context. Especially the second (marked it italic) quote. I really recommend to anyone to read the original article and not jump to conclusions based on comments here !
You do realize that your second quote is about traditional AI and not StoryBricks, ya? Reading comprehension fail, that.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Unless STO and NWO can have nonspecific outcomes, based on what the NPC wants, then probably not.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I hope EQ:N makes it available to the players as well.
They should have a solid foundation with the system that was in SWG to build upon, no?
There was a part of the article that I think a lot of people didn't pick up on, especially with the recent MMORPG Italia interview about creating more than buildings. Take it for what its worth but I think you can where they are going with this. They are a great team to work with and I had a good time with the interview process.
From what I have seen of Storybricks, it could very easily be used in player generated content. Was that one of the goals during its development? What limits, if any, would gamers, with no programming knowledge, have using Storybricks in their player made content?
As mentioned above, the original version of Storybricks was developed as a way to help players tell their own stories. We wanted to make the interface easy and fun to use, so that it did not require deep programming knowledge.
Regarding EQN, you will have to wait to see what aspects of our original design are present in EverQuest Next and how they will be integrated.
EverQuest Nexus - http://www.eqnexus.com
Head of Social Media and part time writer/interviewer.
[mod edit]
personally I thought it was a nice article, still not revealing much more then we already know but I can certainly see the potential and am really looking forward to the reveal to see if they have done what I hope they have.
Well it is very close to what the the original Neverwinters Night offered. The NPC does not react based on its needs, but reacts based on what you say to the NPC, and the ability to remember your interaction with that NPC is saved player character side.
You have a preset amount of conversation routes: (could be any number of choices even 1000 if the person devising the conversation has the skill and the time)
1. greet (NPC x)
2. Insult (NPC x)
3. question (NPC x)
4. coversation (NPC x)
Each one of these conversation starters can branch off into 100s of new branches with different responses and outcomes.
After each response by the NPC a (skin or Invisable item, basicly code) is given to the Player Character. Now evertime that player character interacts with that NPC, he will treat that player character different based on the skin that player character holds. Thus each interaction will yield a new conversation, that can range from joy, to anger, to assult, even to what could be seen as greed, or love.
Its all just code... an NPCs needs are programed in... NPCx has to be at location y at z time, NPCx wants to keep his health at no less then 50%, will flee to locaton t when health drops below 50% (NPC wants to live)
This thought that NPCs in Storybricks will have some new amazing AI is silly.... This technology has been around now for 20 years, its just never been used because it is very time consuming to program in on a large scale.
Now to me it seems what Storybricks is doing , is making it easy to program complex conversation quickly, allowing for more eloborate NPC interactions on a large scale.
I care less about NPCs interactions, and more about actual mob stratages, how will greed, or love, play a part in combat, with your every day, run of the mill, combat encounters?
How many ways will they be able to script mobs to act in combat, that will make it exciting and new for players?
1. if ranged seek greatest distance and use ranged abilitys, if ranged is not an option use sword.
2. Attack x character type ( greastest damage, most heals, lowest HP, ect... )
It's all been done before, though most AAA MMOs do not bother with eloborate mob scripts because it flustrates the average player. The average player does not want to chase a wounded goblin all over the map, or get angery when a ranged mob manages to kite the player.
Will they add the ability for mobs to fear players based on how many of that mob type they killed, or if they made a deal with their leader? not to likely, because what player wants to go out hunting only to find all the mobs fleeing from him? or mobs hunting him down because they hate him? Some players would like this, but your average player would not!
I am not saying that this system is not an improvement on Themepark MMOs, because i am sure it will be, to some degree... I just don't understand how folks get so carried away to assume combat will change much... It is not that they can't change combat to make it tougher, I just feel they wont, to keep the average hack and slasher happy, while he tromps around killing everything in site!!!!!