A bit of life
by Daniel Buckmaster · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 02/09/2007 (1:12 pm) · 17 replies
I was just playing Morrowind, and I reached Vivec City for the first time. I was excited (well, as excited as I can be to be visiting a place in a computer game), but the 'city' turned out to be somewhat different from what I'd imagined.
I had a mental image of a city crowded with people, houses, guilds and cornerclubs crammed together, the place full of life and stuff to do.
However, the place actually looks rather like Giza, but without the tourists. Upon entering one of the giant obelisk-like buildings, I found about ten people, five of whom were guards.
Now, don't get me wrong, the place was pretty amazing. But it just wasn't a 'city'. Walking through the corridors, all I could hear was the 'click, click, click' from my boots. A very annoying sound, which I eventually muted. What few people were there didn't interact with me or each other in any way at all - they just stood there or walked around a little, and spoke a line at me if I came to close.
That gave me a little inspiration. How cool would it be to be able to go into a town square, and, instead of finding it deader than a morgue, have it full of people, life, and noise? NPCs conversing with each other, merchants calling out their wares, drunken yells from the pub. It would be so much more exhilerating of an experience, as well as more convincing and atmospheric.
This will probably become a pet project for me, whenever I get time. I want to develop a fantasy RPG sort of world, and ctually populate i with people. Conversations are actually spoken, so you can just stand beside two NPCs and listen in. Or an NPC can just stand beside you and listen in. People yell to get attention, and NPCs actually interact with each other. Put this in a sort of 1600s colonial/Pirates of the Carribean setting, and I reckon it could be wicked fun.
I had a mental image of a city crowded with people, houses, guilds and cornerclubs crammed together, the place full of life and stuff to do.
However, the place actually looks rather like Giza, but without the tourists. Upon entering one of the giant obelisk-like buildings, I found about ten people, five of whom were guards.
Now, don't get me wrong, the place was pretty amazing. But it just wasn't a 'city'. Walking through the corridors, all I could hear was the 'click, click, click' from my boots. A very annoying sound, which I eventually muted. What few people were there didn't interact with me or each other in any way at all - they just stood there or walked around a little, and spoke a line at me if I came to close.
That gave me a little inspiration. How cool would it be to be able to go into a town square, and, instead of finding it deader than a morgue, have it full of people, life, and noise? NPCs conversing with each other, merchants calling out their wares, drunken yells from the pub. It would be so much more exhilerating of an experience, as well as more convincing and atmospheric.
This will probably become a pet project for me, whenever I get time. I want to develop a fantasy RPG sort of world, and ctually populate i with people. Conversations are actually spoken, so you can just stand beside two NPCs and listen in. Or an NPC can just stand beside you and listen in. People yell to get attention, and NPCs actually interact with each other. Put this in a sort of 1600s colonial/Pirates of the Carribean setting, and I reckon it could be wicked fun.
About the author
Studying mechatronic engineering and computer science at the University of Sydney. Game development is probably my most time-consuming hobby!
#2
but speaking of crowded spaces,
the music lounge has two servers up right now, each with about 150 people logged in! this is super exciting for us, as it's the most users we've ever had. The lounge is built on TGE.
couple screenies:
02/09/2007 (1:38 pm)
Mostly off topic and a shameless plug,but speaking of crowded spaces,
the music lounge has two servers up right now, each with about 150 people logged in! this is super exciting for us, as it's the most users we've ever had. The lounge is built on TGE.
couple screenies:
#3
But it is a noble cause, and I look forward to seeing your quest unfold.
I loved how Vivec looked, but it was so big it was just a pain to get anywhere. My favorite city has to be Balmora.
02/09/2007 (9:47 pm)
Have you played Oblivion? That is by no means fixed, but it is somewhat better (the main problem is that conversations are limited, as are actions the NPC's perform...there are a few people who do unique things, but space is still a limitation unfortunately for such a huge game).But it is a noble cause, and I look forward to seeing your quest unfold.
I loved how Vivec looked, but it was so big it was just a pain to get anywhere. My favorite city has to be Balmora.
#4
02/09/2007 (10:41 pm)
Quote:I loved how Vivec looked, but it was so big it was just a pain to get anywhere. My favorite city has to be Balmora.I wouldn't mind its size, if the place was filled up a little more. Those ramparts on the outside would be perfect for travelling merchants to set up stalls...
Quote:Have you played Oblivion? That is by no means fixed, but it is somewhat better (the main problem is that conversations are limited, as are actions the NPC's perform...there are a few people who do unique things, but space is still a limitation unfortunately for such a huge game).I haven't, actually, but it sounds like I should check it out.
Quote:Flyff (Fly For Fun) is a game I was just playing the other day which has some madly active towns - about 2/3 players and 1/3 NPCs, you can only tell which is which by the color of their names.Sounds good. What do the places sound like? I'm envisioning full-voice conversations, etc., so you can hear the babble all around you. It's a major part of the experience, for me - if the place is full of people, but there's no sound, it's like being at a funeral or something.
#5
I think it would be cool (and good practice) to make just a town center or something, and populate it with people with their own needs and motives, and interactions with others. Supposedly when they were making Oblivion, they were testing the AI system and they told this NPC to sweep. But they didn't give him a broom, they only gave one to some other guy. The guy who was supposed to be sweeping...get this...KILLED the guy and took it so he could sweep.
Now, I didn't see to many instances of anything like this while I was playing the final game (though the fact that if you disarm an enemy and take his weapon, he will run away until he finds another one is pretty neat). But it outlines the possibility of what could be done with AI, so if you made a small area, you could concentrate more on the AI than on making the game huge. Because that's going to be the downside of having more realistic exchanges, the fact that you would need separate sound files for each conversation, etc.
I was actually considering writing a short backstory for every NPC in the game I'm planning on making (well, the short one before I make the main one). I figured if I did that, it could affect how the player interacts with them, even if they don't know the NPC's story themself.
02/10/2007 (10:52 am)
Yeah, I know what you mean there. I have noticed the same, but even more in games like Final Fantasy, there may be many people, but they only interact with you when you do with them. And at that point you can't even talk about what you want to with them. At least Morrowind and Oblivion give you that.I think it would be cool (and good practice) to make just a town center or something, and populate it with people with their own needs and motives, and interactions with others. Supposedly when they were making Oblivion, they were testing the AI system and they told this NPC to sweep. But they didn't give him a broom, they only gave one to some other guy. The guy who was supposed to be sweeping...get this...KILLED the guy and took it so he could sweep.
Now, I didn't see to many instances of anything like this while I was playing the final game (though the fact that if you disarm an enemy and take his weapon, he will run away until he finds another one is pretty neat). But it outlines the possibility of what could be done with AI, so if you made a small area, you could concentrate more on the AI than on making the game huge. Because that's going to be the downside of having more realistic exchanges, the fact that you would need separate sound files for each conversation, etc.
I was actually considering writing a short backstory for every NPC in the game I'm planning on making (well, the short one before I make the main one). I figured if I did that, it could affect how the player interacts with them, even if they don't know the NPC's story themself.
#6
02/10/2007 (11:25 am)
Have you ever played The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of time, there is a Town Square (Right before you the castle) that sounds like what you were envisioning
#7
The real chalenge, one that I think will be really fun, is having te ships come and go. Britannic and Indian trade ships will be stopping in all the time, because that's the town's function. They'll come here, buy food and stuff from local merchants, and go again. I'd also realy like to work out a schedule for them - have about fifteen ships going along the Britain-Indine trade route, and have them stop over regularly. Also, about another fifteen ships should make random stopovers. Then there are the Qinan junk merchants, who will all make random visits.
The main point of the game, at this stage of planning, is just to do little jobs on the island (side-quests, you'd usually call them :P). But that will probably get a little boring, so I'd need to create one or more main story threads that you can persue.
02/10/2007 (11:24 pm)
Quote:Supposedly when they were making Oblivion, they were testing the AI system and they told this NPC to sweep. But they didn't give him a broom, they only gave one to some other guy. The guy who was supposed to be sweeping...get this...KILLED the guy and took it so he could sweep.Now that's what I'm talking about! Except I'd like him to just go up and ask for the broom. And if the other guy's smart, he'll try and make a profit on it ;)
Quote:But it outlines the possibility of what could be done with AI, so if you made a small area, you could concentrate more on the AI than on making the game huge.I agree. My idea for the setting is a sort of alternate reality, but with similar events and places. So Britain still colonises things, Indine is rich in spices, Qinan traders sail in junks, etc. The game would take place on an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean (as most islands are :P) on the trade route between Britain and Indine. That's the reason the Britannit town grew there. On the island there's also a Qinan village, an extinct volcano, and a corsair hideout. But it's not that big.
The real chalenge, one that I think will be really fun, is having te ships come and go. Britannic and Indian trade ships will be stopping in all the time, because that's the town's function. They'll come here, buy food and stuff from local merchants, and go again. I'd also realy like to work out a schedule for them - have about fifteen ships going along the Britain-Indine trade route, and have them stop over regularly. Also, about another fifteen ships should make random stopovers. Then there are the Qinan junk merchants, who will all make random visits.
The main point of the game, at this stage of planning, is just to do little jobs on the island (side-quests, you'd usually call them :P). But that will probably get a little boring, so I'd need to create one or more main story threads that you can persue.
Quote:Because that's going to be the downside of having more realistic exchanges, the fact that you would need separate sound files for each conversation, etc.Yeah. That's going to be a LOT of sound files :P
Quote:Have you ever played The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of time, there is a Town Square (Right before you the castle) that sounds like what you were envisioningThe town square there was good - it had music, and at least a background ambience of noise, but none of that noise was actually 'real'. There were no interactions between the characters other than what the designers had programmed into them.
#8
02/21/2007 (7:47 am)
Thats going to be quite memory consuming. Causing lag when too many people are in the area, and be careful with multiple sound files as the general noise caused by a million and one convorsations all at the same time soon becomes more and more annoying, much more so that an the click click lcik of someones boots.
#9
02/21/2007 (11:08 am)
You only play sound files of people within a certain radius. And if I can stand around in an MMO with dozens of people interacting, I think lots of NPCs in a single player RPG will probably hold up, unless they'll all got some elaborate AI running.
#10
02/22/2007 (5:42 am)
And the sound radius, of course, depends on how loud they speak. So if you shout, everyone can hear you. Could be cool to have town cryers - instead of extremists who can't be bothered moving from their spot to spread the word about the revolution, he could climb on a roof and shout at everyone :) 
#11
02/22/2007 (7:14 pm)
Fable had the atmosphere of towns and people doing things. People would stop and talk if you paused a moment. Maybe have competing goals that are bound to interact.
#12
Also, unless you want all your NPCs to talk in repeated, trite expressions then you'll need some way of generating 'arbitrary' sentences... my imp, in WoW, complaining when I make him attack is funny the first few times but then you realise he only has a few things to say... and its worse than the click click click of shoes because it's less realistic.
While I wish it were possible and that you succeed, I doubt it will be possible anytime soon.
What would be feasible would be to have the characters speaking 'gibberish' (kind of like the Sims but better). You can eaven limit the language so that players will actually understand some words (like those shouted by a vendor) but if a player wants to actually eavesdrop of converse, it would need to drop back to a text and icons based interface which would allow for internationalisation and far more diversity of conversations in less space.
- Brian.
04/22/2007 (5:31 pm)
As has been pointed out, you'll need a lot of sound files especially if you take into account that there will be different voices saying different things. Then you'll want to (maybe?) support different languages so that the French, German, Chinese and Spanish speakers of the world can buy your game.Also, unless you want all your NPCs to talk in repeated, trite expressions then you'll need some way of generating 'arbitrary' sentences... my imp, in WoW, complaining when I make him attack is funny the first few times but then you realise he only has a few things to say... and its worse than the click click click of shoes because it's less realistic.
While I wish it were possible and that you succeed, I doubt it will be possible anytime soon.
What would be feasible would be to have the characters speaking 'gibberish' (kind of like the Sims but better). You can eaven limit the language so that players will actually understand some words (like those shouted by a vendor) but if a player wants to actually eavesdrop of converse, it would need to drop back to a text and icons based interface which would allow for internationalisation and far more diversity of conversations in less space.
- Brian.
#13
On the other hand, it would be freakin' cool if it did. With some sort of AI engine behind the conversations, like those MSN bots, you could have some really dynamic conversations happening. What I'd really love to hear, if that approach were taken, would be an NPC conversation. :D
04/23/2007 (9:31 am)
Quote:While I wish it were possible and that you succeed, I doubt it will be possible anytime soon.Definately true...
Quote:Also, unless you want all your NPCs to talk in repeated, trite expressions then you'll need some way of generating 'arbitrary' sentences... my imp, in WoW, complaining when I make him attack is funny the first few times but then you realise he only has a few things to say... and its worse than the click click click of shoes because it's less realistic.Or, as has been said, have a shedload of sound files. I heard that Fable had something like 200,000 lines. Doing something like text-to-speech would be cool, but going back to Fable, I heard that they tried it and it didn't work for them.
On the other hand, it would be freakin' cool if it did. With some sort of AI engine behind the conversations, like those MSN bots, you could have some really dynamic conversations happening. What I'd really love to hear, if that approach were taken, would be an NPC conversation. :D
Quote:What would be feasible would be to have the characters speaking 'gibberish' (kind of like the Sims but better). You can eaven limit the language so that players will actually understand some words (like those shouted by a vendor) but if a player wants to actually eavesdrop of converse, it would need to drop back to a text and icons based interface which would allow for internationalisation and far more diversity of conversations in less space.That's a pretty cool idea. Sort of a conversation LOD. I think, though, that going too far with it would spoil the atmosphere. In my dream (haha.) the game had a pretty 'realistic' feel, whereas the Sims is really cartoony. But it's true, sounds heard at range should be less intelligible. Which, again, means an automated procedure that garbles sound files or a shedload more files.
Quote:Then you'll want to (maybe?) support different languages so that the French, German, Chinese and Spanish speakers of the world can buy your game.My original idea for an island RPG was to set it in a sort of alternate-reality colonial period. So one settlement on the island is British-equivalent, and the other is Chinese-equivalent. Then, NPCs speak in their own language, and signs and posters and stuff will be in either language. It's twice as much work, and it would limit the market, of course, but China's a pretty big market ;)
#14
If it's a project you really want to do I'd suggest starting off with text speech, and if you can get a solid base where they come up with unique speechs on their own later on working on getting that to text to speech would be a little easier.
Also I think for having a crowded market type area or whatever, the best thing would be to have a looping audio in the background of the sounds of a crowd, you know where you go into any big public area where lots of people are talking it always has that same sound to it, and then only have the people your very close to stand out over that background sound. That way it would sound like everyone was actually having their conversations out loud when really they only were when you were close to them.
It's a fascinating idea and one I've thought of plenty of times too. My thoughts come more from all the mmorpgs I've played and feeling like it was a little silly that every city had 90% of the AI standing in the same spot all day all night never changing. I know this is to make it easier for the players to find the venders they want but it makes it a little boring and unrealistic. Even just having the venders go home after a certain time at night and come back in the morning would be a nice improvement.
04/23/2007 (11:06 am)
For truely original conversations I don't think there'd be any way other then text to speech, but even that will still take a lot of space for files because to get different tones that match you'd want to save the different words/parts of words in different tones, different voices etc. I don't think that's impossible but that would be a ton of work just to get that one part working correctly.If it's a project you really want to do I'd suggest starting off with text speech, and if you can get a solid base where they come up with unique speechs on their own later on working on getting that to text to speech would be a little easier.
Also I think for having a crowded market type area or whatever, the best thing would be to have a looping audio in the background of the sounds of a crowd, you know where you go into any big public area where lots of people are talking it always has that same sound to it, and then only have the people your very close to stand out over that background sound. That way it would sound like everyone was actually having their conversations out loud when really they only were when you were close to them.
It's a fascinating idea and one I've thought of plenty of times too. My thoughts come more from all the mmorpgs I've played and feeling like it was a little silly that every city had 90% of the AI standing in the same spot all day all night never changing. I know this is to make it easier for the players to find the venders they want but it makes it a little boring and unrealistic. Even just having the venders go home after a certain time at night and come back in the morning would be a nice improvement.
#15
Anyway, it doesn't sound too complicated, and would make places infinitely more 'alive'.
Of course, this may already be going on. I'm a little behind the times with games in general, the most recent RPG I have being Morrowind :P.
04/23/2007 (11:40 am)
Quote:My thoughts come more from all the mmorpgs I've played and feeling like it was a little silly that every city had 90% of the AI standing in the same spot all day all night never changing. I know this is to make it easier for the players to find the venders they want but it makes it a little boring and unrealistic. Even just having the venders go home after a certain time at night and come back in the morning would be a nice improvement.I think that's the first thing that needs to be tackled. It shouldn't be too complicated, right? At the minimum, you just give every NPC a schedule for each day, each week maybe. Say they go home at these times, go to work at these times, maybe eat at these times. On Sundays they go to church at this time, on Saturday they stay home. If you had a schedule archetype (shop owner, farmer, noble) and then added little random variations for each NPC, you could get behaviour that follows a pattern but looks natural (every commuter goes to work at roughly the same time every day, but not exactly). Then of course, you'd have to program in unique scheduled items. For example, one guy goes and visits his girlfriend every Tuesday (until she dumps him, and that item is cancelled, replaced with lots more time at the pub).
Anyway, it doesn't sound too complicated, and would make places infinitely more 'alive'.
Of course, this may already be going on. I'm a little behind the times with games in general, the most recent RPG I have being Morrowind :P.
#16
Why not take it a step further?
I do. ;)
So many modifiers, so little time...
- Ronixus
04/24/2007 (12:44 am)
Now you're aiming for Majora's Mask, huh?Why not take it a step further?
I do. ;)
So many modifiers, so little time...
- Ronixus
#17
One of Game Gems books had some nice articles about applying filters to noise (and waves) to make different sounds. Don't know how efficient it would actually be real time but you could at least use the technique for generating the original files and maybe a simple random filter applied real time? meh.
Should be reasonably easy to do that with a simple state or goal machine. This is my main complaint about MMPORGS. I suppose they (the creators) figure that there'll be enough variance in the world because of all the players and so they seem to spend very little time on the AI. Which is a shame. They have a server farm, surely they could add a few computers dedicated to running the AI of the world? But no, instead, the AIs are usually dumber than a pac man ghost.
- Brian.
04/25/2007 (4:54 pm)
Quote:...the best thing would be to have a looping audio in the background of the sounds of a crowd...Hmm, make that two or three loops of different lengths, say a 3 second loop, a 7 second loop and a 11 second loop. (Nice prime numbers so that the over-all loop is 3 x 7 x 11= 231 s = 4 minutes almost).
One of Game Gems books had some nice articles about applying filters to noise (and waves) to make different sounds. Don't know how efficient it would actually be real time but you could at least use the technique for generating the original files and maybe a simple random filter applied real time? meh.
Quote:...a little silly that every city had 90% of the AI standing in the same spot all day all night never changing.
Quote:...I think that's the first thing that needs to be tackled. It shouldn't be too complicated, right? At the minimum, you just give every NPC a schedule for each day, each week maybe.
Should be reasonably easy to do that with a simple state or goal machine. This is my main complaint about MMPORGS. I suppose they (the creators) figure that there'll be enough variance in the world because of all the players and so they seem to spend very little time on the AI. Which is a shame. They have a server farm, surely they could add a few computers dedicated to running the AI of the world? But no, instead, the AIs are usually dumber than a pac man ghost.
- Brian.
Mare Kuntz