AI Conversation

[Springheel]

Friendly Joke: Guard is meeting another guard on patrol and telling a joke

- Response to Friendly Joke

- Insult

- Response to Insult

- Request for Light (maybe to ask a friendly guard with a torch for help)

 

How are these handled in the code at them moment? How does a mapper decide whether an AI will joke or insult someone? I was having trouble figuring out how even the simple superior/inferior designation would work.

[Domarius]

Yeah this would just be making some sort of table of categorised statements and responses for each voice type.

 

This isn't implemented yet, I'm sure even I would have heard about it by now.

 

The categories themselves are nothing more than a name, it doesn't serve any purpose but to cluster statements and responses together.

 

Eg: peasant's table could look like this;

 

Superior

Statements

-Good evening m'lord.

-(etc.)

Responses

-Sorry m'lord, I'll be out of your way.

-(etc)

 

Insult

Statements

-You smell like a mangy dog!

-(etc)

Responses

-I'll take you on!

-(etc)

 

 

 

Ah... of course this raises the issue of the game knowing who's superior and whos' inferior to each other. And then coming up with different responses for each situation...

 

Maybe we could design around this by only having equal level people interact in a variety of ways, and differing classes are limited to greetings only.

[greebo]

The framework for playing these sounds is roughly there, but it's not properly fleshed out yet. I figured that if we ever want to have that, we need to put that on the "sounds to record" list, otherwise I can forget about the code anyway.

 

D3 had the "rank" spawnarg, which could be extended to fit our needs. The implementation is not yet decided, but I'm sure we can find a way to get that in, it's up to the programmers. It's not an impossible task. When everything else fails, we can always set up specific scripting for a map.

[Springheel]

D3 had the "rank" spawnarg, which could be extended to fit our needs. The implementation is not yet decided, but I'm sure we can find a way to get that in, it's up to the programmers

 

Yes, and that's kind of what I was banking on for my inferior/superior barks, since there's otherwise no way to know whether a townsfolk model is a poor beggar or a wealthy merchant.

 

 

I like the idea of insults in general. Jokes I'm not so sure about, as we'd have to record a LOT of them to keep them from getting very old very fast. Most AI-to-AI barks are going to be played as AI are passing each other on patrol, so they would have to be quite fast, unless we made the AI stop for the duration.

 

The call for lights is interesting...do you mean for AI who are actively searching?

[greebo]

The call for lights is interesting...do you mean for AI who are actively searching?

I haven't had any concrete use example in mind, I just saw that bit in sophisticatedZombie's script code while porting it into the SDK, that's why I thought I'd mention it. Maybe it can be used on more occasions, not just searching, but that's of course the most obvious use.

[Springheel]

I'm having trouble thinking of exactly how it would be used though. If an AI was alerted by something and began searching, any nearby AI would be alerted and already searching too, right. I don't think we have any barks right now for AI who are currently searching when a comrade (alerted or otherwise) comes along. Perhaps we should.

 

What does an unalert AI do if he enters a room with another AI who is alert and searching? Does he immediately become alert as well?

 

 

(One other issue with the light bark is that it would be weird for AI to say "bring that light over here so I can see" if they are already searching in a brightly lit room, or the other AI just relit a torch)

[greebo]

Yes, these are valid concerns. I'm not sure about how to implement it either, so I guess it boils down to how much difference it makes in including these lines in the vocal set.

 

@New Horizon: How much difference is it in terms of time and work if we include, let's say 5 more barks per character? I know virtually nothing about voice recording and mastering.

[Springheel]

Even if we don't do the one about lights, we may want to have a "hey, help me look around" bark for cases where unalert AI run into AI who are searching. It would be kind of strange if an unalert AI walked around the corner, saw a comrade searching, and played his 'going to alert' bark--"Hey, what was that?"

 

That's where this gets tricky.

[New Horizon]

@New Horizon: How much difference is it in terms of time and work if we include, let's say 5 more barks per character? I know virtually nothing about voice recording and mastering.

 

Five extra barks can be quite a lot when you factor it in. Say we have 5 more barks...and for each bark, I record 6 variations. That's an extra 30 lines to record for every character.

 

When we originally set out to do the conversation side of the AI, we really hoped to make it very rich and interactive. It would add somewhat to the immersion factor, but do very little for actual gameplay.

 

The vocal states that I outlined in the pdf covered all the core Thief 1/2 AI states and added a few more to help flesh things out. I'll review Springheel's revisions over the weekend and post a revised list on Monday. We'll have a discussion about what we absolutely need to have ingame. I'm inclined to stay close to core needs and not get into overly detailed recordings. I can notice a few instances where a couple of the voice sets aren't being used correctly, so I'll help you guys get all of that figured out.