Mythruna

Disclaimer: This post is pure speculation and is not related in any way to how the dev will end up doing the AI, races or factions.  :P

So, about this thing with the different races/factions, I am curious as to how this will work. I'm assuming that the dev will create factions for the different... well, factions. So, for example, a human npc might be a member of the faction/group: Humans. The faction the npc belongs to would effect the npc's interaction with other factions. An npc belonging to the human faction might have a positive "opinion" of a member of the simian faction, and a negative opinion of a faction such as bandits, predators, or perhaps the reptilian faction. This would also affect how the npcs might react the the player character as well: if the PC is avian, he might get a better reception in an avian village.

The faction mechanic I just described is nothing special, alot of games use something of that sort; however, with the AI the dev seems to be planning, the faction system could work alot better. With the goal oriented planning, and the AI "personalities" or alignments, really REALLY cool faction interactions could be possible, with alot more realism. For example, if a certain member of the human faction had a more tolerant personality, he might have less of a problem with other factions (perhaps he has a trait called "tolerant" which adds 5 to his factions default opinion of all factions.)

Of course, there are other ways it can be done, and I'm definitely no professional.  :D if anyone has any ideas on how factions etc. might work, post them here! And if pspeed wants to correct my clumsy rant, that's also fine!  :P

Factions are good and Mythruna may see something like that.  If so then it will be built from the other direction.

Part of the planning in the AI will be based on the idea of costs.  A particular action may cost more than another for obvious reasons (the food in your hand is easier to eat than the food at the market, for example)... but there will also be costs that are purely derived from the AI character's personality.  For example, eating food will be cheaper than killing and eating your friend... and killing and eat your enemy will be cheaper than killing and eating your friend.

Months and months ago when I started really thinking about AI, I tried to quantify the sort of personality traits that an NPC character would need.  While I could imagine all sorts of uses for one parameter or another it rapidly became clear that it is better to work from the other direction.  There will be some actions.  This full list is yet to be determined.  Some actions will have a personality influence and it will be clear at the time what personality trait should be exposed for that action.  For example, the costs of picking someone's pocket are based on probably a dozen different factors: lawfulness, boldness, etc... a "faction" would only be one tiny part and I'd argue that it limits the AI more than it frees it.  Why shouldn't the right kind of thief steal from his own faction, after all?  And maybe some of the races have no problem with cannibalism but are otherwise severely loyal to one another.

The idea of a "faction" is kind of too broad of a stroke in these cases.

When a character meets another character, it will assess how it feels about them and setup certain relationship parameters (yet to be determined)... these will be the first impression.  The parameters might include: trust, hostility, respect... whatever the action cost functions dictate is necessary for proper costing of a plan.  The race, look, and behavior of a character will factor into how these parameters are set for another character.  After that, they can change based on experience.  This also prevents the case where an AI character automatically trusts a character from their faction even though that character has stolen from them 50 times.

My feeling is that if there are factions... then it will just feed this "initial impression" calculation... and for some types of characters may not matter at all.

Interesting discussion. :)  I hope I'm able to achieve something like the above.

P.S.: For the record, the "initial impression function" is more important than the above might elude to.  In my mind, it will be potentially infeasible for every AI character to have a half-dozen relationship parameters for every other AI character they've met.  It's also a bit unrealistic to have a perfect record of even passing acquaintances.  Consequently, I plan to have a character keep only a few "close" relationships with the full parameters.  This will be based on the frequency of interaction, strength of the feelings, etc... beyond this a larger number of character relationships will be boiled down to one general "feeling" score.  Character A might remember that he dislikes character B that he hasn't seen in two years but may not remember exactly why.  In this case, the one parameter is passed into the "first impression cost" function when they come into contact again so that the relationship parameters can be built out again.  If character B leaves and character A meets 10 other people then A's relationship with B may go back to being a single parameter again.

...I know, I probably just lost at least half of you.

Is this confirming that you are going to consider adding cannibalism in the game? (though, in theory, eating say, a dwarf, wouldn't be cannibalism I suppose)

Not necessarily... but it's funny.  Given the right circumstances the AI would do it whether I wanted it to or not... I'd have to specifically forbid it to keep it from happening.

It all hinges on creature drops.  If a reptilian kills a pantherian then it is entirely logical that they would at the very list skin them and collect bones.  I see no reason a reptilian wouldn't eat that meat.  There are other "setting" issues that I don't want to give away right now but suffice it to say that all living creatures will drop bones, skin, and meat, etc..  The quantity and quality will depend on a few factors that aren't important here.

Given that... if killing produces meat and meat is edible then the AI will certainly figure out that killing leads to eating.  I either specifically code a "yeah, but don't eat the meat of your own race" condition or cost it out of contention or cannibalism would be rampant... entirely based on how willing you are to kill the other thing.  I do already know that races will have taboos against eating certain meat.  Humans won't normally eat the meat of any other race and Simians will be even more restrictive on their meat consumption.  Most of the races will shun reptilian meat because it can make you sick if not cooked right... and the pantherians will otherwise have no issue with eating anything that moves.

But I like the idea of treating taboos as just cost factors... which means that if some town is starving to death then maybe the costs and action plan works out such that they go murder all of the guys in prison to have a meal.  So same-race meat may have some huge cost factor but that doesn't rule out extreme conditions.

I'll probably have to leave the cost as a configurable setting to appease the more squeamish.  Plus I think it would be a funny checkbox to have: "Races never eat their own meat."

Oh, and I feel obliged to drop a hint about the eighth race here.  Except there is no eighth race and they are definitely not called "the whispers" in folk legend.

Haha, woah, epic post. You didn't lose me though, I think I understand what you mean. That seems to be a very ambitious system.  :o Ambition is good though. What you're saying is that when it comes down to intimate/important relationships, (say, husband/wife, or trader/favorite customer,) the way the relationship will be decided will be more complex than villager 1's relationship with villager 2? So, an npc might have several relationships based on a bunch of factors, and then have the more standard "I like him +3" kind of relationship with someone he's only met once who lives faraway but once gave him a candy bar? I over simplified it, but is that the general idea?

By the way, will beasts have the same kind of relationship system as humanoids in this case? Or a different one?

And considering that you're going to make almost everything cost based, could that mean that an npc could theoretically stoop to any action at all? or would there be some actions that would simply be more costly than allowing the NPC to die? (A knight/priest might consider eating human flesh more costly than dying.)

Yeah, basically.  Everything in the game is an "entity" and an entity can have any type of thing tacked onto it.  There's a lot of power in this that I won't go into here... anyway, in this case, a relationship one character has for another is an entity.  It can have a bunch of pieces of data tacked onto it and I don't need to specifically decide what those are... as I can always add more later.  To avoid combinatorial data explosion, I will limit the number of fully fleshed out relationships that a particular character can have.  This may be based on a stat (maybe intelligence means they can remember more relationships or whatever.) or just be arbitrary or based on several factors.  And in my mind, there are three categories of relationship:
1) fully expanded: character A is interacting with character B right now or he is in that character's "sphere".  (google "monkey sphere" sometime... it's fun).
2) passing relationship: character B fell off the bottom of character A's category (1) relationships.
3) who are you?: relationship was deleted and/or doesn't exist yet.  If they met before then character A doesn't remember it.

How quickly relationships transition in and out of these states will depend on a lot of factors.


Yes, though not as expanded.  I want to have actions related to "pets" or domesticated animals.  So human to creature relationships will need some parameters... but ideally they somehow fit into the animal's normal creature to creature relationship set.  For example, in real life, my dog definitely has a concept of where her place in our "pack" (ie: the family) is... even though we are human she views us as her pack.  So taming a wild animal might involve only one or two additional parameters on top of the normal pack parameters.

Correct.  And a simian would likely die before eating any uncooked flesh... and definitely the flesh of a sentient animal.  Racially, their base cost is that much higher.

See, this is kind of what I'm talking about, already in this discussion we've moved really far out from the concept of factions as anything but a basic cost template.  But I bet if I thought about it, I could get all meat eating down to two (maybe three) independent general scores that could be directly reflected in a personality as some traits.  But that's for another time. :)

haha, This exact same thought came into my head yesterday too.  ;) I was thinking more in the line of a castle (or large town) who has a ruler that will hire a small army that will walk the streets. My train of thought was moving the same as tsuku though in regards of absolute friendly/enemy. I knew that wasn't were you were headed since I also thought that would limit the rpg style of the game.

Also, since right now the world is half water (should change when you get different land types?), I think you should add many fish. I don't know if all races can swim (under or over) but having both good, eatable fish and bad man-eating fish in there would make the water pretty interesting. (haha, ships would be epic but it would be hard to make them move. Maybe adding a special button on object maker that allows specific objects to be boardable and wood floats/ stone sinks/ etc)

Sorry for messy post. Just woke up, might edit it later to make more sense  ;D

Ships, fish, sharks, etc. are already on the plan.  Ships are a definite.  My interest in playing the game will be half without water and air ships. :)

Im thinking airships and ships will be a very attractive addition. Just building things around Iron Island, I have both of those vehicles. Well more of a hot air baloon than an airship but I may hop on tonight and build one.

Is there a possibility for land vehicles as well?

OK, cool, so tameable animals. :D Well, since the thread's gone in another direction, I don't feel so bad asking: you mentioned randomised or player created weapons; but will there be armor? And if so, will it be dynamic like the weapons? And will it be race specific? (dwarves can wear uber-heavy armor, but avians can barely wear any?)

Land vehicles are kind of hard and don't interest me that much.  It would be kind of nice to have carriages and wagons and stuff but part of me also thinks that in a society where air travel is easily accessible that wheeled vehicles might not be that popular.

If I have my way you'll make your own clothes and armor.  They will be sized for the character type, though... so dwarf armor won't fit a reptilian, for example.

And an avian can wear whatever they want but if it's too heavy then they can't fly.  If they carry too much then they can't fly, either... it's just part of being an avian to have to travel light or make other arrangements.

haha, this game would be epic only with current mode + smart AI. We are so selfish, wanted Paul to make it perfect.  ;) Your doing a great job though, and hopefully things ideas and the end of the tunnel, at least AI, isn't too far. (Unfortunately in Mythruna, one cannot see the end of the tunnel farther than the clip  :P)

...there may be a fix for clip someday, too.  Got ideas up my sleeve that I never have time to try.

Anyway, on the plus side, starting tomorrow evening, I have 5 days off in a row.  On the downside, three days of that are because I'm watching my kids while the wife is out of town.  Back on the plus side, they are usually pretty good about fending for themselves.  The dog is the only one I worry about. :)

But won't avians have hollow bones to be able to fly in the first place? So wouldn't they have to have a lower carry capacity, and an inability to wear heavy metal armour? Wood, ceramic, leather... But metal would be far too heavy... of course, making them unable to wear heavier armor might unbalance them...

They are lighter and they are magically assisted, sort of.  Either way, it doesn't really matter.  They can physically carry or wear a lot more than they could fly with.  But an avian who has lost the ability to fly for some reason can feel free to load himself up to his normal encumbrance for his strength and stature.  They sort of have to since they are shunned by their tribe once they lose the ability to fly.

True, true... Personally, I think that wingless avian exile thing would be cool to roleplay... Would that be a playable subrace? Just one more question: do you intend to make merchants or mercenaries travel between towns? Like, I dunno, randomly wandering from town to town, spending time there, and then moving on? Because that's something i wish was possible, I've never seen a game implement dynamic caravans. It's probably really hard to do though.

P.S Sorry about all the questions, but I'm fascinated to see where this game is headed. The engine looks amazing, and seems to be very versatile, and your plans are ambitious as hell... even if you only managed to accomplish a fraction of what you hope to, the game will still be great; and if you do manage to make it the way you want, it'll be godlike! Keep up the good work!  :D

Wow thats deep. Just curious, is creating this character personality system very intensive on the cpu, especially in a larger, more populated town? Also, are you planning on giving the ai their personality when they are first created, or will it change over time, if say their house is destroyed? It will be awkward seeing ai walking in what was once his home, dumbfounded that he cannot complete his role as housekeeper (though he may storm some other poor guys house next door)

As an avian, you may have to role-play the exile because it will be hard to have some random avian tribe accept you as their own... though maybe that becomes a personal goal or something.

I do want to support wandering caravans.  I already know how I will implement town to town pathfinding because I think it will be important to a) have NPCs that can travel from town to town for whatever reason, and b) to have NPCs that can tell a player how to get somewhere if they know the way.  The hardest part is actually limiting their perception.  It's easy to make them all-knowing... but harder to make them only know certain things.

The personality may change over time but remember that the personality is just used to help make choices between a variety of plans.  When the AI gets a new goal and/or finishes a plan or is interrupted then they just choose a new plan.  It is during plan selection that the "costs" matter and that's where these personality scores come into play.  So that part shouldn't be that CPU intensive... and AI will only figure out real plans when the player is nearby.

If an AI's house is destroyed then that affects what actions he can do.  It's hard to go to the cupboard to get some food if the cupboard doesn't exist, for example.  That level of thing is sort of automatically taken care of.

I don't yet know how or if I would model emotional state... so I don't know if the NPC would be sad his house is destroyed or just immediately adopt the goals of rebuilding it.  That could get interesting later maybe.  And maybe there is some deep goal embedded in most NPCs that once all of their other goals cannot be accomplished then the just go to a bar and drink or something. :)  The NPC knows what goals he has that he can't accomplish... in my wildest dreams maybe there is a way to get him to articulate that to the player.  Then you potentially get both the drunken NPC telling you his life's sob stories as well as some nice quests for helping him out.  ("Helping NPCs achieve their goals" is already something that I will do but I don't know how seamless that will be as far as communication.)

So you are intending to have travellers? Sweet! Itll make the game more immersive than the usual empty roads in games... on that note, will there be a way that roads could be built between two towns? By the townsfolk?

So basically you're trying to make your AI as realistic as possible, but not make it a task that is Impossible. Also: Make a subconscious mind for the entities. When A's relation for B is like this: "A is saved by B from a group of bandits." and A hasn't seen B in... 20-40 years and A forgets B but A's subconscious still has B in A's mind then when B meets A, They either: 1. Remember eachothers faces. Or 2. B remembers A and reminds A of that day. Then A's relation with B will go from 3 to 1 again.

     But if something like C killed D's Child, but D never saw C's face or knew C's name, then if C met D, and C knew D's name/face then C might be either Hostile or cautious about D if D knew, then D would have 4: Knew someone killed someone. (Family member, etc.) And if C told D, "I killed your child" Then D might be puzzled/confused and Hostile. And C might move into category 2 or 1. It would be cool to see this happen.

    This could also work for if E's king killed... let's say, the king of another kingdom they are at war with, then E will remember this and, again this would work with known criminals! Wanted posters/nicknames could cone true. Just think: You walk around town, and notice a poster you haven't seen before. It could be new like a war is over, or someone important in the town died by some cause. And if you're a investigator and are given knews of a murder in town: Let the investigation begin! I'm so excited thinking about it.

I am a bit curious, are there going to be some kind of generated nations, and if so would that mean politics and huge castles must also be applied? Or is this going to be a single kingdom (due to relatively small size of land) in which towns of various sizes populate the area with no real superior authority (towns have separate authority and are loosely connected through nationalism).

It would really be interesting if ai are influenced by their town. For example, a small town ai would be more local work oriented, while ai in large walled town may be looking more at a big picture. (ai in castles or capitals would be looking more nationally and their patriotism/ego will be stronger, while ai in small towns will have more dedication to his family/town than to care for the nation). I use nation loosely as either a country or the world, whichever way you take the game.

Aside, if there are going to be different towns everywhere, I'm guessing the spawn point will be removed and map will be saved but limited in what it shows (like a shadow effect).

Yes, there will be roads between the towns... I'm not exactly sure how flexibly they get created yet.  Ideally if a player creates a road between two towns then it will be discovered.  In my ideal plans, roads get built because NPCs walk those paths... so the easier a path is to walk then the more likely a path will form... then a road, etc..

Heheh... Let's not get ahead of ourselves. :)  I'd be happy to have fully autonomous-feeling NPCs that live their daily lives and appear to have done something while you were on the other side of the world.  Then I can worry about complicating it with the more grand plans I have. :)

There will be towns and cities... generated ones with castles, etc..  I don't know how political they will be but getting to make your own town will certainly require some sort of governmental structures.

There are definitely different nations... some of the races rarely (if ever) interact with other races so there are bound to be nations and enclaves, etc..  I don't know if it will rise any higher than "setting" or if there will be politics, wars, etc... I only vaguely have designs for how city-level AI works and most of that is concentrating on the design that allows a city to evolve when the player isn't around.  I haven't heavily contemplated if there is a collective strategy layer.

Rest assured, I am designing such a thing on a smaller scale for the ant colonies and wolf packs, etc... it may be that this translates well to the city to city level... and it may not.

In general, though, for the Mythruna "story" (ie: the setting) towns operate nearly independently except that they are usually tied to some city "parent".  Cities are more independent but may belong to an association on a larger scale.  I don't know if this evolves into full-blown nations with kinds or not.

An aside: a long time ago when I ran pencil and paper role-playing games in a world I created called Mythra (yes, the name is similar for a reason) there was an entire part of the world where the only unifying governmental force was a three-guild group called The Triad.  I think it was shipping, manufacturing, and agriculture but I'd have to dig up my old notes to be sure.  Because the guilds were so dependent on one another it created a natural check-and-balance system.  Towns operated basically independently but those three guilds were the driving force in their politics and nearly always negotiated treaty-related issues.

I like the idea of a meta-structure built on independent local governments with a loose tie to the meta-structure because it is much easier to program and much much much easier to implement in a world where the town over the horizon doesn't even exist until you start to go there.


I go back and forth on this.  There will definitely be a spawn point and it will always be within sight of some town or city.  I'm creating a sample of one on the public server if there is an interest in walking there some time. (I will move the public server spawn at some point to this new location)

The part I go back and forth on is whether different races will get different spawn points.  It's a nice idea on some levels but it doesn't really fit with the back story of why the player is there and the idea of finding your homeland could be a nice quest for certain races... especially the ones where finding a tribe would be difficult.

wow. thanks for clarifying everything, even if it needed a superpost  ;)

You happened to catch my right as I was getting back to my computer after two days without power... otherwise I might have found a way to ramble less. :)

I'm putting that power to good use right now and trying to design (at the resource level) town to town interactions.  Good times.