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how deep will the NPC system go?


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like are we talking gangs in the street trying to kill or recruit while building there own structures or relationships with other npc's such as friends or bf/gf? Also will there be terror groups seeking each other out to get what they have?
If this has already been answered can you point me to it?

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Just dont ask for a ETA, these are old news but still kinda relevant.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/01/tales-from-the-metaverse/

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/07/its-an-npc-related-mondoid1-no-hype-pls/

 

In short, NPCs will have personality traits that will define whatever if they are aggressive, backstabbers, loyal or whatever they are going to be.

 

The one thing that i am wondering is if they are going to change their behavior as times goes on, reading all of this makes me wonder if there is a probability of a NPC that has been backstabbed by another NPC stealing from him would become more aggressive or more isolated as time goes on. 

 

Edit:

[God damn it i just read the tales from the metaverse and got fucking hyped again, i failed myself and everyone around me, i promised my self not to hype again, kill me]

Edited by Blasted_Taco
I failed
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2 hours ago, Blasted_Taco said:

These are old news but still kinda relevant.

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2013/01/tales-from-the-metaverse/

http://projectzomboid.com/blog/2014/07/its-an-npc-related-mondoid1-no-hype-pls/

 

In short, NPCs will have personality traits that will define whatever if they are aggressive, backstabbers, loyal or whatever they are going to be.

 

Thanks for sharing these :D I hadn't seen Tales From The Metaverse and had forgotten about the other mondoid!

 

This part of Tales From The Metaverse got me really excited (as if that whole mondoid didn't get me excited lol):
 

"Either way, the goal is to expand all conversation related character interactions with actual dialogue in future updates, having characters insulting, bonding and confronting each other based on their traits and the situation"

Not only do I hope they still try to do all the things mentioned in the "Tales" mondoid but I really hope they do make all "NPC conversations" have real dialog. Love the idea of being able to eavesdrop on NPC plans and gossip :P

Anyway, thanks again for linking these! Those tales have me hyped up as well :) lol, Wish more people could be patient so we could talk about what NPCs will be and not when they'll show up more often.

Edited by Kuren
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1 minute ago, Zorak said:

Oh they started NPC Hype train

Choooo choooo

Well we need to chill a bit as we wont see human NPCs in at least 1,5-2 years


Hey! I'm allowed to be hyped about something that wont be out for years! I'm already doing it with the Black Panther movie :P lol

(And all the new Marvel movies for that matter haha)

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That's a great comparison there Kuren.

There have been so many movies I've been hyped for over the years and the wait for PZ NPCs is now getting to that sort of timescale. By the time we're sitting down to enjoy movies like Infinity War or Star Wars Episode 9 (maybe even episode 8 on Blu-ray) we culd also be toying with the simulated emotions of Muldraugh residents.

Putting it in that perspective, it'll be here before we know it (and in the meantime there will be so many other juicy updates to the game)

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10 hours ago, Randy Valentine said:

There have been so many movies I've been hyped for over the years and the wait for PZ NPCs is now getting to that sort of timescale. By the time we're sitting down to enjoy movies like Infinity War or Star Wars Episode 9 (maybe even episode 8 on Blu-ray) we culd also be toying with the simulated emotions of Muldraugh residents.

Putting it in that perspective, it'll be here before we know it (and in the meantime there will be so many other juicy updates to the game)


Right?! When you think about it like a regular media release it seems that much easier to deal with the wait. Just like filming a movie, building a game takes a lot of time and work from a lot of people :)

Also, I feel like we would get along, Randy :P So excited for the next few Star Wars movies (especially Rouge One) and been loving the Marvel Universe that Disney has built :)

Edit: I also love all the juicy updates we get along the way, I can only hope we keep getting support from these awesome developers after 1.0 :)

Edited by Kuren
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To say that the NPCs are THAT far is hard to believe. I am more pressed to believe that around maybe December-January we will have NPCs because animations will have been pushed out by then and if what has been articulated is true then NPCs should follow. The reason I have stuck around is that this development team is just dedicated like I have never seen before. What happened when the laptops were stolen and the reaction from the dev team only solidifys that they DO care what the end product is. They have ripped out everything in the game twice just to get it right and have always gone "well we fucked up sorry" instead of "well uh itll be done tommorow" and have been as transparent as possible. This game already is extremely detailed and I bought PZ for a friend and the first thing he said was "holy shit wow this is detailed." 

 

We will get them sooner or later and they will be probably be good because

 

A) if the AI is dumb and runs into walls

B) unauthentic

C) turns out to be a big lie

 

They know the amount of backlash they'd get for having a dev-cycle out this long and having a half ass game so just having that pressure along would make me double check every line of code and QA it to death.  All in all this is gonna turn out to be a little like KSP.

Edited by sharkstertheshark
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20 hours ago, sharkstertheshark said:

To say that the NPCs are THAT far is hard to believe. I am more pressed to believe that around maybe December-January we will have NPCs because animations will have been pushed out by then and if what has been articulated is true then NPCs should follow.

 

The last time we heard of NPCs, one of the obstacles were the Player vs NPCs fights i think and the devs said that the animation update opens up the workflow of NPCs again since working on them without the animation update would be pointless.

 

I really want to believe that after the animations update, some time passes and we might the the glimpse of the NPCs, but it will be definitely this year, each IWBUMS takes around 1 to 3 months to get into stable or between each IWBUMS takes 1 or 2 months.

 

Next IWBUMS is probably the animation update with the metalworking and the nutrition overhaul, that is going to take a while to get going into stable and then probably Creative mode. (this is all my opinion by the way, dont take it as a fact).

 

 

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I know I'm in the minority here but I hope NPCs don't get in anytime soon. Simply because I love the updates. And not only that but I want the NPCs to be great within the game. I mean, I want NPCs but more than anything I want the game to be as full and rich as it can be before they enter it. I know they need to use all the systems in the game and that's why I hope we get a lot more systems put in before the devs have to cave to the pressure of impatient people.

In the end, I wish the community (veterans and newbies alike) could spend some time taking about NPCs and not about their ETA...

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1 hour ago, Kuren said:

I know I'm in the minority here but I hope NPCs don't get in anytime soon. Simply because I love the updates. And not only that but I want the NPCs to be great within the game. I mean, I want NPCs but more than anything I want the game to be as full and rich as it can be before they enter it. I know they need to use all the systems in the game and that's why I hope we get a lot more systems put in before the devs have to cave to the pressure of impatient people.

In the end, I wish the community (veterans and newbies alike) could spend some time taking about NPCs and not about their ETA...

If that's what you want, you're not alone, so that's actually minority+1

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On 5/25/2016 at 4:16 AM, sharkstertheshark said:

To say that the NPCs are THAT far is hard to believe. I am more pressed to believe that around maybe December-January we will have NPCs because animations will have been pushed out by then and if what has been articulated is true then NPCs should follow.

 

Perhaps you don't realize what a giant sized bite of coding they've decided to take with this NPC system. Far larger developers have struggled with far lesser AI goals. I would be seriously impressed if they get the NPCs they promised out by the end of the year. Not only do they need NPCs that can avoid getting killed by zombies and react accordingly to ever-changing threats, they need ones that can create dynamic social groupings, fight with teamwork, build forts and safehouses, interact with a player, have the player alter their behaviors, and eventually drive vehicles, know when to move stealthily, etc, etc. Most AI in most video games, even by AAA devs, is a fraction of that, and done in a far far less open world.

 

And then it needs to "feel right", "be fun", and "not be impossible" to deal with for the player. Even if they can get all the code in on time, balancing and testing is going to take months. I'm not saying all this to disparage them, but IF they actually pull through on their promises, the community reaction really shouldn't be "oh, neat, this works okay, but wtf there's a minor bug or annoying behavior". No, the reaction should be, "holy **** this is amazing that you got such a functional system in such a complicated game." And it should be extremely grateful if anything resembling a "decent" NPC system gets introduced, even if it's more limited than what was promised.

 

Quote

We will get them sooner or later and they will be probably be good because

 

A) if the AI is dumb and runs into walls

B) unauthentic

C) turns out to be a big lie

 

They know the amount of backlash they'd get for having a dev-cycle out this long and having a half ass game so just having that pressure along would make me double check every line of code and QA it to death.  All in all this is gonna turn out to be a little like KSP.

 

Other option: they start running low on money, want to move on to a new game, and release whatever they have, or are forced to just can the whole system because it won't fit together right or would just ruin the game with how simple it was.

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On 5/26/2016 at 1:41 AM, Kuren said:

I know I'm in the minority here but I hope NPCs don't get in anytime soon. Simply because I love the updates. And not only that but I want the NPCs to be great within the game. I mean, I want NPCs but more than anything I want the game to be as full and rich as it can be before they enter it. I know they need to use all the systems in the game and that's why I hope we get a lot more systems put in before the devs have to cave to the pressure of impatient people.

In the end, I wish the community (veterans and newbies alike) could spend some time taking about NPCs and not about their ETA...

 

I'm sort of happy to let the game keep evolving, rather than have NPCs finished and they release 1.0, on to the next one.

 

That said, I've been putting off playing the game for a while now, because without NPCs or something "more" to the game than a very old and tired map there's little to get me interested. Certainly, a lot of the new systems and traits and such are nice, but I'm still going to find it all a bit pointless without something more than "lone survivor kills lots of zombies and builds up a small fort and loots the same 5 stores again."

 

Anyway, there's not much for the community to talk about for NPCs. We have nothing but a general idea of what's planned.

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2 hours ago, Talksintext said:

 

Other option: they start running low on money, want to move on to a new game, and release whatever they have, or are forced to just can the whole system because it won't fit together right or would just ruin the game with how simple it was.

You I was gonna write a long response but I can tell you this. If you make people wait 4 years on your product, steal their cash and run, what kind of jobs do you think youll be getting after that if you want to split off and do other things in video games, coding, or art? The NPCs already have have been talked about and the gist of it as been articulated. They will be autonomous little beings with their own agendas and personalities.

Edited by sharkstertheshark
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On 6/1/2016 at 3:37 PM, sharkstertheshark said:

You I was gonna write a long response but I can tell you this. If you make people wait 4 years on your product, steal their cash and run, what kind of jobs do you think youll be getting after that if you want to split off and do other things in video games, coding, or art? The NPCs already have have been talked about and the gist of it as been articulated. They will be autonomous little beings with their own agendas and personalities.

 

First question: they'll continue working for TIS, which will fund another game. NPCs are not really necessary for Zomboid to be "complete". They could expand the map a bit and release the current version as final, and it's more than met whatever objectives they originally had. They'd get a lot of blowback from a no-NPC release, but I don't think it'd tank the studio's chances at another crowdsourced game.

 

And yes, I understand what NPCs are supposed to be. My point was that -at the point they released the unfinished NPC product in this scenario- it might still be in such a simple state which would sort of ruin the game.

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I really hope sometime in the near future the devs see sense and just rip off Animal Crossings NPC system in a special 'you wouldnt let it lie now this is what you get mondroid.

 

The amount of variables involved in completing the kind of NPC system theyre talking about is mind boggling to be honest. And fair play to them, theyve stuck to it and refuse to take easy (and money filled) options ... the NPCs are going to be of skynet level AI by the time they are released/trained.

 

Also, I really dislike the idea of vehicles in zomboid to be, it all sounds very GTA and I can imagine it ruining the feel of the game. Hopefully its something that can be an 'opt out' addition, but if not, despite my bad feelings, the way the devs seem to be putting things together this far I cabt help but feel Spiffo is watching over us, its all going to be gpod guys.

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Plot twist: NPCs are already being tested on multiplayer servers.

 

Just kidding! But that's how I would do it. Throw in some bots on a big MP server and see what happens. 

 

As far as I can tell, Indie Stone is working on NPCs acting as procedurally generated narratives. These work better when the AI isn't "playing" the game but behaving like a simulated being existing inside the game. Kinda like how we are all simulated beings in Elon Musk's universe.

 

Roguelike Radio had a great episode recently on "Simulations" with Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress. Tarn calls DF a procedurally generated narrative game. The simulation runs, players act and react to it, and the story unfolds (and hilarity ensues).

 

Optimized bot players work well in first person shooters, but a game like PZ needs characters.

 

I think the key for success is making the character behavior understandable to the player. An NPC ally that charges head on into a horde for no apparent reason will get groans from players who bitch about stupid AI. But a character that charges head on into a horde because he's buying the player time to make an escape will be dramatic and possibly poignant. An NPC that charges head on into a horde to buy the player time to escape when the player already figured out a safe escape route will be hilarious and tragic.

 

Aim for dramatic and poignant but enjoy hilarious and tragic.

Edited by Jatta Pake
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