How Resource Intensive WIll NPC's Be?

[Kennethdio]

I play with an old PC, GTX 660, 8GB RAM and whatnot. I can play on the new builds and current with around 20-30 FPS. Apparently because I have an obsession of the NPCs, it's a whole lot of code, a shit ton, and I've been reading a lot about how they work and they look as great as they are intricate. So much code that I don't even know if I can run it, at least at the same framerate I have now.

 

And I know that everyone hates about talking about NPC's because for whatever reason the comments end up in a shitshow flamewar against devs and angry people who waited years. But i'm sure that a performance question won't start anything.

 

EXTRA: Are NPC's capable of forming factions or civilization, or simple survival groups?

[cool daddy shark]

So half of this if at all is not going to be answered openly by them. The only game I know with an NPC system that is near Zomboid's is the STALKER series. The AI in STALKER is controlled by a system called A-life that tracks off screen events within an interwoven metagame. There's hundreds of things going on off screen, only for them to flick on as you get near their zone to save performance. Generally speaking, this is what PZ will have. I am pretty sure you'll be able to run it when it goes out. There's going to be a million bells and whistles I wager that determines everything from hostility, spawnrate, etc. 

 

When it comes to them organizing into communes and trading/fighting each other- i dont know. I've come to expect it from then though. Its been a long time.

 

For more info on a-life:

http://aigamedev.com/open/interviews/stalker-alife/

https://blackshellmedia.com/2017/08/12/a-life-an-insight-into-ambitious-ai/

[Kennethdio]

Well it's good enough to at least be kind of confident that I can run the game with NPC's without a stutterfest.

[CaptainDingo]

23 hours ago, sharkstertheshark said:

The only game I know with an NPC system that is near Zomboid's is the STALKER series.

The Elder Scrolls also has a system where it tracks what NPCs do "offline" (when they're in an unloaded area).

As long as distant NPCs are offloaded and simulated only as a rough approximation, they shouldn't be very heavy. In fact, having like 5 nearby NPCs would probably be more complicated to process than 100 distant ones, since the distant ones are probably going to all be playing some "low resolution" version of the actual game that roughly resembles playing Risk whereas nearby loaded NPCs will be doing pathfinding and such.

Honestly though, I don't think it will affect the game performance a whole lot. And like everything else, I'm sure the quantity of NPCs will be customizable in the sandbox settings, or can be disabled entirely.