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So I've heard that the NPCs are mainly being scripted in numerous timelines from various backgrounds, traits, and other conditions that are essentially being hand-made. Which I can absolutely respect as that would allow more "human" responses in comparison to AI. I understand the idea of event chains that act like a logic system in a way, but I can't fathom anything short of a small army of writers to make it possible. Atleast without years of development. 

 

So I propose the following; why not let us, the community and gamers help write scripts or events? I'm sure we've all been through a number of situations and reacted to them differently depending on our own character builds or goals. If they allow the player base to contribute to this end, it would allow the devs to focus on the mechanics end to aid in speeding up the final release of NPCs. 

 

Not only that but it would allow some great diversity in the PZ world as of course, not every writer is the same. This could be accomplished by giving the community  some form of template and maybe bracket it into categories of responses, reactions, or goals. Or a similar tool to properly and effectively integrate it seamlessly into the game. Essentially give us the guidelines and a relatively basic tool to help create the NPCs you, the devs, envisioned. Because trust me, we the players would love deep, lore rich NPCs.

 

One way I could think of implementing this is breaking it down by traits or prebuilt classes. This way we could formulate different NPC reactions and goals that could potentially mesh together with other traits depending on their capabilities or limitations. Maybe even adding in reliance on other NPCs (such as potential family members) for negative traits such as deaf, weak ect or vice versa for bonus traits. Maybe have npc cops, firefighters, soldiers ect try to do their jobs at first and maintain the crumbling civilization. The possibilities are endless.  

 

A way to allow us access to this could be a form of massive logic chains. Where inputs from the beginning of the game could be handmade by thousands of players. Such as family members, goals, occupation, and some background information such as preferences, relationships ect. Perhaps even slap on a labeling system such as traits, personality ect to easily organize and piece together multiple chains. 

 

Finally a team of moderators to accept or decline certain inputs/outputs or entire chains for rating purposes or feasibility. It could be something as simple as a blog similar to this one, or more complex as a plug-in or game extension. Or even a bit of basic coding. Anything that would allow us to effectively help the core game.

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I personally LOVE the idea of crowd-sourcing for stuff like this, but I also know for a fact that it is too big a gamble and a risk for a company to fully rely on the community for things like that.

To script reactions like this is something too core of the game to rely solely at the community, but to be inspired by the community is a different story.

What I would think is more interesting is to create a "Role Play challenge" where players show their character's traits and have to role-play in an official open server hosted by the company themselves where each player can only create a SINGLE CHARACTER per "cycle".
So death is permanent and there is serious meaning to staying alive and dying. 
They would also "hire" a few professional gamers to role play the specific characters they want as NPCs to the story following a specific script in the beginning and "winging it" in some situations.

They would then record and spectate the actions of all players and the hired professionals and write it down. 
After a few specific objectives and events have been completed, the server would be reset and start a new cycle.

This means that some NPCs would be specific meaningful players during some cycles and these players could even be "temporarily recruited" to play the exact same character each cycle to record their decisions and actions under different conditions and "paths" the story could take depending on other events (like the death of another character earlier on).

Then, take all the data of actions, reactions and decisions and use those to write down the NPCs decision making process and dynamic AI for situations outside of the scripted scope.
This would still keep all the power and decision making in the hands of the company BUT it would involve the community in the creation of the NPCs AND it would be a much more organic way to take data and program the NPCs since they would be based on the decisions of living humans taking the players desperation and sometimes even real sadness from events and not just scripted as characters from a story.

Also, it would be awesome to have the chance to play on an official open server with a single life with "real death" and have a possibility of my character becoming an NPC in the game.

Edited by GG Cannon
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On 10/30/2022 at 10:38 PM, GG Cannon said:

I personally LOVE the idea of crowd-sourcing for stuff like this, but I also know for a fact that it is too big a gamble and a risk for a company to fully rely on the community for things like that.

To script reactions like this is something too core of the game to rely solely at the community, but to be inspired by the community is a different story.

What I would think is more interesting is to create a "Role Play challenge" where players show their character's traits and have to role-play in an official open server hosted by the company themselves where each player can only create a SINGLE CHARACTER per "cycle".
So death is permanent and there is serious meaning to staying alive and dying. 
They would also "hire" a few professional gamers to role play the specific characters they want as NPCs to the story following a specific script in the beginning and "winging it" in some situations.

They would then record and spectate the actions of all players and the hired professionals and write it down. 
After a few specific objectives and events have been completed, the server would be reset and start a new cycle.

This means that some NPCs would be specific meaningful players during some cycles and these players could even be "temporarily recruited" to play the exact same character each cycle to record their decisions and actions under different conditions and "paths" the story could take depending on other events (like the death of another character earlier on).

Then, take all the data of actions, reactions and decisions and use those to write down the NPCs decision making process and dynamic AI for situations outside of the scripted scope.
This would still keep all the power and decision making in the hands of the company BUT it would involve the community in the creation of the NPCs AND it would be a much more organic way to take data and program the NPCs since they would be based on the decisions of living humans taking the players desperation and sometimes even real sadness from events and not just scripted as characters from a story.

Also, it would be awesome to have the chance to play on an official open server with a single life with "real death" and have a possibility of my character becoming an NPC in the game.

That honestly may be a more realistic way for us to contribute, however it lacks the dialogue. I mean this could be resolved by simple RPing with strict rules for staying in character for dialogue purposes, but it would still require a good amount of leg-work and polish to make actual logic chains for NPCs.

 

The reason why I suggested something like basic coding and logic chains, was because it would allow us to script out multiple scenarios and goals based on an NPCs surroundings. If our actions and responses were simply recorded for data, that means a lot of NPCs would simply act as scavengers and survivors. 

 

The only way I could imagine something like that working is if we're given specific goals at the beginning of each "cycle". Especially for families. Maybe someone is blind and therefore would rely heavily on "family-members" to guide them around. Or as you said, have certain jobs. But instead of it being until death, it would be to accomplished in chains at a time over and over. 

 

For example, we all start day 1 and perform the same general tasks under numerous conditions over and over. Maybe with or without different kinds of zombies, environmental settings, loot rarity, wound level ect. This way they could have a decent map of what a human being would realistically do under each condition. The hardest part being dialogue as it may be relatively delayed since we of course would have to type it out after something happens. 

 

But that would work great especially for job based NPCs such as firefighters, cops, construction workers ect. This way without zombies, it may be more of a sim game with a relatively living and breathing world. The only problem would be the time frame. It would take months or years for even multiple servers to act out multiple scenarios for logic chain purposes. Especially as there is no defining end to the game other than death. 

 

Which brings me back to scripting. It's a lot easier to use tags and labels to give an npc a general idea for what they'd need to do under certain conditions than it would be to act it out. For example, instead of acting out running from zombies or a burning house, we could instead label it as a condition and then put in multiple outputs. For example, if a firefighter was put in a burning house with zombies and maybe other NPCs, especially family members; we could write multiple outputs and tag/label different goals. Such as labeling the zombies as a Immediate threat and the fire as lingering. You could use those labels to give a priority based system to NPCs and then give them multiple ways to go about it. All without having to act it out. 

 

Now imagine a few hundred writers/scripters working on the same guidelines as that. Some may make the npc fight the fire/zombies for a heroic death while telling the family to flee. While other writers may script the fireman to prioritize living and maybe making an escape for the family so they all could flee a certain distance from the house or zombies. 

 

Basically, if we make logic chains as I suggested, it would mean millions of possibilities for NPCs. Especially in the later game as most npc goals would be the same. Roughly a safe house, food, water, and fighting the occasional zombies. Hell, we could even script a change of goals in the event of family deaths or fire situations. For example, maybe a family would opt to sacrifice another member if there's no other options left for their survival. 

 

I know it's a big leap for a community to do, but I do feel with proper guidelines it's possible. All they'd have to do is set the labels and give us a basic tools to plug in the inputs and outputs to multiple scenarios.

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  • 2 months later...

I would imagine the EASIEST thing to do (in regards to implementing NPCs sooner rather than later), would be to make the first publish of NPCs be all enemies. You would find them out looting buildings or holding off a small horde, etc. Maybe even that ''robber'' you see looting and scurrying out of  your base at times could be an enemy NPC that is finally attackable.

Then with future updates, befriending, rescuing or conversing with NPCs could come later (which I would imagine to be the hardest undertaking).

Edited by Cidxgaming
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