NPC Interaction

[KzinistZerg]

I figure that's the sort of thing best left to the modders- poo-poo is already flying through the air- sticking children in would be like sticking a whirling fan in the middle of it, while the modders, being non-affiliated with companies or such (for the most part) fly below the radar and can wave all the fans they want- rarely do they have a fan big enough for it to stick into the mainstream.

 

As for the technical difficulties, it would be fairly irritating to implement childen without fully installing aging. And then, even if you did not have to deal with all of the mechanics of getting a child, which would also mess up meshes considerably, and require lotsa new anims (non of which I want to see), I doubt you'd want to hover, even with super-fast kid aging. You want to baby a child? Go get a doll or buy Black and White- but the original one, where your creature is about as smart as a brick wall and is incredibly hard to train.

 

The "Go buy ______ if you want ______" argument usually dosn't work, but here it fits- this is an RPG. So, if they ever stuck children in, it wouldn't be (or, ought not to be) the kind where they have to be raised- just add in extra aging capabilities (at chracter creation) for a wider range of ages- instead of say, 20-60, more like 10-90, but keep 20-60 for the player and add in the extra ages for the editor.

[Guest]

I agree that the ability to have children, insofar as thinking, walking, talking children, is a dumb idea. The fact that there are no children at all kind of irks me, though. Not because I want one in the slightest, but because I do consider it a moral victory for censorship, despite all the claims to the contrary. Just make a handfull of clothing meshes for the children; it doesn't matter, because they'll never be coming off. Even if it's just a texture. Whatever, it doesn't have to be complicated.

 

Romance, though. I think that's important. Not sex, of course; that would be silly. However, romance can really get you into the gameworld, I think, if done properly. As someone said before, the archetypal heroic journey includes the damsel in distress to save and consequently woo. Having characters you care about makes you care about the experience more, naturally.

 

This, of course, applies to other things than romance, too. Yes, getting one's groove on is important, but so is just having other friends to care about. The bumbling sidekick, or the grizzled mentor; if this type of relationship was included, I believe the experience would be all the more richer for it.

 

Well, I'm the type of person who believes in characters driving a story, so you may not share my beliefs. But I don't see how having meaningful relationships -- romantic or otherwise -- could hurt the playing experience. It could only make a great thing greater.

 

(On a side note: mods can't really supply these meaningful relationships I imagine, one because they generally lack technical experience to implement them, and two because the ones with technical experience are normally piss-poor writers. But that's just my opinion.)

[Peregrine]

The problem with adding romance and relationships like that is it's extremely hard to do in an open-ended game like Morrowind (and hopefully Oblivion). With a more linear rpg, you can know exactly how the player is going to act, and can make the romance fit in with the storyline. This isn't true with Morrowind. How do you deal with the romance if you can find that damsel in distress while breaking into her house to loot it, not in the quest that is supposed to rescue her? How do you have a mentor when you have countless ways of deviating from the story and/or the beliefs/laws of the mentor, and need dialogue/interaction to cover all of them? For an open-ended game like Morrowind, there's only four options:

 

1) Do an awkward romance that only appears under specific circumstances, and will only be seen by most players if they get out the hint pages instead of playing naturally. Not only that, but the quality won't even be very good, as there's nothing to keep the player following the 'natural' evolution of the romance. And you'd STILL have people complaining about not having enough romance options, because the one you picked to create doesn't include the NPC they want.

 

2) Put in so many romance options that every NPC can be the subject of one. Of course then you need the insane amount of effort invovled in writing dialogue options to cover every possible combination and method of cheating on your partner, for when the player has five girlfriends in every town.

 

3) Make true AI. It should be obvious why this is not a realistic option.

 

4) Concede that these detailed relationships are not going to be done well, and leave them out.

[Gabbemaster]

2) Put in so many romance options that every NPC can be the subject of one. Of course then you need the insane amount of effort invovled in writing dialogue options to cover every possible combination and method of cheating on your partner, for when the player has five girlfriends in every town.

 

3) Make true AI. It should be obvious why this is not a realistic option.

 

It would be possible to write a piece of code that adds romance to every npc in the game. You could use a random-generator to generate relationships and storylines. That would be hard do make perfectly, but hey, they made random forests, so why not spend a year or two in making random romance-quests?

[Peregrine]

It would be possible to write a piece of code that adds romance to every npc in the game. You could use a random-generator to generate relationships and storylines. That would be hard do make perfectly, but hey, they made random forests, so why not spend a year or two in making random romance-quests?

 

It's possible in theory, but it's a lot harder than it sounds. Sure, you could do it, but doing it well would be nearly impossible. If you want completely random romance dialogue, it's going to sound horrible. Or you can just re-use the same lines, changing the NPC names, but that's just as bad. So I'd rather they not do it, since a poorly done feature is worse than not having that feature at all.

[Gabbemaster]

It's possible in theory, but it's a lot harder than it sounds. Sure, you could do it, but doing it well would be nearly impossible. If you want completely random romance dialogue, it's going to sound horrible. Or you can just re-use the same lines, changing the NPC names, but that's just as bad. So I'd rather they not do it, since a poorly done feature is worse than not having that feature at all.

 

I don't think it would be 'that' hard, (I know it is hard, but it's not impossible).

you could do it like this:

 

You could generate the dialoges in parts, first it chose a random dialogue, and then (based on the previous chosen part) it generates a new random dialouge which is written to make sense acording to the previous.

 

Take this idea, make it 1000000 times better, and you have a good random-dialogue/quest thingy.

[loveme4whoiam]

To write an interactive romance quest that wouldn't be repetitive would take AGES. Your idea isn't a bad oneGabbe , just that in order for the dialogue to be generated after every dialogue option chosen before it, you would have to write a seperate response for every single foreseeable selection branch the player chose.

 

The game couldn't generate random dialogue on the fly because games aren't that smart yet. I've read about neural net programs and things that can be taught grammar and soforth, but I don't know if even those pretty advanced AI units could come up with a piece of meaningful dialogue on their own - they'd have to have a pre-prepared list of options to select from in response to the player's choices.

 

I too think that romance in a game can be an excellent feature - look at HL2, didn't millions of gamers around the world fall for Alyx? I know I did (and I'm enough of a man to admit it :P) Although luckily for HL2 you don't get any choice in the storyline, which made it far far easier to pull off. Which brings me back to my original point - a decent romantic storyline wouldn't be that hard to pull off, technically speaking (unless I've missed something), it would just be a stone-cast mother of trial for the writer and voice-artists to get all the neccesary dialogue with no repeated lines.

[Guest]

If i wanted to get married and have kids i'd play The Sims, if i'm honest, and not Oblivion.

[Guest]

seriously tho can you not find something more important to draw your attention!

just as you cant decide to go on an epic quest with your nuerotic nutcase of a sim,

you cant start domestic living with a hardcore hero,

simple fact of it is bethesda isnt making a game like that

they dont want to

so if you want to do that play fable or the sims but you're not gonna find stuff like that in this genre

[Stampede]

Yeah ok. Well how about we let this thread die now instead of adding pointless comments?