Realistic AI - is it possible?

[horynych]

I think many people remember that before Skyrim was released the developers promised to consider the economy and AI more thoroughly, for example there was a suggestion that if you burn down the mill then the prices for the bread would eventually rise.

 

Now, this was never implemented. Still, keeping in mind how much works and thoughts did the Skyrim fans community put into modding so far, I was curious if there were people trying to work on implementing realistic economy and realistic AI behaviour in game. Yeah, I mean...we have realistic needs and desires, we have tons of immersion and appearance mods, and it looks quite great! But as soon as you start putting more efforts you realise that the world around you is static. I know...it would be super difficult to teach AI how to build new houses, but maybe we can finally make AI behave realistically ? Yeah this can destroy the main quest and certain secondary quests, but isn't it worth it?

 

I cannot put much time into developing myself... I was curious, if there are big mods and frameworks that are already working on it?

 

 

Second question - for modders, is there something that prevents a mod like this from being created in principle?

 

 

For example, maybe it would require the creature of a large network of possible "waypoints" or "points of interests" and then it would require to run a script which would let NPC choose their priorities according to their own background, character, etc~

 

Then to implement a certain database with AI personalities, their belongings and real estates, family members and relationships BETWEEN NPCs

Create a set of basic desires - being hunger and thirsty, implement the concept of fear

 

Every single idea here seems to be complicated enough, but is it actually impossible to implement this?

 

 

The third question is a bit more specific - are there mods that are aimed at altering the interaction among the NPCs? Is there something that prevents people from creating a mod like that?

[Sabo]

As far as I know, when it comes to scripting things like this are most likely possible. However, it'd not only be scripting. To implement some of these things properly, you'd need basic voice actors, for new NPC interactions, as well as the 'fear' you speak of needing to be... Noise acted. The reacting prices would be possible too, but you'd need to script the things that affect the pricing. There's no way to burn down a mill right now, is there? However, I'm not sure if you could up individual bread prices or something, but you may be able to up all prices of a shop based on a triggered event, which is also likely since if bread is hard to come by they could either raise the price of bread alone a lot, or raise the price of everything a little less to make up for the losses on bread, etc.

 

So, as far as I can tell from my little scripting knowledge, there's nothing stopping people from doing this, except the sheer hard work no one ever wants to do.

 

And, I doubt there's a mod on this, because it's something that would've peaked my interest when I scroll through all the Skyrim mod sites every few days.

 

Basically, there's no reason I can think of that means there -couldn't- be a mod for all this, however there's many reasons why there probably won't be.

[Rayblue]

It's possible to expand it further for increased realism, but at the price of greater consumption of system resources and taxing the game engine, which is a modified but dated Oblivion engine. To add more "smarts" means more scripting, and the current Papyrus scripting system isn't exactly a robust programming language, nor keeps your gamesaves clean.

[DDproductions83]

Programming anything is possible

Right there enough said on the "Is it do-able'

 

Now on to the "Will someone do it"

 

No

 

 

The resource investment would be obscene, the amount of work and scripting and programming and VA's and compatibility would destroy anyone who attempted it. Mentally spiritually you name it. Trying to do that would turn a atheist to God and a religious man into a brothel owner.

 

The can is always there in anything, programming makes you a god, but sometimes it makes you a god that wants to off yourself and turn your holy wrath onto the thousands of morons that just scream NO WURK WHY NO WURK and then when you nicely try to ask for their load order they go I HAZ 794 MODS THEY WURK U NO WORK UR MOD MAKE WURK WITH MY MODS

So on and so forth

 

If one was to do it the best time would be at the start of a games modding life honestly, cause then they could probably release it within 2 years.

 

Bethesda rushed a game out and to be fair they did a pretty damn good job at it, but we have come across some scripts that are nulled out and have had to work around to do stuff even Bethesda programmers couldn't get in their game engine. The resources to make any type of AI more realistic are painful to the extreme

 

To give you a semi-time perspective Falskar took one kid 2k hours as well as that put in by the VA's etc and it added what 15 or so hours of gameplay all within the engine. You would need a overhaul of Skyrim to do what you are proposing and the time would be 40 hour work weeks for years. It just wont happen. Not until we actually get real AI's that can program half our shit for us and then its Skynet and we are toast anyway

[s.eden]

Burn down a building ?

Guess that modding open options, it is not ?
Feature wise, we have quite a lot available, and with SKSE getting functions these days, hm.

As to the economic side, hm, they are some mods covering that : "trade road" as one.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49369

That said, use the "property" (not sure of the mod name just now) mod (who allow to build a wide (and increasing) type of building, with bonus associated.
Using this one as base, with the dmg from the first mod + economic & script to destroy (hm, models ?) the building. Tweaks to be cross compatible = ?

Of course, not that easy, as it would require some time to make the changes, but at last not that out of reach.

 

[Redflyingmonkey]

Fire and Ice overhaul doesn't actually burn stuff. It's like putting wall of flame spells all over a mesh, but expanding the time sequence in the script for it to last longer. So it's the same thing actually, there shouldn't be near any way to destroy something in Skyrim and get the Papyrus to pick up the fact that it was destroyed, then trigger the whole process of basing some kind of event on the destruction.

A realistic component that I thought would've been great to implement from the start though is a correlation between the Civil War and the economy. Like, the further you go in the quest, the higher prices get, people leave their houses and stuff. For example, a script where conquering a city with whichever side of the war you're in would trigger a sudden rise in the prices in that particular hold, where some NPCs like "Rebels" would spawn and occasionally riot somewhere in the hold, and rise the prices further, and you'd have like, to take radiant quests to kill them for the prices to stabilize a little. There are a lot of stuff that are missing to the economics in Skyrim, I believe there was a mod once on Nexus which upgraded it quite noticeably but I can't find it anywhere...  

[carnifex]

I'd love to play a game that does all that, but I don't think Skyrim will ever be that game. Scripts tend to make Skyrim very unstable, and the amount of scripting required would have been obscene.

[Guest airdance]

I think many people remember that before Skyrim was released the developers promised to consider the economy and AI more thoroughly, for example there was a suggestion that if you burn down the mill then the prices for the bread would eventually rise.

 

Now, this was never implemented. Still, keeping in mind how much works and thoughts did the Skyrim fans community put into modding so far, I was curious if there were people trying to work on implementing realistic economy and realistic AI behaviour in game. Yeah, I mean...we have realistic needs and desires, we have tons of immersion and appearance mods, and it looks quite great! But as soon as you start putting more efforts you realise that the world around you is static. I know...it would be super difficult to teach AI how to build new houses, but maybe we can finally make AI behave realistically ? Yeah this can destroy the main quest and certain secondary quests, but isn't it worth it?

 

I cannot put much time into developing myself... I was curious, if there are big mods and frameworks that are already working on it?

 

 

Second question - for modders, is there something that prevents a mod like this from being created in principle?

 

 

For example, maybe it would require the creature of a large network of possible "waypoints" or "points of interests" and then it would require to run a script which would let NPC choose their priorities according to their own background, character, etc~

 

Then to implement a certain database with AI personalities, their belongings and real estates, family members and relationships BETWEEN NPCs

Create a set of basic desires - being hunger and thirsty, implement the concept of fear

 

Every single idea here seems to be complicated enough, but is it actually impossible to implement this?

 

 

The third question is a bit more specific - are there mods that are aimed at altering the interaction among the NPCs? Is there something that prevents people from creating a mod like that?

First of all I am NOT trying to put you down or belittle your question, but a little bit of research would have answered your question.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_%28video_games%29

 

 

[Veladarius]

 

I think many people remember that before Skyrim was released the developers promised to consider the economy and AI more thoroughly, for example there was a suggestion that if you burn down the mill then the prices for the bread would eventually rise.

 

Now, this was never implemented. Still, keeping in mind how much works and thoughts did the Skyrim fans community put into modding so far, I was curious if there were people trying to work on implementing realistic economy and realistic AI behaviour in game. Yeah, I mean...we have realistic needs and desires, we have tons of immersion and appearance mods, and it looks quite great! But as soon as you start putting more efforts you realise that the world around you is static. I know...it would be super difficult to teach AI how to build new houses, but maybe we can finally make AI behave realistically ? Yeah this can destroy the main quest and certain secondary quests, but isn't it worth it?

 

I cannot put much time into developing myself... I was curious, if there are big mods and frameworks that are already working on it?

 

 

Second question - for modders, is there something that prevents a mod like this from being created in principle?

 

 

For example, maybe it would require the creature of a large network of possible "waypoints" or "points of interests" and then it would require to run a script which would let NPC choose their priorities according to their own background, character, etc~

 

Then to implement a certain database with AI personalities, their belongings and real estates, family members and relationships BETWEEN NPCs

Create a set of basic desires - being hunger and thirsty, implement the concept of fear

 

Every single idea here seems to be complicated enough, but is it actually impossible to implement this?

 

 

The third question is a bit more specific - are there mods that are aimed at altering the interaction among the NPCs? Is there something that prevents people from creating a mod like that?

First of all I am NOT trying to put you down or belittle your question, but a little bit of research would have answered your question.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_%28video_games%29

 

 

I think they are asking about Skyrim specifically not games in general.

 

AI in Skyrim is just AI Packages, Quests and Scenes strung together, if there is something spontaneous (unplanned) from an npc then it is probably a bug. AI Packages tell them what to do when and where, some are specific and others are more general (Sandbox is one of these). Any dialogue or behavior more complex than saying hi would use a scene (chain of AI Packages) and a complex scene would use scripts and possibly quest stages to control. Random elements are usually just a number of preplanned routes so that it has options as to which to do. If you want to be able to repeat the quest it gets even more complex to make as aliases in quests can get rather picky and if they break then so does the quest (usually).

 

 

Then to implement a certain database with AI personalities, their belongings and real estates, family members and relationships BETWEEN NPCs

This is already in Skyrim. Items and property are already tagged with who owns them (most of the time). Spouses, lovers, children and other family are all set so they know who they are but it is only used for mostly mundane things. Complex relationships would need quests to control so it can track when things happen and move on to the next stage when it is ready.

 

 

Building an meaningful interaction between npc's and getting them to remember / react accordingly would be a huge undertaking but it is possible. As for npc's to just go and decide to do something without someone saying it is ok or being told to do it, that won't happen.