After ideas for making a town lively

[Legacy_Darth Shiv]

               Hi all,

Just wondering if there are good reference modules or maybe someone has ideas for making a town lively? The ideas I have are quite script static and require a lot of effort (= time which I don't have a tonne of!) such as writing a whole stack of dialogs and randomising what ones are triggered and so on.

I'm thinking there has to be a better way or at least some mod I can use to take some of the legwork out?

Cheers,
DS
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__Guile]

               When the PC talks to the NPC, OnConversation Event Script, do a roll...

int nResults = d6(1);  // 1d6
//Store the results of the roll...
SetLocalInt(OBJECT_SELF, "RANDOM_DIALOG", nResults);

In the TextAppearsWhen part of the conversation (when selecting a line of the conversation for the NPC) add this script to each line...  (replace ? with 1 - 6)

StartingConditional()
{
int i = FALSE; //Don't show the line..
int n = GetLocalInt(OBJECT_SELF, "RANDOM_DIALOGUE");

if(n == ?)
{
i = TRUE; //Show the line..
}

return i;
}
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _Guile, 05 mai 2011 - 06:58 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Builder_Anthony]

               Ranodm people on the vault is good for spawning them
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_DM_Vecna]

               I spawn NPCs all based on one male and one female model based on regional demographics. Their actions are based on ambient city but I am moving the scripts from on heartbeat to a loop that fires on perception and quits when no PCs are found in the area. I like Ambient City though for a basic system
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bubba McThudd]

               DS,
I've gotten lots of feedback complimenting me on the liveliness of the city in my mod "Agrenost - Beneath the Cobbles."  Start up a game as a paladin, good cleric or monk and explore the more upscale parts of the city.  Play as a fighter, rogue or evil cleric to start in the slums.
I think that the little things like smoke over fires, minstrel bands in pubs, the small placeables in the peddlars' stalls, the shouts of the heralds and hawkers that really add to the immersion factor.  
The law-and-order system in the upscale parts of town and my gang-turf system in the slums keeps things very lively indeed for PCs who like to thumb their nose at authority figures.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bubba McThudd, 06 mai 2011 - 05:42 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Darth Shiv]

               Damn thought I was subscribed to the thread but I wasn't... sorry for the late response.

Was thinking of random dialogs but was thinking maybe random conversations rather than just one-off comments. A conversation engine...

Thanks for the ideas. Bubba the module sounds interesting. I'll have a look at it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_the.gray.fox]

               Anything that breaks the monotony of NWN sim life is okay to add life to your towns, I say.

Have people shout random yells, as if they are angry at someone/something.

I have seen plenty of modules wherein there are armed patrols showing up in town.
But I never have seen pompous and arrogant tax collectors do their rounds... Are NWN towns tax-free by any chance?
(I suppose that pickpocketing a tax-collector would earn the daring Rogue quite a bit of money, btw)

Make a small group of kids speed around as if they are playing some game.
Give them the Monk Speed feat, so they can truly >>ZIP>> around like all proper real life N2O-powered turbo-brats are able to do!

Have dogs barking. Place a pack and make them lousy for no reason!

Place some non-interactive horse or other fauna near what would be a stable. These are best located somewhere near the town outer gates.

Place beggars asking for coins (not food. Never food! Beggars want to make $money$. They do not want food good for just 1 meal). Becoming a poor derelict was supposed to be all too damn easy at the time, so place _many_ beggars. And they will compete for the best spots in town, of course!
And do NOT make beggars act with any honor. When people are desperate for life, honor is not even the last thing they will dream to think to uphold. Leave the utopistic stuff out of the game, or you ruin any trace of realism.

Have a charlatan mage cast (fake) spells in front of a crowd. He is entertaining people, and earning a living in the process. This is best perceived if you setup the scene in a small round plaza.

Have shady characters approach the wandering player to propose shady deals of all sorts.

Have unscrupolous merchants be willing to sell an "alternate" set of merchandise (stuff you can not usually find for sale, or which people of your status have no access to anyway), provided that the player has enough wits to talk the merchant into trusting him.

Do not forget to place the usual gang of thugs bossing around. Make them annoying at best, but not really dangerous. If they were a real "danger" the city guard would take care of them by now and you would never know thugs exist in the town. Makes sense?
Want to make it better? Add a second gang of thugs, competing with the first.
Make their leaders power-hungry but without the means to do anything concrete. Therefore, given the chance (read = the player's aid)  they will raise their aims and start causing some real ruckus in town.

Have the occasional Prince or Lord show up in the streets, accompanied by his personal escort of unfriendly bunch.

Hm. Do not forget the tavern brawl. No tavern is a real tavern if it does not take place a brawl once a week.
Oh. And do not forget the drunkurd getting out of the tavern and heading home, *hic*-ing all the way.
I would also add his angry and chubby wife, waiting for him on the door (with a roll pin, maybe). Realism, you know...

-fox
               
               

               

                     Modifié par the.gray.fox, 12 juin 2011 - 01:56 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_CID-78]

               Give the NPC a personallity and make them act it out without interacting with the PC. ie make them greet other NPC they walk past, make them yell or kick at kids and stupid dogs or whatever. Making a ambient system will be very script intensive and usually mean either use a prebuilt system or writting your own AI. (months of work). but even small scripts can add quite alot of life to a module without requiring that much work. such as a dog that barks when you get close, or NPC that stops and shop at a local marketplace.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               I'm also at the point in building my module where I'm making the towns livelier.  Most of the above suggestions are excellent.  Thanks everybody!  
Try acting Fenora from the vault as well as the ambient city mentioned above.  Acting Fenora's creator is using an advanced version of Deva Winblood's NPC Activities and I just erfed the whole area and plugged it into my module!  It was way too advanced for me but I read the documentation, altered the area to suit me, altered the NPC's appearance, moved the waypoints around and I have a nice countryside village that seems alive!  Didn't need to script a syllable.
The ambient city is very useful too, as all the NPCs come with descriptions of how their scripts work complete with directions of how to erf various NPCs and placeables to use in your own module!  These NPCs are really plug and play and have saved alot of my time!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               Here are the links by the way:
http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=6144
for acting fenora
http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=2433
for the ambient city
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Vivienne L]

               There's also a drunk by Axe Murderer who does a brawl according to the posters, though I haven't tested that one out yet!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mudeye]

               A few ideas:

1) One problem a lot of modules have is a town that is big but the population is tiny.  If you only want to generate and concentrate on 5 or 10 npcs then make the town a tiny village that would reasonably only have a handful of people available at any one time. 

2) NPCs stand around and do nothing.  Several people have already talked about this.  Every NPC should have something to say.  There are a lot of ways to make this happen.

3) All the NPCs are stationary.  Make a number of moving NPCs. Give them a route to follow and it gives an area a sense that something is going on.

4) Make the quest givers approach the PC and offer up the quest instead of standing idle until asked.

5) Make NPC groups do activities like have a conversation or patrol around as a group.  It doesn't work so well to have some event taking place though, because it will be going on forever which seems unnatural.

6) A long term event can work fine, however.  Like ongoing construction, guard patrols, boats arriving and leaving.

7) One time events are nice but a lot of work for what you get.  Like other posters suggestions: brawl, argument, mugging.  It's not usually effective to have a brawl that goes on indefinitely, or that happens every time you enter a shop though.
 
Wandering animals are easy and add some life:  dogs, cats, birds.

9) One thing that is nice if you are up to implementing it is to have the NPCs start conversations with you (like the quest giver suggestion above). 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               I have stuff like animals in villages.  The cows don't do much unless disturbed.  That if if a PC or another NPC comes near them they react, by mooing, or going to the water trough, or hale bales.
Once the distrubing factor leaves or removes to a certain distance they go back to the same sort of normal behavior.  I also have a bull on different scripts who moves around to offset the genernally more passive behavior of the cows, as he is more active.  Chickens just peck around and move to cover if it rains.  I have a cat that hunts mice.

For npc's I have normal ambient hands who wander around doing hand things, checking the fields walking random wp's.  Then in the mix I through in more active ranger types who move to a different set of wp's and, on a switch will do other random behaviors, sometimes speaking warnings, or reacting to the weather.  Like they might say 'Snow remind me of home,' if it's snowing, but only one in a while.  Then usually a tough npc, I call them watchers, who wander wp and go in and out of stealth.  Once again on the theory that different activity levels serve to accentuate the feeling of activity.

In bars I have bar patrons/guards who mostly just sit around while they are juxtaposed with drunken sailors who are more active, they drink, curse, and are just generally obnoxious.  It generally only takes a few npc's dong something to make a place feel alive, but varying behavior with a switch system adds more randomness.  For encounters I have things like bounties, robbers, irate guards, muggers, and others to add to the general terror of certain locals.  This tends to explain why many town areas are devoid of just general people milling about, though I do have towns persons who move quickly from place to place.  I like to throw in a few wayward youths who go in and out of stealth, say things on occassion, and will even try to rob you if you seem an easy mark.