Ambiguous Interactive Dungeons: Upgraded to Version 3

[Legacy_hexmendacious]

               

wyldhunt1 wrote...

I think it would be less jarring and more... ignored.
Players will forget that it exists and miss things.
I think players would have a lot of fun with it if it was used well, but it would need to be used often enough for the player to want to check the area often. If it always says there's no items near, they'll stop trying and miss the stuff that does use it.
I'd send a reminder that it's used when they log in, and maybe add a journal entry with instructions.
Then, use it in enough places to make sure that it's useful.

This.  I'm a HUGE fan of this idea - it creates a whole new layer and level of play, one wrapped up in narrative, which serves to complement role-play, I think.  But if it's not implemented well it can be a disaster - it reminds me a bit of the PAW (Player Action Widget) in the CRAP (classic Role-Playing Adaptation Project): I had a friend whose world I was exploring/testing that used the 'active search"  mechanism of the PAW (basically you target the ground you want to search, an animation of searching would play, and it would roll a Seach check and reveal stuff in a small radius of where you clicked upon success), and he excitedly told me to search around to find the hidden stuff - but I looked everywhere and never found anything, so eventually gave up.  So caution must be used to be sure to implement it well, but this is a great contribution.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               I have a similar system already in HR base, that switch over the searching to a scripted form and does not use the game engine. I make them have to use to find traps and secret doors with, so they should get use to using it all the time and it a custom feat everyone has. No need to type, just click items, placables, door, ground.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               ShadowM, that sounds like an alternative search system. AID is much more than that.

The biggest advantage of AID is that it allows for more detailed actions than are available in NWN's point and click interface. The second advantage is that "usable objects" do not need to be checked as "usable" in the toolset. This means that a player can not simply hold down the tab key to determine which objects are "important".

I like AID for multiplayer modules because in those environments players are more accustomed to emoting their character's actions, and AID is driven by emote text.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               I understand what your saying. I think that if you combined the systems, you get the character more accustomed to using the system. As it is I think you get about 1 out 3 that use the system. Sounds interesting, I test it out when I get some more time.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Ah... I see what you are saying. Basically if AID is integrated with commonly used actions then Players will be more accustomed to using it in the module. That makes sense.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

                I have begun integrating AID into a playable adventure. No play testing yet, but I am definitely making a point of creating a numer of objects that respond to it in each area so I think if I can keep this up, I should get good results from players. AND as I go I've been making improvements.
Improvements so far include:

• One thing that bugged me about the first implementation of AID was that actions with skill checks required the builder to create custom scripts. I've since begun restructuring the code so that actions with skill checks no longer require them. 
  
  Custom scripts will no longer be required for use of skill checks in AID.  Maybe now they'll see some use. I can't imagine they got much use before. So far this is just the case for push, pull, and examine. I'll keep going as needed until I have restructured all of the action functions.
• I have also improved the Push action, and added Pull to complement it. The original system pushed the object in one of four "cardinal" directions based on the direction the character was facing regardless of which side of the object the character was standing, which was weird and ugly on a number of levels. Also it sometimes failed depending on the tileset or the mesh of the placeable even when you should have been able to push the object. I've since fixed the bugs and improved the vector math so that the object is always pushed in a straight line away from the player. And then I added a "pull" action which allows objects to be pulled in a straight line toward (and past) the character. The parser also now accepts "shove(s)" for "push".
• I also think I will need to reimplement the custom actions portion of AID OR add a few built in actions to the parser to achieve some of the things I need for my own module. These actions are foraging related and I am not quite sure how to do it, but they are in the works.

I will likely have all of  this finished and posted to the Vault within the next two months. The reason for the long lead time is that I have to finish this adventure in Arnheim I am working on. Not until after that happens and is played through at least once and then improved upon will I get around to exporting systems out of the module and repackaging them for others to use. Then again I sometimes do foolish things and export systems in the middle of a project to the vault, so who knows.


Footnote - The foraging system in more detail than you probably want to hear:

• Something that I am considering as well is a system for foraging with periodically spawned objects at random locations. In Arnheim, if a wizard's familiar dies, they can't summon it anymore. They need to get a new one. One way to do so is to cast "Bind Familiar" on an animal of the same type. And since mice are awesome familiars, but really easy to kill, I think wizards will be in the market for mice, and so I need mouse holes with mice inside them. Anyway, the concept is to have hidden "mouse lairs" in the forest, field, and town. And there will be different ways to find these using AID and/or the Track feat. A similar system could be worked out with rabbit dens when an adventure needs to rustle up some dinner. These are basically invisible objects that can only be found when foraging for them. Otherwise players and monsters don't notice them, and I don't need to have small creatures running around the map for characters to hunt. Instead they find the lair and make use of it as a resource - or spawn the critter if that makes sense in the adventure.

               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 09 mars 2012 - 03:33 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Bug: I recently found a bug which I introduced by porting all of AID to the OnChat event and eliminating the listeners. AID has a set of chat commands which enable a player to repeat their last chat, to store chats in partiular memory slots, and to repeat chat text stored in a memeory slot. I did not realize that the text spoken by a player does not trigger an OnChat event - so these commands have been useless with regards to emote parsing by AID and DMFI.

Solution: I will need to create a special function that pipes text into the emote parsing functions - AND call this special function when a player uses the <last command or one of the <mem slots to repeat a phrase.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 13 mars 2012 - 10:19 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

                <musing...>

I had a thought last night <careful, boss. you know you can never keep them long>
Funny, bird.

I was considering a small (relatively) little mod set in the Maze of Arrowhead (slums) using Z's fantastic Medieval City.
One of the rather, um, exotic things about Arrowhead is the presence of "Teeth" - large curved spines rising from the ground in a very precise 5km circle around Castle White. They've been there for ages (literally, 4 ages) and yet, only the locals know anything more than that they exist. <you're rambling, old man>
Hardly. Attend.

I was thinking what a cool thing it would be to hook AID into NPC dialogue. Talk to a local and choose the "What's that?" option. Your pointer turns into a targeting pointer (which makes me think this would have to use the Feat system, somehow) and you click on something that AID returns to the dialogue as a string "Bent Pillar". The NPC dialogue then branches based on what knowledge the NPC poss
esses and how much he likes the PC <pc's gold, you mean>
Whatever works.

This line of thought, of course, was inspired my Jackkal Dragon's inquiry into inquiry encounters. <i hate it when you're repeatedly redundant, wizard>

But this would allow PCs to question NPCs about local environmental objects and increase their options for interacting with the environment in a sorta object-oriented way. <he pulls these words out of his hat. really. i've seen him>
Hey. If people laugh at me, at least I made them laugh!

<...and sometimes amusing>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 28 octobre 2012 - 06:57 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               While I like what you are talking about, the heavy lifting in that scheme would not be handled by AID.The advantage of AID is that you can densely layer hidden information in an area because the stuff isn't clickable so it doesn't make the PCs life difficult when they need to click on an enemy in the middle of combat (remember attacking those old CNR trees when you were trying to click on the Owl Bear?). Plus there is the added sophistication of responding to a puzzle with natural language, rather than trying to fit every round peg into the point and click square. But ... I digress... '>
One solution to the problem you poise could be handled by:

• a knowledge component the PC has some knowledge data that tracks what the PC has seen that is important, and possibly what the PC knows about the things they have seen. So perhaps when discovering, examining and maybe even inspecting those teeth in AID for the first time, perhaps a journal entry related to the teeth pops up - or perhaps you simply set an integer on the PC - or both - whatever works.
• a sophisticated conversation: I think you need to use a scripted conversation here. I like Z-dialog for this reason. This is needed for the following couple items
• All NPCs have a hook which compares their knowledge about the teeth with the PC's knowledge about the teeth. If any of the various knowledge bits trip TRUE, then a potential branch (scripted) in the convo will be available. Hooks into special branches that divulge knowledge could accessed in a number of ways depending on what kind of game play you want to push:
• SOLUTION 1 (traditional):  A generic [Schmooze] gives boilerplate responses about the town unless the requisite knowledge is tripped and then a menu of related follow questions are available. [Ask about the teeth] [Gossip about the fish monger] etc....
• SOLUTION 2 (point and click): A generic [Ask about surroundings] could pause the conversation and put the character in a "cutscene select mode" as you mentioned in which the PC clicks on something nearby or near an object (and the nearest AID objects come up in a menu to selct from). Or somesuch. This would be challenging to do in a satisfying way unless you had a tight Space Quest style adventure mod.
• SOLUTION 3 (tool oriented): An [Inquire about something in your notes] option in a conversation draws up a list of items that the PC stored in a "notebook". Storing in a "notebook" would be part of AID. When you encounter an AID object, you can "note" the object, in which case it becomes another object that you store in a "notebook". You'd need to give the player an ability to manage the notebook. Perhaps the notes are an item in the PCs inventory, and you can use it to manage your notes. One of the options would be to select 9 choices that can be focused on during inquiries. If a matching key pair is found on the NPC and the AID object, then knowledge can be divulged (specific or general depending on the knowledge bits mentioned earlier, and what can be gleaned about that particular object).

So anyway, no matter how I look at this, I don't see how else one could use AID for the kind of interviewing of NPCs that you are talking about. I think the main thing is building the conversations, or a framework for conversations that can handle this sort of thing, in the right way to work with AID.

[edit: - one major weakness with AID is the way it uses tags. Tags in AID are single word names that identify the object. A barrel shoudl have the tag "barrel" so that if you want to examine it you type "examine barrel" and then the nearest object with tag "barrel" is examined. So if you have a unique object with a generic name that you want to quickly find later it becomes problematic. I think a better solution would have been to flag an object with an integer that identifies it as an AID object. Use the TAG as a unique identifier, and bury all the identifying text in local strings. This would enable sophisticated Z-machine style identification: object type (barrel), adjective + name of object type (red barrel), object + relation to another object (barrel on the rug) and so on depending on how sophisticated your object model is.... 

but anyway... i have to go]
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 28 octobre 2012 - 08:37 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <nodding...>

"cutscene select mode". I like that ;-) That was what I was thinking of.

Re: AID, I was looking at tapping into the information you are already storing under the "examine" (or similar) function to allow an NPC to acquire knowledge of their surrounding. That is, not store the info statically in a conversation, but use z-dialogue (or similar) to re-route info pulled by the NPC (with greater privileges?) from AID objects when prompted by the PC.

I.e. PC opens an inquiry with NPC. NPC offers prompt in dialogue choices "What's that all about?" and PC selects subject. NPC queries the AID info and determines what can/should be pulled and modifies dialogue to suit. But all the info is on the objects, not duplicated by every dialogue tree.

The Cutscene select is one aspect that really caught my eye. But moving the knowledgebase out of the dialogue trees and allowing NPCs to access AID info. That's more meat and less bling, I'm thinking. <hehe. sound like the dwarf>
Grrrr. Don't you be startin', bird! <*raven chuckle*>

<...in appreciation>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

Rolo Kipp wrote...
Re: AID, I was looking at tapping into the information you are already storing under the "examine" (or similar) function to allow an NPC to acquire knowledge of their surrounding. That is, not store the info statically in a conversation, but use z-dialogue (or similar) to re-route info pulled by the NPC (with greater privileges?) from AID objects when prompted by the PC.

Yes, but you would need to extend the data that is in the objects beyond what AID uses. Also the advantage of dynamically generating dialogue by script is that it doesn't need to be a static storage for data. So I wouldn't overlook the power of z-dialogue. Consider "conversation includes" which would be special conversation scripts shared by multiple NPCs that know the same thing, or similar things. I think you need to solve half of this problem (at least) with the dynamic conversation scripts. Of course extending AID to respond to the conversation scripts is also necessary, but it can't do it alone.

A bit more about AID:
AID strings are typically just the feedback the player gets. For example, the examine variable is simply a local string that gets spit at the PC when the PC sends an examine command at the object. Likewise read, or inspect commands do the same (albeit each can have different skill checks), and I have hooked Arnheim's languages into the Read command as well (although this doesn't do others any good). AID does ofcourse also have other functionality like Light/Extinguish, Push/Pull, Take, etc... and I have added climb, fly, enter, swim etc... to work with a Move Skill implementation (a rewrite of the old man whistler scripts). In addition you can have the system respond with a script to any command instead of the typical way.

While this is all you need for the illusion of an interactive fiction experience, it isn't a rich object model that can react to several kinds of input or queries. Its a thin layer. I'd have to do a great deal of work to enable the level of responsiveness you are talking about. Perhaps create a switch so that it knows who is seeking the information. If it is a PC emoting AID commands... give back the typical response. If it is a script from an NPC, set up the data so that the NPC will have what it needs to speak for or about the AID object.

Anyway I am rambling.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <brambling on himself...>

A thorny issue ;-)
Ramble all you want. *I* do.
I think we are understanding what we're saying, anyway.

The word I was looking for was "method". All day I'm thinking OOP... what's the blasted word...?! Arg!
What I'm thinking of is extending AID into something more flexible/complex :-P Working out methods (like 'examine' 'push' 'bash' etc) and setting them up so that different objects have the pointer to the method (script name) and data needed stored on them.

Definitely looking at z-dialogue down the road... and AID and FB's dynamic rumor system and...

Well, enough brain storming for the day.  Gonna go smell some roses...

<...'ouch' 'ouch' 'ouch'>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               if only i actually knew how to code like the real coders.... '> I've only briefly touched on object oriented code when I was playing with writing an iphone app in objective-c (an interactive fiction game by the way... '> but i'll let the brainy andrew plotkin go there with hadith lands and I'll follow later ), and so yeah.... i got in over my head. one of the things i thought i could do after i puzzled out vector math for the first time and believed i was born to code. oooof... that was a hard fall.

So I'm not quite up to the task you are imagining. I've got to follow my own imagination with the baby steps I'm taking  - one step at a time.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 29 octobre 2012 - 01:30 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <whistling...>

I've been in Arnheim.  Pretty good baby steps ;-) Like Mozart.

<...some wolfgang>