Tavern Talk. Okay it doesn't look like much but there is a LOT of back-end going into this. With some good work but tonight I should be able to parse the scene script. Still haven't solved my combination problem for the Gaussian Probability Sets . I have the question up on Math StackExchange .
Need Intel? I'm loving Starcraft 2 at the moment, and it got me thinking about my love of imperfect information in games design. I strongly recommend A Game of Thrones (board game) and Frozen Synapse , which also introduce blind simultaneous action which make it even more interesting.
Of course there is a story So the data driven dialogue project is moving along and well a simple problem arises. The more mechanic driven and gamey your game is, Ludology focused, the easier it is to scrape and implement a data driven dialogue system.
Get Talking So I have some paper examples composed. They serve to demonstrate, but I feel are rather lacking. I don't think the true nature and power of the system will be exposed until I plug it into a living system or game. Examples. Agent Knowledge Example. Query & Response Example.
XML Data formatted with CSS. Over 13,000 characters and this blasted XML is still not complete enough to provide a decent concrete example. Thank you CSS for making it legible to the human eye. I may look at doing some examples tomorrow night.
Formatting data into a meaningful representation is a whole area of study. XML is a wonderful way to format data. Using a bit of CSS to transform XML into prettiness is a wonderful way of formatting it. Well still loads todo but progress is here. XML Data (WIP) Reference Scenario
So I was so tired of seeing a computer the last few days I switch to paper notes for a while. Still need to scan / transcribe them to digital format. Here are some highlights. Key Points.
Arrays are listed as { }. Groups are “- - -” boxes. So some graph confusion between arrays and groups. It’s very clear on the graph but the query starts looking strange. Really tired and not making progress. So going home, grabbing some food and hopefully I can clean up the mess in my head.
Okay some actions can affect multiple targets, my old model ignored this and hence broke in a few places. I’ve now fixed this. This resolves a few graph query issues I was having. Containers. Aaah yes arbitrary containers are extremely useful in a graph systems.
Okay so loads of code written, which has really found holes and helped smooth out the model. Query Graph. Okay so the most basic Query format is a Graphed Query. Pop-able Context. Any item which is pop-able can throw away it’s parents without loss of information.
Sadly no pretty pictures, but loads of progress. That’s the sad truth of programming, loads of boring text before anything cool happens. So what are you seeing. Query Response Format working. People, Locations, Objects populating with random generator. No Events Yet.
Almost missed last bus home. Really good progress has been made. Lots of clean up and refactoring making good headway. Query & Response format cermented. Basic test bed in. Hard coded a random populator to fill values. Unified time sensitive atom structure. More tomorrow (^_^)
So I wrote this long article about how I switched to an Atomic data model. How this is one possible implementation of the proposed model. Different code would be written based on language, memory and cpu restrictions. The implementation is a proof of concept . It does not define the model .
Not much progress tonight. Looking at examples and the refrence scenario, getting bogged down in detail. Will look at a code implementation of Thursday
Dissertation: Atomic Structure A sample atomic structure laid out in a document. Query and Response forms also discussed.
Classic Dialogue for the Inn-Keeper Well it took much longer than I expected. First Complete Draft of the old Style dialogue tree. Now to replace it with my new system.
Work in Progress: Innkeep Dialogue Only about 70% progress. Still so simple, ye gods this takes forever to write. So glad my dissertation is how to improve this. Cause I’m passionate about character interaction, but this makes you realise why you don’t see it that much.
Event Details - Some Notes. Events are data blocks which are used to construct the dialogue system. The full list of blocks are as follows. Events. Locations. People. Where: The location where the event occurred. When : A fixed time, as to when the event occurred . Actors (1..N).
Today’s Plan. Compile the Inn-Keepers Dialogue the old fashioned way. Create the interaction in AGS. Email my supervisor to bring him up to date. Side Note: Rave music is much better than Jazz for writing long boring scripts.
Okay so the day has been super productive even if it required me to learn a whole new graphing system. So the point is this writing dialogue trees is a pain in the neck. Also what’s the correct approach for the dissertation.
Dissertation: Progress So I’ve made the reference document (see link). I’m extremely impressed with Adventure Game Studio. Made a simple game in it, now I just need to do the dull task of writing all those dialogue trees.
Reference Scenario. I’ve intentionally kept it trim, and avoided too much unnecessary detail. Defining that skeleton would be enough for a GM in a role-playing game to run the Public House room of the Inn. So I’m going to take a break now, then look at implementing the scene in AGS.
So Saturday night and all of Sunday was written off thanks to my house-mate having a house-party before going out for drinks, follow by early morning noise and more drinks… finally Sunday lots of hangover rugby players around the house. Preventing any real work.
So I’ve been trying to do the following tasks today. Create Scenario Reference. Draft scenario and characters. Draft topics of conversation. Compile Final Scenario reference. Complete creative today block.
Aim. To create a data-driven system for use in the games industry that will generate complete social interactions using seeded scenarios which expands based on player interactions and arbitrary input. This is an alternative to dialogue trees. Task List.