Couldn't go to sleep with food still churning in my stomach.
Just had a thought. What does it mean for an author to bring his characters to life? What does it take to make the reader feel like he had immersed into this fictional world that the author is bringing him into?
The character obviously does not exist in our world, it exists in the fictional space of the story whether it is in the book all acted out in the game. The game is trying to take it one more step than reading, that is it is hoping that seeing and hearing and interacting with the character, we would move one more step towards enjoying this make believe.
The gamer knows the voice acting isn't the character's but decides to associate the voice to the character anyway. The graphics of the character is nearing life-like status and it is a matter of time that finally we cannot distinguish a computer graphics actor and a real one. The movement of the character too is also very good nowadays. So visual wise there is no loop-hole whether it is real or not.
It is when one tries to interact with the character that one is reminded that you are not interacting with a real person. What I am getting at is what does one desire from an artificial agent when it comes to intellect. Ever so often I wished artificial agents had thoughts and mental states, anything at all. It just sucks when guards see cell door of a notorious pirate opened and doesn't investigate into it for days and days. The least he can do is to have a purpose. A purpose more than just showing he is there. I wished whatever he said and do was based on world observation, thoughts, purpose and intention.
I am not sure whether these made sense because simple world state change and action is easily scriptable and perhaps that is surely enough. I however wished to ultimately build a world simulation, perhaps a much more simplified version of the world or even an alien world that we could not imagine existing. Then, comes the agents in the world, it'll be fine that i start with creatures with primitive brains but at least they should have them and behave in a more complex and unpredictable based on learning, genetics and internal states. I have no idea how an arbitrary world with artificial life might be interesting as a game, but I am a big fan of simulations.
It might be that complexity and unpredictability makes it easier to believe something is not artificial or dead. After all if an android with AI trying to pass the turing test, the first subtest he has to pass is sophistication. You begin by testing how sophisticated is his thought patterns and behaviors. You ask him about details of his life and ask that he make associations between data in his memory to make a coherent account of his understanding of what he remembers about himself. Unpredictability might be a fog grenade when it tries to fool a human of its true identity but there is something about kinds of unpredictability that makes the difference between fooling or giving away.
There is something about artificial agents in games nowadays that im still unsatisfied with. That is the feeling of meaningful relationship is not there, i am often reminded that their actions are scripted because their mental states that govern their conversation script are so simple. yea i guess thats it, that was what i was trying to get at this whole time. I think it is unavoidable that at the end of a conversation, there must be a cue for you to stop talking to that same person because there is nothing meaningful for you to get out of him. in a story where the objectives are to go on with the story perhaps but in a story where you really want to get to know a person that is really a let down. I have absolutely no idea how to simulate a simple mental model that churns out satisfying small talk to satisfy this urge to interact.
Perhaps even to show that the agents perceive or tries to guess what I have in mind. That is another part of the challenge. What kind of interaction would you need to have the agents try to read into your mind and appreciate your actions as mental model. Perhaps try to second guess your sincerity when you help them, it would make the instances when the character trust your integrity and character even more precious than the current case that the character believes in anything you do or say. This is the kind of unpredictability that makes your desired outcome more worthwhile although no garanteed. It of course brings us back to the question what are the minor give away that you can show that will make them doubt you.
Perfectionist like myself might be disappointed then because it is so hard to get the perfect impression to stay on the artificial character that we would not bother to load and play again to get the perfect response.
I think in narrative games there is really not much of the play in trade offs. There is always not much consequences in your action. To give an example games such as witcher and risen which gives you a choice to choose side does thread you down to slightly different path of the story but the world is still disappointingly unchanged. I don't really perceive the reactions of the people in the story on their thoughts of event changing battles that I took part in. I guess we would like to feel that we made a difference in the world.
I think it should not just flip us to different pages but I think there should be some event chain logic behind the scene that makes little changes to the world through the causal effects. how small action snowball into big changes is an interesting problem. For example how does choosing to help a certain passerby or not could change someone else's life that indirectly benefit you in someway and perhaps hurt you in another. These kind of intricate details does bring the world into life somehow.
I don't believe in the cpu cycle limit consideration when it comes to simulation because the limit is constantly getting increased. Overly simplistic worlds are still not believeable because the details arent taken care of well enough by conventional scripting. I think a general self contained logic of how the world works should be in place. A powerful one that is so that sophisticated behavior can be emergent and not scripted. I think the only way I can try to get away from not killing the computer with too much load is to move away from graphics and do a console based system first or at least no animation. That could be my first attempt at this