06 AI memory of characters – cAIMemory
Details how an AI remembers information about player characters.
In most MMORPGs/MUDs/IF software, AIs (if they exist) remember
very little about a player character. Circumreality AIs remember
a lot of information about the player characters they meet.
At the heart of an AI's memory is the cAIMemory class,
which is a superlcass of cAI and cFaction.
The cAIMemory class maintains a database of all the player
characters it has met, stored in pAIMemory. For
each character, it stores several hundred pieces of "information",
such as whether or not the AI likes the character, the last
time they met, what the character's favorite color is, etc.
Each piece of information is labled with a lower case
string, such as "favoritecolor", and is stored as a sub-list.
If your code changes elements within the sub-list, the AI
will remember the information.
Every AI (derived from cAI) remembers a list of dangerous enemies,
as well as friends that will help in combat. (This list is different
than the like/dislike list also supplied for AI's.)
To access an AI's memory about a character's favorite color,
call vFavoriteColor = oAI.AIMemoryGet (Actor,
"favoritecolor", FALSE); Actor is the player character's
object. "favoritecolor" is the piece of information to access.
FALSE indicates that if the memory doesn't exist then don't
bother to create it. When the method returns, vFavoriteColor
will be a list, with (hypothetically) the first element of the
list set to the AI's memory of the character's favorite
color. If the AI had never stored such a memory NULL will
be returned from AIMemoryGet().
An AI's memory is based on the following (fundamental) methods:
-
AIMemoryActorExist() - Tests to see if the AI
remembers anything at all about the actor.
-
AIMemoryActorRemove() - Causes the AI to forget
everything it knows about the actor.
-
AIMemoryGet() - Gets (or adds) a memory to the
AI, as discussed above.
-
AIMemoryRemove() - Causes the AI to forget
a specific piece of information it knows about the actor,
such as the actor's favorite color.
An AI manages its database, occasionally deleting old data.
You should be aware that:
-
AIs will remember every player character they meet. They won't
ever forget a player character, unless the player character
is deleted from the database, gDatabaseActors. This ensures
that players won't ever feel cheated by NPCs forgetting them.
-
AIs will also remember other NPCs. They may, however, forget
about the NPCs if they are deleted, even if the NPCs
are backed up to a database.
-
AIs will only store about 200 pieces of information on a character before
deleting old ones. The limit is set by gAIMemoryTrim.
-
If a character hasn't been ecountered for more than
two weeks by the AI, the memory limit is set to gAIMemoryTrim / 2.
-
Important: If you want a character (that uses cAIMemory)
in a multiplayer world to remember across reboots then you
need to also base the character off cSaveToDatabase (see the turtorial).
You might also wish to do the following:
-
Sometimes you will want to have one NPC in two or more different rooms at
once. This often happens when you create one copy of a village that exists
before an orc attack, and another version after the orc attack. You may
want a few NPCs to survive the orc attack. Thus, they need to be in two
places at once. To allow for this, create two copies of the NPC. However,
you'll need to have their memories of player characters stay in sync.
To do this, have one of NPCs alias its memory to the other NPC
by using pAIMemoryAliasTo.
07 Factions – cFaction
A class that can be used to create factions and guilds for PCs and NPCs.
A faction is a group of characters, either NPCs or PCs.
Factions are also known as guilds, but are not limited to
official organizations. Members of a village or town could all
belong to a faction "MemberOfTownXXX". Likewise, members of
a race or culture could all belong to a faction.
Making NPCs a member of one or more factions is useful for
the following reasons:
-
NPCs will be able to derive knowledge that's "known" to the
faction. For example, the villagers of Hermansville (a faction)
all know where the temple is in Hermansville, and all know
about the goblin raiders to the north.
-
When a player character befriends a NPC in a faction, he
ever-so-slightly increases the reaction of all members of
the faction. Thus, is a player makes friends with half the NPCs
in town, the other NPCs will be friendly also. This works
in reverse.
-
NPCs can have "enemy" factions. If a player character befriends
an enemy faction (such as "Enemies of Hermansville"),
he will not get as good of a reaction (from "Villagers of
Hermansville").
Players may wish to be part of a faction for the following reasons:
-
Standard MUD/MMORPG guid features, such as guild E-mail.
-
If a PC is a member of a faction, and he makes a good impression
on an NPC, the NPC's reaction will improve slightly for
all members of the faction. Thus, if you're a member
of a guild, your actions affect how all the other guild members
are seen, positively or negatively.
To create a faction:
-
Create an object based on cFaction. Since cFaction
is based on cAIMemory, the faction's information will automatically
be saved across reboots.
-
Make sure the object is an object, and not a class.
-
Fill in the faction's pNLPNounName and pNLPParseName,
as usual.
-
pFactionSize should be filled with the guestimated
number of members of the faction. The faction size controls how
much a NPC's reaction to the faction is affected by its
individual members. Thus, if a player is a member of a faction,
and makes a good impression on a NPC, the NPC's reaction
to the faction will only increase by 1/pFactionSize.
You may also wish to fill in the following faction information:
-
pAIConvScripts dictates what conversations scripts are
common to all members of a faction.
-
pAIConvStories lists all stories known by faction members.
-
pAIFactionAntiFactions provides an easier way for one
faction to dislike another.
-
pAIFactoids lists factoids known by all faction members.
-
pAIKnowledgeConversationStateExtreme lists conversation
states that have a large impact on faction members. For example: Talking
about "fishing" to members of the fisherman's guild.
-
pAIKnowledgeKnow is a list of knowledge that faction
members will know.
-
pAILikeDefault is used by AILikeFirstImpressions().
-
pAILikeEquip is used by AILikeFirstImpressions().
-
pAILikeForget controls how quickly factions forget about
player characters.
-
pAILikeGender and pGender are used by AILikeFirstImpressions().
-
pAILikeRace is used by AILikeFirstImpressions().
-
pAILikeReputation controls how much a player's reputation
affects faction members.
-
pAILikeRoom causes the NPC to like the player more
if the NPC is in a specific room.
-
pAILikeSkills is used by AILikeFirstImpressions().
-
pAnonymous causes the faction to be known to only
a few NPCs.
-
If you se pIsInvisible to TRUE then players won't be
able to see the faction when they type, "What is my reputation?"
-
Set pAIFactionIsHobby to TRUE to use the faction object
as a NPC hobby, such as fishing, bowling, or Star Trek fan.
-
AILikeEquip() determines what kind of equipment faction
members like, such as black robes, etc.
-
AILikeFirstImpressions() controls how much faction members
like other characters.
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