Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!scea!peter_alau@playstation.sony.com
From: Darco <rquat@boone.net>
Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english
Subject: Re: NPC Scripting, Re: An adventure project
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 13:48:19 -0400
Organization: SCEA News Server
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <37629D63.49498D1E@boone.net>
References: <3759079a.1869875@www.netyaroze-europe.com> <375C61CE.2183A46D@boone.net> <375C6435.6F43E4B4@boone.net> <375d9aac.2850158@www.netyaroze-europe.com>
Reply-To: darco@bigfoot.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.88.25.168
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; U)

Barry & Robert Swan wrote:
> 
> yes, that sounds like part of what I was thinking. Having said that,
> Ive done a similar system (not using messaging between events though)
> for the commercial game Im working on. The event based system has to
> be able to cope with absolutely anything that can happen, so a bit of
> research has to be in order, (ie, events only trigger if a certain
> time is reached, player has X money so forth)) before settling on a
> system. (Does anyone remember ZZT?)

Simple IF THEN loops can be implemented in my system, as well as YES/NO
statements. (If an IFSET statement or a YES/NO statement is reached, the
interpreter continues as normal if the statement is TRUE. It jumps to
the END OF BLOCK code if thestatement is FALSE.) There would be a game
heap with all of the information for the game. The script could peek
into his heap and check for anything set, etc.

> 
> Scripting works well for reactions to the player to give relatively
> complex behaviour, but Im looking for something else to complement it
> which will allow for non scripted automatic behaviour. Ie, in a crowd,
> not having to script every NPC to create an interesting 'milling'
> effect. And also just for things such as NPCs tending to dissappear
> (ostensibly going home (nice word)) at night time etc, etc. This is
> BIG area - one company is promoting its crowd scene behaviour as
> middleware for next gen PS (called 'Rampage' i think). Anything
> remotely close would be fine. anyway, I have to think about that one.

No, this script isn't capable of handling something like that. (Just
stating the obvious) However, this could be a complement to another
seprate system. If you are looking for crowd movements and such, then
something so generic as that would probably be more efficiently
hardcoded. Although other, nonrandom movements would require some sort
of scripting. 

If you need such developed, I might be able to help out.

> 
> I dont think I need to look at any source at the moment because a) Im
> not completely sure what I want and b) I havent got time for a few
> weeks (a little thing called work and moving house), but then it will
> be ACE, to quote the Quake 2 players at work.
> 
> ahem,
> 
> cheers, Robert

heh, Allrighty.

'darco