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Orbital Arcade

Lying and bad memory for your NPCs

People tell lies all of the time… We’ve all told lies. From when you were a little kid trying to avoid punishment to the other day…when you were trying to avoid punishment. Lying is mostly about avoiding something that is harder. Avoiding judgement, punishment, awkward conversations, or more serious confrontations. …

Orbital Arcade

Melting and congealing: My brain on GDC…

I’m Fried from GDC… GDC is always a good time, and it never fails to absolutely liquefy the wrinkly organ between my ears for at least a couple of days afterwards as my neurons rearrange themselves to integrate everything I’ve absorbed. Having Daylight Savings Time occur a day after I …

Orbital Arcade

True Grit: The 17th personality trait…

Adding Grit to the equation… It’s not that I didn’t think there were enough personality traits to work with already. I mean, there’s sixteen of them! However, the traits did not seem to adequately cover characters that can simply hang in there while going through hell, despite what you’d think …

Orbital Arcade

Knowledge Levels: Let your information run deep…

In the previous blog, I discussed the progress I had made with Interrogative 3, and realized that up to now, I had not discussed something that is core to how NPCs communicate with players (or, eventually, each other): Knowledge Levels. It’s important to understand what this is to see that Interrogative …

Orbital Arcade

PAI – The case for Jekyll and Hyde

They, who are not what they seem… This week, I’m talking about personalities that are not what they seem, and Jekyll and Hyde is one of the best examples. A mild-mannered man (Dr Jekyll) drinks a potion that turns him into a sociopath known as Mr Hyde (read the plot …

Orbital Arcade

PAI – Giving the characters some character

Data is Nice and all, but… Last time I talked about the data formats that were forming part of the core of Interrogative, and how that opened up a lot of ground for me in terms of bringing new features to bear. This time, let’s talk about our NPCs’ personalities…