Does Cyberpunk actually use AI for normal citizens?

[GrimReaper801]

So, not to go too off-topic with this one - there are a lot of game systems under the hood that took resources to build and take resources to run within the game. NPC scripting must have been one of the areas where CDPR felt like they need to just agree to it being rudimentary, at least for the time being.

The problem is that there is rudimentary and then there is CP2077 rudimentary. Which is to say, pretty much non-existent

Not trying to dis here. I never expected them to deliver on their "thousand of NPCs with dynamic behavior and day/night cycles on screen" thing. Even the beefiest computer would struggle with that.

I did expect them to deliver the basic behavior that has been in games like these for more than a decade now.

 

[gregski]

The problem is that there is rudimentary and then there is CP2077 rudimentary. Which is to say, pretty much non-existent

Not trying to dis here. I never expected them to deliver on their "thousand of NPCs with dynamic behavior and day/night cycles on screen" thing. Even the beefiest computer would struggle with that.

I did expect them to deliver the basic behavior that has been in games like these for more than a decade now.

I agree, there's room for improvement here and hopefully it can be addressed in upcoming patches, DLCs or expansions.

 

[Augurianius]

Here's where I will have to disagree

I don't know why - maybe because it's so well integrated into the game that people just don't notice this - but I feel like the game's most astounding technical achievement is overlooked by almost everyone.

There has been a ton of time, talent and budget spent on the most important gameplay element of branching, complex and deep stories based game - CP2077's "dialogue and scene system", as I call it. CDPR accomplished here exactly what they wanted - a "no cutscene" dialogue system, that let's you move around freely while at the same time you pick dialogue options and have a whole dialogue scene fully animated in real time. No more weird "talking heads" scenes, with NPC just standing there and making weird faces when you choose dialogue options. In CP2077 you have dialogue scenes with NPC talking, moving around, smoking, making faces, hell even blinking at the right time; with lip sync animations engine flawlessly integrated into the whole system. For a game that relies on story, narrative, multiple choice dialogues and quests - this is a kind of technical achievement I haven't seen in any other game.

So, not to go too off-topic with this one - there are a lot of game systems under the hood that took resources to build and take resources to run within the game. NPC scripting must have been one of the areas where CDPR felt like they need to just agree to it being rudimentary, at least for the time being.

Which of course brings its own problems, what you're mentioning feels rather like fallout 4's options in which you can just walk away when talking to people, take codsworth for example, right when meeting him you can do what you do in CP77 by just walking away right in the middle of a conversation, even what happens in CP when someone calls you happened back in FO4 with your character explicitly asking for some time out from a conversation when you're attacking or being suddenly attacked.

Another critique on here is Wilson for example, how many times people going back and forth on V's apartment felt that it was bizarre that he was calling out to you as if you were close by constantly, even though you're far, far away from him.

You ARE right on most of the lip sync and animations though, amazing work there, all in all there's a lot to polish but the basis for amazing thing to come is rather noticeable.

 

[GrimReaper801]

I agree, there's room for improvement here and hopefully it can be addressed in upcoming patches, DLCs or expansions.

Patches please , DLC or expansions are too far away and often mean paying more money. I'm not willing to shell out more money on something like basic behaviors that should've been in the game to begin with.

 

[IskrasFemme]

What the HARD point about this:

Hey, my lovelly JUDY, how are you today, want kiss me? (action, kiss)
Hey, Judy, how are you? Want walk a bit on streets? (some dialogs)
Hey, Judy, how are you... want ...err... see the litle birds? Bed... etc... XD

Ok, what is the hard thing to do here? -_-

 

[Mk3rd]

GTA V is but an example of a world felt way more realistic in every aspct except photographic still image quality and effects (lights, etc.) and run pretty well. Would gladly take slightly worst visuals for a more believable imersive world in the same setting.

GTAv has far less number of NPCs on screen compared to Cyberpunk. So they can put more behavioral code into those peds. They even fight back and drop money.

Cyberpunk has none of that. Because the ped numbers on screen is huge. Remember that each of those peds is a walking line of code. If you want more peds you gotta put in less code. It's a tough balance. Cyberpunk sacrificed the scripts for aesthetics and because the peds don't do anything to contribute to the narrative focus anyway. Weird choice for some. But they just have to do with what hardware and computing power they have right now and choose where and how to compromise.

There has been a ton of time, talent and budget spent on the most important gameplay element of branching, complex and deep stories based game - CP2077's "dialogue and scene system", as I call it. CDPR accomplished here exactly what they wanted - a "no cutscene" dialogue system, that let's you move around freely while at the same time you pick dialogue options and have a whole dialogue scene fully animated in real time. No more weird "talking heads" scenes, with NPC just standing there and making weird faces when you choose dialogue options. In CP2077 you have dialogue scenes with NPC talking, moving around, smoking, making faces, hell even blinking at the right time; with lip sync animations engine flawlessly integrated into the whole system. For a game that relies on story, narrative, multiple choice dialogues and quests - this is a kind of technical achievement I haven't seen in any other game.

Couple this with the rendering, the skill trees, cyberware, shards, loot, crowds and a stupid-fast initial loading and reloading times and you have the perfect game for crippling dated computing hardware.

 

[gregski]

Patches please , DLC or expansions are too far away and often mean paying more money. I'm not willing to shell out more money on something like basic behaviors that should've been in the game to begin with.

Well, of course we're all hoping that all our problems will be addressed as soon as possible. We'll have to wait and see, they tried to address some of the NPC behaviour in 1.05 so let's hope!

 

[GrimReaper801]

Hey, Judy, how are you... want ...err... see the litle birds? Bed... etc... XD

Ok, what is the hard thing to do here? -_-

I know what's gonna be hard "wink" "wink"

Oh wait, Judy is a lesbian... Nothing hard here.


In all seriousness. It definitely isn't the hardest of choices to code in. Now having Judy follow you around and stuff, that might be more complicated.

Side note Judy > Panam

 

[faverodefavero]

Again: seems like a bad trade off. Story and gameplay does not compensate and most people, including myself would take the lower NPC number of, say, GTA V, but with more depth and better behavior than having such a huge number of braindead zombies around. Less NPC density woul have been a good thing for this game if it meant improvements in other areas.

GTAv has far less number of NPCs on screen compared to Cyberpunk. So they can put more behavioral code into those peds. They even fight back and drop money.

Cyberpunk has none of that. Because the ped numbers on screen is huge. Remember that each of those peds is a walking line of code. If you want more peds you gotta put in less code. It's a tough balance. Cyberpunk sacrificed the scripts for aesthetics and because the peds don't do anything to contribute to the narrative focus anyway. Weird choice for some. But they just have to do with what hardware and computing power they have right now and choose where and how to compromise.

 

[IskrasFemme]

I know what's gonna be hard "wink" "wink"

Oh wait, Judy is a lesbian... Nothing hard here.


In all seriousness. It definitely isn't the hardest of choices to code in. Now having Judy follow you around and stuff, that might be more complicated.

Side note Judy > Panam

Modders do it with The witcher -_- Not so hard to CDPR. To me, of corse...but its CDPR...

 

[sommojames]

This is cool, we saw something like this also in Kingdom Come, unfortunately you can do it in "small games" like this. I mean if you have village where is around 20 people, you can do it, but in Night City where is 6,5mil it's just not possible. It's too much work for something you don't need.

It was also in Witcher 2. Each NPC had his daily routines. There fishermen, loggers etc.. And it had probably no more than 50 inhabitants. It do not scale well with a city of ten of thousdands at least. It would have to be procedurally generated.

Post automatically merged: Dec 26, 2020

Patches please , DLC or expansions are too far away and often mean paying more money. I'm not willing to shell out more money on something like basic behaviors that should've been in the game to begin with.

Improvement to base game always come for free in CDPR games. They only ask more money for big story focus expansions

 

[faverodefavero]

Great to see your appreciation for the game man : )

And we can agree to disagree, no problem.

Here's where I will have to disagree

I don't know why - maybe because it's so well integrated into the game that people just don't notice this - but I feel like the game's most astounding technical achievement is overlooked by almost everyone.

There has been a ton of time, talent and budget spent on the most important gameplay element of branching, complex and deep stories based game - CP2077's "dialogue and scene system", as I call it. CDPR accomplished here exactly what they wanted - a "no cutscene" dialogue system, that let's you move around freely while at the same time you pick dialogue options and have a whole dialogue scene fully animated in real time. No more weird "talking heads" scenes, with NPC just standing there and making weird faces when you choose dialogue options. In CP2077 you have dialogue scenes with NPC talking, moving around, smoking, making faces, hell even blinking at the right time; with lip sync animations engine flawlessly integrated into the whole system. For a game that relies on story, narrative, multiple choice dialogues and quests - this is a kind of technical achievement I haven't seen in any other game.

So, not to go too off-topic with this one - there are a lot of game systems under the hood that took resources to build and take resources to run within the game. NPC scripting must have been one of the areas where CDPR felt like they need to just agree to it being rudimentary, at least for the time being.

 

[Augurianius]

I know what's gonna be hard "wink" "wink"

Oh wait, Judy is a lesbian... Nothing hard here.


In all seriousness. It definitely isn't the hardest of choices to code in. Now having Judy follow you around and stuff, that might be more complicated.

Side note Judy > Panam

Gotta wonder though, aren't you both talking about agency and railroading here? I mean, not per se, but giving more choices, or rather complex choices for any character or at least possible companions (ok, River had complex choices but they were rather A or B and that's it even though there were actually 3 options for his quest)

 

[GrimReaper801]

Modders do it with The witcher -_- Not so hard to CDPR. To me, of corse...but its CDPR...

Let's not get into a modders vs. devs thing.

People often forget some very important aspect of modding. Like the fact that modders aren't under budgetary or time limitations. If you look at a game like Skyrim, modders have created stuff that puts the original game to shame but they had all the time in the world to do it and no one to answer to.

One could argue that CDPR being a much bigger company should be able to achieve it very fast but that's an oversimplification. Sometimes you just can't throw extra bodies at a problem and sometimes throwing extra bodies at the problems slows things down.

I don't think it's fair to compare modders to the actual game's developers and vice versa.

 

[Mk3rd]

Again: seems like a bad trade off. Story and gameplay does not compensate and most people, including myself would take the lower NPC number of, say, GTA V, but with more depth and better behavior than having such a huge number of braindead zombies around. Less NPC density woul have been a good thing for this game if it meant improvements in other areas.

Again, I get that it's a weird decision for some people. But that is how TW3 operated and it was hailed for years despite its crappy pedestrians that couldn't even go around Roach that's blocking the road. Different companies just have different design philosophies, and this one has this and will always be this:

Story comes first in the making of Cyberpunk 2077

We speak to CD Projekt Red about the granular details of 2018's biggest reveal.

www.pcgamer.com

And well.. a lot of us are ok with that, want it even. I still prefer to sit down in this game and just listen to Takemura or Judy or Rivers going on and on about their past, clicking on every blue dialogue line as we simply watch the city go about and be pretty. Rather than shooting up civies and fighting cops. This is the demographic this game is aiming for. Not the GTA crowd.

 

[GrimReaper801]

Gotta wonder though, aren't you both talking about agency and railroading here? I mean, not per se, but giving more choices, or rather complex choices for any character or at least possible companions (ok, River had complex choices but they were rather A or B and that's it even though there were actually 3 options for his quest)

Kind of.

I don't think anyone is against more choices. I'd be ok with Judy being a companion. There isn't enough Judy in the game.

 

[gregski]

One more thought I have on prioritizing work to fix the scripting & NPC behaviour in the game - if they indeed need to prioritize, I hope they go with fixing and upgrading the behaviour of NPCs in combat and leave the ordinary citizens for later. This would actually benefit the game more, if they cannot do everything at once.

 

[IskrasFemme]

Let's not get into a modders vs. devs thing.

People often forget some very important aspect of modding. Like the fact that modders aren't under budgetary or time limitations. If you look at a game like Skyrim, modders have created stuff that puts the original game to shame but they had all the time in the world to do it and no one to answer to.

One could argue that CDPR being a much bigger company should be able to achieve it very fast but that's an oversimplification. Sometimes you just can't throw extra bodies at a problem and sometimes throwing extra bodies at the problems slows things down.

I don't think it's fair to compare modders to the actual game's developers and vice versa.

And have this thing about modders x devs? To me, are diferent things. Devs do games, Modders, mods, just few modifications in game. And I have no intention of belittling or one or the other. I believe that there are simple things that CDPR can do to increase the quality of life in game.

 

[Augurianius]

One more thought I have on prioritizing work to fix the scripting & NPC behaviour in the game - if they indeed need to prioritize, I hope they go with fixing and upgrading the behaviour of NPCs in combat and leave the ordinary citizens for later. This would actually benefit the game more, if they cannot do everything at once.

We can only hope they read you and take it to heart lol, combat complexity (or rather more since it has a bit of complexity it's not just shooty shooty) would be an amazing thing to have

 

[GrimReaper801]

And have this thing about modders x devs? To me, are diferent things. Devs do games, Modders, mods, just few modifications in game. And I have no intention of belittling or one or the other. I believe that there are simple things that CDPR can do to increase the quality of life in game.

I think I misunderstood your post. You are machine translating after all. Sometimes it just doesn't translate all that well.