NPC improvement idea

[the_ktt]

There is a lot talk about NPC reactions. I would like to see what people actually expect since seldom or never a game have fully done this.

In GTA V the civilians react better and have various reactions depending on their type, this creates at least a illusion of their individuality. This is something they (CDPR) can do without big problems I think.

However, would be great if people would give some real interaction like player could:

• Ask NPC to hang out/follow and build up a relationship this way in the end have his number
• Ask for sex randomly and get either a slap/punch or actually getting it or pay for it
• Ask a NPC that have cool t-shirt to sell it to you or tell him to take it off because it's mine now and either the person runs away, calls the police, gives you the t-shirts or fights you.
• All above can have depending effect (positive or negative based on type of npc) on how you present yourself if you do. "Hey, my name is V" "I'm V and I am dangerous" "Hey sweetie, I'm V and you look gorgeous" "My name is V, and I have a big D"
• Ask NPC to go for a drink with you which would improve relation if accepted
• Give items to NPCs that would either be accepted if the NPC is correct for the type of item, like a girl NPC looking upper class sexy wouldn't accept a baseball cap but would accept a nice dress IF she knows you and have some kind of relationship with you.
• Ask about their type (by asking where you from, what you doing), like getting to know them so that you can imagine what response you might get from all the other interactions.

This can be done by branching dialogues that would lead to another branch etc and also the NPC would have set response threshold depending on it's type/style versus player apparel/clothing/street cred...

Yeah, I think I am getting ahead of myself dreaming a bit I am not requiring this at all just thinking out loud, since like said, never seen any game with this deepth of interaction. So pretty much brainstorming out loud. And if you CDPR look like this you can contact me I can program this for you, I know Polish too

So what do you guys would like to see from NPCs?

 

[SlimXtra]

I like your thoughts but this will be difficult to implement into the Game code for hundreds of NPCs and the Game would be a huge monster like 300 Gb + more. Thats someting that will be there in the future I am sure of this but only when the hardware and internet speed is capble of this for the majority of gamers.
But then again those would not be NPCs anymore right?

 

[the_ktt]

I am not sure this is such a huge change in size, what would take most space would be voiced dialogues probably. The characters are already there and have a preset type and where they appear. Each NPC would need new variables that are not much themselves in terms of MB, we are talking about counters between 0-100 that would do the job. Also characters already have a name and even police records!

For example: player threatens NPC to give him an item, reaction depend on how aggressive is the NPC (0-100) minus how badass is the player (0-100), if the final value lands at over 50 then the NPC will try to fight instead of give up, if less then he might run if minus he will give up. Then we have the reactions as animations and AI and most seem to be already there, we got NPC fighting and run away.

To make it less predictable and more realistic more values can collide with each other but the calculation itself can be pretty simple with good results I think!

 

[SlimXtra]

Sorry, I do not have expirience in coding and hope I do not tell rubbish but as I understand it now NPCs react to certain crownd patterns like spawn at "a" go to "b" if "out of sight of player despawn". If player shoots behave to pattern "a" to "b" and so on. Those patterns are supposed to be directed by the so called AI and you can allready see what a mess that is because it is buggy as hell. If you add more to this you can imagine what would be. All this reaction as per variables adds to the utilization of hardware and needs calculation power + the correct coding and there is a certain boundary now what the hardware mostly the CPU can do. Plus there is a difference between gang NPCs and normal pedestrians. Those pedestrian NPCs do not have any agressivenes coded behind them. And by all means to wander into a gang and to ask them to give you their fucking shirt, it is already clear how they would react . On the second thought I would like to ask some Mox members to undress their shirts.
The cars (also NPCs) seem to be more agressive then at the launch. I walked infront of an parking car and I swear I did not touch the bumper but that car stunned and kicked me down endlessly without me being able to move. The only thing I could do was to load a save game. There seems to be a bug when you run into, no near, a parked vehicle (bumper of cars and front wheel of bikes) that lets you behave as if you are hit by a vehicle on the street. God I even got kicked over by my own bikes when dismounting and running to near past the front wheel. Fucking traitor bikes.

 

[the_ktt]

Haha yeah well, the ai and aggressive behavior is set of code that is not individuality tailored for every single NPC, all NPC have access to it as long they have requiring animations and I would be surprised if civilian NPC were made out of different models then gang members. I suppose there is some kind of pool for each area and NPCs are pulled from it when player arrives close to their location. Just a guess but from what I see it looks like it. Inside the pool the character are quite defined already, they have their clothing decided and also their role (like beggar is called from Beggar kabuki pool). Their walking path is already there it seems even before the call.

A byte takes 256 bytes of harddrive memory, it is enough to hold a value between 0 and 255.

1000 bytes -> 1 kilobyte
1000 kilobytes -> 1 megabyte

So it's really nothing harddrive wise

It might impact processor and RAM if any, but there is still probably 2000 operations CPU must do every few seconds (I am just guessing widely but I am sure it's many!) So adding 20-30 wouldn't break anything processor wise, especially that the dialogue is called by players action so it's not nessecerly calculating in the background.

I got killed by delmain angry cab yesterday