Ship AI / NPC's

what I thought would be a cool feature would be like an earlier post said about have the A.I. in an avatar state going from room to room also something that could be added is using the air to relay messages to crew in other parts of the ship by using a text to talk system where you could type a few words into a console and it would do the talking for you and you could also allow the A.I. to appear on the main computer with this feature to make mission briefings feel more uniform it would open a lot of RP choices which I know I will be doing

Only kind of AI i'd like is Cortana .  Where she can monitor systems.  have different access panels you can talk to her and adjust systems from across the ship.  She may also take control of ship weapons if you get in to a fight and are alone or down players.

Or go Star trek and have a central computer that can break and systems like LS and power begin fluctuating. and you can still have the access panels to monitor systems.  maybe even a chat system that works with the computer. 

     /computer: What setting is the temperature at?   Temperature is High.  /computer: Lower temperature to low.   Temperature is now on low

Heh, star trek like voice commands

This type of AI would really work well with the menu some of us were discussing in another thread( https://brightspritegames.forumotion.co.uk/t55-heads-up-display ) when in use the AI could pop up and provide information through the wrist mounted display shown in that topic.

Thats precisely what i thought of when i started the thread. Like an AI that posseses essentially everything you own. Weapons wristband/watch?, Visor?, Ship, landvehicle etc.

I really really like the idea of a cortana style ai that is tied into everything especially ship systems and allowing control from other rooms on the ship

I want voice commands! haha how wicked would that be? only half joking devs, would be a pain to implement, and horribly buggy. but still..... expansion pack? lol

Voice commands scare me. ='[ .....Programming wise........(sitting in a dark corner).

Only half kidding. :-) would be cool, but impractical. lol

well ship ai path finding is a difficult thing to program, especially if you have many objects to get the ai to navigate also even more difficult when the ship or vehicle is also moving...

what can be done to alliviate it?
- room only ai's, robotic (droids) servants that handle or supervise micromanagement,
* the wayfarer contest demo's bio room is one place where it would definetly be a good place to have a garder robot to water and tend the plants.
* Engine room, robot to supervise the reactor heat, do minor repairs (not majors - players only)
* exploration hover droids to scout and scan, a follower type that hovers near the player
* exploration mule droid, carries stuff, tools and other implements, though this kind of droid should probably only be deployable from the rover

-ship ai, gives reports on items of interest, works in advisory role
* can link to droids and pass on information, to the player via the droids, process scans
* provide companionish comments and commentary so that the universe is not empty, perhaps engage in light conversation on request

In case any of you haven't seen my reply to another post...I have made a drastic improvement to the current alpha build in relation to how the ship is coded. The new system should allow us to have A.I / NPC entities on board the ship, even during flight. Amongst this, a world of other new possibilities that were simply not doable with the old system.

Marrowmatt wrote:In case any of you haven't seen my reply to another post...I have made a drastic improvement to the current alpha build in relation to how the ship is coded. The new system should allow us to have A.I / NPC entities on board the ship, even during flight. Amongst this, a world of other new possibilities that were simply not doable with the old system.

i might have missed it i just got here

woo hoo! more awesome!

Sounds cool!

ok...you were right lol...I don't grudge the extra wait time now ...does this mean we might be getting NPC crew in SP now?

AI on the ship will be unlikely for Alpha but for later releases its a major possibility!

Yeah, NPC crew's aren't something we're looking at, at the moment, but there's absolutely ZERO doubt to it's possibility anymore. NPC crew members were never planned for due to the complications we had with the old system, so you can expect it to be a feature we look at implementing late in the alpha updates.

ah kk...so im guessing you meant something a little different? like maybe an npc coming on board for the duration of a mission or something?

dan101 wrote:ah kk...so im guessing you meant something a little different? like maybe an npc coming on board for the duration of a mission or something?

To me, that reads like "we're technically able to implement them, but not for the alpha release". Which, considering they weren't planned at all, is still pretty amazing.

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I assume the above means fully fledged AI capable as acting like a crewmember, i.E., being able to do the things players can do. How about implementing more limited AI NPC, like for example combat drones (or the ship's cat, while we're at it...). A simple entity that would follow its owner and shoot at non-friendly entities within range (or a decorative ball of fur which tends to sleep on the gunnery controls, meows loudly until it's fed and tends to trip up players trying to get somewhere in a hurry by sleeping in the main hatchways... Just kidding, really.)