NPCs with Day/Night Shifts

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Sakar
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NPCs with Day/Night Shifts

Post by Sakar »

Another thing I liked about The Magic Candle CRPG was that many NPCs had their own day/night/ schedules. For instance, you could find an old man in the park feeding the pigeons only in the afternoon for a few hours or a ship captain in the tavern at night but hanging around near his ship during the day or the town mayor in his office during business hours but at the tea room in the evening and then in his house at night. Indeed, most shops closed at night and NPCs typically could be found in their homes in the evening...or at the tavern!

It made the world feel like a real living, breathing place with NPCs coming and going according to a real-world clock.
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PhilosophiX
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Post by PhilosophiX »

As far as I can remember from an earlier post (much earlier); It was considered for Book I, but Basilisk Wrangler put it to the community and they said no. To quote BW, he said something along the lines of "The realism of Day/Night schedules is not a big enough advantage to offset the inconvenience of having to wait until the shops opened in the morning."

That's from memory mind, so I could be remembering it differently. So it's not so much missing from Book I, as not wanted in the first place. So the question is; how do you go about it? I myself prefer the realism of day and night scheduling, I've never been all that into convenience in games, but if nobody wants it, what to do?

I suggest those who like the idea, open up a discussion on how it could be implemented without the inconvenience of waiting for morning to buy stuff - if a compromise is found, BW could be persuaded to consider it in Book II.

So good idea, it needs some work...
What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.
Rune_74
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Post by Rune_74 »

With the way the current rest system is setup its not that bad. However, the current rest system is flawed because there is no penalty for resting all the time(ie no food, which I'm sure is being strongly considred for book 2 to b alance this feature).

What he could add is a wait option, many games of this style have this.

I like the idea of day and night for the people which ties in with date and time...so many quests can be made off just these variables...like following a shop keeper at a certain time to see where he hides something etc....
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Post by BasiliskWrangler »

Food/Water will definately be part of Book II, which will balance out the "free" ability to camp whenever you want.

As for day/night NPC schedules...yeah, PhilosophiX is right about why we avoided it in Book I. I look at it this way: it could potentially add 3-4 additional months of development to try to get NPCs on some sort of a schedule: close their business after dark, go to bed when sleepy, eat when hungry, etc. While this may add just a tiny bit of "atmosphere" to the game, it really adds nothing to the gameplay. In fact, all that atmosphere is broken when NPCs do something really dumb, like gather food from the garden in the middle of night during a thunderstorm because the computer says they are hungry. I've mentioned in another thread that if Oblivion's team of AI programmers couldn't get it right, I don't think I even want to try.

At best (for Book II) I could make shop owners close shop at a certain time (doors locked, torches out) and they just go straight to bed for 8 hours, allowing you to pillage their store if you are quiet enough. This is hardly AI though- it'd just be a scripted event that all NPCs do.
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Post by Rune_74 »

You know though, thatwould almost be what people would want as well.

If you could make them goto bed could you not snd them to stand somewhere as well?
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Post by tungprc »

I agree with the crowd that thinks it's a waste of time. I want NPC's available when I happen to arrive. I don't want to waste x number of hours until NPC XYZ unlocks his door. The best NPC AI I've ever seen was in Oblivion and even it was laughable. One thing that would be nice is a spell/device that would transfer unwanted items into weightless gold. This would save a lot of backtracking. Summon Merchant scrolls FTW :)
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Post by Rune_74 »

Wow I'm so against the idea of having things transfered into weightless gold.

The idea of day and night things makes it so you could havea quest to say assasinate someone and if they are in somewheer you could get at them easier at night wouldn't you want that? Too me it just makes sense...

As for not having someone open to sell too...why not have the innkeeper buy everything, bt at a discounted price:P
Necromis
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Post by Necromis »

I think the scripting part would be fine rather than the AI deciding things. Or say when game hour equals X go to location Y and when game hour equals W go to Z. This could also point the NPC to a differnt set of scripting options for that location.
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Post by Rune_74 »

Exactly, that is what people I think our looking at.
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Post by Ihsan »

If there was bigger towns in the next game then I think NPC's going to bed and locking up shop could be good. But dont get me wrong I liked how you did towns in Eschalon, a few crappy small ones (definitely helped the atmosphere of survival) - and one large one, albeit maybe could have been a tad bigger.

Firstly it would be a buff to rogue characters, giving much better chances to loot peoples homes.

Secondly there could be dodgy (think black market) or not so dodgy night shops (think grey market lol) which could allow for interesting side quests. Also opens more choices (good/bad type stuff I guess) which some people love.

On the topic of npcs moving about i have to say yes i do agree its adds a great atmosphere. In Zelda Majoras Mask they had a big thing going on in the main town were npcs moved around doing things and there was plenty of quests relating to this.

But i also agree that it would take a long time to work out schedules for each npc.
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Post by Sakar »

Necromis wrote:I think the scripting part would be fine rather than the AI deciding things. Or say when game hour equals X go to location Y and when game hour equals W go to Z. This could also point the NPC to a differnt set of scripting options for that location.
Indeed. I don't think it needs to be any more complicated than this. I don't think AI needs to be developed to create "hunger" in NPCs so they go out and look for food. Just put the NPC at alternating locations based on time of day....like Magic Candle. ;)

And to address the people who think it's an inconvenience rather than a role-playing "feature", that's where other "time passing" tasks could come in like training with a trainer, researching in a library, working for pay in a job (and perhaps also using a skill like Gemcutting, Smithing, etc) and, of course, simply exploring and shopping to pass the time. Magic Candle did this well.
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Post by Necromis »

I also like the idea of only certain shops being open during certain hours. Like they said the black and white markets. The tavern open from late afternoon to late evening. A fence open only at night. Blacksmith and alchemists open only during daytime. Another option I like about this is you could actually have certain items only able to be sold or bought from the black market shops. I mean finding lock picks in a tavern is semi-shady. I am glad they cannot be found in any shop. But think about stolen loot from homes being only able to be sold to the fence since they are stolen. Buying poisons that you could coat your weapons with from them, too. You would just use the alchemy mix window to make this happen like you do the lantern.
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Post by Jaesun »

BasiliskWrangler wrote:I've mentioned in another thread that if Oblivion's team of AI programmers couldn't get it right, I don't think I even want to try.
Bethesda mentioned that even if an army of their programmers worked on mounted combat, they just could not do it.

Then, and entire army... oh that's right, just TWO people, TWO PEOPLE made an entire game completely about mounted combat.

*cough*
BasiliskWrangler wrote: At best (for Book II) I could make shop owners close shop at a certain time (doors locked, torches out) and they just go straight to bed for 8 hours, allowing you to pillage their store if you are quiet enough. This is hardly AI though- it'd just be a scripted event that all NPCs do.
This sounds perfect. And I agree, NPC schedules do not really add that much atmosphere. It was "neat" in 1990, but I think we need to move on. :D
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Post by vid »

Jaesun wrote:And I agree, NPC schedules do not really add that much atmosphere. It was "neat" in 1990, but I think we need to move on. :D
First, i think they add very much to the atmosphere! Otherwise the npcs would just be diablo-like buying/selling machines.
A neat little backstory here and there, interesting npcs which "live" (scripted, not ai-ed) in bigger towns going on with their lives.... i liked that in ultima. When you meet the shopkeeper you bought your sword from yesterday, in the tavern in the evening, drinking a beer with him. Or some npc have their own little secrets (what was the name of this little elf in the beginning of morrowind, who hid his treasure in a treestump?) and so on. I think you should really see this not as a chore, but as a possibility to create good quests, and a believable world.

Second, Eschalon is about old school, so thats no argument. ;)
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Sakar
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Post by Sakar »

vid wrote:
Jaesun wrote:And I agree, NPC schedules do not really add that much atmosphere. It was "neat" in 1990, but I think we need to move on. :D
First, i think they add very much to the atmosphere! Otherwise the npcs would just be diablo-like buying/selling machines.
A neat little backstory here and there, interesting npcs which "live" (scripted, not ai-ed) in bigger towns going on with their lives.... i liked that in ultima. When you meet the shopkeeper you bought your sword from yesterday, in the tavern in the evening, drinking a beer with him. Or some npc have their own little secrets (what was the name of this little elf in the beginning of morrowind, who hid his treasure in a treestump?) and so on. I think you should really see this not as a chore, but as a possibility to create good quests, and a believable world.
I wholeheartedly agree! If BW says he can send an NPC home for 8 hours via scripting then maybe that same NPC can be scripted to stop at the tavern for an ale and then visit the spot his wife was murdered (quest/story potential) before he finally heads home for the night.... Seriously, if that doesn't add atmosphere, I don't know what would. Certainly not a shop that's open 24/7!
Second, Eschalon is about old school, so thats no argument. ;)
Excellent point. The more Eschalon tries to be like the most famous "drive thru RPG" (Diablo), the farther away it'll get from being what brought most of here in the first place.
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