quote: original post by BB-Pest concerning the verbal aspect: crafting a character only on a verbal base, even though very complicated, would be possible nowadays... but not a deep/realistic one. it'd have to base on a lot of preset stuff/phrases. a maths professor i know who worked on researches about the structure of language told me that the guys he worked with have large respect for language. its not just the grammatical structure but much emotional/implicit content as well that all needs to be make usefull in a mathematical way. (but perhaps ur knowledge is greater then mine ... im actually very interested in the stuff u did research on)

IMO realism and depth are not the same thing. The human mind is an inherently biased thing, and the mind judges to be good whatever appeals to its narrative instincts, not what is actually realistic. This phenomenon is probably familiar to anyone who has studies writing dialogue - if you go to a restaurant and taked down word-for-word the conversation going on at the table behind you, the resulting transcript will not seem realistic, it will seem choppy and random. To get it to seem satisfying you have to make it more orderly and eloquent and funny. And people actually do use a lot of preset phrases; we talked about them in my linguistics class, they're called prepared phrases, and include cliches, figures of speech, proverbs, soundbites, etc. The structure of language is quite mathematically complicated, but it's also possible to fake well - I'm sure you've seen these internet toys that churn out fake essaies about Moby Dick or postmodernism. We've had previous threads in this forum discussing how to emulate narration and dialogue; Beantas started a thread on the topic about a week ago, which I unfortunately did not have time to reply to; superpig's thread on the topic is HERE ; llvllatrix's thread before thet is HERE ; bishop_pass's threads are HERE and HERE; HERE's one of the really antique threads on the subject. And those are just all the ones in the writing forum. I'm sure there are a lot more relevant threads in the game design forum but I don't feel up to searching through it by hand while gamedev's search function is still broken. If bishop_pass happens to be reading this thread maybe he would be so kind as to link to whatever threads he recalls as being relevant to the subject. Edit: Aha I found it! My original post from way back in 2000. This is not directly relevant but it explains some essential concepts like transformational generative plot structure. Edit 2: The very very first post on the topic, from Paladin in 1999. Another thread on generating character AI. Edit 3: Found it, finalllly! The ezboard where several members of gamedev last attempted this and failed, but generated a lot of interesting posts in the process. Edit 4: My old flowchart of story module generation. [edited by - sunandshadow on December 3, 2002 6:42:21 PM]

hehe... at first thx for finding all these links. hope i'll find time to read it next time(we're writing about 3 test/week at the moment doing about 25% of my marks at school now -> lots of stuff to learn)

topic:

what i meant in my post was considering the degree of realism in a mathematical way. But as i allready assumed u know more about this topic then i do. What you said about using preset stuff is of course right... it could be compared to 3d engines where there is no need for calculating the graphics based on atoms and such things (to complex by itself and to complex to do fast calcluations). a 'faking' of these environments is needed as well as faking a person using less complex structures to craft characters.
but a think i think of beeing a difficult one to implement are faking emotions in a realistic way since this makes reactions to input even more neccessairy(damn... how is this word spelled? :D).

[ps]
I'll write more about this topic once i read through the links. just wanted to post a short answer now.


[edit1]

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
IMO realism and depth are not the same thing.

couldn't let my amusement on this unmentioned :D

[edited by - BB-Pest on December 3, 2002 1:41:50 PM]

You are basing your ideas on language. I would take a different approach.

To reiterate:

quote: Original post by bishop_pass
I think situations have potential, as described in my older thread called Situation Creators and also touched upon in Good story vs. connected situations (long but easy) and perhaps in The GM''s Creed Applied To Games and Narrative interpolation.

Hmm, that Narrative Interpolation thread was interesting, although I''ve read the others before. I was mostly talking about language in my first post because I was Replying to BB-Pest and he was talking about language generation. Really, I juat wanted to know your thoughts on what caused the RPGs of the 21st Century project to fall apart, how could this be avoided if we attempted the project again, and did you learn anything new since then that you wanted to add to our existing pool of knowledge - for example I read some relevant things about personal mythology, and I have a deeper, clearer understanding of what plot is than I did two years ago. I''ve studied variations on a story theme by reading fanfiction, and I''ve practiced my ability to generate plot myself - I''ve almost finished a complete plot outline of a novel-length story. Anyway it''s always easier for me to get my ideas typed up coherently through discussing them with someone else rather than just staring at a blank screen and trying to pour out the contents of my head. Ergo, I asked you to post about the subject.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Really, I juat wanted to know your thoughts on what caused the RPGs of the 21st Century project to fall apart

Well, it fell apart because it had no clear direction, no deadlines, no pay, no obligations from any of the members, differing views, and life got in the way.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
... how could this be avoided if we attempted the project again

Luck would play a role. Basically, everyone needs to remain focused, committed, energized, and in pusuit of realistic goals. Over time, one of those things will fail. Failure is more the norm than success in such loosely defined projects.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
... and did you learn anything new since then that you wanted to add to our existing pool of knowledge

I can't say that I've learned anything significantly new, other than the idea that I might pursue something a little less ambitious. My interests have evolved, rotated and changed over time.

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
- for example I read some relevant things about personal mythology, and I have a deeper, clearer understanding of what plot is than I did two years ago. I've studied variations on a story theme by reading fanfiction, and I've practiced my ability to generate plot myself - I've almost finished a complete plot outline of a novel-length story.

Then wouldn't this apply to situations as I have outlined them? I still believe in the concept of the situation .

quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Anyway it's always easier for me to get my ideas typed up coherently through discussing them with someone else rather than just staring at a blank screen and trying to pour out the contents of my head. Ergo, I asked you to post about the subject.

Then why don't you take up AIM again? I don't normally log onto it, but if you'd make a habit of getting on AIM, I might too. However, I'll warn you that I might steer the conversation towards horses, among other things...

Seriously, I wouldn't mind discussing some ideas relevant to this thread, but it's kind of coming out of left field at the moment, and I might need some invigorating discussion to track my mind back into that groove.



[edited by - bishop_pass on December 11, 2002 4:30:04 AM]