Posts made by Logain

@Xzoviac said in Opinion on Monsters after the alpha:

(...)but i love grinding so(...)

That's the problem though, ain't it? Fractured specifically markets as a game that does not require, nor carter to grinding (Kickstarter video and plenty of developer comments on this).

@Xzoviac said in Opinion on Monsters after the alpha:

(...)Have mobs give Knowledge Experience, so the more you kill a monster the more you level up the knowledge of said monster(...)

The knowledge system spotlight describes this:
'Bestiary. The bestiary is a personal diary where you store all the information on the types of creatures you’ve interacted with and/or defeated. New entries in the bestiary only report the most basic information on a creature, such as its name and species. Multiple interactions / kills gradually reveal more detailed data on the creature, including its attributes and abilities. Every time you unlock a new piece of bestiary knowledge, you are rewarded with Knowledge Points, and your characters becomes more proficient when interacting with the creature.'

That said, there is no endless grind on creatures and it isn't meant to be, that's one of the unique selling propositions of the game (as far as I understood it). The 'late game' entertainment is meant to come from exploration and player interaction (either competitive or cooperative though villages and guilds). But some of the 'late game content' involves PvP as well, even for Beastman (though optional, if they opt out of that, it's content that exists and they intentionally don't want to consume). Examples of the 'exploration part' would be:

• Find, interact with, or kill specific creatures.
• Kill some specific creatures in a unique way.
• Find, collect or refine some amount of a specific resource.
• Consume X units of a specific item.
• Be hit X times by a specific spell.
• Perform a specific combat action X times.
• Explore one or more world locations.
• Rest in a specific location.
• Craft X units of a specific item.
• Die in a specific way.

Welcome back!
I hope you'Re going to stay active and have fun in Fractured!

Thanks a bunch and congratulations to all winners!

Welcome to Fractured!
I hope you're going to enjoy your time here!

@deusex2 said in Emergent NPC AI:

(...)WOW! That's a very long way of saying,"yes."

Rather a long way of saying 'Yes, for other indie games currently in development, but not for Fractured, in my humble opinion'.

Really nice work!
Keep it up and thanks for all your effort

@Jetah said in Emergent NPC AI:

How difficult would it be to develop ML/AI as a plugin for game developers?

ML and AI are rather different in that context. Since you mention the script to 'learn', you're talking ML (AI in that context is basically a developer writing the AI functionality by hand and the only means of expanding being to add more). The real issue is not with 'how difficult' is this, but 'how expansive is this to maintain'.
I'm going to use a car analogy (and please note that is not 100% accurate).

You can either purchase a car (large upfront cost, some maintenance cost, can always be used at a fixed amount, you are responsible for nearly everything), you can lease a car (constant cost, can always use at a fixed amount, responsible to a high degree), you can rent a car (cost when needed, can sometimes use, somewhat responsible), or you can call a taxi (cost when needed, can use once, not responsible at all). If you know that you're going to need a car often, or you have to rely on the 'safety' of having a car when you need it, you want to buy or lease a car. If you know that you're going to drive a lot over a specific amount of time, you best rent one. If you just want to get from A to B occasionally, you call a cap. Each solution can be cheapest and best depending on the circumstances.

It's a bit similar with computers, you can co-locate/rent a dedicated server to have a fixed amount of resources, regardless if you need them or not. You can try IaaS (infrastructure as a service) to have a certain amount of resources dedicated for you. You can go with PaaS (platform as a service) to get a certain amount of resources, but with some 'functionality' configured. Or you could take the route of SaaS (software as a service) to get a certain amount of resources, with a specific software in use.

SpatialOS (SaaS) is basically like calling a taxi, plenty of things are done for you, and it's cheap if you can get away with only using it 'periodically' (your game likely has high traffic and very low traffic times). ML and especially a constant evolving environment requires a constant, high amount of CPU (or better yet GPU). Imagine calling a taxi and 'using it 24/7', that is certainly possible, it's not really difficult, but it is incredibly expansive and nothing you would likely do.

@deusex2 said in Emergent NPC AI:

So, basically, letting players make their own AI scrips? I got that, mostly, right?

You stated that an indie company doesn't have the resources to develop AI that allows for high performance and diversity, but doesn't rely on machine learning (ML). I concur. No indie company should try that. What they can try though is to 'outsource' the task to the hundreds of programmers who are up for a task like that in their spare time free of charge, simply because strength is in numbers there (brute force attempt at problem solution). Now, you'd say, but Logain, no programmer is stupid enough to do that in their spare time for free! Which is why I linked Screeps, a game that is basically doing exactly that right now, it provides programmers with the challenge to write an AI (and the programmers actually pay the company to do that ). You can't just copy Screeps though, you would have to go from a pull to an event based API and while you'd need a sandbox, V8 isolates are a bad choice there (they are great for Screeps, for a different reason). A cost effective solution would be to leverage WebAssembly, for example though an open source project like Lucet. Now, since you'd want more people to participate then 'just programmers', you'd provide your own visual programming interface (like Google's Blockly, just with a bit more polish). It's not an absurd or new concept, actually, Chronicles of Elyria is basically doing that with their planned OPC scripting. All of that said, it is basically impossible for Fractured, because Fractured relies on a SaaS model (SpatialOS), which means the cost would be intense. If you want to pull something like this off, you'd have to go on premise, or maybe IaaS and handle your own load balancing instead.

(Sorry for the long response with a few technical terms, but maybe you already guessed that's a topic I like and have spent a wee bit of time with).

@deusex2 said in Emergent NPC AI:

(...)Too much team and money is, probably, required to make it work. Definitely not something a small, indie team can handle(...)

I disagree and agree at the same time
I disagree that a 'small indie team' can not make that happen, simply because this is one of THE prime examples for where you can leverage your customer base. You build a simple visual programming interface and have your playerbase come up with the AI (if you want examples, look up Gladiabots for the visual interface and Screeps for what amazing AI developers come up with during their spare time ).
The part where I agree with, is that this is nothing Fractured could do. If you want to tackle that problem, you basically require an on premise solution (heck you could even go with Fastly's Lucet if you're looking for a plug and play solution...), but since Fractured is based on SaaS, that would explode their cost.

@Jetah said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)it doesn't have to be realistic to imagine how it'd work.

Sorry, I thought we were discussing the question on how Fractured would accomplish something other games did not (according to the original poster, or at least the solution provided didn't satisfy him). And that somewhat implies a realistic approach, doesn't it?

@Jetah said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)I love it when someone can't imagine something happening and I can explain it further(...)

I think you misunderstand me. It's not that I can not imagine it, it is that I know the price tag and hence how unrealistic it is.

@Jetah said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)Maybe one day someone will develop a ML backend that game developers can plug in to their game!(...)

While not trivial, it's not complicated either (even less so with SpatialOS). Technical viability is not the limiting factor there. Plain old money very much is on the other hand. ML is GPU/CPU intense and GPU/CPU cycles aren't cheap, even less on SpatialOS. With a $50 monthly subscription, your idea would be realistic.

@Bryserker said in Races and playstyles:

"if you're doing PvP on Syndesia with a Beastman you have no advantage compared to Demons and Humans. If you're doing it on Tartaros, you're heavily penalized compared to Demons and quite penalized compared to Humans."

Prometheus was talking about the 'base race', whereas Gothix was referring to an 'advanced stage', so to say.
Starting out, yes, Beastman are probably your worst choice to PvP (though they can still find it if they actively go looking for it) and Demons/Humans are a better choice (personally, I'm going to claim that Human is best for PvP but that's an old debate between me and Prometheus, only the final game is going to show who was right in the end ).
That said, as Gothix mentioned, Beastman can turn into Abdomination and Demons into Angles (through a series of actions and quests), which kind of 'turn the race into the opposite).

PvP is also determined by alignment. It's a bit complex as you can already guess.

Welcome to Fractured!
I hope you're going to enjoy your time here!

@Jetah said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)maybe the AI decides to follow you despite there being a 10m rule because you're low HP(...)

That is exactly why I asked in the first place. The reason is as easy as it is sad. Have you ever worked on AI? I'd hope we can all agree on that ML (Machine Learning) is far, far past the scope and not affordable resource wise for Fractured. That leaves you basically with two options, either a state engine, or fuzzy logic and most games (very, VERY likely including Fractured) are going with a state engine. And even a simple state engine can get rather taxing on the CPU (since you have to run a high number for a low cost) if too complex.

@Alexian said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)Those really aren’t a thing in Albion(...)

(...)

1. A multitude of people
2. their mounts
3. wagons full of materials
4. bring their items from one place to the next.

I guess I should have phrased my question a little more precise.
You have trading ox in Albion, so that'd be '(2)mount and (3)wagon full of material, other than graphical difference of not being a wagon. (1)multiple people and (4)transporting their goods is somewhat of a player choice.
What would you need changed to consider it a successful implementation of caravan?

@Gothix said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)NPCs should never be able to beat human players on their own(...)

So, if NPCs are basically useless, that gets me back to my original question for @Alexian, what he expects from a 'Caravan', other than players driving wagons. Because players driving wagons are trivial to implement, and I'd doubt any game could 'fail to deliver on that'.

@Jetah said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)if you buy the best geared (call them veterans or something) then they'll stay withing 10m of the caravan(...)

What would prevent me from taking two friends and killing your dozen veterans from a distance, one by one, retreating when in danger?

@Farlander said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)one group would be escorting 1 wagon(...)

Players or NPCs? It's easy enough with players, there are no additional requirements. But with NPCs, how do you handle the AI? Should the caravan stop or continue during a raid? Do the guards keep locked to the caravan or do they pursue the bandits?
Because if they stay around the caravan, it's easy enough to pick them out from a distance, one by one. If they follow the bandits, you send in one bait, lure them off and then raid the helpless wagons.

@Alexian said in Trade caravans...?:

(...) implied that caravans(...)need wagons to move resources – which means animals to drag them, and a proper escort to see that your bounty doesn’t fall to unwanted hands(...)

Hence why I inquired what would be considered a 'caravan' (it's a lax term, like 'hill' without a concrete definition, but plenty a different vision by different people). If 'caravan' is a wagon or three moving from A to B, then, certainly, I see that going to happen. That's not tricky to implement at all, once you have wagons. Your question on 'how' the developers would deliver on that implies that you'd want more than just wagons moving through terrain though, right?

@Alexian said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)I will find you the link sometime today!

Thanks for the effort! I appreciate that!

@Alexian said in Trade caravans...?:

(...)assign NPCs to patrol areas adjacent to their town, so presumably it’s feasible for them from a programming perspective(...)

That's one of the parts where I am less optimistic. Writing an AI that patrols an area is a piece of cake. Writing an AI that escorts a caravan is extremely tricky, since it has to avoid both being lured off easily and being a sitting target at the same time.