I think Starfield did companion dialog events pretty smoothly. I may not have liked any of the actual dialog, but the system was there. I liked how big events like the end of a quest chain, you could talk about it with all your companions, not just the ones that were with you.
anytime i go to seattle im hoping my wild wasteland perk is active and i have the chance of getting the "tim cain" interaction. ive heard its rare and he only appears in this area.
Really dig this method. I’ve been really excited about how Inkle structures their narrative around these kinds of conditional flags. Their method allows for some really deep emergent storytelling, because the story itself isn’t on rails; it’s run through conditions and interactions (usually dialogue). It’s a lot of work, and tougher to debug.. but the end result is super cool. Have been doing some note taking for a personal project, and this video fits in super nicely with Inkle’s philosophy on emergent gameplay.
Mentioning NPC reactions instantly reminded me of Halo 2 "wow, it's like a postcard. Dear Sarge, kicking ass in outer space, wish you were here." Might be a shooter as opposed to an RPG but a good NPC reaction is memorable
I remember playing Fallout 4, I shot down a Brotherhood vertibird and not only did the Brotherhood passengers get out, walk off and say nothing but the Brotherhood companion I had with me didn't react at all, at that point the world felt more like a movie set than an actual world.
Then again, there was a scene in the Railroad HQ where a body was being eulogized. You can pick up an item from the body and all of the present NPCs respond in a disgusted reaction. 😅
In general i think NPC reaction is the thing games lack the most, i think anyone would struggle to make a top 5 reactive NPCs (scripted moments/ quests don't count) but anyone would easily do a top 5 stupid NPCs lol They are usually just dolls outside of scripted moments in any game, cause they really are just that. Like, in Metro Exodus there are some great fun moments that you can interact and talk to your enemies if you approach them with your gun holstered, i found all of these moments by myself on my first playthrough when the game came out and they really felt very natural, but they are scripted anyway... one could not do that mid combat for example (Your fallout example enters here), you can pick ANY game doesn't matter how great and find infinite flaws related to it's NPCs
Honestly, I think the Brotherhood vertibirds are one of the most immersion-breaking elements of F4. Every single one seems to get shot down without your intervention-and often even despite your intervention-which becomes increasingly absurd. Maxson arrived with one zeppelin and a few escorts; where do they get this seemingly-endless supply of aircraft and crews, and why do they seem to care so little about them?
In the spirit of Tim's latest video ("Do Gamers Know What They Like?") I'll elaborate slightly: The first BoS vertibird encounter I saw was cool. The nth vertibird I saw crash & burn ruined BoS: they're supposed to be an occupying army, but everywhere I go I just see them getting their asses kicked by raiders. They should win a decent amount of the time without my intervention, and it should feel bigger when they lose: maybe my radio picks up some frantic mayday messages before they crash, and afterwards spawns a quest to recover the bodies. Maybe the next BoS you pass asks why you didn't intervene. Something. Likewise, I really like the settlement-building mechanic (despite the UI) but the actual settlers are less important than the shacks. THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE NAMES! Auto-generate some names for them, maybe using last names to imply relationships. Add a graveyard to each settlement; and add a named grave when a settler dies. Make NPCs grieve when they lose a family member. ("Why is Linda crying? She should be selling me ammo... Oh, wait: that's Bob's grave.") These aren't trivial changes, but they're not huge, and they establish that your settlers actually matter-at least to each other. In-world violence doesn't always need to have stakes for me, but it should have stakes for SOMEONE. I'm happy to suspend my disbelief, but you've got to meet me halfway.
@@nw42 After a while, you see a vertibird nearby and my thoughts were "incoming!". Not from any weaponry on the vertibird but from parts that will be soon raining down upon you from it's destruction. (Vert destroyed by literally an NPC stopping to look up at it. Run NPC! Run for your life!)
I've got lots of fond memories of NPC reactions in RPGs. But one that is close to the top of my list is from the original Deus Ex when you get called out by your boss for going into the women's washroom.
I have had NPC's give some very weird reactionary commentary. We could be getting really hyped for an awesome battle. And all of a sudden the NPC's go the most casual of casual "morning", because it happened to be early morning. XD
This is a great topic. It is one of those systems no one talks about much but is essential for immersion. A follow-up: any ideas on how to expand this to make NPCs trigger reactions between themselves and thus create emergent behavior? Thinking about something like Oblivion's Emergent AI, which creates lots of unpredictable yet entertaining scenarios. Likely something that uses a similar framework but adds lots of specific actions prone to triggering other actions?
You could use the same event system I described to make NPCs react between themselves. The same events happen, but now NPCs look at more than just events the player caused. You could have a thief NPC try to steal things, or guard NPCs yell at people for loitering, or even trigger combat between groups. I’d recommend only doing this when the player is nearby, for both optimization and story reasons. Walking into a town where everyone is dead from some obscure triggering event probably isn’t fun for most players.
Indeed. I guess the "magic" in this case would be picking good triggers that facilitate the emergence of fun events and interactions. So an idea for a fun Friday: brainstorming cool triggers and interaction ideas? :D
@@CainOnGames ""Walking into a town where everyone is dead"" Oh the memory Richard Garriott did this. In one of the Ultima, you could find a spell that killed everyone. The nuance was that the player soon discovered that everyone was killed. In general, everyone. In the game world. Except player It's the opposite of fun. But for reasons that it breaks the game just for luzlz
Hi Tim. One thing I've always wondered about running a large studio (>30 people): How does everyone have something to do, all of the time? I feel like character modelers would run out of characters pretty early in development. And at the very end of production, I'd imagine programmer are the only ones touching the game. Is the workload management a big problem, or is there some fundamental thing im not understanding?
I can say that usually there is something else you can do. Character modelers can help the environment artists. Animators can polish up their work. Sometimes you might play-test a bit. Studios like it if you've got backup skills for those times.
Oh my that gave me a laugh. Running out of things to do? Never happens, there is always too much to do such that you need to prioritize and cut some things. Also its not necessarily the devs that have the most work/take the most time. I worked on a game for a startup years ago. The goal was to build a playable demo within 6 months to pitch to publishers. Devs completed all of the coding required on time but the art & modelers went way past the deadline.
Great topic! NPC’s reacting to the world and your choices always helps make the world feel lived in and the players character is part of it. I think this is often an overlooked area in some RPGs
In Fallout 4 (which I have played for waaaay too many hours!) NPC/Companion reactions are quite involved. You do an interview for the paper. Based on the answers you choose as the player, later you walk past a guard and they comment on what you said in the article. Your companions will make brief comments on a location; you drop an item and they might say "you sure you want to discard that?"; or, if you forget to get dressed, they might say "you're baring all" or "I really didn't need to see that". But, where FO4 gets annoying is when something in the background drowns out the conversation. Or worse, you're trying to complete a quest dialogue and suddenly the NPC walks away, interrupting it and you have to chase them to start all over . Both really well done and somewhat buggy at the same time.
Yes, creating good AI and quests rests on the possible tools for setting up this behavior. This is the paradox - quests for a game are often written before the "low-level" AI reaction system is created Tell me, Tim, how do you feel about creating procedural NPCs with their own desires and schedule? And reactions to the world and the player? I don't think you are familiar with such a series of games as "Space Rangers", but there is a system of NPCs that live by the same rules as the player and interact with the world based on their archetypes: pirates rob peaceful ships, warriors save the galaxy and catch pirates, merchants carry goods looking for where the best prices are.
I haven't played the game you mention, but Arcanum was filled with NPCs with their own desires and scheduled behaviors, and they would react to events in the world, including the players' actions. So to answer your question, I like that.
@@CainOnGames Thanks for the answer. I would like to see a review from you in the future about what you think about how life simulation systems were implemented in other games: Nemesis(WB), Radiant AI (Bethesda, you might have encountered them in FNV), A-life (Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl), or NPCs that wandered the world in Might and Magic and stole quest items from dungeons. If you have something to say, of course.
Hi Tim! Thanks for another great video, I am grateful for you sharing your knowledge and perspective as always. Would you be interested in doing a video focused on events? How they are triggered, how they are handled, how they work/exist in singleplayer vs multiplayer games (eg. Wildstar), caveats, issues and problems (technical or otherwise), and whatever else you think is worth talking about! That would be an awesome followup to this video, thank you!
I like to separate concepts between events and what I call "perceptions". This way designers listening to a perception doesn't need to worry about seeing if an NPC would have seen or heard it. You can also use this to turn perceptions into another 'type' of delayed event: rumors.
The problem is now instead of one events system you now have 3 separate systems that need to be implemented, maintained, tested and optimized and the people doing the game design/implementation now need to learn 3 systems. This kills the efficiency Tim was talking about. The efficiency comes from having one general system that can be used for nearly anything.
Fable always had so many fun ways people reacted to you. The title system, u could boast about enemies you slayed, get married, they would say u look scary or like u need a shower if u where un kept. Man the dog would molt a different coat of fur based on your karma as well have different reactions to how aggressive it was to enemies. Your weapons by 3 where like r u hack n slash or do you charge stuff up? That game was always the example of look how many features this has every game look how the world changes on your choices that is always why I hated elder scrolls but loved fable it was half baked combat in fable always but I’d take it anyday over elder scrolls cuz there is no options in those RPGs nothing that makes me feel good or evil everything’s just so boring a neutral. Some people don’t like entirely good entirely evil characters n think karma’s ridiculous because of that, that’s why we have neutral options I think games like fable and fallout why I got my Xbox 360 just for those 2 games and they’re karma alone they really could show case how even if u are with a group of people the regulators or the hero’s guild u may find these extremes are not good and why we have so many conflicts is because we have extreme evils because we have extreme goods if more people where neutral the world would be a lot less eventful but probably more peaceful in a game like fallout where war is the main theme it is super important my character is not just a blank slate for you to just mash any button and it just plays out I want my son Shaun. Just remembering how fun even a simple system that spore had for how your species evolved was perfect it adds so much replay ability n charm to series when the world around you reacts to the actions you cause why I am so happy you set out to make many RPGs like that with even half the tools and developed coding systems we have for these features.
We can make a lot of those dialogue checks with else if statements I’d imagine. If the player is a evil character let them have this option in dialogue etc. Bool as well if this is set to true play this ending if not play this. I think too certain location coordinates could trigger a character to say something if the player is within 150,000 y 250,000 x like 150,000 =< 160,000 x trigger a line of Dialogue about the area we are in
About the "Wait 30 seconds before talking to the player": I know some games put an icon over the NPCs head when they want to talk to you, like an exclamation point, and if you ignore them they will talk to you next time you're in camp or in a town etc.
I liked in Outer Worlds going though all of the trouble setting up a perfect date for Parvati… only to jump on the table when it finally happens and they are having dinner and blow up her date and her reacting to it.
In general, the event system that remembers logs of what happened around the player seems pretty simple. All that is needed is to think through a tag system so that quest and NPC designers have something to work with. 30 seconds of delay - probably for some events it's still quite a lot - for "negative events" that can make a companion sad. It's strange to imagine a guard reacting to a crime when the criminal has already disappeared XD
Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES! Hey Tim, Curious to hear your thoughts on the copyrighting of game mechanics. Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system and the recent Nintendo vs PocketPair infringement lawsuit are some recent examples.
This got me thinking, NPC "rumination" sounds like a really interesting narrative AND gameplay system that could be implemented into RPGs that I don't really see (but always assumed, when playing them) implemented. For example, the more you "ignore" (decline) an NPC's wish to discuss/talk about something you did, the angrier/more agitated (or indifferent, depending on the event and its seriousness/your past deeds) they can get until finally it culminates in some kind of ultimatum.
_"NPC Reactions"_ the best npc reaction i have ever seen in a videogame is in High on Life when the game recognizes that you are speedrunning and a pop-up NPC tells you that it is ok to speedrun the game and says _"good luck"_
IKR! Additionally this also ties well with the video called "Violence As The Default In AAA RPGs". In that video I found myself thinking how persuasion to change the course of action or someone's beliefs just work right off the bat doesn't seem... real? In real life a person won't change their mind so quickly if they hate you or are on the defensive, even if they'll benefit by doing so. It just won't sit right with them. While thinking about a possible approach to that I thought "how about saying something that will make them think about it later?". Imagine if, after a seemingly failed persuasion check, that character finds you once more and apologizes to you. Anyway this video gave me ideas on how to actually implement that if that's something I'll have to do :D The other question is how to make it so the player still has the incentive to keep on doing the persuasion checks. Maybe to get out information... I'm yapping too much
Hi Tim! I'd love to hear your thoughts on designing systems for concluding quests. How are conditions typically set, fulfilled, and tracked in a game? I get that a basic list with checkboxes works, but with thousands of quest conditions, what's a scalable and efficient design approach for managing that complexity?
I don't remember his video on this (go watch it) but here is a quick answer. In general you never want to look at something as there being THOUSANDS of possibilities. Instead there are a small number of co figurable/paramerizered possibilities. Player has x item in inventory Player is in x location Player previously completed x quest Player has x flag set etc Then you setup a structure where you can specify one or more criteria, possibly with and/or and such. There should probably be less than 30 such criteria.
I love games where there is spontaneous NPC (not companions) reactions. Such as the player walks into a farmer's market and pulls out a weapon and points it at someone and all the people in the area scream, dive for cover, or run away. The NPC the weapon is pointed at is frozen slightly shaking with a bead of sweat rolling down off his forehead.
In Gothic there was something like this. You took out a weapon and everyone else took it out too. If you didn't put it away in time, a fight would start - where they could beat you up and take your weapon (and all the coins) Moreover, in Gothic 1, when the player became strong enough, the NPCs would simply run away.
I’m making an RPG with a an artist friend. This will be the biggest game I’ve made. So far I’ve made the state system, inventory, save, a good amount of quest and dialogue logic built. Dialog being dynamic like Oblivion. A decent amount of the world is being drawn. My question is, do you have any tips on making testing easy? Like maybe I’ll have something like 70 quests(subject to change I’m just throwing out a number), and various world states (player actions change world) Did you have any tips and tricks for keeping testing organised? Like maybe some custom tools/systems I should build early on that pay off later? Or do I just do my best to write the code with all world states in mind and then just play the game to test?
Write down a test plan, trying to cover all the different states, and then methodically play the game to cover those states. Also, try to get different people to play the game who don’t know anything about your test plan. Testers sometimes try to do unusual things.
@@CainOnGamesGood testers always try to do crazy things. I love good QA engineers. Have you done a video on testing games? Getting good test coverage of any software is hard but games even more so. Would love to hear your insights on that.
I've been playing Disco Elysium (again) and wonder how much state needed to be stored because it seems that almost everyone remembers or reacts to stuff you do. In a related vein, I also noticed that the stats and skills in the game were closely tailored to the protaganist, whereas a game like Baldur's Gate 3 uses a generalized D&D scheme. I realize that the two games are fundamentally very different, but do you have thoughts on choosing how to model a player character's abilities and attributes in an RPG?
I’d be curious for Tim’s take as well, but I think it essentially comes down to the kind of story you’re trying to tell (or experience you’re trying to create). E.g. there are a lot of great videos online about why the mechanics of D&D aren’t optimal for the horror genre (not least of which being that PCs are too powerful). But in the case of Disco Elysium the story is about a man alienated from himself, destroyed by regret and struggling for closure, within a society that’s doing the same. The story is about wrestling with and rebuilding identity, and the stats reflect that: they don’t measure what you can do so much as describe WHO you are, and even attempt to steer your choices.
There is no right or wrong way to do character abilities and attributes. Depends on what you are doing in the game and how much time & effort you want to spend. I've been working on a custom set of attributes, skills and related mechanics for months that works differently than I've seen elsewhere but are tailored for what I'm planning in the game. I've spent countless hours thinking, writing notes and building extensive spreadsheets to experiment with progression, skill checks, experience, etc. So there is no quick or easy answer, if you are designing a custom RPG spend some time really thinking about what you want to accomplish and why then figure out a system that works for that.
This kind of video shouldn't be interesting to me, as I'm neither a game developer nor I intend to become one in the future. Yet it's the opposite! I find it very intriguing to see how the machine operates behind the curtain, especially when later, in a game I'm playing, I can spot clues and details which indicate a certain specific mechanism was programmed in instead of another. Thanks for your videos!
I don't know if this topic has already been covered (I recently discovered this wonderful channel), but I have a npc reaction-themed question. One of the rarest types of reactions, in my experience, in RPG games, is the one to the outfit. Let me explain better. There are several examples of reactions to some special item in particular, such as a king's crown or an orc's sword, but there are very few reactions to the player's generic outfit. For example, if I walk around practically naked in Skyrim, no one notices anything strange. It would be very interesting to have a reaction system that captures some particular parameters related to the outfit (for example how "bare" a character is), or maybe the type of predominant material of the equipment (perhaps each piece of eq could have a material score), something like that. For other things there are very valid reaction systems, linked to what the player does, but it is very rare for me to see a reaction to what the player is wearing. Is there any good system for implementing something like this (or any example game that implements it)?
You don't want to build those kinds of checks into an event or reaction system as they are too specific. Good systems are rather generic and highly reusable which makes them flexible. So instead of all those specifics I'd have only 2 events: player puts on item and player takes off item. Any npc that is interested can subscribe to one or both. So one npc subscribes to the take off event and their event handler checks to see if the player is wearing pants and if not has a reaction. A different npc could subscribe to the put on event and if say the player puts on a heavy or wool coat and is currently in a desert zone has a reaction.
I would especially like to see this sort of thing in medieval fantasy games, when you might have something like sumptuary laws that restrict lower socioeconomic classes from wearing finer clothing that might mark them as gentry or nobility. But in general it seems like it would be a nice way to increase immersion, especially for roleplayer types like me who like to have a “in town” outfit separate from my adventuring outfit.
I love most dialogs and reactions in Pillars for example, sometimes I play the games just to wait the story and NPCs unfolds dialogs (most NPCS are great) However it is pretty weird when they reply/jump in/opinion on a conversation, because there is no reaction for the reaction. EX: you walk into a store and talk to the owner ,and your companion says "this store sucks" , the owner should be pissed 😅
This (companion reaction specifically) is one thing I think Fallout 4 absolutely excelled in! I remember Piper asking to leave an area because it had an old daycare and was making her depressed. It was by far the best experience I had in that game. It actually made me tear up. I was so focused on looting, and Piper asking to leave the area totally threw me, I'd never had a character ask to leave an area before. It made me stop and see what she was looking at, which in turn made me realize what these people's lives would be like. We're just trying to survive, and we're not only reminded that millions of people were killed senselessly a long time ago, taking away all if their dreams and their future, but also that we're survivng off of their graveyard scraps; people alive today have to deal with that, constantly. I think NPC interactions were the best way to communicate that, in my opinion anyway. Love these videos where I can see behind the curtain and see how these moments are made. Thanks, Tim!
People love to hate Bethesda, but they have a lot of reactivity in their games (less on Starfield though 😢). E.g. go to a town in Skyrim and guards will comment on your equipment (iron sword being too weak, that Daedric weapon giving them the creeps, having a weapon/spell drawn, ear-fur for being a werewolf, etc). NPCs will often also pick up stuff you throw on the ground and maybe even start fighting each other for it.
that's the first thing i thought of too, fallout 4 was great with the companion reactions to the environment and interjecting their own comments during conversations and quests! the only thing i wish they did better was the delay and "checking" that you're in a safe space before saying "we need to talk" because there have been so many times they trigger the high approval conversation with me and our touching moment is interrupted by us getting attacked again 🤣
@@Odisseia-hh2td Yeah, I have plenty of little gripes about Bethesda, but I’m also quick to defend them. Todd Howard is basically the reason we have modern Fallout games, and while Bethesda made a lot of controversial choices, they clearly put a lot of love into the games. At least in my book, that goes a long way.
I will both celebrate and mourn the day where NPCs react to me climbing and playing the floor is lava with furniture while they're trying to talk to me.
If you were a bad person in Arcanum, Vergil would tell you he's going to leave, and you really couldn't do anything about it. If you were evil enough however, you could tell him you'll wear his entrails as a belt. After that he say maybe he can stick around a little longer.
Thanks for a great video on the topic! I'm curious if the fire-n-forget nature of events backfire often in your experience? Like all the many things you have to check when an event from Bob got finally pulled. I constantly see problems like dead NPCs talking or quests reacting to something that doesn't actually happen. I understand the benefit of giving the power to the dev team to do random things, but started avoiding the whole concept of generic events. Would it work better or worse in your example to have instead a queue of topics in Bob, that he would start trying to evaluate when the time is right (if he still has a heartbeat, not in the fight etc)?
Working on a fallout to d&d 5e conversion module was going so very well until I found out that Tim fucking Cain has a channel of rpg advice. Now I’m not gonna get much of anything done until I’m done hyperfixating on this. (Also side note Tim if you see this I’d love to email you for help on making it feel closer to classic fallout lmao)
I know I'm about 25 years late, but in Arcanum it would have been nice if Virgil waited for you to put away your Telegram instead of interrupting you half way through reading it xD
@@YarGolubev Logs are very useful for debugging, but they're really inefficient for anything else. Reading a logfile requires some kind of text parsing, which can be slow. Even with an in-memory log, every single element must be scanned to get the latest version of an event, or to determine that an event hasn't occurred. In Big O notation, this is O(n)-i.e., linear performance. Worse, logs grow with each new event and can potentially become massive. You don't want your game's performance to depend on a file that could be anywhere from 10kb to 100mb, and you REALLY don't want to depend on that for each and every interaction. I'm guessing you meant using in-memory variables of some sort, which are a lot faster to access and can be a decent solution. But a messaging system/event bus still has advantages: For a given event, it only checks for reactions which are potentially relevant to that event. And unlike a timer, event handlers fire immediately-but they can still use a timer to schedule a delayed reaction, giving you the best of both worlds. And just in terms of source-code organization, event handlers can be a lot cleaner and more modular. All of this might not matter for a small game with only a couple of developers, but it can make a huge difference when you grow beyond that.
@@YarGolubev Logs are great for debugging, but inefficient for anything else. Logfiles require text parsing, which is slow. You have to scan every single element in the log to get the latest version of an event-this is linear performance, aka O(n) in Big O notation. And logs can become massive as events accumulate; you don't want your game's performance to depend on a file that could be anywhere from 10kb to 100mb. Using in-memory variables is a lot faster and can be a decent solution, but a messaging system still has advantages. It only checks potentially-relevant reactions to an event. Unlike a timer, event handlers can fire immediately. And the source code tends to be a lot cleaner and more modular. The bigger the game, the more that matters.
@@nw42There are often better ways to do logs so that they aren't just text dumps. That said using logs for anything other than debugging or analysis is a bad idea. No matter how the logging system is built it is going to be massively less efficient than an event or messaging system.
Hey Tim, I was wondering recently if you’ve ever heard of or played the Gothic games. If so, what did you think? I personally found them entertainingly challenging.
@ Yes, I saw! I worry that because they’re remaking the game and extremely likely to be revamping the controls and play style, to appeal to modern audiences, the game’s challenge factor, imo one of the original draws towards Gothic, will be decreased significantly. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to seeing how they revamp it.
Event systems are incredibly common in software, doesn't really make sense to demo what one is like. Though what Tim was describing isn't exactly an event system, its more like an event system combined with messaging & queues. If you need basics on event systems do some research, they are literally everywhere.
I find myself getting really board of most action games, combat system haven't change much in awhile. I've been finding good enemy interactions has been a big part of keeping games fresh. Just cant stand fighting things that feel like their pretending to stop me.
in the Outer Worlds, some of my favourite dialogue comes from the companions reacting to things. I get so tickled when they join in on the convo. Felix especially, personally.
"I heard you were at the wedding of the Emperor's cousin in Solitude. Gods, that must've been horrible."
“I heard you saved the hostages! Just now, 10 minutes ago! We’re all talking about it!”
(Walks 20 steps, next NPC)
“Great job on those hostages!!”
Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
I think Starfield did companion dialog events pretty smoothly. I may not have liked any of the actual dialog, but the system was there. I liked how big events like the end of a quest chain, you could talk about it with all your companions, not just the ones that were with you.
anytime i go to seattle im hoping my wild wasteland perk is active and i have the chance of getting the "tim cain" interaction. ive heard its rare and he only appears in this area.
Really dig this method. I’ve been really excited about how Inkle structures their narrative around these kinds of conditional flags. Their method allows for some really deep emergent storytelling, because the story itself isn’t on rails; it’s run through conditions and interactions (usually dialogue). It’s a lot of work, and tougher to debug.. but the end result is super cool.
Have been doing some note taking for a personal project, and this video fits in super nicely with Inkle’s philosophy on emergent gameplay.
Mentioning NPC reactions instantly reminded me of Halo 2 "wow, it's like a postcard. Dear Sarge, kicking ass in outer space, wish you were here." Might be a shooter as opposed to an RPG but a good NPC reaction is memorable
great Timothy, youre a real talent.
I remember playing Fallout 4, I shot down a Brotherhood vertibird and not only did the Brotherhood passengers get out, walk off and say nothing but the Brotherhood companion I had with me didn't react at all, at that point the world felt more like a movie set than an actual world.
Then again, there was a scene in the Railroad HQ where a body was being eulogized. You can pick up an item from the body and all of the present NPCs respond in a disgusted reaction. 😅
In general i think NPC reaction is the thing games lack the most, i think anyone would struggle to make a top 5 reactive NPCs (scripted moments/ quests don't count) but anyone would easily do a top 5 stupid NPCs lol
They are usually just dolls outside of scripted moments in any game, cause they really are just that. Like, in Metro Exodus there are some great fun moments that you can interact and talk to your enemies if you approach them with your gun holstered, i found all of these moments by myself on my first playthrough when the game came out and they really felt very natural, but they are scripted anyway... one could not do that mid combat for example (Your fallout example enters here), you can pick ANY game doesn't matter how great and find infinite flaws related to it's NPCs
Honestly, I think the Brotherhood vertibirds are one of the most immersion-breaking elements of F4. Every single one seems to get shot down without your intervention-and often even despite your intervention-which becomes increasingly absurd. Maxson arrived with one zeppelin and a few escorts; where do they get this seemingly-endless supply of aircraft and crews, and why do they seem to care so little about them?
In the spirit of Tim's latest video ("Do Gamers Know What They Like?") I'll elaborate slightly:
The first BoS vertibird encounter I saw was cool. The nth vertibird I saw crash & burn ruined BoS: they're supposed to be an occupying army, but everywhere I go I just see them getting their asses kicked by raiders. They should win a decent amount of the time without my intervention, and it should feel bigger when they lose: maybe my radio picks up some frantic mayday messages before they crash, and afterwards spawns a quest to recover the bodies. Maybe the next BoS you pass asks why you didn't intervene. Something.
Likewise, I really like the settlement-building mechanic (despite the UI) but the actual settlers are less important than the shacks. THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE NAMES! Auto-generate some names for them, maybe using last names to imply relationships. Add a graveyard to each settlement; and add a named grave when a settler dies. Make NPCs grieve when they lose a family member. ("Why is Linda crying? She should be selling me ammo... Oh, wait: that's Bob's grave.") These aren't trivial changes, but they're not huge, and they establish that your settlers actually matter-at least to each other.
In-world violence doesn't always need to have stakes for me, but it should have stakes for SOMEONE. I'm happy to suspend my disbelief, but you've got to meet me halfway.
@@nw42 After a while, you see a vertibird nearby and my thoughts were "incoming!".
Not from any weaponry on the vertibird but from parts that will be soon raining down upon you from it's destruction.
(Vert destroyed by literally an NPC stopping to look up at it. Run NPC! Run for your life!)
I've got lots of fond memories of NPC reactions in RPGs. But one that is close to the top of my list is from the original Deus Ex when you get called out by your boss for going into the women's washroom.
Based devs 😂🤣🤣
@@danielliew8698 "By the way, Denton, stay out of the ladies restroom. That kind of activity embarrasses the agency more than it does you."
heh
"can we talk?" oh shit, what did I do now
You know you’ve achieved immersion when an NPC asking you that gives you the same chill of dread as when your IRL significant other says it.
I have had NPC's give some very weird reactionary commentary.
We could be getting really hyped for an awesome battle.
And all of a sudden the NPC's go the most casual of casual "morning", because it happened to be early morning. XD
Appreciate the perspective on how those moments are laid out to happen in game,
Thanks for making the Vid!
Among various reaction videos recommended to me by TH-cam, Tim's title stands out as a funny jab, though unintended xD
This is a great topic. It is one of those systems no one talks about much but is essential for immersion. A follow-up: any ideas on how to expand this to make NPCs trigger reactions between themselves and thus create emergent behavior? Thinking about something like Oblivion's Emergent AI, which creates lots of unpredictable yet entertaining scenarios. Likely something that uses a similar framework but adds lots of specific actions prone to triggering other actions?
You could use the same event system I described to make NPCs react between themselves. The same events happen, but now NPCs look at more than just events the player caused. You could have a thief NPC try to steal things, or guard NPCs yell at people for loitering, or even trigger combat between groups. I’d recommend only doing this when the player is nearby, for both optimization and story reasons. Walking into a town where everyone is dead from some obscure triggering event probably isn’t fun for most players.
Indeed. I guess the "magic" in this case would be picking good triggers that facilitate the emergence of fun events and interactions. So an idea for a fun Friday: brainstorming cool triggers and interaction ideas? :D
I'll add that to the list!
@@CainOnGames Nice! Thanks Tim. You are the real MVP :)
@@CainOnGames ""Walking into a town where everyone is dead""
Oh the memory
Richard Garriott did this. In one of the Ultima, you could find a spell that killed everyone. The nuance was that the player soon discovered that everyone was killed. In general, everyone. In the game world. Except player
It's the opposite of fun. But for reasons that it breaks the game just for luzlz
I’ve only watched 99percent of your videos over the last few days so very excited for a new one
Hi Tim. One thing I've always wondered about running a large studio (>30 people): How does everyone have something to do, all of the time? I feel like character modelers would run out of characters pretty early in development. And at the very end of production, I'd imagine programmer are the only ones touching the game. Is the workload management a big problem, or is there some fundamental thing im not understanding?
I can say that usually there is something else you can do. Character modelers can help the environment artists. Animators can polish up their work. Sometimes you might play-test a bit. Studios like it if you've got backup skills for those times.
Easy: cryopods!
now you know why profit-driven parts of the game industry like to do lay offs after a game ships.
Oh my that gave me a laugh. Running out of things to do? Never happens, there is always too much to do such that you need to prioritize and cut some things. Also its not necessarily the devs that have the most work/take the most time. I worked on a game for a startup years ago. The goal was to build a playable demo within 6 months to pitch to publishers. Devs completed all of the coding required on time but the art & modelers went way past the deadline.
Great topic! NPC’s reacting to the world and your choices always helps make the world feel lived in and the players character is part of it. I think this is often an overlooked area in some RPGs
In Fallout 4 (which I have played for waaaay too many hours!) NPC/Companion reactions are quite involved. You do an interview for the paper. Based on the answers you choose as the player, later you walk past a guard and they comment on what you said in the article. Your companions will make brief comments on a location; you drop an item and they might say "you sure you want to discard that?"; or, if you forget to get dressed, they might say "you're baring all" or "I really didn't need to see that".
But, where FO4 gets annoying is when something in the background drowns out the conversation. Or worse, you're trying to complete a quest dialogue and suddenly the NPC walks away, interrupting it and you have to chase them to start all over . Both really well done and somewhat buggy at the same time.
Yes, creating good AI and quests rests on the possible tools for setting up this behavior.
This is the paradox - quests for a game are often written before the "low-level" AI reaction system is created
Tell me, Tim, how do you feel about creating procedural NPCs with their own desires and schedule? And reactions to the world and the player?
I don't think you are familiar with such a series of games as "Space Rangers", but there is a system of NPCs that live by the same rules as the player and interact with the world based on their archetypes: pirates rob peaceful ships, warriors save the galaxy and catch pirates, merchants carry goods looking for where the best prices are.
I haven't played the game you mention, but Arcanum was filled with NPCs with their own desires and scheduled behaviors, and they would react to events in the world, including the players' actions. So to answer your question, I like that.
@@CainOnGames Thanks for the answer.
I would like to see a review from you in the future about what you think about how life simulation systems were implemented in other games: Nemesis(WB), Radiant AI (Bethesda, you might have encountered them in FNV), A-life (Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl), or NPCs that wandered the world in Might and Magic and stole quest items from dungeons. If you have something to say, of course.
Hi Tim! Thanks for another great video, I am grateful for you sharing your knowledge and perspective as always. Would you be interested in doing a video focused on events? How they are triggered, how they are handled, how they work/exist in singleplayer vs multiplayer games (eg. Wildstar), caveats, issues and problems (technical or otherwise), and whatever else you think is worth talking about! That would be an awesome followup to this video, thank you!
I like to separate concepts between events and what I call "perceptions". This way designers listening to a perception doesn't need to worry about seeing if an NPC would have seen or heard it. You can also use this to turn perceptions into another 'type' of delayed event: rumors.
That’s an interesting idea!
The problem is now instead of one events system you now have 3 separate systems that need to be implemented, maintained, tested and optimized and the people doing the game design/implementation now need to learn 3 systems. This kills the efficiency Tim was talking about. The efficiency comes from having one general system that can be used for nearly anything.
Fable always had so many fun ways people reacted to you. The title system, u could boast about enemies you slayed, get married, they would say u look scary or like u need a shower if u where un kept. Man the dog would molt a different coat of fur based on your karma as well have different reactions to how aggressive it was to enemies. Your weapons by 3 where like r u hack n slash or do you charge stuff up? That game was always the example of look how many features this has every game look how the world changes on your choices that is always why I hated elder scrolls but loved fable it was half baked combat in fable always but I’d take it anyday over elder scrolls cuz there is no options in those RPGs nothing that makes me feel good or evil everything’s just so boring a neutral. Some people don’t like entirely good entirely evil characters n think karma’s ridiculous because of that, that’s why we have neutral options I think games like fable and fallout why I got my Xbox 360 just for those 2 games and they’re karma alone they really could show case how even if u are with a group of people the regulators or the hero’s guild u may find these extremes are not good and why we have so many conflicts is because we have extreme evils because we have extreme goods if more people where neutral the world would be a lot less eventful but probably more peaceful in a game like fallout where war is the main theme it is super important my character is not just a blank slate for you to just mash any button and it just plays out I want my son Shaun. Just remembering how fun even a simple system that spore had for how your species evolved was perfect it adds so much replay ability n charm to series when the world around you reacts to the actions you cause why I am so happy you set out to make many RPGs like that with even half the tools and developed coding systems we have for these features.
We can make a lot of those dialogue checks with else if statements I’d imagine. If the player is a evil character let them have this option in dialogue etc. Bool as well if this is set to true play this ending if not play this. I think too certain location coordinates could trigger a character to say something if the player is within 150,000 y 250,000 x like 150,000 =< 160,000 x trigger a line of Dialogue about the area we are in
About the "Wait 30 seconds before talking to the player": I know some games put an icon over the NPCs head when they want to talk to you, like an exclamation point, and if you ignore them they will talk to you next time you're in camp or in a town etc.
Hey Tim, are you still working on The Outer worlds 2 ?
Absolutely can’t wait for this one !
I liked in Outer Worlds going though all of the trouble setting up a perfect date for Parvati… only to jump on the table when it finally happens and they are having dinner and blow up her date and her reacting to it.
In general, the event system that remembers logs of what happened around the player seems pretty simple.
All that is needed is to think through a tag system so that quest and NPC designers have something to work with.
30 seconds of delay - probably for some events it's still quite a lot - for "negative events" that can make a companion sad.
It's strange to imagine a guard reacting to a crime when the criminal has already disappeared XD
just at the right time!
Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Hey Tim, Curious to hear your thoughts on the copyrighting of game mechanics. Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system and the recent Nintendo vs PocketPair infringement lawsuit are some recent examples.
This got me thinking, NPC "rumination" sounds like a really interesting narrative AND gameplay system that could be implemented into RPGs that I don't really see (but always assumed, when playing them) implemented. For example, the more you "ignore" (decline) an NPC's wish to discuss/talk about something you did, the angrier/more agitated (or indifferent, depending on the event and its seriousness/your past deeds) they can get until finally it culminates in some kind of ultimatum.
_"NPC Reactions"_
the best npc reaction i have ever seen in a videogame is in High on Life when the game recognizes that you are speedrunning and a pop-up NPC tells you that it is ok to speedrun the game and says _"good luck"_
eh?
i guess this is also relevant to the question i asked that you made the video on
IKR! Additionally this also ties well with the video called "Violence As The Default In AAA RPGs".
In that video I found myself thinking how persuasion to change the course of action or someone's beliefs just work right off the bat doesn't seem... real? In real life a person won't change their mind so quickly if they hate you or are on the defensive, even if they'll benefit by doing so. It just won't sit right with them. While thinking about a possible approach to that I thought "how about saying something that will make them think about it later?". Imagine if, after a seemingly failed persuasion check, that character finds you once more and apologizes to you.
Anyway this video gave me ideas on how to actually implement that if that's something I'll have to do :D The other question is how to make it so the player still has the incentive to keep on doing the persuasion checks. Maybe to get out information... I'm yapping too much
Hi Tim! I'd love to hear your thoughts on designing systems for concluding quests. How are conditions typically set, fulfilled, and tracked in a game? I get that a basic list with checkboxes works, but with thousands of quest conditions, what's a scalable and efficient design approach for managing that complexity?
th-cam.com/video/pw6tOlmwwYE/w-d-xo.html
I don't remember his video on this (go watch it) but here is a quick answer. In general you never want to look at something as there being THOUSANDS of possibilities. Instead there are a small number of co figurable/paramerizered possibilities.
Player has x item in inventory
Player is in x location
Player previously completed x quest
Player has x flag set
etc
Then you setup a structure where you can specify one or more criteria, possibly with and/or and such. There should probably be less than 30 such criteria.
I love games where there is spontaneous NPC (not companions) reactions. Such as the player walks into a farmer's market and pulls out a weapon and points it at someone and all the people in the area scream, dive for cover, or run away. The NPC the weapon is pointed at is frozen slightly shaking with a bead of sweat rolling down off his forehead.
In Gothic there was something like this. You took out a weapon and everyone else took it out too. If you didn't put it away in time, a fight would start - where they could beat you up and take your weapon (and all the coins)
Moreover, in Gothic 1, when the player became strong enough, the NPCs would simply run away.
I’m making an RPG with a an artist friend. This will be the biggest game I’ve made. So far I’ve made the state system, inventory, save, a good amount of quest and dialogue logic built. Dialog being dynamic like Oblivion. A decent amount of the world is being drawn. My question is, do you have any tips on making testing easy? Like maybe I’ll have something like 70 quests(subject to change I’m just throwing out a number), and various world states (player actions change world) Did you have any tips and tricks for keeping testing organised? Like maybe some custom tools/systems I should build early on that pay off later? Or do I just do my best to write the code with all world states in mind and then just play the game to test?
Write down a test plan, trying to cover all the different states, and then methodically play the game to cover those states. Also, try to get different people to play the game who don’t know anything about your test plan. Testers sometimes try to do unusual things.
@ thanks!
@@CainOnGamesGood testers always try to do crazy things. I love good QA engineers. Have you done a video on testing games? Getting good test coverage of any software is hard but games even more so. Would love to hear your insights on that.
@@Me__Myself__and__I You might like Playtesting The Outer Worlds
th-cam.com/video/xM6Cr04wWSc/w-d-xo.html
@@CainOnGames Oh thanks, I've seen a bunch of your videos but I somehow missed that one!
I've been playing Disco Elysium (again) and wonder how much state needed to be stored because it seems that almost everyone remembers or reacts to stuff you do. In a related vein, I also noticed that the stats and skills in the game were closely tailored to the protaganist, whereas a game like Baldur's Gate 3 uses a generalized D&D scheme. I realize that the two games are fundamentally very different, but do you have thoughts on choosing how to model a player character's abilities and attributes in an RPG?
I’d be curious for Tim’s take as well, but I think it essentially comes down to the kind of story you’re trying to tell (or experience you’re trying to create). E.g. there are a lot of great videos online about why the mechanics of D&D aren’t optimal for the horror genre (not least of which being that PCs are too powerful). But in the case of Disco Elysium the story is about a man alienated from himself, destroyed by regret and struggling for closure, within a society that’s doing the same. The story is about wrestling with and rebuilding identity, and the stats reflect that: they don’t measure what you can do so much as describe WHO you are, and even attempt to steer your choices.
There is no right or wrong way to do character abilities and attributes. Depends on what you are doing in the game and how much time & effort you want to spend. I've been working on a custom set of attributes, skills and related mechanics for months that works differently than I've seen elsewhere but are tailored for what I'm planning in the game. I've spent countless hours thinking, writing notes and building extensive spreadsheets to experiment with progression, skill checks, experience, etc. So there is no quick or easy answer, if you are designing a custom RPG spend some time really thinking about what you want to accomplish and why then figure out a system that works for that.
This kind of video shouldn't be interesting to me,
as I'm neither a game developer nor I intend to become one in the future.
Yet it's the opposite!
I find it very intriguing to see how the machine operates behind the curtain,
especially when later, in a game I'm playing, I can spot clues and details
which indicate a certain specific mechanism was programmed in instead of another.
Thanks for your videos!
Nice. Thanks Tim!
I recently started seeing videos from "Law of Self Defence" and now all I can think is that he's the evil version of Tim
I don't know if this topic has already been covered (I recently discovered this wonderful channel), but I have a npc reaction-themed question.
One of the rarest types of reactions, in my experience, in RPG games, is the one to the outfit. Let me explain better. There are several examples of reactions to some special item in particular, such as a king's crown or an orc's sword, but there are very few reactions to the player's generic outfit. For example, if I walk around practically naked in Skyrim, no one notices anything strange.
It would be very interesting to have a reaction system that captures some particular parameters related to the outfit (for example how "bare" a character is), or maybe the type of predominant material of the equipment (perhaps each piece of eq could have a material score), something like that.
For other things there are very valid reaction systems, linked to what the player does, but it is very rare for me to see a reaction to what the player is wearing. Is there any good system for implementing something like this (or any example game that implements it)?
My game Arcanum did that. NPCs would react to the player being naked, or wearing armor that was flagged as “scary”.
You don't want to build those kinds of checks into an event or reaction system as they are too specific. Good systems are rather generic and highly reusable which makes them flexible. So instead of all those specifics I'd have only 2 events: player puts on item and player takes off item. Any npc that is interested can subscribe to one or both. So one npc subscribes to the take off event and their event handler checks to see if the player is wearing pants and if not has a reaction. A different npc could subscribe to the put on event and if say the player puts on a heavy or wool coat and is currently in a desert zone has a reaction.
I would especially like to see this sort of thing in medieval fantasy games, when you might have something like sumptuary laws that restrict lower socioeconomic classes from wearing finer clothing that might mark them as gentry or nobility. But in general it seems like it would be a nice way to increase immersion, especially for roleplayer types like me who like to have a “in town” outfit separate from my adventuring outfit.
I love most dialogs and reactions in Pillars for example, sometimes I play the games just to wait the story and NPCs unfolds dialogs (most NPCS are great)
However it is pretty weird when they reply/jump in/opinion on a conversation, because there is no reaction for the reaction.
EX: you walk into a store and talk to the owner ,and your companion says "this store sucks" , the owner should be pissed 😅
This (companion reaction specifically) is one thing I think Fallout 4 absolutely excelled in! I remember Piper asking to leave an area because it had an old daycare and was making her depressed. It was by far the best experience I had in that game. It actually made me tear up.
I was so focused on looting, and Piper asking to leave the area totally threw me, I'd never had a character ask to leave an area before. It made me stop and see what she was looking at, which in turn made me realize what these people's lives would be like. We're just trying to survive, and we're not only reminded that millions of people were killed senselessly a long time ago, taking away all if their dreams and their future, but also that we're survivng off of their graveyard scraps; people alive today have to deal with that, constantly.
I think NPC interactions were the best way to communicate that, in my opinion anyway.
Love these videos where I can see behind the curtain and see how these moments are made. Thanks, Tim!
People love to hate Bethesda, but they have a lot of reactivity in their games (less on Starfield though 😢). E.g. go to a town in Skyrim and guards will comment on your equipment (iron sword being too weak, that Daedric weapon giving them the creeps, having a weapon/spell drawn, ear-fur for being a werewolf, etc). NPCs will often also pick up stuff you throw on the ground and maybe even start fighting each other for it.
that just sounds like npc trauma dumping...
that's the first thing i thought of too, fallout 4 was great with the companion reactions to the environment and interjecting their own comments during conversations and quests!
the only thing i wish they did better was the delay and "checking" that you're in a safe space before saying "we need to talk" because there have been so many times they trigger the high approval conversation with me and our touching moment is interrupted by us getting attacked again 🤣
@@Odisseia-hh2td Yeah, I have plenty of little gripes about Bethesda, but I’m also quick to defend them. Todd Howard is basically the reason we have modern Fallout games, and while Bethesda made a lot of controversial choices, they clearly put a lot of love into the games. At least in my book, that goes a long way.
Great explanation!
I will both celebrate and mourn the day where NPCs react to me climbing and playing the floor is lava with furniture while they're trying to talk to me.
If you were a bad person in Arcanum, Vergil would tell you he's going to leave, and you really couldn't do anything about it. If you were evil enough however, you could tell him you'll wear his entrails as a belt. After that he say maybe he can stick around a little longer.
Thanks for a great video on the topic! I'm curious if the fire-n-forget nature of events backfire often in your experience? Like all the many things you have to check when an event from Bob got finally pulled. I constantly see problems like dead NPCs talking or quests reacting to something that doesn't actually happen. I understand the benefit of giving the power to the dev team to do random things, but started avoiding the whole concept of generic events. Would it work better or worse in your example to have instead a queue of topics in Bob, that he would start trying to evaluate when the time is right (if he still has a heartbeat, not in the fight etc)?
Working on a fallout to d&d 5e conversion module was going so very well until I found out that Tim fucking Cain has a channel of rpg advice. Now I’m not gonna get much of anything done until I’m done hyperfixating on this.
(Also side note Tim if you see this I’d love to email you for help on making it feel closer to classic fallout lmao)
I know I'm about 25 years late, but in Arcanum it would have been nice if Virgil waited for you to put away your Telegram instead of interrupting you half way through reading it xD
As a linguist I have to say: I love the metaphor that NPCs etc. "listen to" events.
It's mostly about a bus-like messaging system in programming, where you have listening units, signals, events, brodcasting, etc.
@@FatBoi305 It can be simpler - write down LOGS and check them for compliance)
@@YarGolubev Logs are very useful for debugging, but they're really inefficient for anything else. Reading a logfile requires some kind of text parsing, which can be slow. Even with an in-memory log, every single element must be scanned to get the latest version of an event, or to determine that an event hasn't occurred. In Big O notation, this is O(n)-i.e., linear performance. Worse, logs grow with each new event and can potentially become massive. You don't want your game's performance to depend on a file that could be anywhere from 10kb to 100mb, and you REALLY don't want to depend on that for each and every interaction.
I'm guessing you meant using in-memory variables of some sort, which are a lot faster to access and can be a decent solution. But a messaging system/event bus still has advantages: For a given event, it only checks for reactions which are potentially relevant to that event. And unlike a timer, event handlers fire immediately-but they can still use a timer to schedule a delayed reaction, giving you the best of both worlds. And just in terms of source-code organization, event handlers can be a lot cleaner and more modular. All of this might not matter for a small game with only a couple of developers, but it can make a huge difference when you grow beyond that.
@@YarGolubev Logs are great for debugging, but inefficient for anything else. Logfiles require text parsing, which is slow. You have to scan every single element in the log to get the latest version of an event-this is linear performance, aka O(n) in Big O notation. And logs can become massive as events accumulate; you don't want your game's performance to depend on a file that could be anywhere from 10kb to 100mb.
Using in-memory variables is a lot faster and can be a decent solution, but a messaging system still has advantages. It only checks potentially-relevant reactions to an event. Unlike a timer, event handlers can fire immediately. And the source code tends to be a lot cleaner and more modular. The bigger the game, the more that matters.
@@nw42There are often better ways to do logs so that they aren't just text dumps. That said using logs for anything other than debugging or analysis is a bad idea. No matter how the logging system is built it is going to be massively less efficient than an event or messaging system.
i always think of Zelda when it comes to this topic, specifically Windwaker, and i mean Zelda is in every gamedev topic but...
What in gods name- are you blind? I I mean.... better luck next time!
5:47 It might be interesting if you intentionally let certain NPCs ignore such “common sense” to make them feel childish or rude
Hey Tim, I was wondering recently if you’ve ever heard of or played the Gothic games. If so, what did you think? I personally found them entertainingly challenging.
gothic one is getting a remake possibly coming this year or next year so it might be something fun to check out
@ Yes, I saw! I worry that because they’re remaking the game and extremely likely to be revamping the controls and play style, to appeal to modern audiences, the game’s challenge factor, imo one of the original draws towards Gothic, will be decreased significantly.
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to seeing how they revamp it.
I recognize that he does not demonstrate coding, but I would have appreciated visual assistance to comprehend this event system better.
Event systems are incredibly common in software, doesn't really make sense to demo what one is like. Though what Tim was describing isn't exactly an event system, its more like an event system combined with messaging & queues. If you need basics on event systems do some research, they are literally everywhere.
@@Me__Myself__and__I Ya I meant to put it all together but I get your point.
amazing
I googled what cystypig is and now I want to bleach my eyes
I find myself getting really board of most action games, combat system haven't change much in awhile. I've been finding good enemy interactions has been a big part of keeping games fresh. Just cant stand fighting things that feel like their pretending to stop me.
in the Outer Worlds, some of my favourite dialogue comes from the companions reacting to things. I get so tickled when they join in on the convo. Felix especially, personally.
🙏❤
Optimization? In modern times? You're old school ;)
The lack of NPC reaction is the biggest issue of Hogwarts Legacy and what keeps that game from being a total masterpiece.
Binary hidden messages with "Everybody vs Everyone"... A game, maybe? This is what I think every time I hear everybody instead of everyone.