Has anyone ever dealt with a chatbot powered NPC in a MMO, MUD, PW or single player game?
I’m working on an „augmented reality text mud“ (think geolocation from your mobile instead of rooms + text MUD) on the google App Engine and I’ve got a data model for NWN style NPC conversations. It is a simplified version my memotica stimulus structure and essentially works just like the NPC conversations in Neverwinter Nights. In fact, I could use the Flamewind standalone conversation editor for NWN2 and write a simple python script for importing the XML files into my model.
But something occurred to me. Perhaps I should try a chatbot approach.
Canned conversations carry the advantage of being able to craft complex NPC interactions; especially for quest givers. They carry the disadvantage that many players won’t read the text anyway and that the canned responses limit the players’ interaction options.
Chatbot conversations have the advantage of “being like Siri”; freeform, discoverable and people are apparently tolerant of oddities; to a certain extent. IF you can restrict them to a small range of topics, they might not even break the magic circle.
Thoughts?
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