NPC
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Breakfast Topic: The clothes you wish you could wear
It happens a lot: you see some random NPC in the world wearing a certain item or clothing and you wonder "hey! Can I can a polearm like that somewhere?" You might even do some searching and find it's not available for players, only NPCs. Most often it's a weapon of some kind, but sometimes it's a particular set of shoulders, or a matching set of armor the like of which doesn't actually exist. Sometimes it's a unique item with a really powerful pizzazz.I always liked the nifty scarf featured here on Baron Rivendare, as well as on the death knight pictured in yesterday's breakfast topic. It probably would be hard to make this sort of scarf work for tauren, but all the other races could wear it pretty well, it seems. It would definitely be a match for death knights who want to look the part, or anyone who wants that certain dastardly debonair look.What items have you seen NPCs wearing that you wish you could wear too?
Freshening up the battleground with new ideas
This idea has been floating around ever since we all realized there were two new opposing reputations in the Burning Crusade-- an Aldor vs. Scryer battleground. It would definitely be a fresh change of pace to line up alongside the opposing faction and have a chance to face off against your own friends and guildies. Of course, there's lots of coding work that would have to be done (as well as a little lore work-- Aldor and Scryer aren't exactly in open war at this point), but it would be a cool addition to the current battleground options.And the forum thread that mentions the idea is actually full of great BG ideas-- a Team Deathmatch BG, multi-team CTF, and even an escort battleground. There's already that kind of thing in AV (you can run the quests that summon an NPC for you to follow around more than escort), but it would be neat to have a BG where you had to get an actual player from one place to another. Or maybe they could do it with an NPC-- run it in the Caverns of Time, and have the player escort someone in the history of Warcraft. Like Durnholde, but with players instead of an instance.The other neat tidbit from this thread is that Ommra winkingly mentions siege engines as something she'd (he'd?) like to see in the BGs. So whatever news comes out about what's new in the battlegrounds, it's a pretty good bet that siege engines are almost upon us.
Ganked by an NPC?
Electricarmada over on WarCry is used to getting stabbed in the back by undead rogues, after all he is on a PvP server. However, his experience in Nagrand was slightly different. This time, it was an NPC that was slipping the dagger into his vertebrae. Gankly Rottenfist is his name, and he is an undead rogue wearing the top notch PvP set, wandering around just waiting for someone to slaughter. The slaughter was turned on him, however an impression was definitely left. I haven't myself encountered this fellow, but Gankly's existence leads me to believe that there must be other NPCs out there in the game wearing this badge of humor over their heads. Have you found any NPCs wandering Outland or Azeroth that brought a chuckle to your day? Which people in WoW have made you smile? [via WarCry]
AIseek's Intia Processor provides dedicated AI crunching
With competition for those spare PCI slots already hot between dedicated sound, physics, and even network cards -- all promising to offload some CPU cycles to speed frame rates and enhance performance -- you've gotta hand it to AIseek for pushing out their new Intia "AI processor" in such a climate. The way it's looking from here, we just need more PCI slots, since the AIseek promises all sorts of Artificial Intelligence leetness that just needs to be had. They're saying that they can accelerate low-level AI tasks 200x compared to a lone CPU, giving NPCs better terrain analysis, line-of-sight sense, path finding and the like. AIseek also guarantees NPCs will be able to find the optimal path in any game that uses the chip, pathfinding abilities we've gone without for too long. Basically: more baddies, less stupidity. Unfortunately, the "chip" doesn't quite seem to exist in anything close to a retail form -- AIseek mainly seems to be after VC money right now -- and of course there's always the chicken and the egg problem being experienced by PhysX of no games until people buy the card, and nobody will buy the card without games. All the same, we're hoping for good things from this technology, and would recommend you peep the read link for some simulations of the AI in action.[Via Ars Technica]
Next-gen games need next-gen AI
Method Director has an interesting blog post up on the role of AI to make game characters' performances more realistic. How many times have you wandered away from a character while they continued talking? Tried to shoot your teammates and not had a hint of reprimand for it? Some games handle this better than others, but generally while the graphics and physics engines of modern (and so-called next-gen) games are spectacular, the AI can be unbelievable and wooden. The arts of theatre direction and improvisational acting are not black and forbidden subjects--they're taught widely and have well known and recognisable methods. It's about time some game developers started getting a little more creative with the way their NPCs behave. Method Director posts a sample algorithm; simple character motivation and emotional states could go a long way to making characters realistic. While some games do manage realistic and believable AI, it seems that most focus on the "wow" factors before making plot and character realistic--and just like a bad movie, a game with great graphics but no depth can flop.
