Dialogue

So once a species is sapient, they will develop a language. Obviously the player will never have to learn the language of the species, but they WILL need a way to converse with others. So my question is this - HOW? I have come up with the idea that visual descriptions can be handled in a relevant editor (see page 2 of this thread), but things such as exchanging information or trying to stir up revolutionary sentiment will be needed in the game. And frankly, i'm out of ideas on how we can do that.

EDIT: Interactions between two people that share a language will be through click-action. Clicking on an option called 'converse' or 'interact' or something similar will open up further options.

Eg
> Converse
> Show hostility towards
> Faction
> Blue Faction

This will be an easy way to stir up war and revolutionary sentiment. However, influencing religions is still under discussion. See the poll to leave your opinion on what you think of the idea.

school? idk. but that seems the only well way.

The player should have to learn the language, or at least have a basic understanding of it. The languages should be very simple. I could probably create a language generator that uses minimal resources.

This would all be if the player hasn't got some kind of Universal Translator Technology?

The player should be able to communicate with the AI by selecting icons that will convey emotions. For example: an icon that will convey that the player is angry with the AI, or that the player is pleased or questioning of the AI.

Guys, i'm talking about when you control one of your faction and talk to one of your faction. They would share a language and therefore you should be able to understand each other easily. And of course emotions would be easy enough, i'm talking more about deeper interactions.

Deeper interactions, such as trade negotiations and such. This should probably be accomplished through a sophisticated drop-down menu or something of similar purpose.

GamerXA wrote:

Deeper interactions, such as trade negotiations and such. This should probably be accomplished through a sophisticated drop-down menu or something of similar purpose.

This is Org Mode. Unless you are playing as a nation's leader, you mightn't be doing much negotiating. I meant more along the lines of starting revolutions and religions. You know, starting rumours that grow into stories that grow into myths that grow into religions.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Guys, i'm talking about when you control one of your faction and talk to one of your faction. They would share a language and therefore you should be able to understand each other easily. And of course emotions would be easy enough, i'm talking more about deeper interactions.

This is where click-action gets even more Sims-esque. Once you click on an organism in your species, the bubble pops up. Youhave several options- hostile, social, questioning, ect. and all of them would lead to another menu, like in the Sims. For example, once you click "hostile", you can choose "toward organism", "toward self", or "toward another organism", or "toward government".

All of these options would make your organism express these thoughts, and they would make the other organism react in different ways, based on the mentality of your species, and a variable that would be randomly determined once you initiate interaction with another organism.

(Warning: this is off-topic AND on-topic at the same time)

This variable would make some slight adjustments to the organism's mentality to give him/her their own unique personality. Of course, it would not draw a personality for EVERY member of your species alive, just the specific one you are talking to. All personalities would be stored in a small cache file that would erase itself every, say, 20 minutes to reduce stress on the processor. So if you talked to a total of 6,000 organisms, all with their own personalities, in the whole time you've had the game, only the last five would still be on your computer.


Anyway, no two organisms are alike, and the interactions are non-specific, yet still allow plenty of different interactions.

That Rebellion and Religion thing is a great idea.

Concerning the second segment of your post. What about Individuals that interact with eachother often. This might be accomplished through Hebbian Learning.

GamerXA wrote:

That Rebellion and Religion thing is a great idea.

Concerning the second segment of your post. What about Individuals that interact with eachother often. This might be accomplished through Hebbian Learning.

I would be rooting for that 100% if there weren't the toll of the processor that would take. Could you imagine your computer having to take care of every friendship in the galaxy?

InvaderZim wrote:

GamerXA wrote:

That Rebellion and Religion thing is a great idea.

Concerning the second segment of your post. What about Individuals that interact with eachother often. This might be accomplished through Hebbian Learning.

I would be rooting for that 100% if there weren't the toll of the processor that would take. Could you imagine your computer having to take care of every friendship in the galaxy?

Good Point. Maybe it could store only the most important and used relations; and only load them when you're nearby the person.

GamerXA wrote:

Good Point. Maybe it could store only the most important and used relations; and only load them when you're nearby the person.

It could do that, but it would still take up space on your harddrive- and the fact that it would have to constantly remember all of the locations and states of these relationships all over the galaxy?


X_X <------ That's your computer (possibly).


Now, I hate to say this, but I think we should do what Spore did and just have organisms briefly talk to each other and walk off. Of course these conversations don't need to be brief- they could go on for hours, but I don't think they should stick around very long- that is, for AI interacting with eachother. For the player making friends with organisms, those relationships should stick around for as long as your organism is alive.

I agree with Zim here, let's make it simple and self explanatory- you don't really need to go very in depth, you just need a bunch of options. For instance, like zim was talking about a "hostile" line of thought.
It could go
Hostile
>Towards Faction
>>Blue Faction

~sciocont wrote:

I agree with Zim here, let's make it simple and self explanatory- you don't really need to go very in depth, you just need a bunch of options. For instance, like zim was talking about a "hostile" line of thought.
It could go
Hostile
>Towards Faction
>>Blue Faction

yes, that seems to be the easiest and non computer killingest way to go.

~sciocont wrote:

I agree with Zim here, let's make it simple and self explanatory- you don't really need to go very in depth, you just need a bunch of options. For instance, like zim was talking about a "hostile" line of thought.
It could go
Hostile
>Towards Faction
>>Blue Faction

So we have a way to stir oppression into revolution or anger into war, now how do we influence religions?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

I agree with Zim here, let's make it simple and self explanatory- you don't really need to go very in depth, you just need a bunch of options. For instance, like zim was talking about a "hostile" line of thought.
It could go
Hostile
>Towards Faction
>>Blue Faction

So we have a way to stir oppression into revolution or anger into war, now how do we influence religions?

Maybe under Social, there could be an option: "Promote", and under it would be things like "Faction", "Tech/Object", or "Faith/Religion".

InvaderZim wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

I agree with Zim here, let's make it simple and self explanatory- you don't really need to go very in depth, you just need a bunch of options. For instance, like zim was talking about a "hostile" line of thought.
It could go
Hostile
>Towards Faction
>>Blue Faction

So we have a way to stir oppression into revolution or anger into war, now how do we influence religions?

Maybe under Social, there could be an option: "Promote", and under it would be things like "Faction", "Tech/Object", or "Faith/Religion".

Excellent idea. You can express favoritism or dislike towards anything in your game, basically, and you could spread that through social interaction.

~sciocont wrote:

Excellent idea. You can express favoritism or dislike towards anything in your game, basically, and you could spread that through social interaction.

Okay, so by choosing to promote or disapprove you can definitely interact with ideas. BUT! There are more emotions than agree and disagree. Hows abouts you can show any emotion towards any thing?

EG
Socialize
Show - (Emotion)
Towards - (Person/Place/Thing)

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Excellent idea. You can express favoritism or dislike towards anything in your game, basically, and you could spread that through social interaction.

Okay, so by choosing to promote or disapprove you can definitely interact with ideas. BUT! There are more emotions than agree and disagree. Hows abouts you can show any emotion towards any thing?

EG
Socialize
Show - (Emotion)
Towards - (Person/Place/Thing)

Yeah, like if a wild animal kills someone you know, you can express anger/sorrow toward that animal's species.
If someone is kind to you, you can go to someone else and show happiness toward that one person. If someone tries to kill you, you can express anger towards that person.

InvaderZim wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Excellent idea. You can express favoritism or dislike towards anything in your game, basically, and you could spread that through social interaction.

Okay, so by choosing to promote or disapprove you can definitely interact with ideas. BUT! There are more emotions than agree and disagree. Hows abouts you can show any emotion towards any thing?

EG
Socialize
Show - (Emotion)
Towards - (Person/Place/Thing)

Yeah, like if a wild animal kills someone you know, you can express anger/sorrow toward that animal's species.
If someone is kind to you, you can go to someone else and show happiness toward that one person. If someone tries to kill you, you can express anger towards that person.

Exactly. In-depth without being too complex.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

InvaderZim wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Excellent idea. You can express favoritism or dislike towards anything in your game, basically, and you could spread that through social interaction.

Okay, so by choosing to promote or disapprove you can definitely interact with ideas. BUT! There are more emotions than agree and disagree. Hows abouts you can show any emotion towards any thing?

EG
Socialize
Show - (Emotion)
Towards - (Person/Place/Thing)

Yeah, like if a wild animal kills someone you know, you can express anger/sorrow toward that animal's species.
If someone is kind to you, you can go to someone else and show happiness toward that one person. If someone tries to kill you, you can express anger towards that person.

Exactly. In-depth without being too complex.

Yep. You can get a high level of interaction without needing to make up a whole language.

For vocal communication, we can simply take clips of sound the creature could make, and run 'em randomly like in The Sims. (A player can define sounds in the organism behavior editor, some parts will give the ability to make sounds, the player just adjusts the sounds.)

~sciocont wrote:

For vocal communication, we can simply take clips of sound the creature could make, and run 'em randomly like in The Sims. (A player can define sounds in the organism behavior editor, some parts will give the ability to make sounds, the player just adjusts the sounds.)

That's almost exactly what I was picturing.

How will the AI communicate with the player, I don't think a player would fully embrace another person talking to them solely with emoticons, for example:

? ; ! ; @ ; ->

GamerXA wrote:

How will the AI communicate with the player, I don't think a player would fully embrace another person talking to them solely with emoticons, for example:

? ; ! ; @ ; ->

Well... "Acta non Verba". Actions speak louder than words. Pair up an emoticon with some sort of procedural animation to show approval, disapproval, disappointment, guilt, happiness, pity, anger, ect. (Am I getting too Sporeish here?)

InvaderZim wrote:

Well... "Acta non Verba". Actions speak louder than words. Pair up an emoticon with some sort of procedural animation to show approval, disapproval, disappointment, guilt, happiness, pity, anger, ect. (Am I getting to Sporeish here?)

Maybe a little. What is wrong with just having simple statements?

"I hate Slavery!"
Simple, easy to create with click-action interaction, and easy to understand.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

InvaderZim wrote:

Well... "Acta non Verba". Actions speak louder than words. Pair up an emoticon with some sort of procedural animation to show approval, disapproval, disappointment, guilt, happiness, pity, anger, ect. (Am I getting to Sporeish here?)

Maybe a little. What is wrong with just having simple statements?

"I hate Slavery!"
Simple, easy to create with click-action interaction, and easy to understand.

It's that we won't be able to achieve the depth we need, because people will come up with concepts we can't think of. Therefore, it's best to let people interpret for themselves and communicate in a simple emotional language that overlays a randomly generated background "dialect" of random noises, movements, chromatophore changes, etc.