Chapter 75: Chapter 75: NPC Generation
Chen Ba couldn’t trust the system.
The painful lesson from "Star Emperor" made him hesitant to entrust certain core ga functions or code to the system for generation and optimization.
There’s no denying...
The system’s underlying core is indeed powerful; for instance, the performance boost in "Star Emperor" is sothing he couldn’t achieve in ten years.
But precisely because it’s so advanced, if there are any bugs or errors, Chen Ba simply can’t modify them.
Moreover, sotis he doesn’t even know where the problem lies and has to rely on players to discover them.
"Let’s first make a ga..."
Chen Ba felt he shouldn’t develop the bad habit of relying on the system. It’s fine if the system is reliable, but if it fails and he’s dependent on it, isn’t that akin to courting disaster?
There’s a core algorithm for automatic NPC generation, which he saw a top industry figure teaching in a post on the Dream Building Forum.
Based on this algorithm, he wanted to develop a generation program himself to see how it perford.
If it could achieve half the level offered by the system, he wouldn’t consider the system’s approach anymore.
If it fell significantly short, with NPCs often turning out overly chanical and dull, then he would let the Iron Fool System take over.
He set to work imdiately.
It took about half a month, continuously working up until the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the "Living Under Soone’s Roof Simulator" renovation DLC was released, that Chen Ba finally managed to finish the 1.0 version of the NPC generator.
Needless to say, the outco was poor.
This NPC generation logic can be sumd up in the simplest terms as "quantity over quality."
The generated NPCs...
Were similar to those seen in many online gas — andering through the main city’s streets, changing course if blocked by players.
Chen Ba made so optimizations.
Updating from version 1.0 to 1.2, the newly generated NPCs showed so improvent in areas like clothing, appearance, height, and movent paths.
But the "daily behavior" aspect remained a challenging obstacle to overco.
Chen Ba hoped that in "Divine Grace Continent," each NPC would have their daily routine and fit into the story’s background.
For example, a street fruit vendor would have their own ho, push fruits into town to sell in the morning, greet custors with a "fruit introduction" action, and return ho as night fell...
He wasn’t expecting NPCs to be highly intelligent.
With current technology, making NPCs converse like real people was impossible, he just wanted these NPCs to have a rational daily life path.
Rather than having an NPC wandering around the city gate morning, afternoon, and midnight!
Don’t laugh, just look in the gas, in most of them, either single-player or online, NPCs are mostly such wooden chanical planks...
Only a few gas, which emphasize experience and imrsion, assign each NPC their own movent path and daily routine.
For example, "My Ti at Portia."
As a simulation managent ga, in this title, NPCs perfectly adhered to the habits of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.
Furthermore, during their free ti, they would have als at restaurants, stroll by the river, take care of chickens at the farm, and gather during town events for so fun.
This is the effect Chen Ba desired.
But NPCs like those in "My Ti at Portia" generally each have their individual preset sche. Given the limited number of NPCs, it’s achievable with so ti.
However, "Divine Grace Continent" is different.
The new ga’s NPC count is simply too vast, even on the smallest map, there are dozens or hundreds of active NPCs.
If Chen Ba had to design action sches and dialogues for each NPC, the workload would be staggering!
Therefore, bulk generation is necessary.
Without batch generation, relying purely on manpower, the developnt cycle of "Divine Grace Continent" would be longer than a AAA title.
"This algorithm isn’t good enough."
Chen Ba discarded the plan from the industry expert and decided to start from scratch, using the most popular AI technology of the ti to generate a large number of NPCs.
The result was slightly improved.
At least, with AI’s help, NPCs no longer had the sa face.
But the movent paths were chaotic, with instances of dozens of NPCs crowding together and blocking the way due to overlapping routes...
Version 2.0 failed.
Chen Ba was quite helpless, as the algorithm-driven NPC generation was subpar and couldn’t et the requirents. If he wanted to properly develop "Divine Grace Continent," he absolutely needed the system to provide NPC generation core code.
[Ga Title: Divine Grace Continent]
[Design: 85 (can be improved)]
[Programming: 80 (can be improved)]
[Art: 82 (can be improved)]
The system interface was as simple as always, reminiscent of early 3G ho text adventure gas, showing nothing beyond basic information.
But Chen Ba was already used to it.
"Divine Grace Continent" was decent in all respects, with no particularly glaring weaknesses. Opening the secondary nu revealed targeted improvent options, including NPC generation and optimization.
[Generating 1%...5%...]
After the progress bar completed, the system-provided NPC generation and action dialogue programs were loaded into the ga’s project files.
The programming score rose to 90!
Chen Ba gave it a test run, and the results were satisfactory. The generated NPCs were not just nurous but vivid, each with their own personality and movent path.
For example, a certain thug NPC.
His movent path was straightforward: robbing other NPCs in an alley, then running to a weapon store to spend the loot on better weapons, and robbing more people...
It perfectly suited his character background!
The NPCs not only had diverse personalities and independent lifestyle paths, but even their dialogues were varied.
"Does it have AI traces?"
After researching for a while, Chen Ba concluded that these NPCs’ dialogue scripts were likely created by intelligent AI, randomly generating conversations based on different character identities.
It was pretty intriguing.
For instance, a tailor’s apprentice would tell players about interesting things they saw in the tailor shop and secretly shared how enchanting so noblewon’s figures were when they ca for fittings.
"Worthy of being a system product!"
Chen Ba marveled. Creating a few NPCs of this caliber isn’t much, given ti anyone could do it.
But let’s not forget, these were among the NPCs mass-generated by the program! There were hundreds or thousands more like them...
It’s sowhat of a black technology!
Creating thousands of NPCs with unique personalities, scripted dialogues, background identities, and rational life paths all at once isn’t easy.
In any case, Chen Ba felt these NPCs’ realism was already very high.
If "Divine Grace Continent" is filled with such NPCs, the players’ imrsion would be enhanced trendously, and the core gaplay would be maximized.
After all, who doesn’t enjoy smart companions?
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