AI-driven actions and dialogue?!

[Lanstar]

Surprising things happen when you put 25 AI agents together in an RPG town

Researchers study emergent AI behaviors in a sandbox world inspired by The Sims.

arstechnica.com

This interesting little research project boggles the mind. It isn't animal crossing, but it screams of potential if implemented properly: They could take all the villagers of animal crossing, give each one all sorts of different personality and hobby variables, and let an AI software design dialog and actions based on them! Pretty neat, and it could make all the villagers feel much more unique than just cookie cutters of just 8 personalities we have now.

Of course, the whole 'if implemented properly' part is quite the catch... What do you all think of this technology in the context of Animal Crossing?

 

[Introspective Onlooker]

I could see Nintendo getting some use out of this; rather or not they capitalize on it is a separate issue entirely. I see how dialogue is handled in these games, and Animal Crossing really could benefit from this, because dialogue just seems something of an afterthought to the developers. I'm fine with just having eight personalities, because I feel it's more important to have some dialogue that corresponds to context, rather than it being random spouts of unrelated topics regurgitated to the player — as it has always been the case with this series.

I just want actions and dialogue that's character-appropriate and don't make me want to facedesk.

 

[nightglow]

That is super interesting, I just hope it would be accessible to indie devs too if it becomes something.

 

[JKDOS]

This is interesting to think about. Not just for Animal Crossing, but for any game with NPCs and text dialogue. Having AI generated dialogue would allow developers to put a near infinite amount of potential dialogue in the game without needing to sit down and write it all.

There are limitations though due to the required storage and processing power needed. I do think Nintendo would be far from ever utilizing such a thing if they could. As we move further into the future, it might be a concept a lot of indie devs pick up on.