Bachelor's thesis in computer science spring 2008 AI-controlled life in Role-playing games by Bertil Jeppsson DV1303 supervised by Johan Hagelbäck This thesis is submitted to the Department of Interaction and System Design at Blekinge Institute of Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor degree in Computer Science. The thesis is equivalent to 10 weeks of full time studies. Contact Information Name: Bertil Jeppsson Address: Folkparksvägen 17:19 Postal code: 37240 City: Ronneby School e-mail:
[email protected] Home e-mail:
[email protected] Mobile phone: 0730-307793 Acknowledgements I want to thank my supervisor for all the help and support through the project. It wouldn't have been possible without his guidance. I also want to thank my family, my girlfriend and my friends for all support and encouragement throughout the work process. I'd also like to thank the makers of the nwnlexicon [nwnlex], a good API documentation of NWscript which I have visited many times whilst working. Other builders of Neverwinter Nights 2 modules on Bioware's builder forums [nwn2bf] also deserves credit for answering questions I've posted about problems I encountered during the implementation phase. I'd also like to make an acknowledgement that is unrelated to the thesis work itself, but has been an affecting factor personally to me throughout the work. My grand father passed away during this all. May he rest in peace! Abstract Will more realistic behaviour among non-playing characters (NPCs) in a role-playing game(RPG) improve the overall feeling of the game for the player? Would players notice the enhanced life of a NPC in a role-playing game, or is the time spent in cities and villages insufficient to notice any difference at all? There are plenty best-selling RPGs with simplistic, repetitive NPC behaviour on the market.