Skyrim Mod for Social NPCs Manuel Castro Guerra Moreira Guimarães Thesis to obtain the Master of Science Degree in Information Systems and Computer Engineering Supervisor: Prof. Pedro Alexandre Simões dos Santos Examination Committee Chairperson: Prof. José Carlos Alves Pereira Monteiro Supervisor: Prof. Pedro Alexandre Simões dos Santos Member of the Committee: Prof. João Miguel de Sousa de Assis Dias October 2016 ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my Thesis supervisor, Professor Pedro Santos for the opportunity to work on such an interesting project such as this one and for all the guidance provided throughout the whole process. I would also like to thank my family, specially my parents, for all the support given, not only through this year but also throughout my life. And finally I would like to thank my friends whose company and support managed to keep me sane and in a good mood no matter what. iii iv Resumo Hoje em dia os videojogos atingiram um novo n´ıvel de fidelidade grafica.´ Alem´ disso, com o aumento da popularidade de novas tecnologias, como a Realidade Virtual e Realidade Aumentada, os jogadores estao˜ mais imersos do que nunca dentro de mundos virtuais com personagens virtuais. A credibilidade dessas personagens virtuais (normalmente chamadas NPCs) exige que estas ten- ham caracteristicas humanas, como emoc¸oes˜ e a capacidade de tomar decisoes˜ sozinhas. Uma dessas caracteristicas mais importante e´ a nossa capacidade de socializar e interagir uns com os outros. Grupos de investigac¸ao˜ academicos´ criaram inumeras´ arquitecturas sociais diferentes que podem transformar as personagens de e mudar os seu impacto no mundo do videojogo. Usando essas arqui- tectures as personagens temˆ desejos sociais, comportamentos complexos e tomam acc¸oes˜ para mudar a sociedade a que pertencem. No entanto, a pesquisa academica´ sobre IA em jogos e a area´ de desenvolvimento de videojogos comerciais encontra-se bastante. Este e´ o resultado de investigadores quererem criar soluc¸oes˜ gerais, enquanto que os programadores de videojogos querem apenas algo que funcione bem o suficiente. O objetivo deste projeto e´ implementar um modelo de arquitectura social, com origens academicas,´ num videojogo recente e com sucesso comercial e investigar a sua viabilidade e impacto na experienciaˆ do jogador. Nesta Tese apresentamos e descrevemos a implementac¸ao˜ do CIF-CK: uma arquitetura social, “Comme il faut” no videojogo “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”. A implementac¸ao˜ foi distribuida como um Mod, que teve sucesso quase imediato na comunidade de jogadores. Palavras-chave: Personagens Nao˜ Jogaveis, Interacc¸ao˜ Social, Arquitectura Social v vi Abstract Modern video games have reached a new level of graphic fidelity. Furthermore with the rise of popularity of new technologies such as Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, gamers are more immersed than ever within virtual worlds and virtual characters. The credibility and believability of Virtual Characters (typically called NPCs) requires them to have basic human traits such as emotions and the ability to make decisions on their own. One of the most defining human attributes is our social ability and awareness. Academic research groups have created numerous different social architectures that can transform video game characters and change their impact on the game’s world. Characters have social desires, complex behaviours and work towards changing the social status around them. However, academic research on AI in games and commercial game AI development efforts are rather disjoint and there is a wide divergence in methods and results. This is the result of academic researchers wanting general solutions to generic problems whereas video game developers want something that works well enough. This project’s goal is to implement a social architecture model, originated from Academic Research, in a modern and commercially successful video game and investigate its feasibility and impact on player experience. We present and describe an implementation of CIF-CK: an agent social architecture: “Comme il Faut” in a commercial videogame “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”. The implementation was distributed as a dowloadable Mod, and met with almost instant success in the player community. Keywords: Non-Playable Character, Social Interaction, Social Architecture/Model vii viii Contents Acknowledgments........................................... iii Resumo.................................................v Abstract................................................. vii List of Tables.............................................. xiii List of Figures............................................. xv Nomenclature..............................................1 Glossary................................................1 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation.............................................1 1.1.1 Social Interaction Expectation..............................2 1.1.2 Decisions and Consequences.............................3 1.1.3 A Possible Solution....................................4 1.2 Objectives.............................................5 1.3 Results..............................................5 1.4 Thesis Outline..........................................6 2 Related Work 7 2.1 Social Interactions and Decision Making............................7 2.2 Social NPCs and Commercial Games.............................9 2.2.1 Social Focused Video Games.............................. 10 2.2.2 Social NPCs, Architectures and Models........................ 15 2.2.3 Defining Social Behaviour................................ 21 2.3 Modding............................................. 23 2.4 A Commercial Game and a Social Arquitecture: Skyrim meets PromWeek.................................... 24 2.4.1 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim............................... 24 2.4.2 Creation Kit........................................ 25 2.4.3 Comme il Faut...................................... 30 3 Solution Architecture 35 3.1 From CiF to Skyrim: CIF-CK................................... 35 ix 3.1.1 Social Exchanges.................................... 35 3.1.2 Characters........................................ 36 3.1.3 Social State........................................ 38 3.1.4 Trigger Rules....................................... 38 3.1.5 Beliefs and Social Networks............................... 39 4 Implementation 41 4.1 General Quest Behaviour.................................... 41 4.1.1 Social Move Quest Stages............................... 41 4.1.2 Quest Scenes...................................... 43 4.1.3 Dialogue Views and Topics............................... 45 4.1.4 Response Phase..................................... 47 4.1.5 Calculating the Result of a Social Move......................... 49 4.2 Script Behavior.......................................... 49 4.2.1 NPC-specific Script Behavior.............................. 50 4.2.2 The Game Manager................................... 58 4.3 Player to NPC interaction.................................... 58 4.3.1 Dialogue Authoring.................................... 59 4.3.2 The Voice Acting Problem................................ 61 4.4 Player Feedback......................................... 62 4.5 Play Scenarios.......................................... 63 4.5.1 Location.......................................... 63 4.5.2 Quest Scenario...................................... 63 4.5.3 Open Scenario...................................... 66 4.6 Giving the User “Author-ability”................................. 67 5 Results 69 5.1 Mod Release........................................... 69 5.1.1 Mod Logo and Images.................................. 70 5.1.2 Mod Description..................................... 70 5.2 Mod Reception.......................................... 71 5.2.1 The First Day....................................... 71 5.2.2 The First Week...................................... 71 5.2.3 Lifetime Total (so far)................................... 72 5.2.4 Mod Feedback...................................... 72 5.3 Surveys.............................................. 72 5.3.1 General Information Section............................... 74 5.3.2 “Filter Out” Section.................................... 74 5.3.3 Quest Scenario, the Comme il Faut House...................... 74 5.3.4 Open Scenario, the Honningbrew Meadery...................... 75 x 5.3.5 User Experience..................................... 77 5.3.6 Results Conclusion.................................... 78 6 Conclusions 79 6.1 Future Work............................................ 80 Bibliography 85 A Technical Datasheets 87 A.0.1 Finding the actors around me code........................... 87 A.0.2 Microtheory Example.................................. 87 A.0.3 Part of the Flirt Social Exchange volitions computation code............. 88 A.0.4 Part of the Compliment Consequences Code..................... 88 A.0.5 Survey Link........................................ 89 A.0.6 Influence Rules Table.................................. 89 xi xii List of Tables 2.1 Character values for Sarah................................... 31 2.2 Sarah initiates the Break Up Social Exchange towards James................ 33 3.1 Social Exchanges: From CiF to Creation Kit.......................... 37 3.2 How Characters in CiF translate into the Creation Kit Engine................ 38 3.3 How the Social State in CiF will be implemented in Creation Kit................ 39 4.1 Understanding each Social Exchange Quest Stage...................... 42