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Documentation of Non-Playable Characters in chiventure

Index

Wiki Pages

Modules

  • NPC
  • Next steps for NPCs
  • Dialogue
  • Next steps for dialogue
  • NPCs in Rooms
  • Next steps for NPCs in rooms
  • NPC movement
  • Next steps for NPC movement
  • NPC Battles
  • Next steps for NPC battles

Directories

  • include/npc
  • src/npc
  • tests/ncc

Subdirectories

  • src/npc/examples
  • src/npc/sandbox

Modules

NPC Module

  • Contains code relating to the creation, use, and deletion of non-playable characters in chiventure.
  • See chiventure/include/npc.h for in-code documentation on the nitty-gritty technical details of NPCs.
  • NPCs in chiventure were designed to be a mix of players and items. They have inventories like players, and descriptions like items.
  • NPCs are unique in that they can participate in dialogue with the player.
  • NPCs also possess a class struct, which contains a stats struct and skill tree, much like a player.

Next Steps for the NPC Module

  • Integrate with chiventure by adding NPCs to the game struct.
  • Complete npc-action module currently contained in the branch npc/action so that NPCs can be spoken and traded with in chiventure.
  • Integrate with battle module by making it possible to battle NPCs in a chiventure game.
  • Integrate with WDL so that NPCs can be specified in that format.

Dialogue Module

  • Contains code relating to the creation, use, and deletion of dialogue in chiventure/an NPC in chiventure.

  • See chiventure/include/dialogue.h for in-code documentation on the nitty-gritty technical details of dialogue.

  • Dialogue in chiventure was designed to follow the concept of branching-dialogue, where the player's input determines the course of the conversation.

  • This was accomplished with structs relating to a directed graph structure, such as nodes and edges.

  • A "node" is one possible section of a conversation, including dialogue to be spoken by the NPC and a collection of edges to be accessed by user input.

  • An "edge" is a connection between nodes, to be accessed when the player indicates the edge's "keyword". This keyword functions as the edge's identification, therefore, no two edges in a conversation may have the same keyword.

    • Note: currently, in the dialogue_example, the player is able to state the exact keyword, and this is read and parsed by the NPC-CLI in the example. This is not compatible with chiventure's UI/CLI.
    • This "keyword" functionality will soon be replaced with numeric options (see Next Steps for the Dialogue Module).

  • A "convo" is a conversation that the NPC can carry out, feature a collection of nodes.

Next Steps for the Dialogue Module

  • Integrate with chiventure's UI/CLI.
    • When keywords were implemented one main issue encountered was the inability to register keywords as non-action-inducing commands. The goal was to have the player type in the keyword (which is a string, and currently can contain more than one word as long as it is smaller than 50 characters. This becomes an issue with CLI's parsing and tokenizing strategy), then advance to the next node.
    • All these issues will be taken care of with the CLI mode feature currently in development. It will allow the CLI to switch from a normal "game mode" to a "conversation mode" in which the program only checks for dialogue options.
    • Our hope is that dialogue in chiventure will someday look more like our dialogue_example.
    • Additionally, we hope that built-in commands like look <item> will be configured to include looking at NPCs, and that actions such as battling and trading with NPCs will be implemented.
  • Replace keywords with numbers
    • Instead of offering dialogue options based on keywords, numeric options will be given where the player will simply input an integer to indicate which dialogue option they would like to choose. This will not be a significant structural change to how the dialogue functions, but it adheres to dialogue styles present in many other games.

NPCs in Rooms Module

  • Contains code relating to NPCs in rooms and moving NPCs to/from rooms
  • See chiventure/include/rooms_npc.h for in-code documentation on the nitty-gritty technical details of NPC movement.
  • The npcs_in_room struct essentially contains all the NPCs that exist in a room

Next Steps for NPCs in Rooms

  • The npcs_in_room struct needs to be then further integrated into the room struct where the room struct will hold this specific npcs_in_room struct for each room. This would therefore contain a list of npcs that exist in the room.
  • A feature that can be implemented would be NPC movement. The primary issue with this is that often times adjacent rooms may not have the same room_tag, thus the NPC will be restricted to a single room. But in the case that adjacent rooms may be of a room_tag that that particular npc_class has been associated to both room_tag, then this can facilitate continuous movement between rooms.

NPC Movement Module

  • Contains code relating to the movement member of the npc struct
  • See chiventure/include/npc_move.h for in-code documentation on the nitty-gritty technical details of NPC movement.
  • For each NPC there is a npc_mov_t struct that addresses the movement of the NPCs between rooms. This struct holds a union determining what kind of movement the NPC is participating in, and this can fall under two categories
    • A definite path: this is the first case when an NPC is required to move from point A to point B for a specific reason (that being for a quest, etc.). In this case the NPC is merely moving from point A to point B and the movement ends at point B.
      • If an NPC is static and will only stay in one room, it will still fall into the definite path category.
    • An indefinite path: this is the second case when an NPC is simply moving through the map but without a definite end point. This is simulate the open-world so that NPCs will be continuously moving through the world. In this case the NPC will also hold a linked list of rooms to move through, but in addition it must have a hash table that holds the time that it should spend in each room in seconds.

Next Steps for NPC Movement

  • Currently, issues may arise if the same room is in multiple parts of an NPC's movement path, or if the room an NPC is currently located is also added later into the path of an NPC. This stems from the room_id being the only key to members of an NPC's movement path, so the addition of another key may be needed.

NPC Battles Module

  • Contains code relating to an NPC's battling capabilities and characteristics
  • See chiventure/include/npc_battle.h for in-code documentation on the nitty-gritty technical details of NPC battles.
  • For each NPC there is an npc_battle struct that contains the following information about the NPC
    • Health level
    • Stats (speed, defense, strength, etc.)
    • Moveset
    • AI Difficulty
    • Hostility Level (Friendly, Conditionally Friendly, or Hostile)
    • Health level at which the NPC will surrender
  • So far this module is focused on the creation and deletion of npc_battle structs, but also has the functionality of moving the items from an NPC's inventory to the room struct upon defeat.

Next Steps for NPC Battles

  • TBD

Directories

chiventure/include/npc

  • Interface of NPC and dialogue modules.
  • npc.h - Contains the structs for the foundational aspects of NPCs
  • dialogue.h - Contains the strcts for all of the NPC dialogue functionality
  • rooms_npc.h - Contains the structs for handling NPCs in rooms
  • npc_move.h - Contains the structs for handling the movement of NPCs
  • npc_battle.h - Contains the structs and functions for battles involving NPCs

chiventure/src/npc

  • CMakeLists.txt - CMake file for examples
  • ./src
    • npc.c - Contains the implementation for the foundational aspects of NPCs
    • dialogue.c - Contains the implementation for all of the NPC dialogue functionality
    • rooms_npc.c - Contains the implementation for handling NPCs in rooms
  • ./examples
    • dialogue_example.c - Uses the backend of the dialogue module and a frontend that is unfortunately incompatible with chiventure as it stands.
      • Prints possible player responses in a different color.
    • npc_example.c - A monkeypatched chiventure executable to display how dialogue can (but probably shouldn't) currently look in chiventure, using the backend of the dialogue module.
    • CMakeLists.txt - CMake file for the examples above
      • Run make examples to create both executables for npc_example.c and dialogue_example.c
      • After making chiventure and making examples, run src/npc/examples/npc_example or src/npc/examples/dialogue_example.
  • ./sandbox
    • convotest.c - pre- make examples artifact code of what is currently dialogue_example.c.
    • Makefile - Makefile for convotest.c
      • Run make all to create convo executable
      • Run clean to remove convo executable

chiventure/tests/npc