AI Non-Playable Characters
While writing my transportation plugin, as detailed here, I decided to further develop the scene by adding AI non-playable characters. Using Chat-GPT at its core, real-world conversations and interactions with NPCs are made possible. After writing a background narrative about the scene for the character, they can give unique and insightful responses in real time, specifically tailored to the player’s speech.
This capability is fascinating as it holds many other use cases related to experiential design. For example, in an immersive art exhibit, an AI NPC could be trained based on information relating to a specific storyline, scene or historical event within the exhibition. Players could then ask the character bespoke questions and receive unique responses in real-time, meaning each user’s experience would be different. I think this is a really important aspect of making truly captivating experiences.
Runtime Actions
The NPC is also aware of different locations in the scene. When asked to retrieve a ticket from the ticket booth, they can navigate to the booth and then back to the player; they can even follow them should the player change location. This logic is made possible by ‘tagging’ actors in the scene. To illustrate, I tagged the ticket booth actor with ‘ticket booth’ therefore when the NPC hears the player mention anything related to the ticket booth’s location, it knows the relevant x, y, z coordinates.