Hey Exanimates,

The last round of changes we discussed in the last coffee diary went live on the test branch shortly after. The new weapon motions and other adjustments were very well received, and we will of course continue to tweak things based on feedback. The new arena with new vegetation features was also included and seems to be working and performing well for everyone. Before we move things to the main branch and do a save wipe we are making some content changes that are required to support upcoming features, so that we won't need to save wipe again when they are introduced.

This major overhaul of our engine, physics and many big core features is finally complete. Some of this such as terrain, vegetation and cloth was in our original immediate plans, but realistically most of it wasn't. These are all hugely important changes though, planned or not, and now that they're done we're finally turning our attention back to the role system.

We briefly introduced the role system topic a few coffee diaries ago, but basically the role system is what drives all "high level" NPC behaviour. We already have a very good and functional system in place for modelling behaviour based on emotions and basic relationships, but with just these things, AI basically behaves like animals. We do already have a version of the role system in place, which is used in a very basic way to give characters dialogue and some basic understanding of others, but as it is this is very static with few placeholder roles, and does almost the opposite of what the role system was designed to do.

What we call a "role" system is very broad in scope. Roles provide different behaviours, decision making that exerts control over raw emotions, they model relationships, carry memories of past events and interactions and generally context for AI to understand and interface with things. They can be very broad like "human", very specific like "Derrin the farmhand" with personal details, or just fleeting contextual things like "pulling lever at friend's request". Relational roles identify others based on experiences with them, context or assumptions, and carry histories between individuals. A character can have many roles active at the same time, and remember them even when they are no longer active.

It's hard to talk about without being vague, but the takeaway is that roles can do a lot of things. It all depends on what roles we design, as part of general AI behaviour, specific events, player interaction and all sorts. Most roles can be circumstantially adopted by any character, and as we expand our library of roles all NPCs will gain more behaviours and awareness. Building this library of roles is one of the key challenges, but it's something we can do incrementally once we've defined a good foundation.

In the past month we've made some important strides in defining what our key role types are, how they interact with each other and the mechanics to support more functional and dynamic roles, control emotions and more. We figured out a lot of important stuff, and are already moving into implementation and optimisation details as far as the most important mechanics go. As we get into a lot of the more practical roles, we do also need to pair them with new AI actions or events that drive behaviour, but we do have a good foundation here for how this works. It's a matter of adding to the range of things that AI can do and understand. Beyond that, the role system itself can be considered complete and becomes mainly content driven. That means we can continue to add new roles and nuanced behaviour without changing how things work.

Our first intermediate goal is a smarter and more aware Derrin. We will use him to aggressively test new role system feature and interactions. The somewhat lofty goal would be to make him feel like a real human companion that is more independent, reacts to things and makes decisions on his own. His relationship with the player should be more nuanced and dynamic, with more things affecting it, but also a better understanding of context and when cooperation is useful even if he doesn't really like it. Basically, we want him to feel smart and alive, not an NPC following scripted behaviours and commands without question. That and emergent outcomes is the purpose of the role system.

The next major update will also feature new NPCs, able to have complex interactions not just with the player, but also with other NPCs. The roles for the most part, as stated previously, are not static things designed to fit one character, but things that can be attached to any character, if circumstances are right. All NPCs have a broad range of behaviours and relationships, and events are mutable and can carry things in new directions.

It's a lot, and we've seen that people tend to either consider too abstract and are somewhat indifferent, or let their imagination run and get very hyped. Whatever your expectations might be, and what we actually accomplish, it will absolutely make for a more immersive and dynamic experience with many new interactions and outcomes. That is the kind of game we're making, and the role system in our eyes is perhaps the most important part of it.

Best,

Bare Mettle