Dynamic Conversation in the Security Park news - Epsylon

The Dynamic Conversation system is an important part of the game mechanics so lots of time has been spend on it. One new feature is the Dynamic Directing system. This system allows conversations to be created with dynamic camera shots. In contrary to pure code based solutions this system here uses the Drag[en]gine Conversation System with a little help of in-game scripts (for collision testing). This gives the conversation artists full control over the dynamic camera shots. He defines the potential camera shots and uses the conversation system to decide what shots to use. This way all kinds of decision logic can be used. Doing the same conversation twice would not result in the same shots chosen. If required manual camera shots can still be used to get the best of both worlds.

Another change is the Topic Handling. The Dynamic Investigation System produced a complex Topic Selection which did not fit any more into the desired look and feel. The goal on the Dynamic Investigation is to force players to figure out what they need to know from NPCs to better simulate Detective Work. The many possible choices turned into a forest of UI buttons and lists and that's hardly player friendly. The solution has been a Keyword System. All entities in the game world the player can talk about have now simple keywords assigned. To talk about something the player enters it's name. For example if the player wants to talk about a person named "Harry" he enter "harry". And if he wants to ask instead where he can find this Harry he can enter "Where is Harry" or something similar. This game is not a connect-dots-on-cork-board detective game. It's about investigating. If you see, read or hear something try using it as keyword and who knows where this might lead you.

The video below shows the reworked system in action.

Besides the conversation system a lot of work went into the Security Park map. This place is where the ISG organization is found the player is affiliated with while be plays the game. Important characters are located here. The map composes of manually and generated elements. Most of the buildings are generated. To handle all this various stuff has been worked on:

• Improved generating content to be faster and with better support for nested generation (plot -> building -> floor -> room)
• The Online/Offline AI Simulation has been improved to handle generated locations, operating on an agenda, travel between areas and adding more location specific AI
• Generating location names for example road signs, direction signs or place names

The video below shows some impressions of the Security Park map at day and night and some new AI agenda routines to make the world more alive.