Originally posted by MattH
It's difficult to keep limited for a 'proof of concept'.
It's difficult to keep limited for a 'proof of concept'.
Originally posted by MattH
Along the same lines, it's hard to even make one crime "fork" (i.e. burgulary without assault/murder) because of the number of possible twists that have to be recconed with individually.
Along the same lines, it's hard to even make one crime "fork" (i.e. burgulary without assault/murder) because of the number of possible twists that have to be recconed with individually.
First of all, I think that for this to be successful, one needs a strong information-sharing system. Basically, my idea was that every NPC would have a memoery of their own, represented by a semantic tree. At the root of it would be the most generic, almost useless information, and as you go deeper, more and more details are contained, so in the end the leaves have the most specific info - the one you are after. Basically, the "memory" of a witness of the crime right after the occurrence would look something like this:
Code:
Saw Burglary / | \ [Participants] [Location] [Environment] / \ | \ Saw Victim Saw Burglar ... ... | | Victim Burglar was was _____________ female male \ +-Was unshaven | | \ She had Had a scar Had dark hair long hair | Scar was on left cheek
Alright, so my thinking was that I would start with this knowledge representation system. Then, once that works, the first thing I would do is try to simulate the crime. I'd start simple: just one type of crime, say theft. I'd then generate, say 10 NPCs. Each would have, say 3 characteristics. Let's say I chose: gender, race, and length of har - them being the most conspicuous characteristics of a person. So, then, I'd randomly give these attributes to the NPCs. Next, I'd pick two NPCs - the victim and the burglar, and five witnesses. To two of those witnesses I would give full and correct memory of the crime; to two of them, I'd give the memory of two of the characteristics of the burglar correctly and one made up; and the last witness would only remember one characteristic of the burglar correctly, and the other two - incorrectly. Finally, I'd put the player in and say: find the burglar in 10 turns. (The victim is assumed to have been hit over the head with something heavy and thus does not remember anything.)
Okay, example time. Say I have the following possible characteristics:
Gender: {male, female}
Race: {Black, White, Asian}
Hair Length: {Bald, Short, Long}
Then, I could generate the following ten characters:
1. male, black, long
2. female, white, bald
3. male, asian, short
4. female, black, long
5. male, white, short
6. female, asian, long
7. male, black, short
8. female, white, long
9. male, asian, bald
10. female, white, short
Now, pick two of them. Say, I pick the first two: the black man with long hair has stolen something from the white female with a shaven head.
Now, say I pick the next five people to be the witnesses. Then, two of them remember all three characteristics of the burglar correctly. Next two: one of them may only remember that the burglar was a male with long hair, but happens to think he was white; the other person may remember the person was black and had dark hair, but happens to think it was a female. The final witness knows the person had long hair, but thinks it was an asian female! ( ) The remaining three people just heard the screams, and can't really say anything useful about the burgar.
Okay, now the player's taks is to pin-point the burglar within 10 turns. This is tricky because:
a. Interrogating four of the available NPCs doesn't yield any information (victim was unconscious for the most part, and the three witnesses only heard stuff), but still counts against your turns.
b. The real burglar will lie.
c. Some witnesses don't have full information but want to seem important, so they still give you all three characteristics of the burglar to the best of their knowledge, without conceding the fact memory may not be serving them right.
d. The witnesses that do know everything correctly, may forget stuff by the time you get to them.
This system would be fairly easy to code, but if you make it extensible, it would then be also easy to build upon and add further details to the crime you generate - additional details of appearance of the burglar, more varying types of crimes, etc.
Originally posted by MattH
Hopefully I'll have something basic to show soon (tomorrow? Friday?).
Hopefully I'll have something basic to show soon (tomorrow? Friday?).
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