AI

I'm on the march towards adding employees/spouses to Fucked Up Burger Shack. The road is long, hot, and sticky towards the tip, but it's the path that I chose. Seriously though I've gotten a little closer towards having the kind of AI that I want for NPCs in FUBS. The core of it is my interpretation of how Sims think, but I'm sure I'm missing quite a bit there.

I'm going for a system where NPCs act autonomously based on needs and wants, rules of behavior encouraged by the player, and the reality of what's going on in the moment. Once an NPC decides on an action to take they are put in place to do it. That's when time stops so that the player can act. They could throw a wrench into things by joining or interrupting in some way, or just ignore NPCs entirely since ideally the AI will continue ~doing what's best~ indefinitely. So managing the rules of behavior and interacting directly are going to be the primary things happening all the time.

There are a lot of details in a system like this and I think there are lots of opportunities for things to get good. The interesting bits for me are figuring out all the little questions like: How will NPC personality traits affect the actions they take? What happens when an NPC disobeys the rules the player has set? How will NPCs react to interruptions by the player? As you might imagine each of the NPC actions can turn into random events, as do player interactions like joining or interrupting.

I released version 5.13 on Patreon with the bare bones skeleton of the AI system in place. I'm just play testing like crazy to make sure that this system is as fun as I imagine before I get too invested in it. The plan is to make the next release along with a public release of version 4-12 around Christmas time.