Game Engine Journal For "beseda"

The main design principle is that complexity should arise out of the interactions between the systems, not from the complexity of any one particular system.

The intended outcome is for the characters to be reactive in an emergent, non deterministic way.

FEATURES

Life simulation

Version 0.8 A system for singular life events inspired by the presentation "Emergent Storytelling Techniques in The Sims" by Matt Brown, 2018.

Refactored the public code repository "ensemble.js" by Ben Samuel, Aaron A. Reed, Paul Maddaloni, Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and others. Additional inspiration for refactoring the system from the dissertation "The Grail Framework: Making Stories Playable on Three Levels in CRPGs" by Anne Margaret Sullivan.

Version 0.3 A system for predetermined character arcs inspired by the presentation "Crafting Compelling Character Arcs for Procedurally Generated Characters" by Max Kreminski, 2017. Refactored substantially the public code repository "StoryAssembler" by Jacob Garbe. 

Social simulation

Version 0.4 There are now two distinct meeting modes:

• based on progression or 
• based on the relationship. 

This makes different subsystems accessible with the benefit that the player is not cognitively overloaded.

Added the effects of preference on the accessibility of actions. Inspired by the book chapter "The Micro-Politics of Social Actions" by Paul Drew.

Version 0.1 Introduced basic, advanced and special actions inspired by tactical role playing games. Adapative listening inspired by the short book "Adaptive Listening: How to Cultivate Trust and Traction at Work" by Maegan Stephens and Nicole Lowenbraun. The negotiation menu is inspired by the academic article "Level II Negotiations: Helping the Other Side Meet its 'Behind the Table' Challenges" by James K. Sebenius.

Emotional simulation

Version 0.3 The affective state changes what actions are available for the player to chose from. This nudges the player into using the affect regulation menu to unlock different actions.

Version 0.2 The system is inspired by Aleksandar's life experiences. It is based on a unique taxonomy of emotions ordered as a tree structure - root emotions which branch into derivative feelings. Later on during development I found the famous model by Ortony, Clore, and Collins (OCC) but was not inspired by it as my model already encompassed it.

Reasoning simulation

Version 0.3 The system is inspired by the famous international network standard Resource Description Framework (RDF). Integrated multiple open source libraries for storage, querying and reasoning over knowledge represented as triples. It was only later that I found the article "Beyond Façade: Pattern Matching for Natural Language Applications" by Bruce Wilcox who successfully used this approach in video games as well as ChatScript.

Reputation, rumours and news

Version 0.7 The system is inspired by the paper "Otello: A Next-Generation Reputation System For Humans and NPCs" by Michael Sellers, 2008. News spread similar to how they do in real life - based on the closest connections first.

Economic simulation

Version 0.6 Commodity trading inspired by the academic paper "Emergent Economies for Role Playing Games" by Jonathon Doran and Ian Parberry, 2012. 

Refactored substantially the public code repository "economia.js" by Dimitris Messinis which implements the instructions from that paper. Added the option for two characters to trade only between each other.

Immersion

Version 0.8 Spatial sound fading in and out based on the player character's distance. Stereo panning (left-right) based on the position relative to the sound source.

Version 0.5 Integrated the pixi-viewport plugin by David Figatner. The integration with the point and click movement was the tricky part. Levels can be much larger. 

TODO The artificial intelligence is aware of private, restricted and public areas. Such design is inspired by the presentation "Hitman Levels as Social Spaces: The Social Anthropology of Level Design" by Mette Podenphant Andersen, 2019.

Version 0.1 Point and click movement based on grid cells. Day and night time cycle - characters behave according to it.

PROJECTS

Here is a list of released games which are running on the engine - the most recent is on top.

Phronesis Petroleum

Reintroduces the planning system.

The Last Mine

The first game to feature a dedicated practice area to learn how the dialog system works. Features behaviour trees for NPCs. Reintroduces semantic reasoning.

Codename Bat

Introduces the emotional regulation menu. Introduces the ontological menu.

Sadat's Journey to Jerusalem

Purely a turn based tactical game sort of like a visual novel.