AiGameDev Conference 2010: EVE Online Characters
UPDATE: post is now under the right author name.
During the AiGameDev Conference 2010 at Paris Claudio Pedica, a researcher at CADIA Labs, Reykjavik University, currently collaborating with CCP Games presented us their new social interaction system in a talk titled Human Territoriality for EVE Online’s Socially Smart Characters.
This was a short preview on how the space stations are going to be populated in the next EVE online expansion.
The main focus of the research conducted by CCP is based on the lack of feedback in games when it comes to interactions. For example if you pass besides a game character, he doesn’t notice you or in worse cases, if you bump into him, the most common reaction is that he won’t even step aside and your character stops dumbly like when facing a wall! Fortunately, not all games react like this. In GTA when you hit someone or pass close to him he steps aside or even says something to you.
What the guys at CCP are trying to do is to recreate an interaction system based on how humans practically cope with interactions and how they react to other people’s physical presence.
In the demos shown we could see the character move close to a group of NPCs; when close enough, the group understands that this character wants to be part of their group so they take a step aside to form a bigger but still homogeneous group.
The “circle” itself is, in this system, the interaction unit; each character and group possesses one and each unit is designed for a particular type of interaction.
1) First there is the personal circle which defines the limit of the body area.
2) The external circle is used for the close social interactions like dialogs or people walking near (also true for groups).
3) An inner circle is also defined by the participants of the group: a circle defines its body and the external circle of it. In another example we saw one participant moving a few steps from his former position and the rest of the group following him to recreate the circle.
I actually don’t play EVE Online at all and I don’t really know what they are planning to do with the new space stations system but having this feature is über-cool and I think it would really improve the experience of the players (at least contributing to a more immersive experience).
Having people walking from one spot to another or joining conversations or even reacting to the players’ presence will surely make us feel more in a real living world. When you think that some games only feature static NPCs, this talk gets even more impressing!
Human Territoriality for EVE Online’s Socially Smart Characters by Claudio Pedica can be downloaded from the AiGameDev website.
