Dynamic conversation system

[Taconic 0]

I've gone through the release threads on this and a couple of other forums, but I haven't seen much mentioned about the new conversation system. Can some of the German members perhaps give us some info?

Namely, I have the following questions:

1: Just how "dynamic" is it? Is the AI limited only to preset options in regards to answers? What are some examples of questions that can be asked?

2: Is the AI actually able to independently (without any sort of scripting) infer things about the environment and express them? I suppose that you could do this even in OFP with something like knowsabout (or even checking if something is in a list to be even less precise,) but I'm hoping for something a little more advanced.

3: How is the conversation system implemented? Game logic? Scripts? If through scripts, are there any immediately apparent interesting features?

I've been wondering about this since it was first mentioned at E3 a few years back. If anyone could give even small details, I'd appreciate it.

Also, on a somewhat related note, one more question:

4: Just how open-ended is the campaign? What I mean is... If I wanted to, would I be able to "go rogue" and join the ChDKZ or NAPA? Could I decide that the Russians are right and help them out? Info on this front has been very vague and I'm wondering if it's truly open or if it's just a campaign with a few different possible branches.

Thanks for any info. Hell, even general impressions would be great. The campaign and conversation system are two things that people have been oddly quiet about.

[mr_centipede 31]

I would like to know this as well. is it only in the campaign only or through out the whole game? ie it can be put in editor...

[maddogx 13]

I only tried the start of the campaign, so I can't really say much about the conco system. It's also there outside of the campaign though. Mostly you can say "hi" to people. The response seems to be very random. Try it on a fellow soldier in a firefight and he'll say something like "Sorry, no time!".

If you greet a Chernarussian civilian, they will answer in Chernarussian. No idea what they're saying, but it's different every time. From the patch changelog I gather that the civs can also give you unscripted info about enemies, but I haven't seen it in action yet.

Overall the convo system seems to be a mixture of dynamic and scripted content.

[nominesine 0]

Forgive my ignorance, but I've been wondering about this for quite some time and it still remains unclear in all threads:

Is the Dynamic Conversation System textbased or sound based? Do the AI units actually speak with proper sound and lip sync?

[Placebo 28]

Do the AI units actually speak with proper sound and lip sync?

Yes..

[Alex72 1]

Anyone managed to have AI give up yet? :) To overpower them? It was stated that if you drive up to an AI with an Abrams and the AI has an AK only (moral/size of squad/equipment matters for giving up or not) - he would give up. So far ive seen them just lie on the floor, but it might be the german version maybe. Wondered if they throw their weapons on the ground.

Anyway i wondered as well if AI that had given up also answered to questions? Squad size and such would be cool if you could interrogate them about hehe. Maybe a tad advanced huh... :)

Alex

[sabre4809 0]

72;1292748']Anyone managed to have AI give up yet? :) To overpower them? It was stated that if you drive up to an AI with an Abrams and the AI has an AK only (moral/size of squad/equipment matters for giving up or not) - he would give up. So far ive seen them just lie on the floor' date=' but it might be the german version maybe. Wondered if they throw their weapons on the ground.

Anyway i wondered as well if AI that had given up also answered to questions? Squad size and such would be cool if you could interrogate them about hehe. Maybe a tad advanced huh... :)

Alex[/quote']

Hopefully its game logic based.

[trini scourge 1]

The Dynamic Conversation system works pretty well; you can ask questions about things that are important to the campaign, or ask about the weather. I've not got that far into the campaign because of a bug, so I can't tell you if it's more in depth than that. I can tell you that the conversation system also applies to the AI, they dynamically spawn from houses (with game logic in the editor) and talk to each other, all dynamically.

Also surrendering is done with game logic like Sabre Tooth said, and from what I can tell, suppression and its effects happen automatically.

[freeman23 0]

72;1292748']

Anyway i wondered as well if AI that had given up also answered to questions? Squad size and such would be cool if you could interrogate them about hehe. Maybe a tad advanced huh... :) Alex

Not advanced at all. The ECP Mod managed to do just that back in the old OFP days. It's a real pity you can't interrogate prisoners, in fact, after they have surrendered, you cannot even take them into custody or something like that. Surrendering is pointless the way it's implemented at this time.

[Alex72 1]

Not pointless at all. Very frustrating many times when you take a city and 1 enemy is out there. With surrendering since they "know" they have no chance to maintain foothold - mission ends to your favour. Also having enemies surrender behind some cover they been shooting from when you come front plus flanking is pretty damn neat. Without the surrendering in that situation they would just keep shooting even though they are completelly over powered and out smarted.

Alex

[sabre4809 0]

The nice thing is, that as you guys have told us its dynamic, but also is probably easily scriptable. Allowing for mission makers to expand on the base already provided.

About the surrender game logic. Do you place it in the mission and thats it! or do you have to link it to units that you want to be able to surrender, pretty sure/hoping its the former but just making sure, otherwise it could become irritating linking it to all units in-game.

Edit:

72;1292875']Not pointless at all. Very frustrating many times when you take a city and 1 enemy is out there. With surrendering since they "know" they have no chance to maintain foothold - mission ends to your favour. Also having enemies surrender behind some cover they been shooting from when you come front plus flanking is pretty damn neat. Without the surrendering in that situation they would just keep shooting even though they are completelly over powered and out smarted.

Alex

Good point but I wonder what the 'range', so to speak, is of the surrendering.

[trini scourge 1]

I think the surrender logic must be linked to a group to work.

[Alex72 1]

Or grouped to a trigger and set it to everything in its activation area? Not too good with these things, but might work?

[Taconic 0]

The Dynamic Conversation system works pretty well; you can ask questions about things that are important to the campaign, or ask about the weather. I've not got that far into the campaign because of a bug, so I can't tell you if it's more in depth than that. I can tell you that the conversation system also applies to the AI, they dynamically spawn from houses (with game logic in the editor) and talk to each other, all dynamically.

How does it work with on an individual AI basis? If, for example, a civilian actually sees guerrillas heading into the woods, will they be able to tell you that? Or is it more on a group basis? By that I mean if one civilian in a village sees something, do they all know about it?

How exactly does the game logic that populates the world work?

Does it run once at the start of the campaign or does it run for every mission?

Is it random, or does it pull the population from some sort of DB so that it has persistence? (IE, if you kill Dimitri and Petra they will not show up again in the campaign) Is it scriptable in any way?

Also, how persistent is the campaign? If you destroy a building in the beginning, does it stay destroyed for the duration? Initially I thought this would be the case, but then I started seeing screenshots of debriefing screens. That makes me think that the campaign isn't fully persistent and is instead broken up into individual missions like Arma/OFP.

Sorry for all of the questions, but I'm very curious and it's going to be at least a month before I can find out for myself. :p

[STS_SolidSnake 0]

Hopefully its game logic based.

I haven't seen this happen once, but there is a game logic named "Surrender", haven't tried it out yet.

[simulacra 0]

72;1292748']Anyone managed to have AI give up yet? :) To overpower them? It was stated that if you drive up to an AI with an Abrams and the AI has an AK only (moral/size of squad/equipment matters for giving up or not) - he would give up. So far ive seen them just lie on the floor' date=' but it might be the german version maybe. Wondered if they throw their weapons on the ground.

Anyway i wondered as well if AI that had given up also answered to questions? Squad size and such would be cool if you could interrogate them about hehe. Maybe a tad advanced huh... :)

Alex[/quote']

Why woulde he give up? If he unloads all his and his comrades magazines into the tank it'll blow up ;)

[Col.Flanders 0]

Not directly related to the dynamic converations system but something I've noticed from the new game footage is the voice system in general, sadly, seems to be very much like Arma1. I'd like to think that this could change but I just don't see it happening. Still very unnatural, stitched-together voices and what baffles me is that OFP's system seemed to be far better than A1's system and now Arma2 seems to have followed suit. For years after OFP's release, my mates and I would jokingly throw out OFP one-liners at appropriate times (and not mockingly, either!). It was just that believable. Not perfect, but believable.

My heart sank a bit when I watched the SP mission vid on youtube. There was this beautiful forest with such ambience and even the ambient sound seemed just right. It was somewhat killed by the "Front, 200 metrMAN!" nonsense.

I understand it is a complex problem. I wish even the tempo could be improved. It's like how I typed it - words are said as though there's no space between them, amongst other things. I just can't figure out why it seems inferior to what we had 8-9 years ago. Anyway, I'll be optimistic and hope for the best. Looking forward to getting my copy!

[Taconic 0]

Not directly related to the dynamic converations system but something I've noticed from the new game footage is the voice system in general, sadly, seems to be very much like Arma1. I'd like to think that this could change but I just don't see it happening. Still very unnatural, stitched-together voices and what baffles me is that OFP's system seemed to be far better than A1's system and now Arma2 seems to have followed suit. For years after OFP's release, my mates and I would jokingly throw out OFP one-liners at appropriate times (and not mockingly, either!). It was just that believable. Not perfect, but believable.

I actually have to agree with that. OFP's radio chatter was (and still is) the best I've heard. Arma's is definitely of higher quality, but OFP's was more believable. I'm not quite sure why. I think you may be right about the tempo. OFP chatter was more along the lines of "12 o'clock--enemy--man--200" whereas Arma is more like "12 o'clockenemyman200." :p

If you want to see something really interesting, find some of the in-development OFP videos from the late 90s. The AI addressed people by name ("report status, Pvt Kozlowski") and the audio clips were clearly individually recorded. It's clear that BIS must have dropped that system for logistical reasons (recording that many individual clips with at least 12 voices would have been insane) and because the current system is more versatile.

Still, it's a legitimate complaint. Though Arma 2 does seem to be an improvement over Arma in this regard.

[lapa 1]

Not directly related to the dynamic converations system but something I've noticed from the new game footage is the voice system in general, sadly, seems to be very much like Arma1. I'd like to think that this could change but I just don't see it happening. Still very unnatural, stitched-together voices and what baffles me is that OFP's system seemed to be far better than A1's system and now Arma2 seems to have followed suit. For years after OFP's release, my mates and I would jokingly throw out OFP one-liners at appropriate times (and not mockingly, either!). It was just that believable. Not perfect, but believable.

I wholeheartedly agree. OFP's radio voices were monotonic and somewhat emotionless, but they were consistent and certainly got the job done.

Arma1's radio voice reports have changing speed, volume and pitch, which is really annoying and actually makes it more difficult to understand the message. The speech pattern seems completely random. It's unfortunate if Arma2 suffers from the same thing.

I prefer monotonic/robotic to, what I would describe as, schizophrenic.

[mr_centipede 31]

ARMA1 radio chatter followed OFP Elite way.. i think I saw a vid of ofp elite gameplay some other months ago...

I wholeheartedly agree... OFP 1 radio chatter was the best, because thats what the military use to talk in radio... they are procedures for consistency and clarity and simplicity.

[Taconic 0]

Didn't Maruk say at some point that the voices in the German release aren't final?

[Raphier 0]

Didn't Maruk say at some point that the voices in the German release aren't final?

coming soon: didn't Maruk say at some point that the voices will be patched in final game :-/

If you get what I did there...

[CarlGustaffa 4]

72;1292875']Not pointless at all. Very frustrating many times when you take a city and 1 enemy is out there.

I would call this a mission flaw. Mission maker could have used a seized by trigger instead, maybe combined with some allowFleeing and removeWeapon stuff, when the enemy was overwhelmed.

Back on topic: I saw a video where a soldier asked a civilian about the weather. The civ answered something like "and it's forecasted to stay like this for a while".

For mission designers, would it then be best to change the forecast values than try to modify the weather directly? Scripting question: How can we influence the 'forecast time' during a persistent mission?

[Georg.B 0]

So, I can't seem to get civilians to actually talk to me. I can get friendly troops to tell me things (you know, weather, targets, locations), but never any civilians - not in the campaign or when I make a mission in the editor.

I thought the whole point was to get the locals to talk to you?

[berowe 0]

Surrender option needs a gamelogic and seems to work pretty well. Bodies flying everywhere in a 30marine vs 30 ebil terrorist fight and at least one of the baddies gave up. However, one the squadleaders called all clear a marine put a few rounds through him Falluja style...