Quote from: rawma;1114888You seem to be wandering into no true Scotsman territory;

It comes from being in software development for 30 years. Not just having AI while I was in college but due to keeping up with it because if my work dealing with metal cutting machines and robotics. Not a sense of purism. No true Scotsman is not applicable when the person making the point has experience in the field.

To me the assertions being made in the article is the equivalent like saying Star Wars accurate represents real world spaceflight. Now if I felt it was something like Kerbal Space Program or better that Orbiter Space Simulator then I would say they are on something. But they not doing  that. What being described is more elaborate version of Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. It may be fun to use and play but it is as much use to the tabletop roleplaying hobby as Neverwinter Nights was. What described doesn't help you manage, prepare, or play a tabletop roleplaying campaign.

Case in point, computer rpgs. Not one computer roleplaying game has found widespread use in the hobby as something useful for playing tabletop roleplaying campaign. This includes SSI Gold Box, and Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. There were various software utilities including program listing in Dragon Magazine, and various companies put out software utilities for their RPG like TSR and AD&D (twice one for 1e and another release for 2e)

It wasn't until the development of Fantasy Ground and other Virtual Tabletop software that a type of game software found widespread use in the hobby. And VTTs are structured very differently from a CRPG.

Quote from: estar;1114902It comes from being in software development for 30 years. Not just having AI while I was in college but due to keeping up with it because if my work dealing with metal cutting machines and robotics. Not a sense of purism. No true Scotsman is not applicable when the person making the point has experience in the field.

You're quick to assume I don't have more experience and AI classes, but comparing lengths of CVs is an argument from authority, so let's not.

When you say

Quote from: estar;1114882However there is no intelligence behind it.

you're making a "no true Scotsman" argument. What are your criteria for something to have intelligence behind it, beyond that it has to come from a human being?

Quote from: estar;1114902To me the assertions being made in the article is the equivalent like saying Star Wars accurate represents real world spaceflight.

They may be promising more than they can deliver; it doesn't sound as ambitious to me as you're taking it to be. Their game may turn out to be vaporware, or may scale back from what they've claimed for it; the history of AI is full of over-ambitious projects. It was a long video, and I didn't watch that much of it; but early on the technical director says "the technology might be able to do something like that", where "that" is much less than human level GMing, which hardly seems to be promising the equivalent of Star Wars hyperdrives.

A summary found by web search:

Quote from: Forbes articleTheir four design pillars for the game are as follows: "a huge dynamic world to explore"; "rich lore to be discovered, through NPCs and in-game books"; "nonlinear and branching endless quests, which evolve the world, like a great virtual gamemaster running a pen-and-paper campaign"; and "robust character generation and advancement."

That also reads as something different than you're claiming they've promised.

So many humans fail a Turing test I'm hardly worried about AI.

I believe we will have a Bad AI GM in a few years.

AKA, perfectly fine for running Adventurer's League or Pathfinder Society.

We'll even have AI players to fill out the table. Those will be even easier to program.

Quote from: S'mon;1114867I've noticed that computer game AI 20 years ago often seemed more advanced than what we get now, when all the emphasis has been on graphics. Fighting the computer in the original Total War games (Shogun & Medieval) felt much more threatening than the passive & primitive Rome+ AI. It's the same with Elder Scrolls - the nicer the games look, the more primitive the AI. Hopefully this is a sign of things turning around.

Yep but those games had super simple mechanics compared to the later entries in the series, so the AI learned to play them at a fairly competitive level. From Rome forward they added a more complex managerial layer that the AI never really learned to game the and so we have the retardness that we see with each new installment.

Shogun 2 managed to have a competent AI by going back to the basics (and simplicity) of early games. I think it was the last tough entry in the series.

Quote from: estar;1114902This includes SSI Gold Box, and Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. There were various software utilities including program listing in Dragon Magazine, and various companies put out software utilities for their RPG like TSR and AD&D (twice one for 1e and another release for 2e)

Using various tricks some folk got some fairly sophisticated results from SSI's UA engine. Very narrow focuses if I recall right. But its been tried to varying degrees within the limitations of the system.

And lets be clear. the SSI games were never meant to be GM tools. These were PC games for a single player.

But...

SSI did take the engine and turn it into one of the first, graphical MMOs, complete with live GMs for special events. Note the live GM part.

As for AIs. The one I met on the MUD way back was pretty sophisticated. In a way far moreso than modern ones. It actually took me a while to figure out that it was an AI. The tip off was the speed of its replies. According to the coder the main problem was memory storage. As it learned the mud and increased its knowlege database it took up more and more storage. Eventually prohibitively so. This was the late 90s afterall. I think with todays massive storage that would not be a problem and the designer could likely run many rather than just one. Havent heard from him in a long time so no idea what became of the project.

"Deep Blue just beat Kasparov. Obviously, people are going to stop playing chess against other people." - 1997.

Tabletop roleplaying games are a social creative hobby. Computer games are to board games what masturbation is to sex with another person: it's fun, but there's someone missing.

It's just giving more reactivity to single player games.

Quote from: estar;1114902Case in point, computer rpgs. Not one computer roleplaying game has found widespread use in the hobby as something useful for playing tabletop roleplaying campaign. This includes SSI Gold Box, and Bioware's Neverwinter Nights.
It wasn't until the development of Fantasy Ground and other Virtual Tabletop software that a type of game software found widespread use in the hobby. And VTTs are structured very differently from a CRPG.

Not true. One of my favorite RPGs is GURPS:Alpha Centuari based on the game by Sid Meier. It is so good that I can run the computer game solo for fifty turns or solo, and it will generate an incredible backstory for the tabletop RPG.

What we need is a learning neural net AI, one that seeks out new and innovative behavioral and cultural knowledge, mixes in some history based on a statistical weighted model, and then creates new societies for tabletop RPG play. Software like this would be very interesting! I have to agree with one of the original poster there are a handful of really incredible MUDs from the early days, that contains a complete vocabulary as well as some cultural knowledge. The more people play, the better the MUD gets.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1114981Not true. One of my favorite RPGs is GURPS:Alpha Centuari based on the game by Sid Meier. It is so good that I can run the computer game solo for fifty turns or solo, and it will generate an incredible backstory for the tabletop RPG.

Sid Meier Alpha Centauri is stupendous, but I don't think that's what Estar means. I think he means a platform for a group to play together, online in the same adventure, like old Neverwinter Nights modules tried to do.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1114864Promises, promises...

For one thing, RPGs shouldn't be about telling a story. If NPCs are character-driven, a story will result from that. There are a lot of terrible story-telling DMs out there. Why have a computer emulate them?

Theres nothing wrong with story telling GMs, it's a different approach to gaming...not inferior.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1114982What we need is a learning neural net AI

AFAIK that's their plan.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1114981Not true. One of my favorite RPGs is GURPS:Alpha Centuari based on the game by Sid Meier. It is so good that I can run the computer game solo for fifty turns or solo, and it will generate an incredible backstory for the tabletop RPG.

Likewise with Crusaders Kings 2 I can generate a continent worth of NPCs of varying cultures and extensive family details. Not only for Europe but for fictional settings with mods like Westeros of Game of Throne.

However neither Sid Meier's AC or CK2 have good ways to get the information generate in a form useful for tabletop RPGs. You have to comb through the log and use the game interface and record the different bits of information yourself.

And both games are their own thing developed independently of tabletop roleplaying.

None of the CRPGs built to use TT rules have any kind of useful export or utility built in. All of them are focused on being CRPGs that happened to use the rules of a tabletop RPG.

Quote from: Itachi;1114987Sid Meier Alpha Centauri is stupendous, but I don't think that's what Estar means. I think he means a platform for a group to play together, online in the same adventure, like old Neverwinter Nights modules tried to do.

Even Bioware's NWN wasn't particularly useful for a TT RPG. It was too much work to prepare for one and transfer it to the other. I tried twice and both times it would up being a NWN only thing.

Not to say that the NWN's DM Mode wasn't a cool thing to use. However it turned out that my experience running LARP events was more relevant. That because unlike face to face, NWN combat and task resolution is essentially real time. The AI was good enough that I could spawn mobs not micromanage them. I could focus on roleplaying as the major characters or antagonist.