Chapter 75: NPC Generation

Chen Ba couldn’t trust the system.

The painful lesson from "Star Emperor" made him hesitant to entrust certain core game functions or code to the system for generation and optimization.

There’s no denying...

The system’s underlying core is indeed powerful; for instance, the performance boost in "Star Emperor" is something he couldn’t achieve in ten years.

But precisely because it’s so advanced, if there are any bugs or errors, Chen Ba simply can’t modify them.

Moreover, sometimes he doesn’t even know where the problem lies and has to rely on players to discover them.

"Let’s first make a game..."

Chen Ba felt he shouldn’t develop the bad habit of relying on the system. It’s fine if the system is reliable, but if it fails and he’s dependent on it, isn’t that akin to courting disaster?

There’s a core algorithm for automatic NPC generation, which he saw a top industry figure teaching in a post on the Dream Building Forum.

Based on this algorithm, he wanted to develop a generation program himself to see how it performed.

If it could achieve half the level offered by the system, he wouldn’t consider the system’s approach anymore.

If it fell significantly short, with NPCs often turning out overly mechanical and dull, then he would let the Iron Fool System take over.

He set to work immediately.

It took about half a month, continuously working up until the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the "Living Under Someone’s Roof Simulator" renovation DLC was released, that Chen Ba finally managed to finish the 1.0 version of the NPC generator.

Needless to say, the outcome was poor.

This NPC generation logic can be summed up in the simplest terms as "quantity over quality."

The generated NPCs...

Were similar to those seen in many online games — meandering through the main city’s streets, changing course if blocked by players.

Chen Ba made some optimizations.

Updating from version 1.0 to 1.2, the newly generated NPCs showed some improvement in areas like clothing, appearance, height, and movement paths.

But the "daily behavior" aspect remained a challenging obstacle to overcome.

Chen Ba hoped that in "Divine Grace Continent," each NPC would have their daily routine and fit into the story’s background.

For example, a street fruit vendor would have their own home, push fruits into town to sell in the morning, greet customers with a "fruit introduction" action, and return home as night fell...

He wasn’t expecting NPCs to be highly intelligent.

With current technology, making NPCs converse like real people was impossible, he just wanted these NPCs to have a rational daily life path.

Rather than having an NPC wandering around the city gate morning, afternoon, and midnight!

Don’t laugh, just look in the games, in most of them, either single-player or online, NPCs are mostly such wooden mechanical planks...

Only a few games, which emphasize experience and immersion, assign each NPC their own movement path and daily routine.

For example, "My Time at Portia."

As a simulation management game, in this title, NPCs perfectly adhered to the habits of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.

Furthermore, during their free time, they would have meals at restaurants, stroll by the river, take care of chickens at the farm, and gather during town events for some fun.

This is the effect Chen Ba desired.

But NPCs like those in "My Time at Portia" generally each have their individual preset scheme. Given the limited number of NPCs, it’s achievable with some time.

However, "Divine Grace Continent" is different.

The new game’s NPC count is simply too vast, even on the smallest map, there are dozens or hundreds of active NPCs.

If Chen Ba had to design action schemes and dialogues for each NPC, the workload would be staggering!

Therefore, bulk generation is necessary.

Without batch generation, relying purely on manpower, the development cycle of "Divine Grace Continent" would be longer than a AAA title.

"This algorithm isn’t good enough."

Chen Ba discarded the plan from the industry expert and decided to start from scratch, using the most popular AI technology of the time to generate a large number of NPCs.

The result was slightly improved.

At least, with AI’s help, NPCs no longer had the same face.

But the movement paths were chaotic, with instances of dozens of NPCs crowding together and blocking the way due to overlapping routes...

Version 2.0 failed.

Chen Ba was quite helpless, as the algorithm-driven NPC generation was subpar and couldn’t meet the requirements. If he wanted to properly develop "Divine Grace Continent," he absolutely needed the system to provide NPC generation core code.

[Game Title: Divine Grace Continent]

[Design: 85 (can be improved)]

[Programming: 80 (can be improved)]

[Art: 82 (can be improved)]

The system interface was as simple as always, reminiscent of early 3G home text adventure games, showing nothing beyond basic information.

But Chen Ba was already used to it.

"Divine Grace Continent" was decent in all respects, with no particularly glaring weaknesses. Opening the secondary menu revealed targeted improvement options, including NPC generation and optimization.

[Generating 1%...5%...]

After the progress bar completed, the system-provided NPC generation and action dialogue programs were loaded into the game’s project files.

The programming score rose to 90!

Chen Ba gave it a test run, and the results were satisfactory. The generated NPCs were not just numerous but vivid, each with their own personality and movement path.

For example, a certain thug NPC.

His movement path was straightforward: robbing other NPCs in an alley, then running to a weapon store to spend the loot on better weapons, and robbing more people...

It perfectly suited his character background!

The NPCs not only had diverse personalities and independent lifestyle paths, but even their dialogues were varied.

"Does it have AI traces?"

After researching for a while, Chen Ba concluded that these NPCs’ dialogue scripts were likely created by intelligent AI, randomly generating conversations based on different character identities.

It was pretty intriguing.

For instance, a tailor’s apprentice would tell players about interesting things they saw in the tailor shop and secretly shared how enchanting some noblewomen’s figures were when they came for fittings.

"Worthy of being a system product!"

Chen Ba marveled. Creating a few NPCs of this caliber isn’t much, given time anyone could do it.

But let’s not forget, these were among the NPCs mass-generated by the program! There were hundreds or thousands more like them...

It’s somewhat of a black technology!

Creating thousands of NPCs with unique personalities, scripted dialogues, background identities, and rational life paths all at once isn’t easy.

In any case, Chen Ba felt these NPCs’ realism was already very high.

If "Divine Grace Continent" is filled with such NPCs, the players’ immersion would be enhanced tremendously, and the core gameplay would be maximized.

After all, who doesn’t enjoy smart companions?