So, ages ago, when I was a regular Less Wrong reader, I was introduced to the concept of Perceptual Control Theory. Now, I have no idea to what extent this is a fitting description of reality, but I feel like it could work as inspiration for a game AI.
Take, for example, an NPC in the shelter at the beginning of the game. Suppose flips coin he continues to be an unsleeping immortal guardian with no bodily needs whose only interaction with anything other than the conversation tree is fighting monsters. What should his strategy be?
Well, the foundation of the character as far as I can understand is, “At least we’ve got shelter.” In other words, he likes the shelter. He wants the shelter to be a safe place to stay. And his actions should be driven by one of two motives: maintaining the safety of the shelter and not dying. So:
[ol][li]The more dangerous or numerous monsters are, the sooner he will consider them a threat to the shelter. One dog three tiles away? Meh. The same dog inside the shelter? Kill it. Ten dogs, all within three tiles of the shelter, but not a pack? Okay, this is beginning to be a problem, so clear them out.[/li]
[li]If he is brave, a very dangerous but slow monster (e.g. a bloated zombie) that gets close he may try to lead away, returning after he has evaded it.[/li]
[li]A very dangerous and fast monster (e.g. a zombie hulk) he may try to hide from, and if he can’t (i.e. if it is getting too close and too hostile) he will flee and (if necessary) he will seek new shelter to stay in.[/li]
[li]If he runs into something very dangerous while out and about that is not close to the shelter, he will try to evade it and get back to safety.[/li]
[li]He may board up doors or build barricades to repair breaches in the doors or walls if he can.[/li]
[li]Whenever he feels like he doesn’t know what is in a given direction from the shelter (either because it has been a while or because he hears - or doesn’t hear - an expected noise), he will take a peek out the windows (ideally) or go out and look (if necessary).[/li]
[li]If he doesn’t have anything else that needs doing, he’ll go back inside and chill.[/li][/ol]
…and, by “doesn’t have anything else that needs doing”, I mean, “doesn’t have anything that causes his Danger-To-Self or Danger-To-Shelter meters to exceed their thresholds”. If any of you are familiar with Democracy 3 (TotalBuscuit did a video if you’re not) something like their threshold-value interacting-factors stuff is what I’m thinking of.
Obviously there are other things that you can add to this - say, foraging for food if hungry, foraging for liquids if thirsty, sharing food and liquid with you because it’s the apocalypse and you’re not interested in eating their face (unless you took “Cannibal”, obvs, but how would they know?), not wanting to go out in the rain - and other entities that could be modeled in related ways - say, that dog that the one NPC wants you to rescue - but I wanted to present the basic idea and see what reactions people have.