[UA] CRPG

[holycrow at mindspring.com]

>Unfortunately, that's what we call the "Turing Test."  The ability to >hold a conversation in a believable manner is, in fact, what computer
>scientists consider the only real test for creating a >human-equivalent intelligence.

And even that's a false test, if you follow the Chinese Box analysis.

Actually, what I was thinking about was something like this.  Onscreen, there's a sort of control panel -- I picture it as a circle with red at the top, shading to blue at the bottom.  You use this to pick the emotional inflection of what you're saying.  For instance, if you're at the very top, you're very passionate -- angry or desperate or whatever.  At the bottom, you're very dispassionate -- maybe coldly logical or just blase.  I'd want there to be some meaning on the right -left axis as well -- maybe the right indicates that you're friendly while the left is unfriendly.  (That being the case, a square might work better as a controller.  Upper right hand expresses a passionate urge to help the person you're talking to.  Upper left hand expresses anger, rage and hatred.  Lower right is casual conversation.  Lower left is chilly disinterest.  That sort of thing.)  

You'd use the mouse to control the emotional element of the conversation.  With the keyboard, you'd pick topics out of a list.  Whenever you learn something relevant in a conversation, you get a brief summary of the information ("Alex Abel hired the Freak to get a Hand of Glory away from Selena." "Dirk Allen has been having bowel troubles.")  Before you enter a conversation with someone, you can hotkey topics.  If I'm going to go talk to Jeeter, I can hotkey Dirk Allen and Alex Abel and medical problems.  While talking to him, it's quicker for me to bring up those topics, but with a little extra time, I can scroll through all the topics I've already 'acquired.'

Computer types?  How feasible is this?  It would still be tree based, but it would seem (on the surface) much more genuine because the emotional content of a statement or question strongly influences the response.  It doesn't require anything like a Turing interface because the player has no way to put in unexpected stuff.

Ideally, this would all be synchronized with hundreds (hell, probably thousands) of sound files, so you actually hear Jeeter going "Heh, yeah, ol' Dirk can't seem to keep a cool stool."  Then when you say something, you might time it at a natural conversation pause, or you can interrupt -- timing (as in real life conversation) would be important.

-G.

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