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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamisBuck" data-source="post: 341977" data-attributes="member: 12">Thanks for all your ideas!  This has already been extremely helpful for me.  I'd like to respond to each posters comments:Peter: Thank-you for your comments on N-Body problems.  I've not had a chance to do any deep research on it, and the information you provided does seem to indicate that the multi-body approach may not be appropriate for what I have in mind.  Also, you are absolutely correct in that what I am trying to do is non-trivial--I fully expect it will be a large scale project requiring lots of brilliant minds to come up with the design.Knightcrawler: I should clarify that when I said "generic", I was actually referring to a process that could be applied to problems outside of the realm of RPG's.  I apologize in advance to everyone who misunderstood my meaning there.  Yah, that increases the difficulty of the problem considerably, but I know it can be done.  Keep in mind that initially, we're just talking theory.  The implementation that we eventually decide upon will of course be more specific (possibily even system specific, as suggested by other posters).Davin:  If we can "harvest" data from other sources, I'm not against doing so.  However, I have a feeling that any satisfactory solution we come up with is going to require more information than existing systems provide.  We may be able to harvest some of their data, but we'll have to massage it.  That's just me trying to predict the future, though.  You're absolutely right about the need to be more specific, but I think (as I mentioned above) that we can at least theorize in general about the class of the problem, and then restrict our implementation to a specific realm.Thanks also, Davin, for the wonderful list of possible approaches to the problem.  That is EXACTLY what I was hoping to see.  I hadn't considered this as an expert system, but it really is (in many respects).  Still, you're right about that probably not being the best approach.  An AI approach is good, though--I suspect that we'll probably combine lots of different technologies to create what we come up with.  The "simulated annealing" suggestion really got me thinking--I'll have to do some more reading about that.Archimedes: you're right about the dangers of over-analysis.  However, given that we have an extremely flexible schedule and no real resource constraints, we can pretty much do whatever we want with the scope...within reason.  It may be that our discussions here will prompt others to begin implementing systems based on partial analyses, and I'm sure those have a high chance of success, but keep in mind that my ultimate goal here, is really just to design.  Naturally, we'll want to actually produce software eventually, but right now I want to find one of the best solutions possible for this problem.  Your suggestion about a description language for RPG's is exactly what I've been working on for some time (with both Basilisk and Medusa), but I've actually tabled work on that for now since I want to focus more on analysis of the problem.Also, Archimedes, you're exhortation towards patience until we settle on common definitions is an excellent one.  Discussions will probably fluctuate around the true issue for a while until we settle into how the dynamics of this group will really work.jmettraux: that's an intriguing idea.  It leans more towards implementation, but I'd like to read more about it.  Is there anything online, or any books you would recommend?Thanks, all, for your ideas!  One last thing: I thought I'd post some of my analysis of the relationships between many of the attributes of an NPC.  I worked heavily on this document for a few months, but it has guided my thinking ever since (at least until I realized that I needed to be thinking on a more theoretical level).  The document is not particularly well written, but it should give you something to work from in discussing interrelations between attributes.  (Please note that the document is too focused, really, for our current discussion, but it is an example of the kinds of interrelationships we'll be dealing with).  The document may be read here: <a href="http://www.jamisbuck.org/CADD.html" target="_blank">http://www.jamisbuck.org/CADD.html</a>  .Thanks for your comments!- Jamis</blockquote>

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