Conviction Chronicles blog post #8 - Character AIs implemented

 It's been 26 days, almost a full month, but I added one of the major hurdles for the game and that is the character AI.

Before all the characters could do was move from location to location. That's fucking it. 

Now they can change actions based on certain conditions for the day. If actions are happening before the influence game, the time of day, their personality, status and more. And along with doing actions in each location.

Why this is a big deal

A massive part of this hinged on the AI being good enough to make the game interesting. Since most of the game is trying to figure out what the AI is doing and why it's doing it which leads to the trial phase where the player either defends themselves or tries to find faults with the AI players. Since it's now made, it should be fully possible to do more with the game and that huge weight has been lifted.

Personalities

Before mentioning anything else, the personalities have to be taken in consideration, especially since there is an option for randomized personalities. Basically every character has some quirks to them. Agatha focused on trying to interact with others. Edgar chooses his actions based on his tarot card reading. Lily's actions depend on her personality state. Crow actively will try to save energy to do more at night. 

There is more specific actions stuff, Tina is much more focus on crafting. Cross will always try to plant evidence when he has some, while never using the furnace. Other characters will only use the furnace to burn evidence. Jade will never go into the pool, while Emma will have a mental nudge to go to the parlor more often. Jack will work more at the work bench. Victor visits the hospital more often. Small things like that to make the characters feel more unique. 

Actions

When the player spends energy, the AI will automatically do an action. There are MANY checks in place before anything even loads. But after those checks it sees what time it is, and chooses actions based on it.

Day time 0 is normal day time where it goes from room to room, if the AI ever goes back into it's dorm room, it goes into a room lock which prevents it from doing any more actions until the next time slot. These actions are mostly normal with shopping, crafting, working, stealing medicine and spiking the water fountain, and messing with certain aspects. So this makes it where even in the day time, new dangers can show up. But nothing new can change with the airvents and the doors at this time. The Ais can spend time together and set up alliances during this, and gift each other items which impact how they are viewed. It uses a different viewing system for how much it impacts them compared to the player, since it's simpler to use descriptions for basic stuff with the AIs instead of with the player.

Day time 1 is when they are only in the dorm room they own. This can happen before bed, before the influence game, and certain special cases. The AI will do stuff it can do in it's dorm room, like putting in barricades for their dorm room and airvents, storage box manipulation, going to the bathroom, taking a bath, etc. Mostly defensive actions.

Day time 2 is more aggressive actions with trying to go into other people's dorm rooms, going into other parts of the prison to do normal actions along with messing with airvents and doors. This is where murders take place, the cafe becoming spiked, etc. If the player chooses to spend energy to listen in, they can hear certain actions happening away from them. But they will always hear when an AI enters their dorm room, this aspect really showcases the horror of only knowing what is happening with sounds and punishing the player if they waste their energy and they don't care about their self viewpoint. When the AI is going into different rooms, they have a chance to to something to the airvents and the door, but unlike everything else, they won't destroy what they did afterwards to return. The AI has to remove any blockades they set up, or if the other AIs set it up, it has to be removed. Example: Aishia placed something in her airvent, she has to spend energy to remove it before using the airvent. Stuff like that. The reason the outside dorm rooms is slightly different is because of the AI actively trying to remove what it was doing just beforehand for no reason, so removing some stuff allows it to leave and keep whatever they placed there.

The AI has lots of options and they do actions based on the items on hand and the descriptions, along with other variables tied to them. The danger level aspect I think I need to add more to with balancing, since Jade will always have such an advantage at the start where it needs more balancing where energy matters more.

But the AI can set up and prepare for certain actions over time with lots of variance with consistency.

Anything else?

With a test export, I discovered the game is 1.5 GBs in size at the moment. This is 100% going to increase dramatically before the game is 100% finished due to the trials and executions. The AI actions remove almost no performance, since I made it heavily optimized. 

Before I make a steam page and a public demo, I need to do more work to iron out the details with adding some things. One is the Rat mechanic needs more integration along with making the intro content a little better with ironing everything out with it heavily and adding details when possible.

Then I would have to commission some Steam Art for the cover art, and then get a basic trailer up and running with maybe even a custom song made for it where it might need vocals I have to pay someone for it.

I'm 100% sure I should commission a trailer to really showcase the game, since it is complex in design and needs to be shown right away for a trailer to be good.

Basically a lot more is needed, but even with that, once the Steam Page is done, all that is really left is the trial related content, the flashbacks, and the remaining cutscenes. Also I do want to add cheat codes too. So there is still so much that needs to be made, but it's going smoothly. Might be fully done by the end of the year at this point, I'm really not sure.

I really have no idea how strong this game will be with Steam's Algorithm.  Even if it's lower than expected, I'm still going to finish it. The biggest worry is the executions, since I have no idea how I will do them at this point and they have to look good due to the obvious expectations. Paying someone for it would cost an insane amount of money for what I usually put into games, and I have to spend money on bills and other crap in the meantime. Outside of that I think it will do good once everything is in working order.

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