Thanks a lot for feedback! You’re right, this kind of core system really should be worked on really hard. Unfortunately I’ve only got to it on the last day of the jam and I’ve had only one playtester so I couldn’t know a large chunk of messages that people might try to ask.
I assumed that people would type detailed requests and questions so I mainly tried to work on them but as you can see a lot of the time AI still acts really silly.
Unfortunately I’ve only got to it on the last day of the jam
I think you likely spent way too much time on the environment (the office), which in this case is high-effort, but low-yield task (I only looked around the office and even noticed all the details after solving the case). That seems a common problem. I personally probably shouldn't have bothered with procedural generation this time.
I assumed that people would type detailed requests and questions
When playing I assumed you just checked for keywords, something like:
if (toldAboutMurder && message.Contains("where")) { ... }that would make bots more "accepting/understanding/forgiving".
But in the case of my second screenshot, simply asking "where?" seems like a legit response I would write to a human.
I think you likely spent way too much time on the environment
That is true, I’ve actually always had this problem. I understand that the primary goal and the first thing that needs to be done should be the main mechanic, but for some reason I need the game to look cool (at least in my eyes) to have motivation and urge to continue working on it.
When playing I assumed you just checked for keywords, something like:
I kind of did this but in a weird way. The code you provided doesn’t assume that the player could’ve asked any kind of question starting with the word “where”. But at the same time vast majority probably really would’ve meant to know where the body was so I guess I really should’ve done this.
The kind of answer you got (“You don’t need to know”) is the type of response one is intended to get when he tries to ask some random question that has nothing to do with the actual walkthrough.
It is generally really hard to get “chat bots” to behave correctly but I really liked the concept of this idea so I just went for it. Once again, thanks a lot for a very detailed feedback!
You're welcome:)
The code you provided doesn’t assume that the player could’ve asked any kind of question starting with the word “where”
Yes, but you could have several keyword checks:
if (toldAboutMurder && message.Contains("where")
&& (message.Contains("murder") || message.Contains("kill")) { ... }Have you played "Her Story"?
It's purely keyword based and there are absolutely no restrictions to what you can request at any moment. It will provide you with the first five search results, which means common requests like "where", "murder" will most likely lead to earlier story responses and to get to the later ones you naturally need to ask for something more specific. But still, the game doesn't restrict you from accessing the "later" story, you could just randomly stumble on it at the beginning, but you won't understand it yet, so you still need to "explore" a lot to be able to puzzle together what happened.
Yes, I absolutely loved it!
Yes, but you could have several keyword checks:
Of course I have several keywords. The problem was that you’ve texted only one word “where”. Key words to get response in that situation are: “where”, “did”, “you”, “find”, “the”, “body”, “corpse”, “location”, “city”.
I haven’t played “Her Story”, but I’ve heard a lot of positive things about it. Guess I’ll try it soon.