Hi everyone! For the past couple of days, I have decided to challenge myself to making a life simulator, like The Sims series, but 2-D. For those who don’t know what a life simulator is, its a game where you control a person(s) and decide what they do in it; date, work, build a house, go to a party, etc. Of course, there are some major problems with trying to do this from scratch:
Having to develop your own A.I.
Figure out how to make the A.I. figure out what things are more important, ex. Do I talk to this person or go buy some food?
How to rewire the A.I. once they get in a certain building
Figure out how to make the movement seem natural, and not on a timer.
Giving the A.I. their own home, that way they can throw parties and such.
Make them have feelings to certain people
Of course, that’s just some of the problems, no matter how prepared you are for a project, there will be more bugs and time conflicts that you couldn’t prepare for. So I’ll post some of the problems I’ve manged to get past, and how I did it; and maybe some early dev. concept art and such.
The street.png will have some more buildings soon, once I figure out what I want to put there. There also will be more clothes, I found the tuxedo the easiest to make, though.
@CodeNoob Depends what you want your A.I. To do, if you want your zombies to take cover, or find paths to a player, I can’t do that. What my A.I. does is it figures out what each npcs’ stats are, and finds them a place to raise the stats, and it will invite your player to a party, out for food, etc. depending on how much the npc likes your player.
You can solve one of those problems. If you want to make the movement seem natural, I’m pretty sure you can use perlin noise for it somehow. That’s what it’s designed for, making things look natural.
For now I’ve been working on brain-storming for what I want the game to do. I think the most important part is the socializing. So I’m also working on a way to make it work in a fun, non-repeating way.
@CodeaNoob I was thinking the jobs you get will be mini-games, for example, if you work at the coffee shop, you have to fill out orders of how much surgar, foam, etc. After you’ve done that job for a certain amount of time, you get money based on how well you did.
I have finished the brainstorm, and now I’m working on the A.I. I’m going to go for a easy, semi-realistic A.I, where the non-playable characters have needs that they need to fulfill: hunger, fun, and sleep. They will go to a random shop that will take care of their needs, and go on to the next. Unless you talk to them. Then, their cool-down counter will reset that way they will listen to what you have to say. I also have been working on the room selector, where you and the npcs can go into certain buildings.
Also, if you have any ideas for places they can visit, let me know!
I added some of the A.I. But to finish the rest I have to finish the GUI. When you are around a npc, you can interact with them: Talk, Flirt, Buy Coffee, Ask about day, Tell joke, etc. When the GUI gets full, it will cycle through the choices.
@Prynok For where the NPCs and players can visit depends what country it will be based in. If it was in England then I’d say they can go to the Job Center, Bank, High street with shops in it (clothes, jewellery, shoes, food, sweets, off licenses, pubs, cinemas, public toilets) and then maybe a gym or exercise area and of course in sunny old england, the pale beach. Obviously if it’s set in Arabia it’s a bit different!
