AI-driven Dynamic Dialog through Fuzzy Pattern Matching

In this classic GDC 2012 session, programmer Elan Ruskin shows a simple, uniform mechanism made for the Left 4 Dead series for tracking thousands of facts and possibilities, allowing intelligent characters to remember history, cascade from special to general cases, and select the optimal dialog, script, behavior, or animation for every situation.

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[npatch]

Despite this being an amazing talk, I'd like to say how much I adore this man as a speaker. He has the greatest talks. He clearly shows he knows what he's talking about, doesn't appear nervous, has comedic elements and generally knows how to structure and present a talk. Btw coming here from Firewatch and Jason Gregory's TLOU talks, kinda going back in time. All of them great talks, highly recommended, as is anything this man presents.

[stealcase]

I've watched this talk more than 10 times by now. Excellent talk.

[Bluequaz]

I actually love this talk. Will be implementing a lot of the concepts in a current project

[vrcenter]

Excellent talk!
Surprised no one spotted him getting stage left and right confused during questioning.

[jeremiahlampkey]

This is pure gold and should be adapted for many more different types of games. I want a JRPG that uses this system.

[Mittzys]

This is a genius method in how unobviously obvious it is! I will be rewatching this at least a few times...

[xanaguythelegend]

This is quite fascinating to see. I'm very glad to have worked with this system.

[_equalo]

This is very interesting. I’m trying to formulate a way to create procedural dialogue based on a procedurally generated NPC personality in a world as believable as possible, and it is very formidable

[dachshund_gaming]

Aww he was getting visibly anxious after the PowerPoint failed. It’s good he was making some attempts to alleviate the awkwardness

[cycomiles]

"You should leave writers to do the writing not programmers"

Meanwhile at Bethseda - "our quest designers are writers" + E. Pagluirlo

[MasthaX]

When I saw this technique I instantly recognized it from L4D2 it's very reliant and robust.

[dreamingacacia]

more ideas pile up for me since I don't have require skills yet, great. thanks for the simplified version here so I could further simplified this idea more.

[Sarrixx]

Big ups to the Firewatch devs for sending me here!

[Lofwyr]

Really nice.
Damn how I miss Valve making games...😔

[leonardoraele]

Great talk! This approach really helps to make the characters alive and aware of the world. Awesome. Also, I like this part 57:45 ^_^

[joewilliams]

Brilliant talk thanks for the information!

[johnx]

2018, and powerpoint is a piece of trash.
So relatable!

[arcannar]

Why wasn't this published sooner, This is amazing

[rpfake]

I have a question, with these query parameter like "who", "health", "hitBy" etc. how is the designer kept up to date which parameter they can use and with parameter like "hitBy" the designer must not only know that "hitBy" can be used but they must also know all the names of the enmies that can be used for the paramter. On one hand you have to implement them in the game/engine, so they can be used by the dialog system, but then you also need them outside the engine, so that the designer knows they exist etc. a naive way would be that the programmers writes down a "list" or "manual" and gives it to the designers, but the list can change over time so im wondering how professionals handle this case to keep the "list" in synch for the programmer and designer.

Even if you implement it in your designer tool and give them a drop down of all names, they still need a way to know who "bob" or "zombie03" is like a screenshot or even more information, at least the first few times until they remember the names.

Im currently a solo dev so it's easy for me, I add a new enemy to the game, I add the enemy ID to my tool. I can open the engine at anytime and look how the enemy model looks ingame, but I assume that people who work in big teams have better workflows and I would like to learn.

[johnrussell]

22:28 - General idea for intelligent dialog system