NPCs are an important part of making any game feel lived-in and alive, and powering that AI behavior is a big task for Star Citizen considering the things Cloud Imperium wants NPCs to do – even if that’s sometimes at the expense of what players think is necessary. At the head of all of this work is AI director Francesco Roccucci, who sat down to talk about his work and plans for AI in this week’s Star Citizen Live.
Much of the video broke down Roccucci’s job tasks and the way subsumption (CIG’s fancy-pants word for AI thought processes) works, but it also offered up a couple of tidbits about what the devs are doing to make things more performative, mentioning the effectiveness of spawn closets for NPCs and a possible relaxing of server tick rate for distant NPCs to lower server workload. Roccucci also agreed that AI needs more refinement, noting how different teams collaborate to make NPC behavior happen. The full broadcast lies just below the cut, along with another excellent summary from The Noobifier.
In other SC news, CIG is counting down the days to CitizenCon and has showed off the free digital goodies backers can collect, so if your citizen’s life wasn’t complete without a stuffed whale wearing a party hat, the devs have got you covered.
What does a plushie, grenade launcher, and jumpsuit have in common?
We're gifting them to all backers for FREE as part of the CitizenCon 2952 Digital Goodies Pack which includes:
🚀 Francis the Party Animal Plushie
🚀 Frontier Jumpsuit
🚀 Frontier Behring Grenade Launcher pic.twitter.com/i3gl9gi8rT— Star Citizen (@RobertsSpaceInd) September 30, 2022
