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[Scoops Novel]

I've heard that toady plans to improve language eventually, but I'm wondering what the theoretical limit is. The most obvious example (edit:spitballing follows here) that jumps to mind is cleverbot, but i doubt that dwarf fortress could contain quite that much information in quite so many instances. The next was crowdsourcing it by some kind of situation generator with which we supplied appropriate anecdotes and where then vetted, but again i have my doubts. I would like to have, reactive, fluid, interesting conversation one day, perhaps even with body language if that idea of depicting dwarf faces in ASCII ever comes through, and i don't want to be limited to three options in my reply. Those with more technical prowess, i eagerly await your musings.

[Putnam]

You tell him about your troubles.
He replies that you should see the Lord in Cheesedungeons.
(thank/decline)
You thank him for his time.

[Mesa]

One day Dwarf Fortress will reach another bastion of simulation - the dating simulator.
But for now...

[Scoops Novel]

There is only smores.

[NW_Kohaku]

It can theoretically have a more advanced AI than any current AI at trying to get to Turing Test compliance. 

Also, theoretically, Toady might eventually scrap his ASCII game aesthetic entirely, and possibly let other people start crowdsourcing in art and media, and we can start seeing "closeup" shots of those dwarves using overlayed graphics to construct faces out of those facial stats. 

Theoretically, I could become a billionaire when I give rides on my flying pigs. 

Theoretical limits are often far less important than practical limits.

Putnam's likely right about where it's going to stay for a very, very long time. Toady has his strengths, and realistically profiling and simulating reactions to things is not really one of them.  (Keep in mind, dwarves currently still don't recognize what being on fire means, or take any steps to avoid catching fire.)

"Improve" is a relative term, and there's a tremendous amount of ground to improve over. 

Right now, Toady's working on the characters actually having some motivations about things, and actually having some facsimile of an emotional state is the first step towards actually making those random peasants more interactive with the simple, physical world around them in ways that don't involve direct orders from the player or "kill that" routines. 

I see far more reason to hope that we will live to see the day where random NPCs have goals and take intelligent steps towards achieving them, but we have stupid and clunky means of actually "talking" to the NPCs, and can only do things like "be rude" to give a +5 to the NPC's anger modifier that then makes them more biased towards aggressive actions or something than that we have meaningful conversations.

[Caldfir]

Yeah, above posts pretty much cover it. 

The soonest a conversation rewrite might actually happen (though it would likely not be the final one) would be the personality rewrite, since those are probably connected facets.  That's just a guess though. 

Writing conversation simulators is hard, and currently there are only a handful of phrases conversation can use, which all follow a sort of madlib format.  The only phrase structure currently understood by the game in a meaningful way is the name-phrase, which is "Word WordWord, the Word Word" (or something like that) and it doesn't even really understand that properly (exhibit A: every artifact name ever).  With that in mind, maybe the first thing to happen will be better naming of things based on what they are and sphere alignments of things, but again that is probably a way off. 

Toady has also mentioned that natural language processing isn't really something he's particularly interested in (as in, he'd rather program more realistic historical progression than try to make Siri), so there's potential that if some sort of convenient language processing library comes along in the next few years (which is completely possible) then DF might use that. 

The main problem in my mind is that I doubt that it would be worthwhile to take a 5-year detour just so Toady could work out syntax generators that made sense some of the time, because that's the sort of timescale it would take to get something really good together on his own, so my guess as to the far-future is that either an external library will get hooked in to do the job, or conversations will just kinda suck forever (though probably slightly less than right now). 

To summarize:

-things to expect:

• more descriptive names
• more variety in phrase structure

-things to hope for:

• an externally-sourced language library gets created that DF can use
• personality rewrite affects conversation

-things to wish upon a star for:

• Toady to single-handedly write the best language simulator ever, and not take forever doing it

Again though - all this is guesses and opinion, so feel free to think this is all bollocks. 

[NW_Kohaku]

A problem with that is that if someone built a fantastic language-processing software and made it open source, would Toady even use it? 

Toady doesn't really like help for anything, even doing the things he hates to do, can't do well, and need to be done.  (I.E. the interface.)

Even if a bunch of fans got together and made a language system that fit in perfectly for DF, would massively improve the game, and cost Toady basically nothing to use, would Toady even use it?

[smakemupagus]

"I am not a robot, I am a unicorn"

[Absolute Niro]

I doubt Toady would implement a language system he hasn't made himself, since that's pretty much been his stance since the first version of DF was released. That said, I'd love deeper conversations - maybe not on par with something like Cleverbot (as previously mentioned), but at least more than "Yes" and "No".

Even just an option to get more extended information about people in Adventure Mode would be cool.

> Family
> "I had an uncle named Urist Hairybasements. He was fond of earthworms and red spinel."
> What happened to him?
> "In Granite year 413 Urist Hairybasements was struck down by the ettin Genericfoe."
> What can you tell me about Genericfoe?

Et cetera.

[Xantalos]

I just assume that all the NPCs hate your guts and want you to get out of their face ASAP, so they're just pulling names out of a hat.
"Yes, yes, there's a dragon ... uh ... 9000 miles ... thataway. Right over there! So, better get going, son? That dragon won't slay itself!
*adventurer leaves*
Is he gone?
Yep.
Thank Armok.

[Hummingbird]

Even just an option to get more extended information about people in Adventure Mode would be cool.

> Family
> "I had an uncle named Urist Hairybasements. He was fond of earthworms and red spinel."
> What happened to him?
> "In Granite year 413 Urist Hairybasements was struck down by the ettin Genericfoe."
> What can you tell me about Genericfoe?

Et cetera.

Yes, a version of this is how I've always envisioned DF conversation turning out. If Toady adds the option to ask about a recently mentioned historical entity, something close to this can already be achieved using the existing "talk about an entity" routines.

[tyrannus007]

I doubt Toady would implement a language system he hasn't made himself, since that's pretty much been his stance since the first version of DF was released.

True, but he could still make it moddable. He certainly isn't opposed to doing that.

[i2amroy]

I doubt Toady would implement a language system he hasn't made himself, since that's pretty much been his stance since the first version of DF was released.

True, but he could still make it moddable. He certainly isn't opposed to doing that.

It already is a little bit moddable. Just open up the data/speech folder and you should find a list of all of the various responses in a bunch of text files (this is also where you can add customized "slayer of XXXX, who blah'd his blah" taunts for specific races). While the types of responses are limited the amount of each response is not.

[Scoops Novel]

I suspect this will hinge on when companions get developed. Question is when, though if tavern's are implemented in adventure mode a similar deal may apply.

[Telgin]

A problem with that is that if someone built a fantastic language-processing software and made it open source, would Toady even use it?

Probably not, but maybe.  He already uses external libraries for some things in DF, probably for things like loading PNG images (which, believe me, is a nightmare to code yourself).  He's stated before that he uses them and it's one of the reasons he hasn't taken the 64-bit jump.  He doesn't know how well they'll stand up to the change.

Having said that, if he was going to use an external library, I'm sure he'd prefer to use one that was well maintained, looked like it wasn't going to disappear any day, and had a lot of community backing or other verifiable clout.  Anything produced by the fans here likely wouldn't have that.  Especially if it was produced for the express purpose of being integrated into DF.

Even if it had all of that, he probably wouldn't use such a library if he thought he could code up something almost as good himself.