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[TheDarkStar]

Will the crew have orders for you or ask you to do things, or are you free to do whatever?

"AI, open this door."
"AI, door."
"AI, the door."
"AI, open this."

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL..."

[i2amroy]

This definitely seems like something that has a lot of potential; now we just have to wait and see if it actually gets actualized.

[ProceduralJOYE]

Hallo everyone! This is Joe Yeates, back again, because word just reached me that there are new posts here. Just as a reminder, I'm the technical lead on Human Orbit.

I think I've still got a couple of questions that I missed from last time (I didn't want to double-post), so I'll have a quick scan through the thread for those and put up some answers soon. In the meantime, I'll answer this new question - please feel free to throw more questions out there. Everything is permitted.

Will the crew have orders for you or ask you to do things, or are you free to do whatever?

The crew does not have orders for you, as they are not aware that there is a sentient AI in their midst. However, you do occupy actual droids on the station and those droids do have actual jobs that they are supposed to be doing.
Tobel (hi!) mentioned the dockable mechanical droids earlier - when you're not docked to these, they may well be performing maintenance tasks autonomously (e.g. fixing broken equipment). There's no reason why you cannot perform these activities yourself (and doing them sooner rather than when the automated systems kick in later might be advantageous to the station), but you are free to do whatever at all times.

In other news, I've just posted a new article to the blog - "We need to talk". Please check it out!
http://humanorbit.com/blog/

[miauw62]

It was inevitable.

(Seriously though, that's really cool)

[jhxmt]

In other news, I've just posted a new article to the blog - "We need to talk". Please check it out!
http://humanorbit.com/blog/

Absolutely loved that blog entry - I'm really intrigued now to see how the process of working through a dialogue tree, moving to another subject and the whole general pattern of it actually works in practice.  Excellent use of diagrams as well - made the whole thing very straightforward and easy to understand!

[ProceduralJOYE]

Neat.
Might be a bit much, but is it possible to show us a snippet of what this dialogue generator can do?

Yup, actually I've posted another blog post a couple of hours ago (2 in one day!) which does just that!
It's titled 'Getting Personal' www.humanorbit.com/blog

I baby my dorfs.
Speaking of babying, can we baby the crew and make sure everything is of the utmost safety? Possibly by locking everyone into their rooms and only letting them out for food and water?

You can lock them into their rooms, but it's not a good strategy. They'd be alright for water (they'd get it from their en-suite sink), but they'd get pretty hungry pretty soon - and once you'd let them out, they probably wouldn't come back for a good while!
Really though, the problem with locking everyone in their rooms is that they wouldn't be able to do their jobs - the station would quickly become inoperable.

Absolutely loved that blog entry - I'm really intrigued now to see how the process of working through a dialogue tree, moving to another subject and the whole general pattern of it actually works in practice.  Excellent use of diagrams as well - made the whole thing very straightforward and easy to understand!

I'm glad you liked it! Especially glad that you liked the diagrams - you've no idea how long I spent getting them to look just the right level of business-casual.

It was inevitable.

It was inevitable.

[Aklyon]

I baby my dorfs.
Speaking of babying, can we baby the crew and make sure everything is of the utmost safety? Possibly by locking everyone into their rooms and only letting them out for food and water?

You can lock them into their rooms, but it's not a good strategy. They'd be alright for water (they'd get it from their en-suite sink), but they'd get pretty hungry pretty soon - and once you'd let them out, they probably wouldn't come back for a good while!
Really though, the problem with locking everyone in their rooms is that they wouldn't be able to do their jobs - the station would quickly become inoperable.

But what if you gave each of them a robot to do their job with and fetch foodstuffs?

It was inevitable.

It was inevitable.

It was inevitable.

[bluwolfie]

Neat.
Might be a bit much, but is it possible to show us a snippet of what this dialogue generator can do?

Yup, actually I've posted another blog post a couple of hours ago (2 in one day!) which does just that!
It's titled 'Getting Personal' www.humanorbit.com/blog

I baby my dorfs.
Speaking of babying, can we baby the crew and make sure everything is of the utmost safety? Possibly by locking everyone into their rooms and only letting them out for food and water?

You can lock them into their rooms, but it's not a good strategy. They'd be alright for water (they'd get it from their en-suite sink), but they'd get pretty hungry pretty soon - and once you'd let them out, they probably wouldn't come back for a good while!
Really though, the problem with locking everyone in their rooms is that they wouldn't be able to do their jobs - the station would quickly become inoperable.

Absolutely loved that blog entry - I'm really intrigued now to see how the process of working through a dialogue tree, moving to another subject and the whole general pattern of it actually works in practice.  Excellent use of diagrams as well - made the whole thing very straightforward and easy to understand!

I'm glad you liked it! Especially glad that you liked the diagrams - you've no idea how long I spent getting them to look just the right level of business-casual.

It was inevitable.

It was inevitable.

I would really like to hear about this knowledge base and some of the other things you've got going on, like tone.

[MrWiggles]

Is tone used for only person to person exchanges?

[ProceduralJOYE]

But what if you gave each of them a robot to do their job with and fetch foodstuffs?

If the station could be fully automated then they wouldn't have sent humans up there to begin with
The station is usually quite safe. Your people should be relatively safe. No Goblin raids nor fear of tunneling into Hell - only maybe the occasional disease, mutagen, gravitational anomaly or something to worry about.

Is tone used for only person to person exchanges?

Tone is normally used in 1-to-1 exchanges in messages that they send one another. There's 2 tones currently supported (direct & indirect) and they typically moderate the type of language used and level of formality between NPCs. Typically, an NPC will use the indirect tone to talk to their boss or someone else of higher status and the direct tone among their peers.
An example of direct/indirect is as follows:
Direct: "Do this for me."
Indirect: "Could you do this for me?"

In earlier stages we supported two more tones - autonomy-oriented and approval-oriented; these are more subtle. There's still value in those tones, so I may leave them in as stubs for modded content or post-release updates - but we don't have the resources to populate them with dialogue from the start.

I would really like to hear about this knowledge base and some of the other things you've got going on, like tone.

That's good to hear. In that case, I'll try to follow up with a third blog post on the dialogue system soon. I just need to think of a catchy title...

[Graknorke]

Speaking of, how much of the conversation stuff do you have populated? I would assume it's the sort of thing you'd leave 'til nearer the end, but you at least had enough to demonstrate in that blog post.

[Aklyon]

I want to ask if space carp is on that list because of all the earlier ss13 references in the thread, but it keeps sounding like a silly idea.

[~Neri]

I can think of reasonable science for spess carp existing.

Still super unlikely in nature, but possible.

[miauw62]

Space carp would be a mad reference because spessh carp are a reference to DF. So it's like a second-level reference.

[~Neri]

Referenceception?