ResponsIF supports associations among topics, which is something I consider important. What does this mean? Let’s give an example from real life.

Say it’s morning, and you go out for a walk with the dog. The sky is gray, but your mind is pondering the day ahead of you. There’s a problem you’ve been assigned to solve, and it’s important that it be done soon. You walk absently, your mind exploring possibilities.

As you approach the corner shop, the sight triggers a memory – you need bread. For a moment, your thoughts of the problem at work have been displaced. You think about when you might be able to get some bread as you continue on, and soon that thought fades. Re-gathering, you return to your original pressing thought.

Waiting to cross the road, your thoughts are displaced again by the need to be aware of the traffic and the proximity to your dog. An old fashioned car cruises by, and you’re reminded of that film that you saw when you were younger, about the car that could fly.You think about the actor who was in it, and of how you used to like to watch his TV show. It was quite an old-fashioned TV show, black and white, but your parents liked to have it on in the evenings in the living room.

That living room was what you entered when you were done playing with your friends outside. You remember the cool evening air when you used to ride your bike and play ball. You remember the time you went off that insanely high jump on your bike, and that time you fell. You also remember that time you feel off your skateboard and fractured a rib.You can almost feel the pain, and how you almost couldn’t breathe.

You register that the traffic has cleared, and you head across, alert to any oncoming cars you may not have seen coming or that may be coming quickly.

Having crossed the road, you follow a path beside the grass. There are flowers growing there, and delicate purple ones remind you of – you almost can’t even bear the name, you miss the person so. Suddenly, you feel the loss all over again. You can’t help but recall images of the last time you were together, of the words spoken, of the tears shed. The heartbreak has faded to a dull ache, but it doesn’t take much to flare it up.

An elderly man approaches you along the path. He smiles and waves as he passes. He told you his name once, but it didn’t stick.

For a moment, you’re in tune with what’s going on around you. You hear birds chatting in the trees. You hear cars drifting by. You smell the remnants of last night’s rain, which you remember made the windows shake and the dog jump. It was impossible sleeping during the downpour, but it was ok, because you like the sound of rain.

The smell of fresh, hot food greets you as you approach a small shop. You remember you need bread. You’re not sure when you’ll be able to get it, because of the time pressure at work…

And you’re back to  your original thoughts.

I’m not sure if that seems familiar or not, but it certainly is for me. I find my head is an ongoing stream of thoughts, steered left and right and up and down by ongoing associations, either to other thoughts or to external stimuli.

Assuming that is how a human mind works, on some level, the obvious question is whether or not you’d actually want that going in your NPC’s “minds”. The interesting thing about what happened above is that there was no external indication of what was happening. There was no speaking or obvious signs of emotion. It was all internal. Does it make sense for NPCs to have an inner life? Traditionally, IF has been about what the character does: what it says, where it moves, whether it attacks you , etc. The invisible inner workings have taken a back seat or not been bothered with at all. After all, does the player care?

I can only say that I’m interested in giving it a try. The reason why is that the inner state influences the outer. Let’s say that someone were to approach you along your walk and attempt to engage you in conversation. The response you give might well be determined to some extent by what’s happening inside. If you’re thinking about what you have to do and how you have no time and how you don’t know what to do and how you really have to work out the problem, your response might be annoyance at any intrusion. If you are forced to respond while you’re contemplating your lost love, the response might be considerably different.

Having this sort of NPC inner turmoil (or at least ongoing inner state fluctuations) could help provide a more varied response during game play, depending on what’s happening or has happened in the past.

One thing you may have noticed in the narrative above was the continual return to thinking about the pressing long term goal. Little distractions came in, some even causing ripples that lasted a while, but eventually, when the water calmed again, the long-term goal came to the fore again. This points to several key things:

1. Long vs short term topics. Short-term topics have a short lifespan. They are the introduction of topics into the thought stream that cause ripples or even a splash, but they have no sustaining energy. They’re fleeting, disappearing as quickly as they come, replaced by either their own descendants or simply fading away unless sustained. Long-term goals, on the other hand, are constantly there, although perhaps at a lower level.
2. Higher and lower priorities to topics. Thoughts of work took precedence over thoughts of buying bread, ultimately. But external stimuli were able to temporarily overpower long-term thinking. Responses occurred or not depending on which topics had current weight, and those weights changed over time.
3. The internal topic patterns oscillated or could oscillate. This is a powerful concept for me, one I’d like to explore further in a separate blog post.

Without delving too deeply into it, there are two primary mechanisms ResponsIF uses to associate topics. First, a response can trigger via multiple topics. This allows topics to be grouped in terms of the effect they have. Second, topics can trigger responses which can then add possibly different (but related) topics either back into the responder or out to other responders via suggestions. And the topics can be weighted appropriately. So, for example, the topic “family” might introduce topics for “mother”, “father”, and “Sarah” with relative strong weights, but it might also introduce the topic “farm” and “Pine Valley” with lesser, but still existent, weights. And if the discussion just prior also had weights for one of those lesser topics, it might be enough to push it up enough in priority to cause a response.

Topics are the glue that link response together. Responses tell you what happens in a riff. Topics tell you what the riff is all about.