PLEASE HELP ASAP Omnipresent characters/Dialog questions

[Laroquod]

@maga

@Laroquod

I don’t like attempting to simulate an actual human conversation in which one side’s dialogue is typed by me and the other side’s dialogue is played by a computer. It doesn’t work! Alan Turing kinda showed this, but still, for some reason, many, many authors prefer to pretend as if this does work. So I am in a minority in this opinion even though it’s very objectively clear that it doesn’t actually work. (Possibly even a minority of one! After all when everyone is in denial, logic doesn’t really enter into it.)

And when you make bad assumptions, you can make your logic prove anything. Very few people feel that NPC dialogue needs to pass a Turing test. The Turing Test isn’t about fiction! It’s about situations where there’s a genuine uncertainty about whether you’re talking to a person or a computer. Requiring an NPC in a computer game to satisfy the Turing Test is like throwing a brick at your TV and then complaining when it breaks the screen instead of the character’s head. Your personal preferences with here are legitimate, sure, but please remember that they’re aesthetic. Simulationist realism is not a logical requirement of fiction.

In general, dude, you’re very hasty to assume that everybody else in the room is being an idiot, or that you’re somehow the only person who has bothered to think honestly about a subject - very often, as in this case, a subject that’s been discussed in depth, over and over, for a very long time.

I didn’t intend to assume that, and sorry if that’s the message that was received, but I said it was my opinion literally three words before the section you bolded. How often must I say so? Between in my opinion every word IMO I type IMO? At this point just assume everything I type is my opinion, because it is. I also was at pains and went to great lengths to admit and make clear that I am in an extreme minority on my contrariwise opinion.

I understand that you think the Turing test isn’t being applied in those situations, but you are speaking from a position of a perspective that has learned to overlook the flaws. That is why I say ‘in denail’; only when everyone is in denial, it becomes a self-supporting system that newbies can find difficult to crack. I have watched many newbies try many games and I feel confident in my assertion that the Turing test is applied whenever you let a player supply words into a conversation from a supposedly infinite field. They will very quickly comment on the apparent dumbness and robotic nature of the responses, if merely by sheer reptition of denial conditions, which are totally unnatural in conversation. The minute you give them the idea that they are supplying data into a conversation, they want to play the conversation. It’s a natural instinct that an IF veteran learns to ignore in order to focus on only specifically mentioned nouns, and only nouns mentioned in certain contexts at that.

EDIT: DictatorZero, if the direct scope modifications don’t work out for you, here’s more on how to do animate backdrops.