NPC Simulation

[Rook Queen]

Are the NPCs simulated in a sense that they have goals and tasks similar to the player and not just hardcoded schedules? Like a farmer would go and farm for money in exchange for commodities, a soldier would patrol for money… etc. I hope we can expand on the NPC simulation part because that would separate this game from others even further!

[OwNathan]

For now we only have a basic daily routine for NPCs, and we're focused on giving that kind of intentionality and agency to factions, instead of single individuals.
Back then when we started developing Dustgrave, we planned to have smarter NPCs, but the importance of a single, fragile, and mortal NPC is so little that it meant developing a lot of features for single individuals that could die anytime, or do things no player would notice!
That is why we are focused on factions, and the next step will probably be having a limited amount of NPCs that could become important to the player, and get more agency and screentime, instead of relying on an extremely complex simulation that could require months of work, create tons of bug, and go mostly unnoticed!

[Rook Queen]

@OwNathan Ah I see! Similar approach to having AI directors instead of individual utility AI pawns. Nice design choice :D