Will more realistic behaviour among non-playing characters (NPCs) in a role-playing game(RPG) improve the overall feeling of the game for the player? Would players notice the enhanced life of a NPC in a role-playing game, or is the time spent in cities and villages insufficient to notice any difference at all? There are plenty best-selling RPGs with simplistic, repetitive NPC behaviour on the market. Does that mean that smarter NPCs is not necessary and that an improvement of them wouldn't benefit the players' impression of it? Or would some of these well recognised games get even better with a more evolved AI? These are some of the thoughts that created the initial spark of curiosity that inspired the making of this article. By assuming that a more complex game AI for the NPCs will improve the realism and feeling in a role-playing game, a research about possible techniques to achieve this was made. The technique Smart Terrain was found most beneficial for the purpose with this research. It's been used successfully in the well-selling game The Sims and appeared to be a good choice for an NPC AI with the flexibility and expandability it delivers. With a technique of great potential selected, a first version of an AI using it was implemented as a module to the commercial RPG Neverwinter Nights 2(NWN2). With the implemented Smart Terrain AI at hand, twelve testers got to compare this AI with the one that is encountered in the original campaign of NWN2. As all the participants in the test thought the new version of the AI more realistic than the original AI, the hypothesis was proven to be true. The results gave a strong indication of that using the Smart Terrain technique is a good choice to achieve higher realism among non-hostile NPCs in a RPG like NWN2.

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I denna uppsats kommer vi att presentera en modell vars syfte är att generera beteende-mönster för rollfigurer i digitala spel. Spelgenren rollspel (eng. Role-playing games) placerarspelaren i en värld fylld av fantastiska monster och modiga hjältar. I ett sådant spel ärde goda karaktärerna minst lika viktiga som de ondskefulla varelser som spelaren kämparmot. Hur ser livet ut för en spelkaraktär när den inte hjälper spelaren på dess äventyr? Dekanske lever som fiskare på havet eller som bönder ute på fältet. Mer troligt är att de bori en by tillsammans med en massa andra spännande karaktärer. Vi undersöker hur sådanakaraktärers vardag ser ut och tittar på en teknik som används för att skapa deras beteen-demönster, Cyclic Scheduling. Tekniken innebär att utvecklare skapar scheman som styrrollfigurernas beteende. Dessa scheman måste skapas i förväg under spelets utveckling ochkräver i stora spel många arbetstimmar för att utvecklas. Modellen vi presenterar i dennauppsats använder tekniken Smart Terrain för att automatiskt generera beteendemönsteroch kan användas för att minska utvecklingstid. Vi diskuterar hur modellen kan användas iföränderliga spelvärldar där utvecklare inte i förhand vet hur spelens omgivningar kommeratt se ut. / In this thesis we present a model for the generation of behaviour patterns for charactersin digital games. In the genre Role-playing games the player is placed in a world filledwith fantastic monsters and brave heroes. In this kind of game the good characters areas important as the evil creatures the player must fight against. What kind of life doesa game character have when not helping the player on adventures? Maybe they live asfishermen on the sea or as farmers in the fields. More likely they live in villages amongstother exciting game characters. We examine what these characters’ daily routines looks likeand look at a technique used for creating their behaviour patterns, Cyclic Scheduling. Thetechnique is used by developers to create schedules that control the behaviour of charactersin games. These schedules have to be created during the game development process andfor bigger games this consumes a lot of time. The model we presents in this thesis uses thetechnique Smart Terrain to automatically generate behaviour patterns thereby reducingthe development time. We discuss how the model can be used in dynamic game worldswhere the developers are unaware of potential changes in the game world.

Abstract. Autonomous agents, also known as AI agents, are staples in modern video games. They take a lot of roles, everything from being quest-givers in roleplaying games, to opposing forces in action- and shooter games. Crafting an AI that is not only easy to create, but also retains humanlike and believable behavior, has always represented a challenge to the development industry, and has in several cases ended up with open world games using AI systems that limit the AI agents to simple moving patterns. In this thesis, a form of AI systems more commonly used in simulation games such as The Sims video game series, are taken and implemented in an environment that could possibly be seen in an open world game. After the implementation, a set of tests were performed on a group of testers which resulted in the insight that a majority of the testers, when asked to compare their experience to other games, found this implementation to feel more lifelike and realistic.