The upcoming space MMO Star Citizen aims to create a believable game world where NPCs appear to live in it.
The game’s developers place great importance on ensuring that the animations are appropriate. There will not be NPCs just standing around waiting for the player to interact with them in Star Citizen. NPCs will perform activities and are expected to interact with thousands of objects in the game world.
Scripting too complex – AI to the rescue
However, it would be an enormous effort to have to script all of this. For example, spaceships consist of different modules, and an NPC would need its own animation script for each module and its handling.
To minimize this effort, the team developed an AI. This AI determines which animation is triggered and played for an NPC when interacting with a specific object. For instance, an NPC might angrily take a glass of water and pour it over a laptop to destroy it.
Animations must feel natural
However, this also brings problems, as shown in a new video. For example, when multiple people are sitting at a table.
The game should not play the same animation for each person, as this would break the illusion of being in the game world. Therefore, a system is necessary that plays different animations that feel distinct. One leans coolly against the table, another slides on the bench, and the third rests their elbow on the edge of the table.
Coordinating all of this and integrating it into the game in a meaningful and visually appealing way is a significant effort. It is also one of the reasons why nothing new about the single-player mode Squadron 42 has been shown yet. Because a lot of work still needs to be done on the animation AI before Squadron 42 can be showcased in action.
Star Citizen is slowly adopting the status of an early-access title, which is expected to be reached with the launch of Alpha 3.0. Alpha 3.0 is still planned for this fall.
