Twit 4 Dead
Here is a little off beat news today. A programmer by the name of Tom Armitage has taken the popular social media site Twitter and successfully programed four bots to tweet about Left 4 Dead. Who are those four? Well Zoey, Francis, Louis, and Bill of course. Check it out:
You can read about the rest off this story at Tom's blog here.
Enter @louis_l4d, @zoey_l4d, @bill_l4d and @francis_l4d. You might notice that they’re named for the characters in Left 4 Dead.
This is not a coincidence.
One of the most wonderful things in that game (which I’ve already commented on the brilliance of) is the banter between the four player characters. There’s so much dense, specific scripting, and enough dialogue so that it rarely repeats. I thought it would be interesting to see if you could simulate the four players’ dialogue over Twitter, sharing some state between the bots, but also finding a way to make them communicate a little with each other.
Well, a bit later, I worked out how, and this is the result:
This is not a coincidence.
One of the most wonderful things in that game (which I’ve already commented on the brilliance of) is the banter between the four player characters. There’s so much dense, specific scripting, and enough dialogue so that it rarely repeats. I thought it would be interesting to see if you could simulate the four players’ dialogue over Twitter, sharing some state between the bots, but also finding a way to make them communicate a little with each other.
Well, a bit later, I worked out how, and this is the result:
You get the picture. They run a scenario, they bump into boss zombies, they find stuff, they get hurt (and help each other), they get scared (and reassure each other). At the moment, there are some dialogue overlaps; my main work at the moment is adding more unique dialogue for each bot. Bill is sounding pretty good, but the rest of them need work. It takes about 2-3 hours for them to run a scenario, and it’s usually fun to watch. (And, as you can see, it makes sense to follow all four of them).
So how does it work? Read More...
So how does it work? Read More...
You can read about the rest off this story at Tom's blog here.