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You wouldn't think so...but maybe it does.
Why would that be? Does it take an Advanced Degree (tm) to figure it out?
Origin: a couple of weeks ago (early June 2006), "Ask Amy" (kinda like Dear Abby) had a letter from in guy ("In Search of a Goddess") in Los Angeles, CA, lamenting that he couldn't find a "nice, wholesome, model-type blond in Los Angeles who wasn't after his money". Apparently he could find brunettes otherwise fitting the description, and mentions one who was leaving to go back to her hometown in middle America. Clearly, the answer for this guy could be "well, look somewhere else", or "don't fixate on blonds". You also have to wonder about whether he looks enough like a god for a goddess to be interested. Could also be that he's as shallow as the question implies.
Yesterday (June 21, 2006), there was a letter from "Redheaded Goddess" who wrote "I am a very nice, pretty shapely, single redhead with a six-figure income--and no dates". [Damn. Where was she 20 years ago?] She continues "My three best friends are blond, a little overweight, and are all married housewives." She does not mention ages. Furthermore, "When we go out, the men look right past me to the blondes." Apparently she asked, and she quotes one guy as saying "all a woman has to do is be blond to be attractive. She can be fat, skinny, old, young, stupid or smart, as long as she is blond."
Whoa. It's all about hair color..? Why would that be?
I don't have any personal experience with this, never had a date with a blonde. Ever. My wife's a brunette (well, actually right now she's blonde, but it comes out of a bottle, and is to disguise the gray). My first girlfriend was a redhead, and I'd hazard a guess that that's my actual preference. But I look at them all. I think I prefer brunettes.
In a purely Darwinian world, a preference for blondes would cause the blonde population to expand over time and eventually eliminate others, excepting for a small population of random variations that would be brunette or redhead (which would maybe drive up their desirability, based on unusualness, keeping that population around).
What are the statistical priors on this? Is there data to support this result? The empirical evidence is against it--if it were true, we should be able to observe it around us--people have been producing offspring for millenia. I grant you that it is only in recent centuries that there's be easy enough travel long enough distances to begin to produce the mixing of previously more homogeneous populations, and perhaps only since 1939 that communication technology was good enough (prior to that you couldn't even see a photo of someone in color to really notice blonde hair, but in 1939 when color movies began to be made, wider distribution of them would expose non-blonde population areas of the world to things they'd never seen, in color). So decent demographic and census data might tell us whether the blondes are starting to dominate the population in places.
But I suspect not. In fact, I think it's something else entirely that drives this. Nothing complicated, but subtle.
Sex.
Recall the phrase "blondes have more fun"? Not exactly clear what that means. Perhaps it could be rephrased as "blondes ARE more fun". What would that mean? I recall a tv show episode (won't say which show as I'd be embarrassed to admit having actually seen it, it was appallingly stupid), in which a woman on the show was referred to as a "fun date" in this episode (for the wrong reasons, of course). "Fun date" meant she'd have sex with you.
What I think the hair color preference is about: blondes are perceived as more sexually liberal, brunettes are sexually conservative, and redheads are dangerous/trouble (witness the historical description of redheads as "fiery", hot-tempered, etc). If you're a single guy, interested in easy sex with women, which targets are you likeliest to pursue? If there's one population group that is easy to get naked with, one that's hard, and one that's weird, which one do you go after? Doesn't take an Advanced Degree (tm) to figure that out.
And if hair color is the distinguishing characteristic visible from a distance, and is a 1:1 correlator with the 3 population groups, and blondes are in the "easy" group...well, surely it doesn't take an Advanced Degree to see what's going on.
If the above is true, and it shouldn't be too hard to get a handle on it, then blondes would be harder to get a date with, because of competition, meaning those of us willing to have sex with non-blondes would still have plenty of opportunity, albeit with the hard and weird groups. But there ought to be more blondes...
It's been my experience (granted, from a limited population sample set, and no blondes) that hair color is NOT an indicator of a woman's willingness to have sex with you. No reason to assume that hair color correlates 1:1 with libido (or that breast-size does either, else we'd see the female population trend towards larger). In fact, give the size of human population around the world, and the randomness and wide distribution of variations, there's no reason to assume there's any detectable correlation between libido and something else.
Except perhaps how they dress. I wonder if that's any indicator? Or would it be a reflection of something else? It's the only other casually modifiable variable.
But perception is reality if you act upon it...so if you think blonde women are more likely to go to bed with you on a casual basis, and others are not, what do you do? You pursue the blondes. Plain and simple. Except that I still prefer to minimize competition, thus a preference for brunettes.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Monday, June 05, 2006
Game AI Advanced Degree
well, I was hoping not to make this post. Really, I was. (and it's late as it is)
but the game AI in Oblivion is way too heavy on the "A" and too light on the "I". The NPCs continue to be phenomenally stupid--really no improvement over Morrowind. So instead of "Artificial Intelligence" we have "Superficial Intelligence" or "Artificial Stupidity".
You recall in Morrowind that the NPCs were stupid like this: you would find them all outside bopping around on their random walks in the town square, in the dark, at 2am, in the rain. And they'd still be there 12 hours later. And a month later. Doing the same random walk, bopping around the town square. Unless they were executing a scripted sequence, which few ever actually did, or if they were attacking something, equally rare. Really brainless.
Well, in Oblivion, many characters have a bit more scripting, but that's all the smarter they are. And you can't make them be any different (well, you can, but it's a game mod; there are a couple of mods available that alter some behaviors--but you can also read that they may be "unbalancing"--if that's true, it means their control mechanism is flawed). In the towns, NPCs have houses they might go to, and then go to bed. You can actually see folks lying in bed; you can wake them for a conversation, but they will go back to bed when you finish. In the morning, they will walk to work. Ok, that's decent scripting, FAR better than Morrowind.
I hated having a sidekick character ever, in Morrowind, even just to escort someplace, because that NPC was still going to run towards a fight if one was available. So in order to do an escort properly, you'd have to talk to that NPC, and tell them "Wait here" and then go clear the route to the destination, then come back and escort safely, because if you didn't and a really difficult opponent was in the middle of the travel, your escorted NPC was going to run to fight that opponent, instead of letting you lead the fight or do it solo, or walk around the problem. One NPC I had to escort I was able to tell to wait, but then I was never able to get it to follow me to the delivery location--not even an option.
So your typical effort with any sort of sidekick was much more oriented around preventing them from doing something stupid--which would mean YOU have to run towards the fight, faster than the sidekick/escortee, which I seldom wanted to do.
Nothing much changed in Oblivion, the NPCs are just as stupid. Same exact thing happens. And the sidekick won't sneak when you do, or have any of your special skills. It'd be one thing if you could have a sidekick early, train them the same way you train, and have them sneak and not attack when you sneak and don't attack. (Neverwinter Nights is a little better about this, but not much.)
But that's not what happens. Conveniently, when you get the assignment about the Black Bow Bandits in Leyawiin, Mazorga the Orc says "I'll wait here until you say you're ready to go", so that you can go clear out most of the danger and then go back for her. Otherwise, since she doesn't sneak, your doing so won't accomplish much, she'll run into the fight in the cave and get overwhelmed--because there's no "I" in the NPC "AI".
I guess doing this well really does take an Advanced Degree (tm), and it seems no one over at Bethesda has one. GAH!
This is really bugging me at this point. I know already that I'm going to have additional tasks in the future in this game where I'm going to be part of a team where I am the only smart player, and the others will all get killed because they don't know how or when to be careful. Dungeon Siege was better about this in the you could at least click down a retreat path and your team would follow, and there were easily-changed control settings about the team's basic tactics; I don't remember them applying to summoned critters, but really, who cares what they do? At least with DS 2 you could put Healing Hands/Wind as an automatic spell, and not have to worry about it too much.
The other thing that bugs me and happens a lot more often (not too many sidekicks in Oblivion) is that when you summon a helper, that helper can't see opponents even if it is standing right next to them unless/until they move. So your summoned thing might not detect an opponent until its 30-second lifetime is almost over. GAH! I summoned it up close so it could attack immediately, not stand there waiting for some motion to detect. Granted, I'm the one with the Helmet of 100-ft life detection, but surely a summoned thing can detect the opponent that is 3 feet away? If I attack the thing they're standing next to, they see it right away, but that's exactly what I want to avoid.
I can create better NPC AI than this. Will the game let me? Do I even want to bother?
I ask because while you can define some NPC actions, if their decision-making/control scheme is inadequate, there's a good chance that there will be unintentional conflicts between actions/goals.
How this ought to work: a character should be able to have any number of goals, in various states, just as you do in your journal. They can be active to different extents, and there can always be background goals. Goal priority can change over time, sometimes in non-obvious ways. Example: a character could have a goal to eat twice a day, once in the morning around 9am, and once later around 7pm. The urgency of completing those goals would be low, depending on what else was going on, and there should be some time flexibility, so breakfast could be from 7am to 10 am, and dinner from 5pm to 9pm. There wouldn't be any real urgency about the meal goal until time was running out at the end of the day (figuring you can skip breakfast, but not dinner). The problem that could arise is if the character has a scripted behavior between 5pm and midnight, and violating it by going to eat breaks the script. This is where a more complex script control is needed, so that character can make a dynamic decision about eating. The script for eating would have to be lower priority than others, and a quest-related required activity would be higher than most others. Probably max priority is self-preservation, so that a character under attack focuses on battle. You can read more about this in various texbooks under "hierarchical planning"; there really is a lot of past work on this general topic.
If you play a while, you will see a few interesting behaviors, but not as many as you should. I've seen characters (just today, in fact) walk past a weapon, encounter a critter, run back for the weapon, pick it up, and use it on the critter (thus protecting me, albeit unintentionally, the critter was chasing me). That was clever. Saw one run down and kill a deer once, not sure why.
But what you don't see, for example, are NPCs healing themselves or each other. Opponents don't do this either; in one sense this is good, because it means that you can wear them down on an ongoing basis, and you can heal yourself while they cannot, giving you an edge, if you are evenly matched in a battle.
I have not yet investigated TES Construction Kit to find out what's possible. I'm going to have to. (later: well probably not, other games to play, not enough time to waste on figuring out this one if I'm not getting paid for it :)
I've read that in Half-life mods there are some very good squad behaviors, where opponents will take cover, support each other, execute group actions, etc. I'm pretty sure I'm a better squad leader than the default battle behaviors in Oblivion.
------- some months later ---------
I've started playing NeverWinter Nights 2 just after Thanksgiving. There are some seriously stupid behaviors in this, too, which are ultimately worse because the game requires you to have a large team the entire way through because of the quantities of opponents in groups (well, you could mostly play solo, but that's a guaranteed path to failure pretty quick).
Where the teammates are stupid:
1) they run towards fights. well, this isn't unusual, it seems. you can arrange to micro-manage your teammates, but I am not interested in doing that. I AM interested in telling them to stand still, stay behind me, etc. Not possible.
2) doorways are a disaster. entirely too often I have found that I have characters stuck in doorways, because I have a character that is blocking the doorway because it is being attacked and the one behind can't get through or help. This happens a lot.
3) they won't retreat when I do. When I run somewhere, I don't care what they are doing, I want the team to follow me. Always. No exceptions.
4) the NPC behavior is, in general, about equal to Morrowind. Most of your NPCs are doing the random bopping around town 24/7. Merchants are awake nonstop.
-------------
Where they are smarter:
1) the dialog trees are better all around, and the overall story is more complex. Morrowind had a complex story, TOO complex, I thought, and the "journal" did a lousy job of keeping you informed about what you needed to do. I didn't play for a while, forgot what I was up to, and ended up just stopping permanently (except for a couple of returns to test ideas).
-------------
I am going to be thrilled when I can play a game where the NPCs really exhibit intelligence (and no, I don't mean by playing in an MMO).
I'm available if someone wants to hire me to solve this problem. Please!
but the game AI in Oblivion is way too heavy on the "A" and too light on the "I". The NPCs continue to be phenomenally stupid--really no improvement over Morrowind. So instead of "Artificial Intelligence" we have "Superficial Intelligence" or "Artificial Stupidity".
You recall in Morrowind that the NPCs were stupid like this: you would find them all outside bopping around on their random walks in the town square, in the dark, at 2am, in the rain. And they'd still be there 12 hours later. And a month later. Doing the same random walk, bopping around the town square. Unless they were executing a scripted sequence, which few ever actually did, or if they were attacking something, equally rare. Really brainless.
Well, in Oblivion, many characters have a bit more scripting, but that's all the smarter they are. And you can't make them be any different (well, you can, but it's a game mod; there are a couple of mods available that alter some behaviors--but you can also read that they may be "unbalancing"--if that's true, it means their control mechanism is flawed). In the towns, NPCs have houses they might go to, and then go to bed. You can actually see folks lying in bed; you can wake them for a conversation, but they will go back to bed when you finish. In the morning, they will walk to work. Ok, that's decent scripting, FAR better than Morrowind.
I hated having a sidekick character ever, in Morrowind, even just to escort someplace, because that NPC was still going to run towards a fight if one was available. So in order to do an escort properly, you'd have to talk to that NPC, and tell them "Wait here" and then go clear the route to the destination, then come back and escort safely, because if you didn't and a really difficult opponent was in the middle of the travel, your escorted NPC was going to run to fight that opponent, instead of letting you lead the fight or do it solo, or walk around the problem. One NPC I had to escort I was able to tell to wait, but then I was never able to get it to follow me to the delivery location--not even an option.
So your typical effort with any sort of sidekick was much more oriented around preventing them from doing something stupid--which would mean YOU have to run towards the fight, faster than the sidekick/escortee, which I seldom wanted to do.
Nothing much changed in Oblivion, the NPCs are just as stupid. Same exact thing happens. And the sidekick won't sneak when you do, or have any of your special skills. It'd be one thing if you could have a sidekick early, train them the same way you train, and have them sneak and not attack when you sneak and don't attack. (Neverwinter Nights is a little better about this, but not much.)
But that's not what happens. Conveniently, when you get the assignment about the Black Bow Bandits in Leyawiin, Mazorga the Orc says "I'll wait here until you say you're ready to go", so that you can go clear out most of the danger and then go back for her. Otherwise, since she doesn't sneak, your doing so won't accomplish much, she'll run into the fight in the cave and get overwhelmed--because there's no "I" in the NPC "AI".
I guess doing this well really does take an Advanced Degree (tm), and it seems no one over at Bethesda has one. GAH!
This is really bugging me at this point. I know already that I'm going to have additional tasks in the future in this game where I'm going to be part of a team where I am the only smart player, and the others will all get killed because they don't know how or when to be careful. Dungeon Siege was better about this in the you could at least click down a retreat path and your team would follow, and there were easily-changed control settings about the team's basic tactics; I don't remember them applying to summoned critters, but really, who cares what they do? At least with DS 2 you could put Healing Hands/Wind as an automatic spell, and not have to worry about it too much.
The other thing that bugs me and happens a lot more often (not too many sidekicks in Oblivion) is that when you summon a helper, that helper can't see opponents even if it is standing right next to them unless/until they move. So your summoned thing might not detect an opponent until its 30-second lifetime is almost over. GAH! I summoned it up close so it could attack immediately, not stand there waiting for some motion to detect. Granted, I'm the one with the Helmet of 100-ft life detection, but surely a summoned thing can detect the opponent that is 3 feet away? If I attack the thing they're standing next to, they see it right away, but that's exactly what I want to avoid.
I can create better NPC AI than this. Will the game let me? Do I even want to bother?
I ask because while you can define some NPC actions, if their decision-making/control scheme is inadequate, there's a good chance that there will be unintentional conflicts between actions/goals.
How this ought to work: a character should be able to have any number of goals, in various states, just as you do in your journal. They can be active to different extents, and there can always be background goals. Goal priority can change over time, sometimes in non-obvious ways. Example: a character could have a goal to eat twice a day, once in the morning around 9am, and once later around 7pm. The urgency of completing those goals would be low, depending on what else was going on, and there should be some time flexibility, so breakfast could be from 7am to 10 am, and dinner from 5pm to 9pm. There wouldn't be any real urgency about the meal goal until time was running out at the end of the day (figuring you can skip breakfast, but not dinner). The problem that could arise is if the character has a scripted behavior between 5pm and midnight, and violating it by going to eat breaks the script. This is where a more complex script control is needed, so that character can make a dynamic decision about eating. The script for eating would have to be lower priority than others, and a quest-related required activity would be higher than most others. Probably max priority is self-preservation, so that a character under attack focuses on battle. You can read more about this in various texbooks under "hierarchical planning"; there really is a lot of past work on this general topic.
If you play a while, you will see a few interesting behaviors, but not as many as you should. I've seen characters (just today, in fact) walk past a weapon, encounter a critter, run back for the weapon, pick it up, and use it on the critter (thus protecting me, albeit unintentionally, the critter was chasing me). That was clever. Saw one run down and kill a deer once, not sure why.
But what you don't see, for example, are NPCs healing themselves or each other. Opponents don't do this either; in one sense this is good, because it means that you can wear them down on an ongoing basis, and you can heal yourself while they cannot, giving you an edge, if you are evenly matched in a battle.
I have not yet investigated TES Construction Kit to find out what's possible. I'm going to have to. (later: well probably not, other games to play, not enough time to waste on figuring out this one if I'm not getting paid for it :)
I've read that in Half-life mods there are some very good squad behaviors, where opponents will take cover, support each other, execute group actions, etc. I'm pretty sure I'm a better squad leader than the default battle behaviors in Oblivion.
------- some months later ---------
I've started playing NeverWinter Nights 2 just after Thanksgiving. There are some seriously stupid behaviors in this, too, which are ultimately worse because the game requires you to have a large team the entire way through because of the quantities of opponents in groups (well, you could mostly play solo, but that's a guaranteed path to failure pretty quick).
Where the teammates are stupid:
1) they run towards fights. well, this isn't unusual, it seems. you can arrange to micro-manage your teammates, but I am not interested in doing that. I AM interested in telling them to stand still, stay behind me, etc. Not possible.
2) doorways are a disaster. entirely too often I have found that I have characters stuck in doorways, because I have a character that is blocking the doorway because it is being attacked and the one behind can't get through or help. This happens a lot.
3) they won't retreat when I do. When I run somewhere, I don't care what they are doing, I want the team to follow me. Always. No exceptions.
4) the NPC behavior is, in general, about equal to Morrowind. Most of your NPCs are doing the random bopping around town 24/7. Merchants are awake nonstop.
-------------
Where they are smarter:
1) the dialog trees are better all around, and the overall story is more complex. Morrowind had a complex story, TOO complex, I thought, and the "journal" did a lousy job of keeping you informed about what you needed to do. I didn't play for a while, forgot what I was up to, and ended up just stopping permanently (except for a couple of returns to test ideas).
-------------
I am going to be thrilled when I can play a game where the NPCs really exhibit intelligence (and no, I don't mean by playing in an MMO).
I'm available if someone wants to hire me to solve this problem. Please!
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