What are the components of a ideal NPC?

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#1

Hello! I’m trying to make my own game. It have building plots, choppable trees, diggable ground… (This’s important info).

But I need NPCs.

And after long thinking about what’s best solution to make it, I understand that I don’t ever know WHAT good NPC should be able to do. So… after another day spent on this I got this ideas:

  1. Normal walking (even in player house which can be built by player itself).
  2. NPCs should be interactable with player (like trading)
  3. NPCs should be interactable with NPCs.
  4. NPCs should have corresponding reactions on everything that occured with them (so if you will start fighting with NPC, it will run away or try to fight with you too).

But I’m sure that I miss a lot of important things which good NPCs should do. So, maybe anyone here have it’s own ideas about his ideal NPC, and will tell me some of them?

Also, tell me if this’s wrong category.

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#2

Well it depends on your game really, for example

Say you have a casual resturant game where the NPC is a waiter and greets you, it wont ever pull out a sword and start attacking customers

But you get the idea, it all depends on what game your making and the mechanics the revolve around that game

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#3

My game is open-world… Sandbox probably. Bc you can mine and chop almost everywhere, complete quests, build on your plot… So there’s almost every situation possible.

#4

Well then it sounds like most things the players can do the npcs can also do, so maybe use the player mechanics as a reference

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#5

In this case, you could probably just have the npcs be everywhere, just doing normal human stuff, like leaning around, or walking up and down sidewalks.
Though, you probabyl shouldn’t add too many, or have them all be handled from one script, which would be hard, as having a ton would lag.

#6

“it wont ever pull out a sword and start attacking customers.” :joy::joy::joy::joy:

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