Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
similar mechanism. If a sim feels both lonely and hungry, she will seek out food
before social interaction, because food is a physiological need and more urgent. Once
the sim has met her most urgent needs (for example, she still feels lonely but no
longer feels hungry) she will then act to meet her higher-order psychological needs.
FIGURE 20.2
The Sims 3
You can design such a system fairly easily. You don't have to use the needs that
Maslow posited for human beings, or the ones in
The Sims
. A fantasy creature
whose behavior is based on an animal such as ants or bees might have a completely
different hierarchy of needs. It might give the safety of its colony the highest prior-
ity, and self-preservation a lower priority, for example.
Although the needs-management system is fairly simple, that doesn't mean that the
creature's AI will be easy to implement. The creature still has to have enough intel-
ligence to actually perform the behaviors required to meet its needs. If a sim is hungry
in
The Sims
, she must know how to obtain food, and that means knowing which
appliances in the house can provide it, where they are, and how to operate them.
SKILLS
Unlike artificial pets, sims don't need to be taught by repeatedly showing them
what the player wants them to learn. Instead, the trick is finding the time for them
to improve their skills, which they can do by a variety of means. The sims in the
