7/25/20 – For anything from an action game to a puzzle game, this idea is designed to let the player drive the behaviors of their team by playing as them. This could be presented in many ways, such as the team member who is the leader of the mission is the one played by the player, and the extras behave like the player has done. It is up to the design team to determine what cues and conditions will trigger different behaviors. Here’s some examples:
For something like a fantasy dungeon crawler, how close or far the player stays to the team, when and how they apply their abilities, and how the behavior changes when doing something sneaky or delicate compared to an overt head-on attack. If the player plays as the warrior and charges headlong into battle and calls for heals, the player should expect that character to behave similarly when the computer is in control. If the player doesn’t want to chase their warrior, they can take on another warrior mission and instead stay back with the crew, acting as a wall while the rest of the team can position as needed and chip away at threats. The ranger can stay back and fire precise shots while covering the flanks, but the ranger could also be trained to simply run among the enemies, dropping traps and firing distractions, if the player wants to play that way so the warrior has more support to run in the thick of combat.
For a surface-to-spaceflight sandbox game, the crew can start by running missions from the husk of their crashed vessel to gather resources, find suitable locations for temporary construction facilities, build a scaffolding grid to right the ship and allow for safe repairs and makeshift replacements, then prepare to launch back into space where they still need to get by a pirate blockade to deliver something important. The emphasis may be more on spotting and avoiding threats, surveying for resources and hazard from attempting to extract them, even determining what might be useful resources for the construction facilities like specific minerals or plant fibers. When on the surface, the player taking point will be the most specific to the task, but what their comrades do along the way may be critical for avoiding or taking on local threats or hazards. Just walking around with a gun in one hand and a mapping tool in the other will leave everyone unready for situations where their skills will otherwise be needed, like noticing a terrain hazard or large predator using more specialized tools. When it comes to space operations, the missions will instead let the player emphasize how the characters will behave, what routines they go through, what small actions they take to adjust for situations, possibly even part what they target on an enemy vessel or how they attempt to deliver cyberattacks.
For a puzzle game, it could be how the characters attempt to solve puzzles, and the logic they work through. If the player always uses the big character to pick things up, then try pushing them, then try smashing them, that’s the order they’ll try when they are being automated. The stealth character may first inspect the walls and floors for hidden paths, then inspect objects and furniture for hidden compartments, and finally try looking for clues in text and images. Where this plays out is when the player controls one character with one specific set of skills, their partners are trying to find other clues in other ways. When they call out that they think they have a lead, their partners can come to investigate.
Some cues that could then be used:
Proximity to player character
Proximity to “lead” character
Proximity to a specific character
Proximity to the group as a whole
Attention to a specific character
Attention to a specific attribute or pool of other characters
Attention to a specific type of object, surface, or feature
Attention to the direction of the group
Attention to the direction of the objective
Attention to the progress towards the objective
Attention to the position of gameplay elements (creatures to objects, spacing of puzzle items)
Attention to elements which the character specifically deals with
What the player is focused on.