Star Citizen Devs Walks The Community Through NPC Design And Behavior

As far as MMO’s go, NPCs play a big part in not just giving quests but also bringing the game world to life as they go about their day-to-day tasks in the background. While most developers simply place pathing guides and triggers for NPCs to mindlessly follow, some choose to take the harder route to make NPC behavior and personality more believable. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what Cloud Imperium Games is doing when designing NPCs for their sci-fi space simulation game, Star Citizen.

During last Friday’s dev stream, Cloud Imperium talked about the process of designing NPCs and walked viewers through the actual process of creating one. The team started with a blank area and a blank NPC and proceeded to flesh out an engineer working on a wall-mounted fuse box on the spot.

According to the developers, all NPCs have shared behavior such as socializing, eating, and sleeping but also have different layers that make each of them unique. NPC behavior also goes beyond just setting the ambience for a particular location, said the devs, as they could also eventually be hired as companions or assistants in the future.

All-in-all it’s a pretty interesting video, especially if you’re interested in the backend stuff that makes a game run. If you have time to kill, you can watch