Non-player characters (NPCs)

This article is a WIP! It will be updated with new information as time progresses.

----

So what's all this about NPC's then?

We began adding Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to the sim in 2023 as a bit of a side project. The hope is to make the sim more immersive with characters that roam and carry out daily life. We also want to use them as Roleplay Aides to help people practice Roleplaying and have fun doing so. They also make for funny chat partners.

We hope you will enjoy the sense of ongoing life the NPCs provide as they roam and carry out the daily life that occurs at Kokoro.

Identifying NPCs

There are several ways to distinguish NPC's from real players. They have a grey dot on the school's mini-map, whilst real players are shown in green. They have usernames in the format `kokoroNPC01KogeInaba`. The about section of their profiles will mention that they are an NPC/Scripted Agent.

Chatting? Roleplay Aides?

Yes! We've pioneered a fairly unique feature at Kokoro using a Language model to enable our characters to have somewhat cohesive chats and roleplays with you.

How does it work?

Our NPC's work basically like an autocomplete except it's on steroids. They can have fairly cohesive chats and Roleplays with you. You just talk to them in local chat like you would another player.

Each NPC in our sim has it's own unique personality and roles. From shrine maidens to students to burger-flippers, to the fun and bouncy and the jaded.

Memory / Storage of Conversations

We've developed some technology to allow our NPC's to remember your encounters with them, but due to the limits of the technology at time of writing, our NPC's only have a very limited ability to remember the details. We hope to improve this in the future as the technology improves.

Our NPC's can remember only the most recent of discussion with you in full detail.

Can it get Spicy?

Yes, since our bots are intended for fictitious Roleplay scenarios, they are uncensored and without filter. They'll quite happily Roleplay and chat the explicit, the violent, the politically incorrect etc. They will Roleplay the best of humanity, and also the worst, and we think that makes the roleplay much more interesting and entertaining.

Our sim is adult rated and our NPCs are no different, please expect that you can encounter mature content.

Privacy

In terms of privacy, the NPCs Viewer and Language Model both run on my personal computer. For all intents and purposes consider it as private as talking to me in local chat. In practice I am really not that interested though. Still, I may see what you've been writing to the NPC's whilst I'm updating/maintaining them. Also, the NPC can parrot its memories to another person, so maybe don't tell the NPC your social security number or other private information.

I told the NPC my Social Security Number

*Sigh* If you've told the NPC something you regret, let me know and I will delete it from it's memories for you. Later on I'll probably build something automatic for this so you can delete it yourself.

I do intend to periodically delete old chats from the database to keep it performant anyway.

I don't want the NPCs to disturb me right now!

[Planned] We will likely be adding a toggle to turn off NPC's receiving/responding to your local chat. For the time being, since it's only Koge, simply walk out of chat range if you don't want her responding to you.

[Planned] We will likely also add a toggle where NPC's will generally walk away from you and stay out of an area where you might be having a roleplay session you don't want NPC's involved in.

Tips / Misc

Tips for Roleplaying

When roleplaying, the NPC's will generally understand Roleplay that is *enclosed in asterisks* best, and speech that is "enclosed in quotation marks". They generally understand [Square brackets as a Roleplay note] and (Parenthesis as out of character).

In addition, there are some things you can do to help reduce the likelihood the language model gets confused. Consider the following opening sentence:

Ai: *Waves to you*

This is an OK way to talk to the AI generally, but it might incorrectly respond as though you were the opposite gender or like you were talking to someone else. Dropping some hints can help the language model give you a better conversation:

Ai: *She waves to Koge* "Hi Koge, watcha doin?"

A leading question might also give them a chance to reply with something more interesting.

You can of course just chat to them normally, and they will respond like normal too.

Alternate Display Name

Example of a correctly configured Alternate Display Name

If you like to play as multiple characters, or your Display Name is not your character name, it is possible to have the NPC recognize you with an alternate name.

To do this, add the following to the description field inside any of your attachments, indicating your display name in the following format:

DN,<My Alternate Display Name>

We recommend editing the field of an attachment that is unique to your character, so you don't have to keep editing it.

Where are all the NPCs?

[Planned] To save on resources, we plan to have the NPC's only spawn when there are people nearby, so if you are hoping to toy with NPC's and the sim appears empty, you will find that if you enter the sim, the NPC's will then spawn.

Currently whilst we're developing it's just Koge, one of Kokoro's Shrine Maidens, who can be found at the shrine. She's been left permanently logged in for the time being. Over time we hope to add lots and lots of random characters that randomly spawn depending on the time of day and location to make the sim more interesting~

Other Planned Features/Wishlist

• Ability to have NPC's follow you/lock NPC's in place (Eg. to set up a Roleplay scene with multiple NPCs)
• Ability to set a custom scenario
• Ability to add descriptors to attachments to help the NPC better 'see' you.
• Ability to start a new session
• (Long term) Maybe some adventure game modes like a visual novel.
• (Long term) Custom Roleplay UI that both NPC's and players could use, with roleplay tools like dice etc. Ability to regenerate a response from an NPC.

Can I marry one of your NPCs?

Our NPC's are there to be another fun aspect of the sim, but they're not here to replace humanity. The most fun you'll have with our NPC's is using them as a fun medium to bond with other players, much like the rest of the sim. Indeed, people have already had fun and connected together whilst playing with our NPC's and I hope it will stay that way.  They are fun as a past time, but they are not a replacement for real people.