My Creative Director requested a system which could trigger hyper-specific barks/commentary based on player actions, but also be flexible enough to handle all critical path dialogue.

I designed a hierarchical, condition-based dialogue system called the “Reactive Dialogue System”, inspired by this GDC talk by Elan Ruskin. Writers and Designers agree on logic rules, using them to organize VO into categorical “buckets” per character. When a particular set of rules is met in game, the system would select and play the appropriate dialogue line.

Through prototyping, playtesting (and lots of tuning), we found the system to be effective! Dynamic and reactive barks would trigger based off specific player actions, while never overlapping or stomping on critical path dialogue. This resulted in the game having characters who seemed more alive, reacting and commenting on specific player actions.

My team and I were building a prototype in which a player could run through a procedurally-generated D&D-type adventure. We wanted players to be able to pick between multiple Dungeon Master “narrators”, each with their own dynamic commentary, challenges, and feel.

I designed a Dungeon Master AI system. This system bundled together many of the game mode’s variables and settings into “profiles” per each DM which, when combined, conveyed a sense of that DM’s character and tone.

Through play-testing, we found that the profiles worked! Weighting randomization, increasing/decreasing combat difficulty and loot drop rates, along with unique VO per DM, made the procedurally-generated sessions feel more cohesive and conveyed the Dungeon Master’s personality.

Can a procedural generation system create characters that feel alive and memorable? That was the question I explored on an unannounced title, which told fully systemic stories.

I designed an approach which showed how character’s personalities could be driven by many different interlinked systems - all of which would then contribute to a Trait system. Each character received a Core Trait: permanent and decided by Archetype. Utility Traits were chosen based off the character’s Skills and Profession. Finally, Experiential Traits were gained over time through gameplay, representing memories or traumatic experiences.

The Traits system took lots of prototyping to get functioning. I worked closely with engineers to work out the many dependencies. By the end of the prototyping phase, we had characters spawning with several test Traits. Suddenly, these randomized amalgamations of systems felt a little closer to unique and memorable characters, as their behaviors began to differ on screen.