Groundbreaking mechanic from Skyrim really was born on a napkin. „This is a real one,” says former developer
Skyrim's dev talked about the development of Radiant AI technology, which is responsible for NPC behavior. Todd Howard sketched it on a napkin.
Fans of Bethesda games may be familiar with a technology called Radiant AI, which is responsible for the dynamic behavior of NPCs. Although it is probably not a perfect system, it fulfills its task of making the world more vibrant and unpredictable.
Napkin technology
The first version of the technology was created for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and since then, Bethesda has been using it in all of their games. However, the system was significantly expanded during the creation of Skyrim, and it all started with... a sketch on a napkin.
The Radiant AI system was developed from a napkin drawing that Todd Howard gave us. So it's actually a napkin story. You don't hear many of those in real life, but this is a real one.
Bruce Nesmith used to work at Bethesda and was the lead designer for Skyrim. In a conversation with PC Gamer, he recalls what the development of Radiant AI looked like. Todd Howard started by drawing the character on a napkin, and then connected it with lines to icons of various objects, such as houses or monsters.
And he said, 'The player interacts with these things, but they don't interact back with them. That was Morrowind. For Oblivion, we started having them interact with each other a little bit. But now for Skyrim, we want the world to point back to the player as well as interact with itself. So how can you do that?'
Nesmith, along with the other developers, therefore got to work, and as he recalls, it was "probably one of the most creative moments he experienced in the video game industry." A list of many different actions that the program could monitor was prepared. This led to the assignment of "huge amounts of data," which was something new for Bethesda.
An NPC actor would know the location it belonged to; the location would know the actors that belonged to it. It would know the objects. And we had an event system where, when something happens, it goes through a list of potential quests that could get spun up, that all have conditions on them. If the conditions are met, a quest is spun up. If no conditions are met, no quest is spun up.
As a result, the world of Skyrim was able to understand the presence of the player and respond accordingly. Thanks to this solution, coming back to the game even now, many years after its release, can be a really enjoyable experience.
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Author: Martin Bukowski
Graduate of Electronics and Telecommunications at the Gdańsk University of Technology, who decided to dedicate his life to video games. In his childhood, he would get lost in the Gothic's Valley of Mines and "grind for gold" in League of Legends. Twenty years later, games still entertain him just as much. Today, he considers the Persona series and soulslike titles from From Software as his favorite games. He avoids consoles, and a special place in his heart is reserved for PC. In his spare time, he works as a translator, is creating his first game, or spends time watching movies and series (mainly animated ones).
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