GDC 2025 Session Viewer
Game AI Summit: Combining GOAP and MBTs to Create NPCs' Behaviors for 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance II'
Matej Marko (AI Programmer, Warhorse studios)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Programming
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a large open-world story-driven historic RPG where the designer's control over the non-playable characters is of paramount importance. However, instead of dealing with tedious details of NPCs' behaviors, the designers are more interested in describing the wanted results instead of a way to get to them.
In this session, Matej Marko presents how KCD2 utilizes a combination of Goal Oriented Action Planning and Modular Behavior Trees to implement behaviors of its NPCs. He describes how the state of each NPC is represented and how MBTs are used to specify the desired NPC's state and to trigger a state change process. Within this process, the desired NPC's state is used as a goal for GOAP which finds actions necessary to get NPC from its current state into the desired state.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn about the system used in KCD2 to create NPCs' behaviors, the motivation behind the choice to combine MBTs and GOAP within this system, and the results achieved with the system.
Intended Audience
This presentation is mainly intended for gameplay and AI programmers. Nevertheless, scripters and designers that create NPCs' behaviors may also benefit from learning the presented ideas.
Prior knowledge of MBTs and GOAP is welcome as these topics are discussed without thorough introduction.