Post by Vortex | Head Admin on Jul 11, 2015 18:51:33 GMT -5
Hey guys, today I am going to talk about the "Cardinal System", what it is, and how we can make it. This doesn't directly impact the creation of a brain computer interface like the nervegear, however this would be important for video games which are created for it.
Cardinal
Lets reference the sword art online wiki:
In "Sword Art Online" the Cardinal System is the primary driving and management force of nearly all Virtual Reality MMOs in the Sword Art Online Universe. The system was originally developed to manage all resources, processes, and events within Sword Art Online. Cardinal is given nearly absolute authority on all matters related to the game that it manages without requiring any human input, whether that be player monitoring, spawn balancing or generation of new quests.1
What this is basically saying, is that the Cardinal System is an advanced game engine that maintains balance, the world and the progress of quests. There are engines out today that can do what the cardinal system, however there isn't one, that I currently know of, that does everything at once.
Player Monitoring
"The original NerveGear had the ability to read the wavelengths of the brain, and to parse the data, in order to determine what sort of emotions and thoughts were felt."1
Player monitoring is a somewhat easy task to accomplish. We can monitor the player's heart rate through a sensor in the device and then determine a heart rate variability(HRV for short). "By measuring the frequency at which the heartbeat varies, and doing some calculations on that data, a value can be obtained that is related amongst other things to levels of stress. The lower the HRV value, the higher the stress is."2 The device could also measure brain activity in the Limbic system which is the brain structure that mainly handles stress. With the combination of HRV and Limbic observation, we can prevent players from becoming over-stressed since it is detrimental to their health.3 We could do this by having them log out for a time period or altering their environment. For example, if the person is stressed out colors could change to a more relaxing hue4 and binaural beats could be used to calm the player.5
Language and Speech
Language and Speech are always a big part of a video game. Having good dialogue/speech allows a game to communicate easily and naturally to it's players. You have heard of systems like Siri or Cleverbot. They receive vocal or text input and then respond accordingly. Since Cardinal is the primary management system it would also handle language and speech. For conversations between players and NPCs Cardinal would use its own customized language system like Hound by SoundHound Inc. Hound is an innovative language system like Siri and Cleverbot, however it is faster and more advanced. Here is a video demonstrating Hound's capabilities. Using it's own custom language system based on a program like Hound, Cardinal would communicate information & quests to the player. Adding on, this customized language and speech system would have access to player data such as stress and mood which it can then analyze and change it's answers in response.
The language and speech system would also incorporate language translation so players can hear conversation and dialogue in their native tongue.
Quest Generation and General Gameplay
"During the run of SAO, there were reportedly a number of strange and bizarre quests that kept appearing every so often. It was explained that Cardinal oftentimes creates quests based around internet trends, mythology and stories that it acquires from the Internet. The Cardinal is also capable of creating quests with the ability to completely change the geography of the game itself, even for those not involved in a quest or event."1
Quest generation is a very interesting topic, because it would allow unlimited adventures in a video game experience. The best example of modern action-based generation that I could find is "Left 4 Dead"'s "The Director.""The Director, sometimes referred to as the AI Director, or simply as AID is the artificial intelligence of "Left 4 Dead" that features a dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty."6 This system changes mob spawn rate, spawn location, map layout and other things depending on skill level as well as in-game events and player actions. It also determines where items spawn, which is useful for item diversity and rarity. We could take this system, recreate it and add onto it improve the procedural quest generation to fit our needs for games like SAO or ALO.
To increase quest diversity, players could create their own quests which other players can accept and then complete. Having the option to task other players to do something will improve productivity with players who are busier than others. You can see an example of this in EVE Online. A wealthy high-level player who wants to have a lot of a certain mineral would pay lower level players to mine it for him. The lower players benefit from the money and the experience where as the higher level player receives the required minerals.
One of the bigger issues with generation today is lack of region space and assets. Most generators have limited maps, and so therefore their generation limited. This can be solved using an advanced open world generation system.
World Generation
World generation is nothing new, it is used in many open world games. Minecraft is a prime example of this. Minecraft uses seeded procedural generation for it's worlds. It creates a seed (either by system time or a user entered value) which is then used by Java's built-in RNG to generate noise using specialized generators such as perlin and simplex. Terrain is then generated from this "noise."
For a game like SAO or ALO we could use procedural generation for the generation of it's floors, terrain, villages, and other world related objects.This would allow for very diverse worlds/lands. Once the world is generated then the gameplay and quest procedural generation systems would take into consideration placement of terrain such as rivers, mountains, valleys, lakes, villages and would populate the regions with items, npcs, plot lines and other gameplay related items.
This is already possible using game engines such as Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Both engines allow procedural generation which in turn could be used for a system like Cardinal.
Here is an example of procedural world generation in Unity.
Conclusion
A system using Cardinal's main functions could be made today. It would use a combination of procedural generated gameplay, quests, worlds and then it would take events and player actions to create a dynamic environment. However, it wouldn't be as advanced Cardinal. To fully recreate the Cardinal System, a highly intelligent limited AI would have to be created. This is due to the fact that Cardinal looks for data such as myths, urban legends, and world news, analyzes it and then applying that knowledge to the game world. Also, let's not get into post-singularity AI like Yui.
Sources
These are sources which I quoted directly from their works or I felt needed a direct source. Any topic I mentioned but did not quote, I posted related hyperlinks.
1.) "Cardinal System." Sword Art Online Wiki. Wikia Inc, 31 Mar. 2015. Web.
2.) Glance, David. "Don't Call the Doctor, Your Phone Can Now Tell When You Are Stressed." The Conversation. The Conversation US, 27 May 2014. Web.
3.) Smith, Melinda, Robert Segal, and Jeanne Segal. "Stress Symptoms, Signs, and Causes." Stress Symptoms, Signs, & Causes: The Effects of Stress Overload and What You Can Do About It. Helpguide.org, July 2015. Web.
4.) Effects of color on emotions. Valdez, Patricia; Mehrabian, Albert Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 123(4), Dec 1994, 394-409. dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.123.4.394
5.) Wahbeh H, Calabrese C, Zwickey H (2007). "Binaural beat technology in humans: a pilot study to assess psychologic and physiologic effects". Journal of alternative and complementary medicine 13 (1): 25–32. doi:10.1089/acm.2006.6196. PMID 17309374.
6.) "The Director." Left 4 Dead Wiki. Wikia Inc, 16 May 2015. Web.
I would also like to give special thanks to Markystal from the Virtual Dreamers YouTube channel who created this video which covers the Cardinal System as well.
Personal Comments
This is the first research post I have done. If you believe I have made a mistake please feel free to point that out. If you have something to add please create a post about it in this thread. Thank you, and hopefully you gained some more knowledge about what the Cardinal System is.
Cardinal
Lets reference the sword art online wiki:
In "Sword Art Online" the Cardinal System is the primary driving and management force of nearly all Virtual Reality MMOs in the Sword Art Online Universe. The system was originally developed to manage all resources, processes, and events within Sword Art Online. Cardinal is given nearly absolute authority on all matters related to the game that it manages without requiring any human input, whether that be player monitoring, spawn balancing or generation of new quests.1
What this is basically saying, is that the Cardinal System is an advanced game engine that maintains balance, the world and the progress of quests. There are engines out today that can do what the cardinal system, however there isn't one, that I currently know of, that does everything at once.
Player Monitoring
"The original NerveGear had the ability to read the wavelengths of the brain, and to parse the data, in order to determine what sort of emotions and thoughts were felt."1
Player monitoring is a somewhat easy task to accomplish. We can monitor the player's heart rate through a sensor in the device and then determine a heart rate variability(HRV for short). "By measuring the frequency at which the heartbeat varies, and doing some calculations on that data, a value can be obtained that is related amongst other things to levels of stress. The lower the HRV value, the higher the stress is."2 The device could also measure brain activity in the Limbic system which is the brain structure that mainly handles stress. With the combination of HRV and Limbic observation, we can prevent players from becoming over-stressed since it is detrimental to their health.3 We could do this by having them log out for a time period or altering their environment. For example, if the person is stressed out colors could change to a more relaxing hue4 and binaural beats could be used to calm the player.5
Language and Speech
Language and Speech are always a big part of a video game. Having good dialogue/speech allows a game to communicate easily and naturally to it's players. You have heard of systems like Siri or Cleverbot. They receive vocal or text input and then respond accordingly. Since Cardinal is the primary management system it would also handle language and speech. For conversations between players and NPCs Cardinal would use its own customized language system like Hound by SoundHound Inc. Hound is an innovative language system like Siri and Cleverbot, however it is faster and more advanced. Here is a video demonstrating Hound's capabilities. Using it's own custom language system based on a program like Hound, Cardinal would communicate information & quests to the player. Adding on, this customized language and speech system would have access to player data such as stress and mood which it can then analyze and change it's answers in response.
The language and speech system would also incorporate language translation so players can hear conversation and dialogue in their native tongue.
Quest Generation and General Gameplay
"During the run of SAO, there were reportedly a number of strange and bizarre quests that kept appearing every so often. It was explained that Cardinal oftentimes creates quests based around internet trends, mythology and stories that it acquires from the Internet. The Cardinal is also capable of creating quests with the ability to completely change the geography of the game itself, even for those not involved in a quest or event."1
Quest generation is a very interesting topic, because it would allow unlimited adventures in a video game experience. The best example of modern action-based generation that I could find is "Left 4 Dead"'s "The Director.""The Director, sometimes referred to as the AI Director, or simply as AID is the artificial intelligence of "Left 4 Dead" that features a dynamic system for game dramatics, pacing, and difficulty."6 This system changes mob spawn rate, spawn location, map layout and other things depending on skill level as well as in-game events and player actions. It also determines where items spawn, which is useful for item diversity and rarity. We could take this system, recreate it and add onto it improve the procedural quest generation to fit our needs for games like SAO or ALO.
To increase quest diversity, players could create their own quests which other players can accept and then complete. Having the option to task other players to do something will improve productivity with players who are busier than others. You can see an example of this in EVE Online. A wealthy high-level player who wants to have a lot of a certain mineral would pay lower level players to mine it for him. The lower players benefit from the money and the experience where as the higher level player receives the required minerals.
One of the bigger issues with generation today is lack of region space and assets. Most generators have limited maps, and so therefore their generation limited. This can be solved using an advanced open world generation system.
World Generation
World generation is nothing new, it is used in many open world games. Minecraft is a prime example of this. Minecraft uses seeded procedural generation for it's worlds. It creates a seed (either by system time or a user entered value) which is then used by Java's built-in RNG to generate noise using specialized generators such as perlin and simplex. Terrain is then generated from this "noise."
For a game like SAO or ALO we could use procedural generation for the generation of it's floors, terrain, villages, and other world related objects.This would allow for very diverse worlds/lands. Once the world is generated then the gameplay and quest procedural generation systems would take into consideration placement of terrain such as rivers, mountains, valleys, lakes, villages and would populate the regions with items, npcs, plot lines and other gameplay related items.
This is already possible using game engines such as Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Both engines allow procedural generation which in turn could be used for a system like Cardinal.
Here is an example of procedural world generation in Unity.
Conclusion
A system using Cardinal's main functions could be made today. It would use a combination of procedural generated gameplay, quests, worlds and then it would take events and player actions to create a dynamic environment. However, it wouldn't be as advanced Cardinal. To fully recreate the Cardinal System, a highly intelligent limited AI would have to be created. This is due to the fact that Cardinal looks for data such as myths, urban legends, and world news, analyzes it and then applying that knowledge to the game world. Also, let's not get into post-singularity AI like Yui.
Sources
These are sources which I quoted directly from their works or I felt needed a direct source. Any topic I mentioned but did not quote, I posted related hyperlinks.
1.) "Cardinal System." Sword Art Online Wiki. Wikia Inc, 31 Mar. 2015. Web.
2.) Glance, David. "Don't Call the Doctor, Your Phone Can Now Tell When You Are Stressed." The Conversation. The Conversation US, 27 May 2014. Web.
3.) Smith, Melinda, Robert Segal, and Jeanne Segal. "Stress Symptoms, Signs, and Causes." Stress Symptoms, Signs, & Causes: The Effects of Stress Overload and What You Can Do About It. Helpguide.org, July 2015. Web.
4.) Effects of color on emotions. Valdez, Patricia; Mehrabian, Albert Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 123(4), Dec 1994, 394-409. dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.123.4.394
5.) Wahbeh H, Calabrese C, Zwickey H (2007). "Binaural beat technology in humans: a pilot study to assess psychologic and physiologic effects". Journal of alternative and complementary medicine 13 (1): 25–32. doi:10.1089/acm.2006.6196. PMID 17309374.
6.) "The Director." Left 4 Dead Wiki. Wikia Inc, 16 May 2015. Web.
I would also like to give special thanks to Markystal from the Virtual Dreamers YouTube channel who created this video which covers the Cardinal System as well.
Personal Comments
This is the first research post I have done. If you believe I have made a mistake please feel free to point that out. If you have something to add please create a post about it in this thread. Thank you, and hopefully you gained some more knowledge about what the Cardinal System is.
