You can make your own AI RPG, but you would have to have a mix of technical know-how, creativity, and a basic understanding of game design and AI tech. Selecting the right tools and software is the first step in developing an AI RPG. In addition, the best practices of their development, should be well considered, could you take these from game engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine, they are widely used in the industry, are able to support AI development through their behavior trees and state machines tools. Unity accounts for about 50% of the indie game development marketplace (source: Game Developer report, 2023) and provides the flexibility and power necessary for the integration of AI.
The next important step, is Designing the AI systems that will power your game. Most of the large AI use case in RPG is around NPC behavior, dialogue systems and decision trees. As an example of these approaches, the advanced AI system in Divinity: Original Sin 2 (2017) from Larian Studios enabled NPCs to respond dynamically to player actions. The system tracked player decisions and adapted NPC behavior along hundreds of variables, creating a very responsive world. According to the same article, developers work on AI behavior for 6 to 18 months in such types of RPGs depending on the complexity involved.
The second key facet of AI RPGs is to add an emotional response system when you think about what tools you might use to create the narrative. Using sentiment analysis algorithms, NPCs can be integrated to respond emotionally to player choices, making for more engaging interactions. BioWare created a system in Mass Effect (2007) where actions taken by the player affected the emotional responses of your companions, adding a facet to the game’s emotional engagement that they said increased emotional engagement by 50% based on internal metrics. In AI RPGs, machine learning can be used to enhance these interactions, where NPCs “learn” based on the player’s behavior.
Moreover, the game world needs to be responsive. Using procedural generation to tailor the world to player decisions is only one of many ways to use AI in RPGs. An example is No Man’s Sky (2016), that utilized procedural generation to populate planets, ecosystems and stories. If you wish to read more about AI RPGs in further detail, include resources like AI RPG for you to gain insight into starting your own journey in Ai RPG.