Basically I'd like to see RPG
characters be at least slightly less moronic in 2008 then they were in the
original "Final Fantasy" (most console RPGs aren't even trying) and a
system like this one would be a fairly easy way to do that even in a
homemade game. As for graphical presentation, that's no problem; the code
would only provide text output, leaving the rest of the game to decide how
to present it.
What do you think of a not-just-dialog, yet simple, AI system suitable for
RPGs? Something that lets you offer a few kinds of interaction like
starting a shop screen, asking them to join you, or asking about some
topic? As with the pathfinding thing, part of the trouble would be with
making it generic enough to work with the various forms of movement &c that
people would use.
Re: speech synthesis, that's not so farfetched. Look up "PyFlite," which
implements a Carnegie Mellon speech-synth system called Festival;
specificially a simplified version called Flite. PyFlite is very easy to
start using, but it offers only one voice in that implementation. I've not
played with it enough to see if there's a way to get more voices for it, or
the ability to add simple <i>emphasis</i> or other cues like that. It might
be useful if there were at least half a dozen deadpan voices instead of
one.