That is a good point, DATD. In Baldur's Gate, Imoen, Minsc, etc. were considered NPC's, even though you control them and develop their skills.
Still, maybe you can create the deathknight, in a way. Give him a name, change his avatar's appearance? Then wouldn't he qualify as a player-character?
This is getting very confusing for the uninitiated.
The correct terminology for CRPG is that a human-player’s controllable computer-character
MUST be a player’s character by simply masking the words {human, controllable, computer}. This is very simple logic guys not chemistry. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />
On the other hand, it is a custom for a programmer to consider all characters as NPCs; the reason behind this contradiction is that from the point of view of the programmer they make no difference when he locates their coordinates and execute the commands whether they were computer-generated by algorithm or computer –generated by human-player-triggered event. The serious reason for this terminology is that abbreviating characters “Cs” is rather non-indicative, and “PC” is mainly reserved for Personal Computer. This mean that the three letters NPC is the best abbreviation for indicating RPG characters in a very general sense. Here the verbal naming sounds as “EN PEE SEE” not as “Non Player’s Character”.
In Baldur’s Gate and other games, NPC stands for any character player’s or not.
In other games there are Human Players HP and Computer players CP.
Characters controlled by each are called HPCC and CPCC respectively.
HPCC + CPCC = NPC
In fact, I would recommend writing N.P.C. to stand for the non-player’s characters to distinguish them from the HPCC.
In a sense N.P.C. = CPCC.
I hope this clarifies the confusion.
Cheers.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />
