Emotion & Mood
Mistscale separates volatile emotion (the immediate feeling driving the current reply) from stable mood (the long-term baseline an NPC carries toward a specific player). Together they produce believable affect across time.
Mistscale separates how an NPC feels right now from how an NPC generally feels about a player. Confusing the two produces flat characters. Splitting them produces ones that simmer.
Emotion (volatile)
The immediate feeling driving the current reply. Set fresh on every message: irritation, surprise, warmth, fear. Visible in the Playground inspector as current_emotion.
Mood (stable)
The long-term baseline an NPC carries toward a specific player. Shifts slowly as emotional signals accumulate over many conversations.
The mood scale
Mood moves one step at a time along this ordered scale:
How mood shifts
- Each conversation contributes to an internal accumulator.
- When the accumulator crosses a threshold, mood moves exactly one step.
- A single very intense moment (e.g. betrayal) can shift mood immediately.
- After a shift the accumulator partially resets. The NPC remembers what changed it.