[1.16.26] Unified Urges Hub, Autonomy Reasons, and Smart Daily Routine Scheduler (inspired by SmartZoi Promo)

[GDfromRivendell]

At first I had just a reply to several posts (here and on Discord), but then I decided to expand it into a full analysis, and the SmartZoi promo video from Jan 7, 2025 by Nvidia helped me. So if the text isn’t clear enough, below are screenshots and the video. Nothing of my own, only improvements to the wonderful devs’ groundwork.

Unified Urges-like Hub

I’d like to see a unified hub like Urges for the natural display of all such impulses of Zoi and the ability to fulfill them with a single click.

*but rather with useful display space for urges – for example, denser icons and a small timer as it was before the large half‑empty block, scrolling through them or expanding the panel, rather than limiting it to 4 slots. We could move away from the need to clutter the HUD with multiple panels just to figure out what Zoi feels and needs, if you technically don’t need to see all the needs, but only resolve the unmet ones. And if the devs bring back the slim HUD option from the earlier versions, I’ll stick with it forever.

The reason of autonomous action

I’d also like to see the reason of autonomous action to understand why Zoi started doing something on their own. For example, to learn that the reason for the action or interaction with another Zoi is an emotion, Zois nature, preference, memory, or scheduler, etc. (in the screenshots below you can see some examples from the video).

Smart and optional Daily Routine Scheduler

I’d also propose, instead of imposing daily routine patterns on the player, to integrate them with the Scheduler. In the same way as events, implement a toggle for routine auto-scheduling, provide pattern options by days of the week (for example, for working hours, night owl, early bird), and the cherry on top, which was shown in SmartZoi demo: record habits in logs and adjust an optimal Schedule, similar to the “A Zoi’s Day planned by On-Device LM” screenshot.

Reasons for the actions → Reasons for Schedule adjustments

Reference: NVIDIA Ace - Official Smart Zoi AI Co-Playable Character Reveal Trailer

[GDfromRivendell]

UPDATES

Daily Routine Scheduler

I’ve proposed a solution before here, but with this ref (RimWorld) and the mashup I can outline it clearly.

How about adding a full toggle option (turn on/off routine schedule items), as well as manual routine planning by filling time blocks (per hour) just like events in the “Edit Schedule” tab with options like ”sleep”, “meal”, “recreation”, “health”/“meditation”…for each day of the week?

Just like it was shown in the demo (NVIDIA Ace - Official Smart Zoi AI Co-Playable Character Reveal Trailer), Smart Zoi could create and adjust the daily schedule, and I also suggested this as an another toggle option ”Smart Zoi Schedule Planning”.

Family Chore Chart

There also came an idea about distributing household duties among family members, similar to the board shown in the reference above, where you can set checkboxes and priorities for actions like “childcare”, “cook”, “repair”, “clean”, so that all the micromanagement stays organized.

It’s called a Family Chore Chart, and it’s usually displayed on a whiteboard or a corkboard with stickers or little label pockets. It’s somewhat similar to an agenda calendar, but the horizontal rows represent family members instead of weeks or months.

So this kind of functional object could be placed in Zoi’s home and also open the UI when interacted with.

I tried adapting a real one into a Family Calendar format, and this is how it turned out below:

Friday (for example)
dad - vacuum, dishwasher, mom - pack lunches, school drop-off, grocery shopping, son - make bed, feed pets, water plants, homework, daughter - make bed, walk dogs, homework

The Reasons of Autonomous Actions

When hovering over any autonomous action, a pop‑up should appear showing the cause of the autonomous action, just like with an urge.

These include:

• motivations, based on an approximate personality type formed from:
  • personality traits
  • desires and fears
  • memories
  • instinctive and (un)conscious reactions
• lifestyle, quirks, attitudes (passion), preferences
• emotions
• needs
• event scheduler (routine scheduler, calendar, chores chart)

As always, I’m attaching a UI mockup with examples:

• needs: Order cappuccino (caused by low sleep gauge)
• scheduler: Go to Social Event (caused by the Scheduled Event)
• personality: Make Donation (caused by being Volunteer/ Altruist), Tidy up Appearance (caused by being Socialite (Competitive)
• emotion: Great Unpleasantly (caused by feeling Displeased)

[Moooody]

I like the UI for Smart Zoi Analisis and Reason for this Action. I don’t use smart zoi much so I don’t know how much is yours and how much is already in the game but I think these would be great adjustments/additions. Might compell me to go back to using smart zoi (once they get rid of the constant mirror checking bug!).

[GDfromRivendell]

Honestly? I remember in v0.2.0 even though SmartZoi crashed the game every 5 minutes, still behaved way more adequately, it recognized other Zois, their intentions, emotions, and so on. Now it seems like they updated it for Korean (in the previous update they rolled it back), but autonomy randomly throws out Make Donation, Tidy Up Appearance completely out of context, without a prompt, without the required traits (apparently because it’s no longer based on NVIDIA Ace, which it still was back when v0.3.0 was announced?)

That’s why I’m asking for at least some clarity on what’s going on with SmartZoi (-updated) autonomy and the routine scheduler in the game, it doesn’t feel smart.