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Software Engineering vocabulary · Architecture, Design Patterns and Graphics

NPC

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˌen piː ˈsiː/abbreviationCore term

In software engineering, NPC means: Short for non-player character: any character in the game that is controlled by the computer, not by a player, such as a shopkeeper, a quest giver or an enemy guard.

In Turkish: NPC, oyuncu olmayan karakter

How it is used

Said letter by letter: N-P-C. Designers talk about NPC behavior, dialogue and schedules; programmers about NPC AI and pathfinding. Some teams use NPC only for friendly characters and call hostile ones enemies or mobs.

Example sentences

  1. The NPCs in the market should react when the player draws a weapon.

  2. We gave every NPC a daily schedule, so the town feels alive.

Common collocations

  • NPC dialogue
  • NPC behavior
  • friendly NPC
  • quest-giving NPC
  • NPC AI
  • navmeshShort for navigation mesh: a simplified map of the walkable surfaces in a level that game AI uses to find paths and move characters around obstacles.
  • spawnTo make a character, enemy or item appear in the game world, or to appear in it. A spawn point is the place where this happens.
  • open worldA large game world that players can explore freely and in almost any order, instead of moving through a fixed series of levels.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Architecture, Design Patterns and Graphics

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