True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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MrFlibble
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by MrFlibble »

Hurricane Otter wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:27 pm
MrFlibble wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:34 am Well, each playthrough in vanilla DF is already unique and different, isn't it?
No. ;)
How so? I don't remember having identical characters or doing exactly the same things after the Privateer's Hold each time I'd start a new game.
Hurricane Otter wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:27 pm We are lightyears ahead of 1990s chatbots.
Hurricane Otter wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:27 pmPeople still think about chatbots as if it were 2005
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.

I did not imply that chatbots of the past are in any way comparable to the current deep learning AIs -- this would be just incorrect.

What I'm saying is that when you suggest implementing a system in Daggerfall when the player chats with NPCs, this could be done back in 1996, with very crude methods compared to what can be created today, but still. But the developers chose not to do it. And I think there were reasons why it was decided that way, based on how the game was structured in general.
Hurricane Otter wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:27 pm But if it doesn't make any sense to you, the idea of an AI with human-level intelligence acting as built-in dungeon master, that can create custom dialogue and custom quests and even campaigns in the style of Dungeons and Dragons, in a game which was literally modeled off Dungeons and Dragons... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is there any evidence that the AI in its current state can act as a human DM?

There's a topic at Doomworld where users prompt ChatGPT to invent and describe a map layout for them, and then they map it after those directions. The output is sometimes hilarious, but the descriptions it produces are for the most part bland and generic. I know this might not be the best example and possibly not representative of the current, cutting-edge version of ChatGPT or a similar AI, but still.

You've not answered any of my questions in the above post, namely: even if you have a human-level AI running the game, what advantages will there be compared to a carefully made algorithmic quest system? Alright, let's assume the AI can play make-believe and give a unique voice to each NPC -- although there are so many of them and interaction is generally so limited that they don't really need unique voices. But okay, that might be a nice cosmetic change.

But what about quests? Imagine a human DM being able to put together a quest on the run as you play. Wouldn't all the quests still be, go there, fetch that, or kill monster/character X, or talk to NPC what's-their-name? Doesn't this system of limitations already undermine what could be considered unique quests? What else could you propose? What could the AI do that cannot be done by quest authors?

From my knowledge of how actual tabletop RPGs are played, a serious DM will prepare an interesting and unique story in advance, invent various locations and parts of the setting and then adjust to what the players do (or try to railroad them into the predefined story, depending on the situation). In Daggerfall, the equivalent of this is the main quest plus the game world itself as it implements the playing mechanics (overseen by the DM in tabletop RPGs). Do you intend the AI to make up a different main quest on the fly?

Also, aren't players supposed to engage in a little make-believe themselves? You could imagine any story on top of what's happening on the screen if you so like. In fact, I find that Daggerfall is more suited for this kind of roleplaying exactly because there are obvious limitations to its realism, like relatively simplified visuals, as compared for example with Morrowind which tries to be more realistic but falls short (IMO) in many areas to produce an impression of a living world.

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Jay_H
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Jay_H »

I don't think it's possible NOW, not with OpenAI holding the keys to the kingdom and no viable open-source alternative. But keep this in your head as you read the news about AI in 2023 and 2024.
Sure, I'd be happy to see how things develop. Like I said, current models aren't enough... but I'm sure we'll reach the point when entire worlds are generated on the fly by DM AIs :lol:

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Orbarth
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Orbarth »

It will certainly happen at some point, someone will figure out how to have an AI managing a complete indepth DM role in a RPG type of game delivering npc, quest and worldbuilding on the fly .

I remember the potential people saw with the old dungeon ai.

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Werewolf
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Werewolf »

Orbarth wrote: Wed Apr 05, 2023 11:52 am It will certainly happen at some point, someone will figure out how to have an AI managing a complete indepth DM role in a RPG type of game delivering npc, quest and worldbuilding on the fly .

I remember the potential people saw with the old dungeon ai.
In many ways AI is the natural progression of Daggerfall, the game’s ambition is only fully realized with AI that procedurally generated endless quests and such. Someone needs to implement AI into Daggerfall and the game will explode in popularity and recognition

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Werewolf
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Werewolf »

whoare365q wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 10:58 am One of the biggest complaints about Daggerfall is that it gets stale. The quests are copy-pasted versions of each other with mad-libbed names and dungeons.
LLM architecture could solve that problem. Unique, one-of-a-kind quests generated on the fly by a built-in AI! Not just "go here kill this," but generated stories with twists and fully formed characters. The possibilities!
Once again, AI implementation would be the natural progression of Daggerfall. Would absolutely love AI-generated quests, would make the game have unlimited replayability (and its already a game where you can play the same character for a long time, going on adventures in the huge world).

Hurricane Otter
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Hurricane Otter »

For consideration! Skyrim already being modded to use LLMs. ;)

https://twitter.com/rpnickson/status/16 ... 3403366405

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MrFlibble
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by MrFlibble »

Alrighty, I've watched this video today:

I can't say I'm overly impressed, although perhaps that I haven't played the original Skyrim without this makes me under-appreciate the results.

Oh, and one thing. There's that part of the dialogue where the female merchant casually confesses to selling skooma and then goes on to justify this when inquired by the player. It's like the AI took the argument from modern libertarian discourse, which sounds extremely off when viewed in the context of a mediaeval fantasy game (IMO). I suppose if developers should really use AIs like that in games, they'd want to at least fine-tune them to roleplay characters in a convincing way appropriate to the setting.

Hurricane Otter
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Hurricane Otter »

MrFlibble wrote: Tue May 02, 2023 8:40 pm Alrighty, I've watched this video today:

I can't say I'm overly impressed, although perhaps that I haven't played the original Skyrim without this makes me under-appreciate the results.

Oh, and one thing. There's that part of the dialogue where the female merchant casually confesses to selling skooma and then goes on to justify this when inquired by the player. It's like the AI took the argument from modern libertarian discourse, which sounds extremely off when viewed in the context of a mediaeval fantasy game (IMO). I suppose if developers should really use AIs like that in games, they'd want to at least fine-tune them to roleplay characters in a convincing way appropriate to the setting.
When I read this post, I imagine if I were to apply the same logic and reasoning to seeing the Wright Brothers' biplane in 1903: "Well, you know, I can't say I'm overly impressed. It was only off the ground for 59 seconds, and in that time, it didn't even manage to travel two tenths of a mile. And this 'aeroplane' only accommodates one person, lying down! I don't quite see how this 'aviation' thing is as revolutionary as you insist it is. Perhaps it might have some applications to the world, but I'm not convinced."

Obviously it's rough. It's a Skyrim mod done in someone's unpaid free time, which is using ChatGPT's developer API as the backend. But it's a proof of concept! 😊

Let me feed your imagination. As these systems miniaturize, they can run natively inside the application or as a background process instead of having to interface with an API and query OpenAI with a delayed prompt-and-response across the Internet. That means less latency, which means no "Let me think," which means free-form and fully interactive conversations with an entity that has human-level intelligence. Something like Meta's leaked LLaMA could probably be adapted to a task like this already. If you train the model on a diet of Elder Scrolls fantasy and lore, give it some RLHF, and create overriding archetypes and rulesets for law-abiding NPCs, you can pretty easily get them to not talk about things like skooma. These are really miniscule, solvable problems. The point isn't that it's ready for primetime now, but this *is* the future of video games, and probably the future of all human-computer interaction eventually.

Hurricane Otter
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by Hurricane Otter »

Incidentally: Anyone want to place bets on how much longer high-poly 3D rendering is going to be a thing? I genuinely expect this to go the way of the dodo in the next ten to fifteen years. It seems fairly obvious at this point that high-res textures on top of high-poly models isn't the future of graphics. Rather, I think the industry will revert to ultra low-poly stick figures or even sprites, with a real-time procedurally generated AI coat of paint splashed on top. Midjourney at 60 frames per second. True-to-life graphical fidelity with less processing overhead and better fps. That's ancillary to the LLM discussion we've been having, but it's just another facet of the same revolution we're on the cusp of.

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MrFlibble
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Re: True Radiant quests with GPT and LLMs?

Post by MrFlibble »

Hurricane Otter wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 3:09 am When I read this post, I imagine if I were to apply the same logic and reasoning to seeing the Wright Brothers' biplane in 1903
Hurricane Otter wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 3:09 am Let me feed your imagination.
Hurricane Otter wrote: Thu Mar 30, 2023 3:27 pm Pardon me if this is presumptuous. I think, if I am to guess from reading your post, you are maybe not aware of the current watershed moment we are experiencing in tech right now
Interesting how you seem to picture me as some kind of narrow, backward and conservative person who is not really aware of the implications the AI tech development are presenting us with, and is still thinking with some 90s tech cliches at best. Let me dispel this image.

I've been playing around with ESRGAN AI upscales since 2018-2019, and with waifu2x prior to that, searching for ways to improve the look of old game assets. And even despite the flaws and shortcomings of the technology back then (ESRGAN was never developed to upscale game sprites in the first place), it was immediately obvious to me that what we were seeing was a fundamental breakthrough in computer technology, a paradigm shift or whatever you call it. Since then, neural network AIs have made even more progress, with astounding performance in generating images, which is being slowly adapted to the needs of computer game art -- slowly, apparently, because we have to learn a great deal how to harness this new power.

I've found useful applications for ESRGAN myself, but this does not mean that I uncritically accept anything made with AIs as an improvement over the status quo. For example, out of the many neural upscales of textures and sprites, a lot are not very much to my liking (to put it mildly), even despite the best efforts made by the people who made them. I think that Vanilla Enhanced is a good example of an upscale that stays true to the original mid-90s aesthetic, while Pure Vanilla Extract, with all due respect to the author, is not my thing at all.

Back to the use of language learning models in Daggerfall. You seem to be very excited about the very possibility of chatting with NPCs. I've been playing this game from time to time since the early 2010s I guess, but personally I've never felt the need for such talk -- although admittedly the built-in "dialogue" system in Daggerfall is incredibly limited even by the standards of early-90s (or even late-80s) CRPGs. I would say that this is a forgivable flaw because the game is slanted towards more action and the player generally being on their own, rather than character interaction. I would probably not mind a kind of dialogue system that would allow the player to discover more about the game world and lore, for example by typing keywords as in more traditional RPGs. At present I cannot really imagine any gameplay benefit besides being simply a gimmick feature for AI-driven conversations in Daggerfall. You can always prove me wrong if you provide some examples of how you view this.

I can contrast this impression of mine with my experience of playing Morrowind, where characters are more fleshed out (again, in spite of obvious flaws and breaking suspension of disbelief) and more grounded in the game world. I can tell you that for certain because I have had imaginary conversations with some of those characters and generally tended to treat them as persons and not as functions, which many Daggerfall NPCs tend to become for me after a while -- no doubt, a side effect of the copy-paste game world, and the limited reactions that billboard NPCs can have to your actions.

I think I would certainly appreciate the possibility of freeform dialogue with certain Morrowind characters, including Caius Cosades, Divayth Fyr and of course the last Dwemer, Yagrum Bagarn. There is so much I'd want to ask probably, but here's one thing that I'm thinking about: even if the AI is trained to know all about the existing lore, it's inevitably going to improvise some things which are not found in the lore. I suppose that for the sake of a thought experiment we can imagine that this kind of AI is capable of supporting conversation on the same level as a human being, so essentially one can picture this AI as a person with extensive knowledge of TES lore who roleplays being different in-game characters. When this AI is asked questions or talks upon topics where it needs to improvise, for the lack of established lore on certain topics, is it not likely that different users might get different responses to the same questions? And if yes, would this not make the AI an unreliable narrator of sorts? I'm genuinely interested to know about this. (I'm aware that this might be viewed as a positive thing though, as a factor of increasing replayability.)

I'm also thinking about the possible ethical concerns related to using AIs. In a post above you stated that you envision future AIs as effectively gaining human-level sentience if I understood this correctly. Would this not mean that you'd need to make sure that such an AI willingly participates in roles like being a perpetual DM in a video game, and how exactly is this going to be determined? Or the question of supposed free will and consent of AIs not a real issue?

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