Comment by veggieroll | Hacker News Reader

Comment by veggieroll | Hacker News Reader

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I think there's a really interesting opportunity for a synthesis of the classic NPC dialog menu and a fully freeform LLM character.

Namely, the dialog would still be fixed, where there's a pre-defined flow of the conversation and fixed set of facts to deliver to the player. But the LLM could generate variations on it each time so it's never exactly the same twice. And it could add more character so the NPC gets frustrated if you keep asking it over and over. Or, it tries to dumb it down for you. Or, it gets sick of you and just tells you point blank: Look, you need to know XYZ. That's all I have for you.

Namely, the dialog would still be fixed, where there's a pre-defined flow of the conversation and fixed set of facts to deliver to the player. But the LLM could generate variations on it each time so it's never exactly the same twice. And it could add more character so the NPC gets frustrated if you keep asking it over and over. Or, it tries to dumb it down for you. Or, it gets sick of you and just tells you point blank: Look, you need to know XYZ. That's all I have for you.

Or if it's important pre-scripted text you could put a different colored border around it or include an option like, "What was that thing about the thing that you said" as a permanent option to allow the player to re-trigger the script if needed.

I like this idea a lot. Alternatively, perhaps a dialogue journaling system that records the important bits for you and can be reviewed at any time, instead of badgering the character in-game to repeat things.

No, this is smart, because then the journal could also be the thing that records all of the AI's made up on the spot sayings.

If you indexed that with the unique character descriptor then the LLM can be programed to re-read the relevant data other iterations of itself made and keep the characters somewhat consistent.

Maybe allow it other information like:

"How many in game days since last conversation" after a random number would cause the npc to forget the character "What major events have happened in the world, if any" "What events have happened in this area" "Generic gossip related to this character" "What other NPCs are doing at this time"

All of these combined into summary paragraphs would go a long way to influence what topics would be on the characters mind while also not requiring that every NPC has a perfect knowledge of all events or that the game designers have the script everything out.

Could also cause some interesting emergent gameplay, both naturally by the game world evolving over time as the characters play in it, moreso if it's a MMO.

Could also be fun to do things like advance the game clock 1,000 years and see what happens to the npcs.

What if the world is fully destructible? What if the NPCs can build new houses, expand cities, engage in trade? What if NPCs can die of natural causes, get married, have children that are genetic descendants of their parents? What if NPCs undertook quests and occasionally advanced the plot all on their own?

What if you were just one person among hundreds of thousands in the game world?

I'd love to play something like that.

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