8 ms·

First, I’d like to say I really love this product. Thanks for making this. Second, where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue i

by arriu 4y ago

First, I’d like to say I really love this product. Thanks for making this. Second, where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. Imagine playing Mass Effect or Skyrim but where you get to ask whatever and the NPC responds with something that fits within the space of possible answers based on the prompt that defined their existence.

hoseja 4y ago
I think it's "the space of possible answers" that's the struggle. It's hard not to start with a barbarian in a tavern and end up with a bunny space pirate in argentinian highschool in the space of five sentences.
wsgeorge 4y ago
My feeling is companies don't invest in this because there isn't much return they expect from it. If gamers are more interested in playing with other humans than interacting with in-game characters, spending a lot on the AI to make it work might not make sense economically. I'm no insider, but I imagine the same sort of reasoning is applied to when companies don't invest enough in opponent AI to make them continuously competitive: people want to play with other humans. But I suspect this will change if it's marketed well. I will like to see that happen!
- cbozeman 4y ago
  Let's found a startup, wsgeorge... Unreal Engine is popular because it removes the effort of designing and building a 3D engine from game creation (and it's my understanding that because it has fairly reasonable licensing agreement). PRATTLE, or Persistent Realistic AI for Talk and Text Language & Engagement, could be the Unreal Engine of procedurally generated NPC speech in games! And it already has a name... all we have to do is, you know... the hard work...
  - wsgeorge 4y ago
    Hah! Sounds like a plan! And I love that name ;)
corytheboyd 4y ago
If it were free text, sounds like a thing I would use once for the novelty then forget about, because it's not an entertaining gameplay feature. Maybe an AI could generate incidental dialog, things NPCs yell out in reaction to things around them, to keep it from always being from the same list of two or three reactions. Just my two cents. I want to play a well written and fun game, not a chat bot.
- arriu 4y ago
  Why not a bit of both. Feed dialogue options in and have the AI generate a response that matches their character.
  - wongarsu 4y ago
    At that point, why not just have a human write those responses? Every character using the same three lines doesn't seem like a technology problem. Getting voice acting out of the time-critical path by automating it might help, but I'm doubtful about the usefulness of AI-generated scripts.
  - corytheboyd 4y ago
    There are so many other really good use cases for AI, but human interaction just isn't one of them. And that's okay! Some AI ideas I think make a lot of sense in a video game off the top of my head: - Posters on walls - NPC to NPC conversations (overheard in a bar, etc.) - Flora/fauna generation - Loudspeaker announcements Anything part of story or lore, I'd rather have a team of good storytellers give me what they got.
- corytheboyd 4y ago
  I do just want to say it because if you don't clarify all possible context on the internet you're an absolutist: I'm really excited to see more AI in games over the coming years! It has soooo many potential applications
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Talk to NPCs for hours about their boring lives thatching roofs and keeping shops, until they get weirded out by all the questions. Yeah, doesn't really sound fun.
fho 4y ago
From what I read (on /r/gamedesign, /r/proceduralgeneration and Gamasutra) it's about control. The AAA studies leave nothing to chance when it is about the game play. Once "AI" speech comes to a level where the NPC will only answer with pre-sanctioned content they might jump onto the band wagon ... but seeing that it is very much possible to generate porn with "censored" stable diffusion ... we won't see "free" AIs in games any time soon.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  "AI" with pre-sanctioned content just sounds like Eliza-like chatbots [1] (a couple thousand pairs of regex-match to fitting answer). Those actually work great to create the impression of a conversation. I think those even were used in a couple games ages ago. But they are not very good at steering the player and keeping him on track, which is how dialog systems are usually used in game design. They might be useful in a truly open world where the player discovers the story themselves (maybe like Fallout 1/2), but the AAA gaming industry has largely abandoned that idea in favor of "linear scripted stories in an open world". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
- swyx 4y ago
  and imagine if plot leaks happen through an NPC... would ruin the game! ultimately we care more about our character than the NPC being "realistic".
  - Tao3300 4y ago
    This reminds me of the captors in Iron Man exposing plot spoilers, but only if you happen to understand Urdu.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  Won't you need to train it to tell what you want before it tells it?
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  If you slap an M rating on it why would that matter?
Bjartr 4y ago
> where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. I'd put good money on AAA studios actively working on this. Voice acting budgets make up a non-trivial portion of expenses and actively constrain the scope of games. Studios are definitely investing in this, game dev cycles just take a lot of time on top of the R&D.
- elcomet 4y ago
  This is solving a different problem, the voice acting budget problem cannot be solved with this type of thing. To solve the voice acting problem, you need realistic text to speech. This type of thing is solving the problem of generating infinite variation of text, which might make the NPC more realistic than hearing a series of predefined recordings. But you still have the problem of text2speech, you still need a realistic one if you want to include this into the game.
falcor84 4y ago
> where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. "Event[0]"[0] is based on a great implementation of a chatbot NPC/adversary, and there's a nice video by Game Maker's Toolkit explaining how they achieved it [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_0 [1] https://youtu.be/bCJw4hQkPj4 https://youtu.be/bCJw4hQkPj4
kstenerud 4y ago
Reminds me of eXistenz. https://youtu.be/fPqpv__NiD0?t=189 https://youtu.be/fPqpv__NiD0?t=189
arduinomancer 4y ago
I don't think that tech even exists For the answers to make sense the NPC needs to be consistent I've never seen one of these chat bots that doesn't produce occasional nonsensical answers There's also the problem that as the designer you don't even know what your NPC is going to tell the player You can do a bunch of testing but its still unpredictable

by arriu 4y ago

hoseja 4y ago

I think it's "the space of possible answers" that's the struggle. It's hard not to start with a barbarian in a tavern and end up with a bunny space pirate in argentinian highschool in the space of five sentences.

wsgeorge 4y ago

My feeling is companies don't invest in this because there isn't much return they expect from it. If gamers are more interested in playing with other humans than interacting with in-game characters, spending a lot on the AI to make it work might not make sense economically. I'm no insider, but I imagine the same sort of reasoning is applied to when companies don't invest enough in opponent AI to make them continuously competitive: people want to play with other humans. But I suspect this will change if it's marketed well. I will like to see that happen!

cbozeman 4y ago
Let's found a startup, wsgeorge... Unreal Engine is popular because it removes the effort of designing and building a 3D engine from game creation (and it's my understanding that because it has fairly reasonable licensing agreement). PRATTLE, or Persistent Realistic AI for Talk and Text Language & Engagement, could be the Unreal Engine of procedurally generated NPC speech in games! And it already has a name... all we have to do is, you know... the hard work...
- wsgeorge 4y ago
  Hah! Sounds like a plan! And I love that name ;)

corytheboyd 4y ago

If it were free text, sounds like a thing I would use once for the novelty then forget about, because it's not an entertaining gameplay feature. Maybe an AI could generate incidental dialog, things NPCs yell out in reaction to things around them, to keep it from always being from the same list of two or three reactions. Just my two cents. I want to play a well written and fun game, not a chat bot.

arriu 4y ago
Why not a bit of both. Feed dialogue options in and have the AI generate a response that matches their character.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  At that point, why not just have a human write those responses? Every character using the same three lines doesn't seem like a technology problem. Getting voice acting out of the time-critical path by automating it might help, but I'm doubtful about the usefulness of AI-generated scripts.
- corytheboyd 4y ago
  There are so many other really good use cases for AI, but human interaction just isn't one of them. And that's okay! Some AI ideas I think make a lot of sense in a video game off the top of my head: - Posters on walls - NPC to NPC conversations (overheard in a bar, etc.) - Flora/fauna generation - Loudspeaker announcements Anything part of story or lore, I'd rather have a team of good storytellers give me what they got.
corytheboyd 4y ago
I do just want to say it because if you don't clarify all possible context on the internet you're an absolutist: I'm really excited to see more AI in games over the coming years! It has soooo many potential applications
Tao3300 4y ago
Talk to NPCs for hours about their boring lives thatching roofs and keeping shops, until they get weirded out by all the questions. Yeah, doesn't really sound fun.

fho 4y ago

From what I read (on /r/gamedesign, /r/proceduralgeneration and Gamasutra) it's about control. The AAA studies leave nothing to chance when it is about the game play. Once "AI" speech comes to a level where the NPC will only answer with pre-sanctioned content they might jump onto the band wagon ... but seeing that it is very much possible to generate porn with "censored" stable diffusion ... we won't see "free" AIs in games any time soon.

wongarsu 4y ago
"AI" with pre-sanctioned content just sounds like Eliza-like chatbots [1] (a couple thousand pairs of regex-match to fitting answer). Those actually work great to create the impression of a conversation. I think those even were used in a couple games ages ago. But they are not very good at steering the player and keeping him on track, which is how dialog systems are usually used in game design. They might be useful in a truly open world where the player discovers the story themselves (maybe like Fallout 1/2), but the AAA gaming industry has largely abandoned that idea in favor of "linear scripted stories in an open world". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
swyx 4y ago
and imagine if plot leaks happen through an NPC... would ruin the game! ultimately we care more about our character than the NPC being "realistic".
- Tao3300 4y ago
  This reminds me of the captors in Iron Man exposing plot spoilers, but only if you happen to understand Urdu.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
Won't you need to train it to tell what you want before it tells it?
adamsmith143 4y ago
If you slap an M rating on it why would that matter?

Bjartr 4y ago

> where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. I'd put good money on AAA studios actively working on this. Voice acting budgets make up a non-trivial portion of expenses and actively constrain the scope of games. Studios are definitely investing in this, game dev cycles just take a lot of time on top of the R&D.

elcomet 4y ago
This is solving a different problem, the voice acting budget problem cannot be solved with this type of thing. To solve the voice acting problem, you need realistic text to speech. This type of thing is solving the problem of generating infinite variation of text, which might make the NPC more realistic than hearing a series of predefined recordings. But you still have the problem of text2speech, you still need a realistic one if you want to include this into the game.

falcor84 4y ago

> where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. "Event[0]"[0] is based on a great implementation of a chatbot NPC/adversary, and there's a nice video by Game Maker's Toolkit explaining how they achieved it [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_0 [1] https://youtu.be/bCJw4hQkPj4 https://youtu.be/bCJw4hQkPj4

kstenerud 4y ago

Reminds me of eXistenz. https://youtu.be/fPqpv__NiD0?t=189 https://youtu.be/fPqpv__NiD0?t=189

arduinomancer 4y ago

I don't think that tech even exists For the answers to make sense the NPC needs to be consistent I've never seen one of these chat bots that doesn't produce occasional nonsensical answers There's also the problem that as the designer you don't even know what your NPC is going to tell the player You can do a bunch of testing but its still unpredictable