Join devRant
Do all the things like
++ or -- rants, post your own rants, comment on others' rants and build your customized dev avatar
Sign Up
Pipeless API
From the creators of devRant, Pipeless lets you power real-time personalized recommendations and activity feeds using a simple API
Learn More
-
@Demolishun The 4th Coming dialogue system was rad as fuck I think
God I wish that was a thing still
there was no quest log, you had to go come up to NPCs and type stuff to them and they would notice keywords you said and if you said the right magical keyword it would make events happen. so like if another player (cuz it was a MMO) tells you some dude stole a ring and you mention the person he stole it from or the name of the ring that guy was like "fuck!" 🤣 and it made the whole ring quest progress. in reality to find out about the thing you had to go fight the devil or something first and he mentioned his ring is missing and you could've pieced together who was in his dungeon last -
oh also the NPCs and players all typed in general chat within earshot
the npc would only reply to who began talking to him (and wouldn't talk to multiple people at once, you had to wait)
so basically if you saw someone mention the ring to him and then you got curious and mentioned the ring to him, boom.
fuck that was so good -
there was other stuff like some angels would deny if you interrogated them about concepts. only they would only deny twice. so if you kept mentioning the concept over and over again they gave in.
so basically someone gave you a tidbit of rumour and you went around town trying to figure out who dun it
and they would deny. unless you actually kept hammering them lmao. but the other NPCs genuinely didn't know.
BUT
AGAIN
cuz this was at the beginner temple, you would've had a high chance of having seen a more seasoned player interrogate this angel when you were a newbie, so when you were wizened and had to find out who done it you may have had some hints
goddamn I loved that chat system
you can't do that with quest logs or button dialogue systems. it gives everything away and then it's a boring sleep walk -
@Demolishun The argument, I believe, is that it is a kind of weak code since there's keywords, the order and weight of tokens matter, how you separate tokens affects the output, etcetera.
But it is, most definitively, nowhere near as technical. Thus, I reject the term, even though I may probably be taken seriously if I were to use it.
Making NPCs talk is fun though. Have you seen that Skyrim mod that generates dialogue responses from text input? It's a little dull but I like the idea. -
@jestdotty yeah exactly, that thing.
Why are we writing dialogue by hand like a bunch of fucks? We should be generating that shit. GET ME SOME COFFEE. -
@Liebranca Unless voice tech gets better fast I plan on using text in convos. The reason is the gameplay shouldn't be limited to your voice actor budget. You can get around this with AI voice gen tech, but you are still limited to pregenned voice dialog. Which is limited. Text generation is so cheap realtime. I like the idea that characters can grow and get more dialog.
-
@Demolishun Maybe it's because I spedrun Legend of Mana and the Narnia books as a kid, but I like having nothing but text. That way I can imagine what the fantasy people are saying, and how serious they are in their delivery. Current voice generation is OK but it kills my ~ i m m e r s i o n ~ too easily. We'll see if it gets better...
-
@Liebranca I think the next big wave for voice will be emotional inflections. Then the next big wave (I hope) is realtime generation in games. No more gigabytes of sound files. I am thinking I might record my voice and make a model. Then license rights to use in games. Could be risky if someone tries to pin a crime on me though. Could also be reasonable doubt...
-
@jestdotty Just imagine the chaotic potential of having access to generators that cannot be distinguished from reality. Mere revitionism is enough to execute soft retcons of world history, so what would even happen with shit like that?
Utter annihilation of truth. And taking bronze age shitposting to the next level. -
@Liebranca we all gonna be like "Ted kaczynski motherfucker"
yeah basically
on the other hand malicious people are generally stupid and lazy, and you need to try real hard to get this stuff right
I'm just hoping people will forget about all this. it's actually kind of surprising to me how frequently humans forget the possibilities of technologies. those who are vicious generally lack curiosity and once it's out of the public sphere it's basically safe -
@jestdotty Like my mama says: "evil makes stupid" c:
Some time ago, when exactly the fuck I don't quite remember and promise I never will unless just the right amount of ass is provided in a timely fashion, I start going about how I want to work on some utils to make writing prompts easier.
What I do remember and will remind you with strongly renewed vigor is the fact that I signed a legally-binding document to grant the general public a full pardon for my own ritualistic assassination should I ever use the term "prompt-engineering" unironically.
This pact still holds, and were I to break my solemn oath, then I will hold you fully accountable every single second I find myself still breathing.
Anyhoo, today was the first test of my resolve, for I have implemented both the stupid preprocessor and the local database prototype that allows it to fetch long ass definitions from disk, and both have been published (main: https://github.com/Liebranca/...).
I must admit to you all that though I have not failed, I felt weakness for a second when filling out tags in the repo description, as only "prompt-engineering" was recognized as a legit tag, and not "prompt-writing". In that moment, I almost gave in to temptation, as the accursed Satan whispered in my ear, appealing to my desire for recognition.
However, I reminded this ill buttrape daemon that their fate lies in the burning fires of hell, and as a result was allowed to resist it's alluring diabolical seduction. And for not giving in to greed, I have kept my life, my honor, and my anal virginity.
Also I wrote *some* documentation, it's shit but it's something.
rant
perl is a perfectly valid school of magic