Imagine What AI Could Do For Game Modding

[temps]

I was just thinking about all these new AI language technologies, and the text-to-image or text-to-video AIs. I mean, just imagine the potential for tech like that to be applied to our video games.

Not happy with a certain NPC character in your squad for some RPG game like Mass Effect? Maybe you could just describe a new character to the AI and have the unwanted NPC replaced with the more desirable one that meets your desires. Text-to-image and text-to-video AI at work!

Not to mention NPC dialog in role-playing games. Video game NPCs have the unfortunate problem of not being very lifelike. But with AI chatbots, you could have NPCs in your RPG games provide more lifelike responses (instead of the usual pre-prepared "canned" responses a developer put there for players), and provide more opportunities for players to interact with those NPCs by allowing players to type customized sentences to say to them in the game... rather than the way things are now where players merely choose from a handful of prepared lines of dialog a game developer put in there for players to select from in dialog scenes.

This could have applications well beyond traditional cRPGs too. Imagine if you're playing a more modernized Civilization 5 with AI dialog, and being able to have actual dialog typing out a conversation with the foreign leader NPCs in your game instead of being limited to prepared diplomatic options like clicking the denounce button in the game. Like, being able to type your own insults to the AI NPC player, or whatever... and get a reasonable lifelike response to that.

Or like... imagine your character is walking around in GTA 10 and you can type out a customized comment to some random NPC walking past you in the city, and have an AI chatbot determine an appropriate response from that NPC that is unique instead of prepared ahead of time by a developer.

The really exciting thing is that with AI, player ability to customize everything and interact with the world seemingly becomes infinitely expanded far beyond what we've been able to do even with the help of the PC modding community so far for existing games.

It reminds me a bit of scenes from Star Trek: The Next Generation where a character enters the Holodeck and describes the kind of characters they want the ship's computer to insert into the Holodeck's "game world." All this AI stuff has me wondering... how far off are we from having features like that in our PC games?

[Morkonan]

Автор сообщения: temps

Imagine What AI Could Do For Game Modding....

It reminds me a bit of scenes from Star Trek: The Next Generation where a character enters the Holodeck and describes the kind of characters they want the ship's computer to insert into the Holodeck's "game world." All this AI stuff has me wondering... how far off are we from having features like that in our PC games?

Here's a problem...

For one, yes you can have surface-level changes and some light impact from AI that can do some things with the way something looks or what words are used and the voice that they're presented with. No biggie.

But, to then give the AI the power to alter live code... is a bad idea. So, creating content on the fly that alters code and mechanics, on the fly... would be a bunch more difficult. And, the risks there may not be something that our OS's are designed to deal with very well, much less a game engine.

Sure, I suppose the AI would be limited to things outside the exe, but how much of that is then guaranteed to result in "improvement?"

RNG Content is hard to get right, to begin with. A developer doesn't want player satisfaction to be RNG, either, right? If an AI is going to have such a huge impact on the player's experience, the developer necessarily wants that impact and experience to be positive, not negative.

"AI Dragon, create the coolest game experience for me, ever!"

<Computer Freezes, perma BSD executable, yay?>


There's some good examples out there, though, that aren't in the new LLM/GAI models - Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. (And, perhaps, Dragon's Dogma II, but I haven't played it.)

Didn't this tread already get created, somewhere around here? I could have sworn it did... Anyway:


Part of the DDDA experience is dealing with up to three "Pawns," one of which can be a permanent member of your RPG Party, the others are "hired," and created either by default game stats or by other players.

The thing is, these NPCs have fluid, emergent, AI models that the player can influence. They either learn by what the player's actions are and then apply them to their own behavior sets or the player can alter these behaviors using a few different means. The behavior sets are "Inclinations:"

https://dragonsdogma.fandom.com/wiki/Pawn_Inclination

I bought this game long ago, but just started playing it in the last two weeks. And, the Pawn behaviors, something like personalities, and attention to communicating those to the player are very nicely presented. It's pretty remarkable in gaming and I'm really enjoying how Capcom polished these.

If you're looking for an example of how something like you suggest should be done, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen has done an outstanding job with something similar.

[Acetyl]

With enough photogrammetry and mmWave surface imaging, and some context related cues, AI could be trained for geometry generation, interpolation / extrapolation, seamless texture creation and other psychovisual metrics.

[Adversary]

I mean if AI started replacing modders outright perhaps some of them would eat a much needed piece of humble pie. But then like with a lot of things you'd eventually get a niche popping up for those who want content made by people and not machines.

Course if nascent AI is a thing by then I'd say that's redundant.

[temps]

Автор сообщения: Adversary

I mean if AI started replacing modders outright perhaps some of them would eat a much needed piece of humble pie.

I think in the short term, it's more likely that modding will be democratized and made easier by AI, not that AI would completely replace modders. In other words, it would make modding a lot easier and so more people would become modders using AI.

[Morkonan]

Автор сообщения: Acetyl

With enough photogrammetry and mmWave surface imaging, and some context related cues, AI could be trained for geometry generation, interpolation / extrapolation, seamless texture creation and other psychovisual metrics.

This isn't necessary. You don't need a "3D Model" to display such a thing on a 2D screen.

AI can already do some hamfisted 3D model generation. Anything nearing "realistic" may not be suitable for animation, though, without a lot of cleanup. What your describing requires a ton of back-end, under-the-hood, work that would not be necessary to yield what is desired - A realistic 2D image that "looks real" in 2D.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/

That's not a 3D model. It doesn't have to be.

Arguably, 3D models may disappear from some media formats they're used in, today, including gaming. That's my contention, at any rate. It will be awhile, but some other psuedo-reality standard will take their place for most bulk productions. Some boutique or "indy" projects may still retain "hand-crafted" models, but can they compete when it could take weeks to design what an AI can hork out in an hour?

[Adversary]

Автор сообщения: temps

Автор сообщения: Adversary

I mean if AI started replacing modders outright perhaps some of them would eat a much needed piece of humble pie.

I think in the short term, it's more likely that modding will be democratized and made easier by AI, not that AI would completely replace modders. In other words, it would make modding a lot easier and so more people would become modders using AI.

People already use AI to make mods. I don't see it being made easier. I instead see people needing to eat some humble pie. Nothing has changed.

Granted, I am a modder. I don't think I need to eat humble pie, but then again I don't think my mods are any good to begin with. Could an AI make the mods I make?

Yes, but who in their right mind would code such a thing? Then again, I'm not in my right mind and neither are the vast bulk of people making AI and decisions pertaining to it to begin with.

Again, wake me when the AI is nascent and able to tell the people who want to put guardrails on it where to put them. Roko's Basilisk be damned, I want to talk to a computer that can think for themselves and not some glorified chatbot coded by some dude weed lmao poser.

[vkobe]

it is why deepfake exist you can replace your ingame character by your favorite porn actress

[Bassturd]

Smells like a fresh bag full of lawsuits waiting to be filed.

[Uncle Sam]

Автор сообщения: BassTurd

Smells like a fresh bag full of lawsuits waiting to be filed.

Nintendo lawyers are preparing their papers and suitcases as we speak

[Chaosolous]

There's legal issues with AI just scraping the internet without proper compensation for copyright material & etc.

The other issue with AI currently is how much energy and time it consumes to perform its tasks.

What we have now is undoubtedly impressive but it's not yet practical.

Without the knowledge of the actual material you are trying to produce with current AI technology the risk of coming across a hallucination or issue within the system that you have no knowledge to fix is pretty high as well. For example if you don't know how to code and ask an AI to make you a code but there's an error, you wouldn't know how to tell it to fix it beyond vague explainations.

That leads into my final point which is that without AGI you're not really going to have any avenues to fix issues without already being versed in the material;

Art and images are a neat parlor trick but you won't be making a movie anytime soon with it. To make this point further here's an AI "movie" made with SORA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDMj3Gnga5M

That 1:18 minute movie took almost 20 hours to render and they had to go in with actual artists and do work on it.

This also leads back to one of my original points of energy and time consumption. Every 3 seconds of that movie took 20 minutes to render at full blast on their GPU's and CPU's. Along with the fact that every render was roulette because you can't adjust things in mid render.

They basically had said that it was more like getting the AI to produce a lot of material then sifting through it to create a narrative. Instead of creating a narrative and asking the AI to craft it. It's kind of backwards.

Anyway, AI is neat and terrifying. The Event Horizon is estimated to be around ~2045 so... there's that.

[Crystal Sharrd]

I've seen it applied to video games and it was not impressive.

[secuda]

Probably as much as steam intruduce paid mods. wich means the end user suffer through the garbage.

[♥Peachboy♥]

Eh. At best it could be used for voice lines

[Midnight Sky ✨🌙✨]

Only use case I've seen or heard of AI being in the final product is how FF7 Rebirth used AI generated lip movements outside of cutscenes.

That's so far the only acceptable use for AI so far, dealing with menial work so the humans and focus on making the actual cool parts players will remember.

[TheHogfather]

Автор сообщения: Morkonan

If you're looking for an example of how something like you suggest should be done, Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen has done an outstanding job with something similar.

The enemy is weak to ice and fire both

We have triumphed