Coelacanth

Well, what I’m working on is a mod for STALKER Anomaly, and most large models already seem to have good enough awareness of the STALKER games setting. I can imagine it’s a much bigger challenge if you’re making your own game set in your own unique world. I still need to have some minor game information inserted into the prompt, but only like a paragraph detailing some important game mechanics.

Getting longer term interactions to work right is actually what I’ve been working on the last few weeks, implementing a long-term memory for game characters using LLM calls to condense raw events into summaries that can be fed back into future prompts to retain context. The basics of this system was actually already in place created by the original mod author, I just expanded it into a true full on hierarchical memory system with long- and mid-term memories.

But it turns out creating and refining the LLM prompts for memory management is harder than implementing the memory function itself!

I’m actually also working on a project using LLMs to talk to NPCs. Though this one doesn’t use local models but online models called through a proxy using API keys, which lets you use much larger and better models.

But yeah it’s been interesting digging deep into the exact and precise construction of the prompts to get the NPCs talking and behaving exactly like you want them, and be as real and lifelike as possible.

There are mods that implement it, don’t know about games. Skyrim has an AI driven follower mod and STALKER Anomaly has the TALKER mod.

They do have a publisher: Kepler Interactive. But so does Blue Prince in fairness, it was published by Raw Fury.

What constitutes an indie game will always be debated, because it’s almost impossible to define it through black and white rules. If Kojima created a game with a budget of $300m, a cast of Hollywood A-listers and a development team of 200 people and published it himself, would that be an appropriate nomination for the Indie Awards?

Larian self published BG3, should that have been nominated for Indie Awards?

This feels kind of more like finding a valid excuse after the indie-or-not debate and backlash, but fuck it. Blue Prince is a great Indie GOTY (the correct choice imo).

I don’t think E33 should have qualified as an indie game to begin with.

I don’t want any gifts, I just wanted to say you’re an amazing person and this is a great initiative ♥️

Enjoy your time with it! Those moments of seeing something in game and going “wait wait wait I know what this is!” *rifles through notes furiously* were my favourite part.

Without spoiling anything I will say this: I recommend taking actual notes. I did it in a physical notebook but digital has the benefit of being searchable. It’s possible to get by with only screenshots, but I really recommend both and I thought the note taking itself was so enjoyable. I find physical note taking helps with memorization too, and every time you make progress because of something you’ve taken notes of is such a dopamine rush.

I absolutely love Blue Prince! Such an amazing experience and a unique and innovative game. I hope you’re enjoying the note taking and progressively losing your mind!

I haven’t really played anything the past week, beyond playtesting changes I’m making to the TALKER mod for STALKER: Anomaly (the mod using AI to let you talk to NPCs). This little project has grown considerably and I have a lot of writing left to do before it’s fully ready I think. But early signs are positive. I also have some more prompt engineering to do. I’m getting much better and more interesting responses from NPCs now than with the base mod - which had extremely basic and barebones instructions for the LLM.

For me in general I think FPS games have aged the worst. There is such a big part of the pleasure that comes from animations, gunplay, recoil implementation, enemy AI, ragdolls, hit effects… I have a much easier time playing something like Fallout 1&2 - which are even older but have mechanics that are more timeless.

But yeah it was definitely a time in gaming where technological advancements felt like they were happening at an exponentially increasing pace. Comparing games from 2000 with just a few years later is like night and day. Splinter Cell came out only two years after NOLF and that’s a stealth game that’s aged spectacularly. And even Monolith’s own F.E.A.R. came out in 2005 and feels like one of the first truly modern shooters - one that still really holds up well.

The writing, setting and concept were charming and the art direction is good which means despite being polygonally challenged I don’t mind the way it looks. Great soundtrack too. That being said I tried playing it earlier this year for the first time and it just struck me as one of those games that have aged like fine milk mechanically. It really really wants you to be a stealthy spy sneaking around and being non-lethal yet the stealth gameplay felt terrible, and going guns blazing wasn’t particularly fun either as gunplay in these old games is hard for me to enjoy having gotten used to modern FPSes. And it doesn’t help that the guns blazing approach forces you to listen to a constant soundtrack of blaring alarms, which frankly was hard for me to deal with.

I couldn’t make myself finish it despite really wanting to be able to say I’ve played it, but maybe I’ll give it another go some day. At least I don’t think it’s all that long.

I know it was very original and different back in the day, but is it really one of the “best game ever”?

Ah. I guess of the Sigmas it’s the least offensive version. It’s a shame still though as NGB is the perfect version. But yeah I momentarily forgot about it being an Xbox exclusive.

Great game though!

Does the switch have Ninja Gaiden Black? 04 is good and all but Black is even better.

My STALKER: Anomaly playthrough is progressing at the typically languid pace. As soon as I find a scoped shotgun for Hip’s quest I can start thinking about migrating my base of operations a bit north. For a Loner run this would be prime time to setup in Rostok, but Mercenaries aren’t on friendly terms with Duty so that’s out. I’ll have to make it to Dead City probably and that will be quite a trek. I probably have to wait until I find and repair a better suit. And also hope my companions don’t die on me as I need them to haul over all my collected shit in my stash.

I’ve also been playing Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yes it’s a gacha game (don’t buy any currency to gamble) and yes the character designs are unfortunately a bit too gooneriffic, and yes the story is pretty bad and the translation is pure Google Translate level machine-translated slop. But you know what? The actual gameplay of the roguelike deckbuilder portion is actually very fun. Tons of customisation with an incredibly mutable deckbuilder that has tons of variations for every single card. Even the balance is surprisingly good, with such endless possibilities in combos and specific versions of specific cards that you can make pretty much any character shine with enough work on finding just the right decks and setups. Don’t know if it will stick, and I’ll keep an eye on balance going forward to see if they start making it more pay-to-win, but for now I’m having a surprisingly good time with it.

Thank fuck, absolutely bizarre it was granted in the first place.

Very short and sweet article. If anyone wants to read more there is a longer elaboration by the same author here: “I Told Him I Loved Him, Because I Do”. Worth a read.

I think I might have relapsed. Send help. Everything was going so well, I was playing through the Final Draft of Alan Wake 2 and having the time of my life, and then I clicked on a video YouTube recommended in my feed that looked interesting and the familiar old craving kicked in. Suddenly a week had passed by and I was deep in the rabbit hole again.

So this week I’ve mostly been modding STALKER: Anomaly. There’s been so many new mods and modpacks and even engine optimization released since I played it last and I’m having a blast getting reacquainted, this time basing my modlist on the H.A.C.R. pack which seems to be a flexible and solid base. I’ve already added about 30 mods to it.

I also have to give special mention to the mod and video that kicked it all off - TALKER. It transcribes your voice talking into the mic, and uses AI to give responses from characters in game and it’s actually just so much fun to use, especially for someone like me who loves the role-play and emergent narratives and storytelling of Anomaly. Right now I haven’t even started a full playthrough yet as I’m still tweaking parameters for the AI to fine tune the prompts given to each faction as well as adding to the list of unique personalities.

If you’re an Anomaly player, I definitely recommend checking out TALKER, even though setting it up is a little annoying.

Both NOLF 1&2 and Contract JACK are available on the website above, patched and fixed to work on modern machines.

YMMV but when I tried NOLF 1 for the first time earlier this year I sadly found the gameplay so poorly aged I wasn’t having enough fun to make myself finish it - despite the setting, theme and writing being quite fun.

I might give it another shot at some point though, it was a critic’s darling back in the day and I’d like to be able to say I have played it.