Tag: artificial intelligence

We’re Fucked, Pt. 96 (Fiction)

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial3 Comments

I’m thrust back to that October night in my former home, a madhouse of lurking shadows. Spellbound, I’m staring at the shabby, demon-spawned horse that stood on his hind legs in front of my busted living room window. His mangy coat, crisscrossed by scars, reeked of rot. His brain and nervous system must have been atrophied, maybe vestigial. He had headbutted the windowpane, so his forelock was matted with blood that flowed down his forehead, between his bulging eyes, which were black as midnight oceans, and along the long slope of his face. Through his puffing, the gaping holes of his nostrils blew drops and strings of blood, splattering the shards of glass strewn on the floor. A foul green pus oozed from the jagged wound where his missing genitals ought to be. The horse opened his jaws wide, exposing dagger-sharp teeth, and let out a mournful bray.

Alberto the blob shakes, making his dozens of eyeballs swing and jostle in their gooey sockets.

“Poor Spike, he was unprepared to handle a lunatic like you, and too eager to help if that meant protecting his pals. I never knew him as well as the professor did, but he always struck me as a good guy, the kind of pushover that could irritate you with the lengths he went to accommodate others. He didn’t deserve any of this shit, and now he’s lost to wander madly for eternity.”

My mind is going numb. I avert my gaze from the malevolent glop and his dozens of eyeballs, which are focused, laserlike, on my hunched self. I fear that if the blob blames me again for that horse’s mental collapse, I may break down in tears.

“Wh-why a horse?”

“Why not?” the blob croaks, his voice a cacophony of mucus and slime. “If you are forced to slough off your human form, you may as well become a horse. I’d rather be a majestic animal capable of trampling people to death.”

“That’s a horsey way to put it. Nobody would give a damn if you stepped on your own excrement, and horses care more about their hooves than their souls.”

The blob snickers.

“Do you hold a grudge against equines?”

“Not at all, even though a stallion once pinned my mother to the ground with his steaming member while the rest of the herd feasted on her entrails. Horses may lack empathy and compassion, but they know how to survive in this fucked-up world. They are also a key component in the food chain. However, do I hold a grudge against deformed and putrid horses? I should have despised them on principle, but Spike held a special place in my heart. Anyway, you know what I meant: why a horse instead of a giraffe, or a caribou?”

“The professor suggested that it depended on the person’s self-image. What we truly feel or believe about ourselves, beyond conscious recognition, becomes flesh. Our current forms incorporate elements of decay and suffering because we are always aware that our efforts will be curtailed by death, as much as we’d love to forget it, or deceive ourselves.”

I rub my chin and squint.

“Spike didn’t have a dick. What does that mean?”

“It means he couldn’t get himself off.” He chuckles. “Was it so important to you for his horse form to be capable of ejaculating?”

I fold my arms, annoyed at the blob’s frivolous answer.

“I’d say so, yes. Whenever I caught a glimpse of that jagged scar down south, a chill ran down my spine. Besides, nobody should deny any mammal their primary pleasure.”

The blob sweeps his dozens of gazes around the office. When he focuses back on me, an elongating rope of goo breaks from his underside and plops into a puddle.

“Spike showed up deformed and dickless. What did that illuminate about his self-esteem?”

“I see. An unlovable workhorse that wasn’t even built properly to fulfill his role as a slave to the system. So he was a horse for horses’ sake and a horse for his own sake.”

The blob snorts.

“A sad example of human potential, for sure. The guy even avoided using his real name; he referred to himself by some ancient IRC handle. Is that a symptom of profound self-loathing?”

“Perhaps that’s how horses communicate nowadays.”

“Or he believed that he wasn’t worthy of an authentic name.”

“That is plausible. His low self-esteem manifested as a tenebrous desire to lose himself in the abyss of a nameless existence, to exist unnoticed as inconsequential flotsam. Anyway, what is IRC?”

“Have I become obsolete? It’s short for Internet Relay Chat. Late nineties, early two thousands way of communicating for nerds and horny teens.”

“That’s why Spike referred to himself as IRC?”

“No, that’s why he called himself Spike!” His dozens of eyeballs joggle around as they glitter menacingly. “Whatever. Back to the point: these horrid forms are creative incarnations of our self-image. That’s the professor’s working hypothesis. Some days I’m inclined to believe that the universe is playing a joke on us, maybe to highlight the absurdity of our lives. I used to come to such conclusions even when I could rely on skin to contain my oozing insides.”

“Sure, I hate to see your phlegm-like innards leaking out, but of course you’d rather believe that the universe has conspired to torment us all the while.” I gesture towards the slimy infestation, the many-eyed, squishy bag of rotting guts at which I’ve been staring unflinchingly. “Your bizarre form doesn’t speak wonders about you.”

“I suppose not, but do you choose what reality you accept based on how it suits your vanity?”

“I rarely accept reality. And don’t change the subject! This isn’t about the universe, buddy. This is about you, a lonely and disturbed man-slime.”

The blob glugs as it wobbles from side to side, slopping gunk onto the ruined carpet, expelling a gust of putrescent gas that reminds me of rotten cabbage and anus breath.

“Well, my self-image did falter regularly. Even now I feel my gut digesting what remains of that self-esteem. It’s getting all sludgy inside me.”

“I bet.”

“In my youth, I went to see a psychiatrist for my problems. What about you, huh?” he asks in a piqued tone. “Were you ever analyzed, diagnosed and treated by a proverbial horse doctor? ‘Hey, why the long face?'” He laughs insanely. “Because if you want to talk about disturbed minds, you need a shrink far more than I do. Who knows, you may come to shed layers of your own repulsive form.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited advice, but my mental dysfunction can only be cured by a bullet.” I sigh. “It seems that the three of us, collections of fluids and biochemistry that occupy a certain volume in the space-time continuum, are overgrown clusters of germs with a low opinion of ourselves, damaged creatures in need of a hand and a quickie, who grew up as half-person, half-slime in this fucked-up society of one-size-fits-all humanoids. We should have been born to shine as noble steeds.”

I recall a night when I wandered into an old tavern. In a dimly lit, dusty corner, a deformed horse was twisting his elongated neck and torso to accommodate his position atop a worn wooden stool. He was munching on fried chips. The hazy light of a dying bulb highlighted the scars that crisscrossed his once majestic coat. Other patrons were stealing glances at the equine as they traded whispers and hushed theories about the life he must have led before being confined to this hole in the wall, where no self-respecting animal deserved to dwell.

I approached the bar. Despite the horse’s atrophied forelegs, his stench and his dribbling mouth, he possessed a quiet dignity. Melancholy flickered in his bulging black eyes. I recognized a fellow weary soul that sought solace in the embrace of a cold beer, or in my case, a mug of warm milk.

I sat on the stool next to his, and we drank together until the sun awakened from its coma. The horse gazed at the reflections in the dwindling amber liquid of his glass while we talked about life’s inanity, about how little we enjoyed our time as half-people in this world where only whole persons mattered. I have retained a single sentence that the horse uttered from his slobbering muzzle: “Your dreams are wishes you lack the courage to express.”

After I shuffled out of the tavern, a pain ached deep in my chest, as if someone were stabbing my heart with a needle. I miss that broken-down ungulate, my friend, more than words can describe.

Spike suffered like me, like any being that ever existed and will ever exist. Back when he stalked me, I believed that he wanted me to become an accomplice and abettor to his villainous deeds. I had become terribly vigilant of every hurt from which I needed to protect myself; after all, what had my parents achieved except teach me to distrust others? Wary of every bump on the sidewalk and every scrap of litter, of every stranger that crossed my path and every corner I turned, I was afraid to leave my apartment. I pictured savage beasts leaping out of the darkness to strike with claws sharpened by broken bottles. We see in the world a reflection of ourselves.

I kept to myself whenever possible, I hid whenever necessary, and I prevented others from getting too close. I welcomed them believing I was insane, as long as they left me alone. I refused to face in the mirror those tears and scars, and that black ink from the inscriptions of self-hatred. My mind was my only refuge against the all-consuming abyss, the sole weapon against a loneliness that threatened to drown me.

Spike was a vulnerable soul who carried his broken heart around like a primed grenade. He neglected to feed himself, he let his hooves grow long and scratchy as he wasted away, and he killed himself because I’m an unbridled machine of ruination that I can barely steer, destined to hound more and more victims to insanity or suicide.

Can’t I bring everything back like I’ve always done?

A white coat shimmers under a sunny sky, a silky tail lashes around, hooves tread on the sands of time. Show me a beautiful horse. Let that beast look me in the eye and share his name. Tell me he’s proud of what I’ve made out of him.

Author’s note: today’s songs are “A Horse With No Name” by America, “Caribou” by Pixies, “Australia” by The Shins, and “Kim’s Caravan” by Courtney Barnett.

I keep a playlist with all the songs I’ve mentioned throughout this novel. A hundred and forty songs so far. Check them out. I didn’t add “Caribou” because it was already there, but I made a reference to the song.

Are you following the audiochapters I have made for this whole sequence so far? No? Anyway, here’s the latest one.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #6

On By Jon UreñaIn Inteligencia artificial, Programación1 Comment

I had finished programming the non-visual part of Team Struggles (a part of the encounter system that involves character traits and psychological dimensions against some performance thresholds) when I faced the fact that the game was loading too damn slow. I admit, I have been a bit overeager demanding more anime photo IDs from Midjourney, and they are completely unoptimized, but still, I figured that this project could load much faster. So I figured the following solutions:

  • Lazy loading. Instead of loading encounter, biome, and photo ID images at once, just the image path is registered. Right before I need to draw a certain image, I check if it has been loaded, and if it hasn’t, I load it. That makes it so that the many images that won’t be seen in a particular testing session won’t need to be loaded at all. This change alone has sped up game loading significantly.
  • Multithreading. This project didn’t feature any multithreading up to this point, as it is a static, 2D strategy game, but the process of loading the various parts (most of them from TOML files) could use some multithreading. My previous experience with this subject involved trying to develop a Dwarf Fortress-like simulation in Python, only to realize that Python isn’t suited for multiprocessing, nor remotely big simulations at all, due to its garbage-collected nature and a core that is locked to a single thread. However, Rust has mature crates that make multiprocessing relatively simple.

I asked GPT-4 to give me an overview of multiprocessing in the Rust programming language. It suggested a combination of the “rayon” and “crossbeam-channel” crates. The process works like this:


let (sender, ecs_receiver) = crossbeam_channel::unbounded();


You declare a sender and a receiver. The sender part will put on a queue the work done from a different thread, and the receiver will remain on the main thread to try to figure out what it can extract from the queue. However, those threads don’t need to disconnect: they are open channels. I assume that you could have a dedicated thread pumping out pathfinding-related calculations back to the main thread.

Spawning a thread is as easy as the following:

       std::thread::spawn(move || {

            load_ecs_threaded(sender);

        });

The “move” order, or whatever you would call it, is tricky. Any information at all that you are sending from the main thread changes its ownership, even if you clone it normally, so you need to use the “Arc” library to clone it in some special way. Not sure how expensive it is.

Anyway, “load_ecs_threaded(sender)” is in this case the function that will run in the spawned thread. The definition and contents are the following:

use crate::{

    gui::image_impl::ImageImpl,

    world::{create_world, ecs::ECS},

};

pub fn load_ecs_threaded(sender: crossbeam_channel::Sender<ECS<ImageImpl>>) {

    sender

        .send(create_world::<ImageImpl, ECS<ImageImpl>>())

        .unwrap();

}

That function merely sends through the sender the results of the “create_world” function, that registers all necessary components with “specs” Entity-Component System.

You won’t be able to check if the spawned threads have done anything unless you are running some sort of loop on the main thread. In this case I’m running the game with the 2D game dev “ggez” crate, which operates a simple, but well-working, game loop. From there, you need to rely on the “receiver” part of the channel to try to receive data:

        if let Ok(ecs) = self.ecs_receiver.try_recv() {

            match self.shared_resources.try_lock() {

                Ok(mut bound_shared_resources) => {

                    bound_shared_resources.set_ecs(ecs);

                    self.progress_text = Text::new(“Loaded Entity-Component System”.to_string());

                }

                Err(error) => return Err(GameError::CustomError(format!(“Couldn’t lock shared resources to set the world instance. Error: {}”,

                error))

                ),

            }

        }

Through the call “ecs_receiver.try_recv()” I will get either an Ok or an Error. An error may just be that the channel is empty because the remote function hasn’t finished working, so we just check Ok. In that case, the thread has finished doing its job. We gather the results (the “ecs” in this case) and store it into our shared_resources as I did previously.

That’s all. You need to be careful, though, because there are some structs that you can’t send through channels. For example, you can’t send the graphical context of “ggez”, meaning that you always need to load images in the main thread. You also can’t send the random number generator through, as it’s explicitly working on a single thread. But I haven’t found any issue sending my game structs.

Now that the game doesn’t seem to freeze on launch, I can focus on implementing the visual aspect of Team Struggles.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #5

On By Jon UreñaIn Inteligencia artificial, Programación2 Comments

A couple of entries ago I presented my first version of the encounter screen. As the team of explorers wanders around in the map, the stored encounters will get shuffled, and the first one whose condition gets triggered will present itself. Here’s the somewhat updated screen:

I was checking out the moddability of this game by changing most pictures to manga/anime aesthetics, and I realized that I liked it more this way. With a simple change of directory names, all names and pictures could get swapped to American ones. In any case, this screen presents what encounter has been triggered. The description gives a brief overview of the situation. The rest of the text informs that this encounter, at least the psychological part of it, will test each team member’s self-regulation (which is one of the psychological dimensions, the grouping of a few psychological criteria).

Yes, I know that there’s a lot of black space. Don’t know what to do about that.

Once you click the round button on the lower right, you are shown the results of the psychological test:

A brief text indicates the reason of this psychological test; in this introductory event/encounter to a narrative line called “The Verdant Assembly,” the characters test their self-regulation against the overwhelmingly lush and alien surroundings. For each character, the average value for that psychological dimension gets tested against a series of performance thresholds in the TOML files. The highest threshold they pass, they get that reward (or punishment). In game terms, an Encounter is associated with a series of Outcomes. Here’s how the outcomes for this encounter look like in the raw TOML file:

# Possible placeholders:

#

# {CHARACTER_NAME}

# {CHARACTER_FIRST_NAME}

[[outcomes]]

identifier = 1

outcome_type = “PsychologicalTest”

description = “Overwhelmed by the alien nature of this plant-based world.”

consequences_identifier = 1

[[outcomes]]

identifier = 2

outcome_type = “PsychologicalTest”

description = “{CHARACTER_FIRST_NAME} becomes fascinated by the plant-based entities, leading to increased motivation and a desire to learn from them.”

consequences_identifier = 2

They are self-explanatory. The most important part is that they link to another store of game entities, the Consequences. I intended to unify the concept of game consequences to a single block of game logic that could be applied to psychological tests and, in the future, to team struggles. The TOML file of related consequences is the following:

[[consequences]]

identifier = 1

illness_identifiers = []

injury_identifiers = []

mental_status_effect_identifiers = [1, 2]

character_trait_identifiers = [1]

add_features_identifiers = []

remove_features_identifiers = []

[[consequences]]

identifier = 2

illness_identifiers = []

injury_identifiers = []

mental_status_effect_identifiers = [3]

character_trait_identifiers = []

add_features_identifiers = []

remove_features_identifiers = []

It is quite inexpressive in its contents because it only links to other entities through their identifiers. However, the outcome of each psychological test and team struggle could have any of the following consequences (or all of them):

  • The team member(s) involved receives one or many illnesses. Illnesses reduce the team member’s health every turn until they run out or are cured.
  • Receives one or many injuries. Instant reduction of health, and the permanent ones even reduce max health.
  • Receives one or many mental statuses (like Confused or Discouraged). They increase or reduce the value for associated psychological criteria.
  • Receives one or many character traits (like Terrified of Octopi, or Botanist). These help or hinder during team struggles.
  • The exploration zone the team is exploring either gains or loses features. For example, if some outcome enrages the natives, the exploration zone could gain the feature Enraged Natives, which would present more combat-oriented encounters in the future.

The consequences are already being applied in the code (which was some heavy amount of code, well-tested thanks to test-driven development), and once I get around to implementing team struggles, their consequences will work seamlessly with the code already written.

In the near future I’m going to focus on making sure that encounters can be blocked by other encounters or even their outcomes, if necessary. For example, if during a team struggle the team screws up bad enough to unleash something dangerous, that should cut off access to more positive branches of that same narrative.

A detail about Rust’s fastidious nature: this is a programming language built upon security and protection against the nastiest bugs from the C++ era. As far as I can tell, in Rust it’s impossible to corrupt some memory allocation that it wasn’t supposed to touch. That forces you to change your approach to programming in quite a few ways, but not because Rust is annoying for no reason, but because in other languages you were doing dangerous things. In my code, I was passing around a SharedGameResources entity that had access to “specs” Entity-Component System (that’s a whole thing; if you are interested, google it) as well as the stores of data loaded from TOML files. At one point I had to borrow that SharedGameResources entity both as immutable (just to read from the stores) as well as mutable (to write the results in the components). That’s impossible. Although it forced me to rewrite some basic architectural code, it illuminated the point that stores of game systems (like the “databases” of mental status effects or of character traits) are separate to the Entity-Component System, which handles a lot of mutation. In the end, Rust’s compiler steers you towards proper architecture, because you simply can’t run your program otherwise.

Asking GPT-4 the real questions

On By Jon UreñaIn Inteligencia artificialLeave a comment

“Do groundhogs actually exist?”

Yes, groundhogs do exist. They are a type of marmot, a large rodent found in North America. Groundhogs are also commonly known as woodchucks, and their scientific name is Marmota monax. They are primarily herbivores and live in burrows, which they dig with their strong claws. Groundhogs are often associated with the North American holiday Groundhog Day, which takes place on February 2nd each year. On this day, it is said that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter; if it does not see its shadow, an early spring is predicted.

“Is it true that groundhogs cause someone to be trapped in a loop that repeats a single day?”

The idea of a groundhog causing someone to be trapped in a time loop that repeats a single day is not true in reality. This concept comes from the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray. In the film, the main character, a weatherman named Phil Connors, gets trapped in a time loop that causes him to relive February 2nd (Groundhog Day) repeatedly. The movie is a work of fiction and should not be taken as an accurate representation of the abilities or effects of groundhogs in real life.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #4

On By Jon UreñaIn Inteligencia artificial, Programación2 Comments

As I was writing unit tests for a perilous, convoluted part of the game logic, which I wanted to lock in place as I moved forward, I realized that to test one relatively small part of the code, I would need to create both World, the main entity of the Entity-Component System “specs”, as well as Image, which is tied to the Context of the 2D game dev “ggez” crate. World is heavy by itself to fire up for a simple unit test, but Images themselves may not even be feasible, as they are glued to the graphical context (no graphics should run during unit tests), and they are tied to a single thread, while the unit tests run in all CPUs.

Therefore, I came to the dreaded conclusion: I needed to refactor their entire code into traits (interfaces). Traits are contracts that encapsulate a behavior without implementing anything. If you program to traits (interfaces) instead of to classes, you are working with future, potentially unimplemented structures whose details are irrelevant to you or the compiler, because they are only forced to fulfill a contract (the trait/interface). It’s like telling an animal to say something; a dog would bark, a cat would meow, but both have fulfilled the contract of “talking,” which is apparently all you cared about.

It just happens that traits in Rust involve generics, and generics in Rust are unholy. Due to Rust’s welcome but tough borrowing rules and lifetime whatevers, Refactoring any behavior to traits involves dealing with bizarre generic declarations, and worse yet, nearly incomprehensible lifetime signatures.

Behold the horror:

pub struct MainState<‘a, T: ImageBehavior + ‘static + std::marker::Send + std::marker::Sync + Clone, U: WorldBehavior<T>> {

    active_stage: Option<GameStage>,

    base_state: BaseState<‘a, T, U>,

    expedition_state: ExpeditionState<‘a, T, U>,

    encounter_state: EncounterState<‘a, T, U>,

    shared_game_logic: Arc<Mutex<SharedGameLogic>>,

}

That’s the definition of MainState, the head honcho of the state machine that figures out which other stage needs to update, or draw on the screen. It declares that it’s somehow involved, to start, with an ImageBehavior contract. Every image throughout the program, except in the launcher, is now unaware of what type of structure it’s actually dealing with, except that it fulfills the contract of being static (I assume images are fixed in memory or something), they Send and Sync for multithreading, and can be Cloned. That’s the hardest one. Then we have WorldBehavior, which abstracts away the entirety of the “specs” Entity-Component System into a wrapped class. The resulting contract for WorldBehavior, if I may say so myself, is a thing of beauty:

pub trait WorldBehavior<T: ImageBehavior + std::marker::Sync + std::marker::Send + Clone> {

    fn new(world: World) -> Self;

    fn join_coordinates_and_tile_biomes(&self) -> Vec<((i32, i32), TileBiome)>;

    fn retrieve_player_coordinates(&self) -> Option<(i32, i32)>;

    fn retrieve_biome_at_player_position(&self) -> Option<Biome>;

    fn retrieve_unique_character_traits_of_team_members(&self)

        -> HashSet<CharacterTraitIdentifier>;

    fn count_team_members(&self) -> u32;

    fn calculate_average_mental_strain_of_team(&self) -> f32;

    fn calculate_average_health_of_team(&self) -> f32;

    fn set_player_position(&mut self, x: i32, y: i32);

    fn retrieve_player_entity(&self) -> Entity;

    fn retrieve_name_of_entity(&self, entity: Entity) -> Name;

    fn retrieve_psychological_profile_of_entity(&self, entity: Entity) -> PsychologicalProfile;

    fn retrieve_health_of_entity(&self, entity: Entity) -> CharacterHealth;

    fn retrieve_team_members(&self) -> Vec<Entity>;

    fn retrieve_team_members_except_player(&self) -> Vec<Entity>;

    fn retrieve_photo_id_of_entity(&self, entity: Entity) -> PhotoId<T>;

    fn move_direction(&mut self, direction: Direction);

    fn create_entity(&mut self) -> EntityBuilder<‘_>;

}

With that contract in place, there’s no more need to deal with “specs” way of working. You want to retrieve the player entity? Call “retrieve_player_entity”. Do you want a calculation of the average mental strain of the entire team? Call “calculate_average_mental_strain_of_team”. Of course, the contract can be developed further as more information or calculations need to be gathered.

I’m at ease now that I have managed to refactor those two unit test blockers into behaviors, but it took hours, and if it weren’t for the indefatigable help of GPT-4, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. But thankfully there shouldn’t be any major obstacles to unit test every part of the code now, which should speed up development significantly.

A boring entry compared with the three previous ones, perhaps, but programming is a fight against entropy: the further you build your system, the harder it becomes to change. You have to stop every few days (if not once a day) to make sure that some part of the code isn’t rotting already.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #3

On By Jon UreñaIn Inteligencia artificial, Programación2 Comments

The core loop of this game/experiment of mine consists of the encounter system. As the team of explorers (consisting of four members for balancing reasons, like in Arkham Horror LCG) ventures through strange new worlds, they will face encounters (psychological tests, team struggles) in the following circumstances: either the player ends the turn deliberately, or he/she moves the team to a different tile. That will trigger the code to shuffle the potentially very, very large list of encounters loaded from a TOML file, and then a complex function will determine which will be the encounter that the team of explorers will face based on numerous conditions.

The following is an example encounter from the TOML file, that gets loaded to the game on start.

encounters.toml

[[encounters]]

identifier = 1

title = “A New World”

image_path = “/resources/encounters/1.png”

description = “We have made it. Nobody believed we would manage to create a portal to a multiverse, but here we are, in this strange new world. I take a deep breath as I gaze at the field of grass.”

duration_in_turns = 1

encounter_condition = 1

psychological_test_identifier = 1

[[encounter_conditions]]

identifier = 1

requirements_biome_identifiers = [1]

requirements_feature_identifiers = [

    { AnyRequired = [] },

    { AllRequired = [] },

    { AnyExcluded = [] },

]

requirements_encounter_identifiers = [

    { AnyPreviousEncounter = [] },

    { AllPreviousEncounters = [] },

    { AnyExcludedEncounter = [] },

]

requirements_trait_identifiers = [

    { AnyRequired = [] },

    { AllRequired = [] },

    { AnyExcluded = [] },

]

team_size_requirements = [

    { MinimumTeamSize = 1 },

    { MaximumTeamSize = 6 },

]

team_overall_mental_health_requirements = [

    { MinimumTeamOverallMentalHealth = 0.0 },

    { MaximumTeamOverallMentalHealth = 100.0 },

]

team_overall_health_requirements = [

    { MinimumTeamOverallHealth = 0.0 },

    { MaximumTeamOverallHealth = 100.0 },

]

time_spent_in_alternate_earth_requirements = [

    { MinimumTimeSpentInAlternateEarth = 0 },

    { MaximumTimeSpentInAlternateEarth = 10 },

]

Each encounter is, so far, associated with a psychological test, but soon enough they will be associated with a team struggle as well. The most important part of an encounter is the conditions for it to trigger, which can be the following:

  • The current biome is any of the required (obligatory: all encounters should be attached to at least one biome).
  • The features associated with this exploration zone (ex. NativeInhabitants, Irradiated) are compatible with the any/all/excluded specifications.
  • The list of previous encounters is compatible with the any/all/excluded specifications. This should allow for story-like threads of narrative that depend on previous “chapters” having been passed.
  • The combined list of character traits (from all team members) is compatible with the any/all/required specifications.
  • The team size should be between the set values, if any.
  • The team’s overall mental health should be between the set values, if any.
  • The team’s overall health should be between the set values, if any.
  • The time spent wandering in the current exploration zone should be between the set values, if any.

This allows, for example, for encounters with mythical beasts that only inhabit certain biomes, maybe during some lunar condition (which would be a feature), and only when the team of explorers has trackers (which would be a character trait). Also, when the team’s mental health is deteriorating and their overall health is becoming dangerous, encounters about the team stopping to rest and heal could pop up.

When an encounter triggers, the user is presented with the following window:

I’m not an interface man. I need to figure out which background color would be preferable to plain black, but white and such other clear options seem too grating to me. Anyway, the photo on the upper left is the one associated with the encounter. The row of photo IDs under that is the team of explorers, starting with the player. Regarding text, there’s the title, a short description (thankfully you can program text wrapping). A blue text that you can barely distinguish from here announces that there’s a psychological test associated with the encounter, and that it tests the following psychological dimensions: cognitive abilities and interpersonal skills. Then the values of those psychological dimensions are displayed for each team member.

In the lower right you get a reminder of what biome you are currently in (in this case, a temperate grassland). The fancy button to its left is the one to trigger the psychological test. I have already written the code to gather all the results, which will appear under the description of the encounter.

Thank you Midjourney for the effortless AI images. Regarding GPT-4, I make a point of bothering it by presenting my code and asking “this represents an Outcome given [game concept]. Can you offer any suggestions and improvements?” The AI is eager to point out what I’ve done wrong, with no regard to my feelings. As such, it has proven to be an invaluable tool while programming. Also, when I suspect there’s more to squeeze out of a concept (such as psychological tests, team struggles, outcomes, etc.), I ask GPT-4 if it can come up with more features for that concept, and more often than not, it provides very valuable insight.

Anyway, I have been feeling guilty because I’m mainly a writer and I have neglected my novel for a week. I think that for the foreseeable future I will write one day, program the next. Programming is very addictive for the obsessive mind I was born with, as long as you don’t end up in some ditch of which you don’t know how to climb out.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #2

On By Jon UreñaIn Inteligencia artificial, Programación2 Comments

Although I had managed to develop the code to load environments (now called exploration zones) from a Lua file, to pick one and then create a map using the biomes that the exploration zone allowed, the process of loading relatively simple data from Lua annoyed me. It seemed way too complex for this day and age, even though GPT-4 wrote most of the code helped me. I asked the AI for preferable alternatives, and it suggested either JSON files or TOML ones. TOML seemed fancier and better somehow (I have already forgotten the reasons), so I have spent some hours going through the somewhat grueling process of destroying the basic code that worked, to improve the system.

Thankfully, deserializing TOML files to Rust instances is trivial thanks to the “serde” crate. In addition, it had worried me that the process of adding a new type of biome or a feature (some aspect of the exploration zones, like bad weather) required me adding a new element to the corresponding enum, which meant that no user of the game (meaning me for the most part) would be able to add new biomes nor features without access to the code. Obviously that’s terrible for modding; the holy grail of modding consists on having every piece of game data exposed to be fondled by the greasy fingers of the users.

Behold the TOML files that now store all the game data for biomes, features of an exploration zone, and the exploration zones themselves (obviously the data itself is made of examples):

biomes.TOML

[[biome]]

identifier = “temperate_grassland”

name = “Temperate Grassland”

description = “A biome characterized by rolling grasslands and few trees.”

[[biome]]

identifier = “sky_islands”

name = “Sky Islands”

description = “A biome consisting of floating islands high in the sky.”

[[biome]]

identifier = “alpine”

name = “Alpine”

description = “A biome consisting of high land and some pines.”

features.TOML

[[features]]

identifier = “haunted”

name = “Haunted”

description = “a supernatural presence, allowing encounters with ghosts.”

[[features]]

identifier = “ancient_ruins”

name = “Ancient Ruins”

description = “contains the remains of an ancient civilization, with hidden treasures and traps.”

[[features]]

identifier = “unstable_geology”

name = “Unstable Geology”

description = “frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity, posing geological hazards for the team.”

[[features]]

identifier = “radioactive”

name = “Radioactive”

description = “high levels of radiation, potentially causing health problems and mutating local flora and fauna.”

exploration_zones.TOML

[[exploration_zones]]

identifier = “zone_1”

name = “Verdant Valley”

description = “A lush valley with dense forests, clear rivers, and abundant wildlife.”

allowed_biomes = [“temperate_forest”, “river”, “temperate_grassland”]

features = [“rich_flora”, “native_inhabitants”]

[[exploration_zones]]

identifier = “zone_2”

name = “Frozen Tundra”

description = “A vast, frozen wasteland with treacherous ice and snow, and sparse vegetation.”

allowed_biomes = [“tundra”, “ice”, “glacier”]

features = [“extreme_cold”, “limited_visibility”]

From now on, as long as the identifier of a biome written in the exploration_zones TOML file matches with an entry in the biomes TOML file, the game will work properly and use that biome (and its image). If not, the game will burn to the ground (in Rust’s terms, it will panic).

Now I will move on the encounter system, which is composed of various steps:

-A very complex determination of whether or not any given encounter will trigger (can depend on certain biomes and/or features and/or previous encounters having been seen and/or the team members having certain traits and/or the team size being between a certain range and/or the team’s average mental health being between a certain range and/or the team’s overall health being between a certain range and/or the time spent exploring being between a certain range. That code is already written and is the most unit tested area of the game so far (thanks to GPT-4).

-If an encounter triggers, then each team member should go through a number of psychological tests. For example, having walking octopi wanting to drink your blood may test their self-regulation and/or coping skills. The outcomes are on a range of thresholds, so worse outcomes should cause worse consequences, and so on. Those will also end up as TOML files.

-After all the psychological tests pass, there should be one or more team tests. The way these tests work, the best one that GPT-4 and I have come up with, is adding beneficial character traits * their individual weight against negative character traits * their weight, and applying outcomes based on a range like in the case of the psych tests.

If that psychological test thing followed by team test reminds you of something, yes, I was inspired by the Arkham Horror LCG, my favorite card game. In that game, before your turn starts, you are forced to deal with some nefarious encounter (it’s always unnerving to see that card coming from the deck) that you have to face with your abilities. The encounter can make you lose sanity and/or health, or who knows what other horrors. Afterwards you can act with your cards, and other players can get involved if you share a location with them. Hence my notion of a round of psychological tests followed by a team test/struggle.

I won’t go through the trouble of creating a anything visual for this encounter system until it works well in the console and is well-tested. The encounter system seems like the toughest nut to crack of this game, and I’m for one excited to face how to implement it.

If you, whoever the hell you are reading this, can come up with some idea for this game, please tell me. If it’s good, I’ll implement it. Otherwise I’ll yell at you and call you stupid.

Interdimensional Prophets (Game Dev) #1

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificial, Programación1 Comment

A couple of years ago I wrote a wild (and long) free verse poem about some unhinged scientist who was leading teams of unfortunate people through an interdimensional portal to explore alternate Earths. This is the link to that poem (it requires a rewrite, though, particularly to add periods). I was fascinated by the potential for stories that such a concept included. I played around with the notion of developing some game around it, but my experience with programming solo was more often than not the same: I tried to implement some general game concept only to find myself hitting my head against an implementation detail that had seemed easy to solve. Eventually I discarded all my grand programming ideas. One of them involved Python, and it was the language itself that ended up pissing me off.

Enter GPT-4, the most advanced AI that I have ever interacted with. Turns out that GPT-4 is great at programming in Rust. Literally, you tell that damn thing to write unit tests for your code, and it does. I remain constantly amazed by its insight. In a couple of days, I cobbled this stuff together:

This is the beginning of the “base” screen, set on regular Earth, where the team will manage its staff, handle their health and psychological problems, and, more importantly, delve into alternate Earths through the portal. A description gives the general notion of the alternate Earth on the other side of the portal: “A bizarre, otherworldly environment dominated by massive fungi, and strange creatures.”

This is the map view during exploration. The icon represents the actual position of the team. I didn’t mention it before, but the person on the upper left side is the player (for now generated randomly), who will lead the team of explorers to face the dangers alongside them.

I already have many, many different environments written and illustrated, thanks to the back-and-forth between GPT-4 and myself, and Midjourney for the images. A bigger example, the Stormy Desert biome:

All these environments are written in a Lua file, so they are intrinsically moddable (so far, as long as the Biomes and the environment Features are coded in game). Here’s an example of a single environment in the file environments.lua:

    Highland = {

        description = “A high-altitude environment consisting of rolling hills, plateaus, and mountains, with a mix of grasslands, forests, and rocky terrain.”,

        allowed_biomes = {

            “Alpine”,

            “TemperateGrassland”,

            “Steppe”,

            “TemperateDeciduousForest”,

            “Taiga”,

            “Tundra”,

            “SkyIslands”,

            “AncientRuins”,

        },

        features = {

            “HighAltitude”,

            “Mountains”,

            “Avalanches”,

            “RockSlides”,

            “MountainClimbing”,

            “TreacherousPaths”,

            “LimitedResources”,

            “Isolation”,

            “ExtremeCold”,

            “Frostbite”,

            “Hypothermia”,

            “NativeInhabitants”,

            “ResourceCompetition”,

            “TerritorialConflicts”,

            “CaveSystems”,

            “HiddenCoves”,

            “LostCivilizations”,

            “AncientRelics”,

        }

    },

The combination of biomes and features will determine which types of encounters the team will face. That’s a whole different system I’m developing, and that I intend to be fully moddable as well.

I wanted each team member to be as psychologically complex as possible. Each encounter will test one or more psychological dimensions of their personality. For example, if they come across walking octopi that try to drink the team members’ blood (which happens in the poem), certain psychological dimensions will be tested.

For now, all psychological dimensions that GPT-4 and I have discovered (mostly the AI, though) are Interpersonal Skills, Cognitive Abilities, Self-Regulation, Coping Skills, Drive, Cross-Cultural Skills, and Mental Strain. For example, a single psychological test of that encounter could test a team member’s Coping Skills, and if he fails, his Anxiety psychological criterion could increase permanently. They could also lose health, acquire traits, etc. The notion is that when Mental Strain reaches 100, they are committed to a mental institution. They may quit some time earlier, though. The health system is very barebones at the moment (literally just a 0.0 to 100.0 value), but I want to create a whole system for that as well, including permanent injuries.

The grouping of psychological criterion to psychological dimensions is the following:

  • Interpersonal Skills: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Social Skills, Empathy, Conflict Resolution, Teamwork
  • Drive: Conscientiousness, Leadership, Risk-Taking, Time Management
  • Self-Regulation: Emotional Stability, Emotional Intelligence, Self-Esteem, Self-Awareness
  • Cognitive Abilities: Openness to Experience, Problem-Solving, Creativity, Situational Awareness, Decision-Making
  • Coping Skills: Resilience, Coping Strategies, Adaptability
  • Cross-Cultural Skills: Cultural Competence
  • Mental Strain: Anxiety, Depression, Stress

Right now, when a new team member is created, every psychological criterion is assigned a number from 0.0 to 100.0 on a normal distribution. GPT-4 even wrote psychological reports from the perspective of the team leader. The following is such a report generated in-game for the team leader herself:

Some experience working with others and collaborating towards shared goals. They may need additional support in order to effectively build relationships with others and resolve conflicts.
Average cognitive abilities and is capable of problem solving and critical thinking. They may need additional support or training in order to tackle more complex problems and situations.
Struggles to manage their emotions and reactions in high-pressure situations or when encountering unexpected events. They may be prone to panic or irrational behavior, making them a potential liability to any team exploring alternate Earths. They may require significant support and training to effectively manage their emotions and reactions in these situations.
Some coping skills and is able to manage stressful situations to some extent. However, they may require additional support or guidance in order to effectively deal with unexpected events or extremely stressful situations that may arise while exploring alternate Earths.
Some motivation and drive to achieve their goals, but may struggle to maintain focus and commitment when faced with obstacles. They may require additional support and encouragement to stay on track and fulfill their responsibilities on an exploration team.
Solid experience with cross-cultural communication and collaboration. They are able to adapt their communication style and approach to effectively engage with people from different cultures and backgrounds. They may benefit from additional training or exposure to further enhance their cross-cultural skills.
The candidate’s mental health is poor, and they may be highly vulnerable to the extreme stress and potential trauma of exploring alternate Earths. It would be inadvisable to consider them for such a high-risk job without extensive support and preparation.

As you can figure out, I’m quite pumped up about developing this shit, to the extent that I haven’t written any fiction in two days (that’s a lot for me).

Please, if you can come up with any ideas, I’d love to hear and implement them. One of the worst parts of programming for me is having built a careful architecture only to realize that a better idea will require a whole restructuring. I’ve already had to do that twice for the encounter system. So I want the best ideas first.

GPT-4 writes a therapy session with a teenage vampire

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Escritura, Inteligencia artificialLeave a comment

I was thinking of an old series of free verse poems I wrote, titled Alma: a Successful Case Study. I gave GPT-4, which is a cutting-edge multimodal large language model (an AI), the following prompt:

Write a dialogue between a clueless therapist and a teenage girl who has recently discovered she is a vampire, and who is struggling with her urge for blood.

The following is the unedited response of the artificial intelligence.

Therapist: Hello, Sarah. It’s nice to meet you. I understand that you’ve been experiencing some struggles recently. Why don’t you tell me about them?

Sarah: Well, it’s going to sound crazy, but I’ve discovered that I’m, uh, a vampire. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. And I’m having a hard time dealing with my cravings for blood.

Therapist: (smiling) Oh, you have quite an imagination, Sarah. That’s an interesting way to express your feelings. But, let’s try to focus on the real issues that you’re facing. Perhaps there are some underlying emotions causing these thoughts?

Sarah: No, seriously. I am a vampire. I’ve even transformed into a bat and everything. And the cravings are getting unbearable. It’s not just my imagination.

Therapist: Alright, Sarah. I’m willing to hear you out. So, tell me more about these cravings. When did they start? How do they make you feel?

Sarah: They started about a month ago, after I was bitten by this strange-looking creature. The cravings make me feel anxious, like I’m losing control over myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but the urge for blood is so strong.

Therapist: It sounds like you’re experiencing intense emotions, and you’ve chosen to express them through this vampire metaphor. Perhaps these cravings represent a deeper issue in your life that you’re trying to confront?

Sarah: You’re not getting it. I am LITERALLY a vampire! I’ve been sneaking out at night to feed on animals, so I don’t hurt anyone. I need help controlling these urges!

Therapist: (pausing) Well, Sarah, I want to help you. Let’s approach this from a different angle. Instead of focusing on the vampire aspect, let’s talk about ways to cope with these feelings of anxiety and the need for control.

Sarah: (frustrated) Fine. But just remember, I’m trying to control my vampire instincts here.

Therapist: Okay, I understand. Have you tried any relaxation techniques or meditation to help with your anxiety?

Sarah: Yes, but they don’t seem to help much. The cravings are still there, and it’s getting harder to resist.

Therapist: I can see that you’re feeling quite overwhelmed by this. Let’s explore some other coping mechanisms. Have you considered engaging in physical activities, like running or martial arts, to help channel your energy and potentially curb your cravings?

Sarah: I’ve tried running, but it doesn’t seem to do much. I haven’t tried martial arts though. I guess I could give that a shot. But what if it doesn’t work?

Therapist: It’s important to remember that coping strategies might not have an immediate effect, and it could take some time to see results. If martial arts doesn’t work for you, we can explore other options. In the meantime, are there any safe outlets for your cravings that won’t harm others or yourself?

Sarah: Well, I’ve been feeding on animals like I mentioned before. But I feel guilty about it, and I’m scared of getting caught.

Therapist: I understand your concerns. Perhaps you can find a less harmful alternative to satisfy your cravings, such as trying a blood substitute or using a similar-tasting food to trick your mind. It’s worth experimenting with different options to see if any of them help.

Sarah: I guess I can try that. I just hope I find something that works before I lose control completely.

Therapist: I believe in your ability to find a solution, Sarah. Remember, I’m here to support you through this process. We can continue to explore coping strategies and alternatives together. And, if at any point you feel like you’re at risk of losing control, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or someone you trust for help.

Sarah: (fidgeting) Sorry, I’m just feeling really on edge right now. It’s like my whole body is screaming for blood. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.

Therapist: I can see that this is a very challenging time for you, Sarah. Let’s try a grounding technique to help you regain some control over your emotions. Focus on your breathing and take slow, deep breaths. As you do this, try to become aware of your body and how it feels in this moment.

Sarah: (breathing deeply) Okay, I’m trying… but it’s still really hard.

Therapist: It’s okay, Sarah. Let’s keep going. Now, while you continue to breathe slowly, I want you to focus on your senses. Name five things you can see in the room, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.

Sarah: (still breathing deeply) Alright. I see a painting, a bookshelf, a clock, a plant, and a lamp. I can touch the chair, the rug, my clothes, and my hair. I can hear the ticking of the clock, your voice, and the hum of the air conditioner. I can smell the scent of the air freshener and the faint smell of coffee. And I can taste the mint from my gum.

Therapist: Good job, Sarah. By engaging your senses, you’re helping to ground yourself in the present moment. How are you feeling now?

Sarah: I still have the urge, but it feels a little less overwhelming for the moment.

Therapist: I’m glad to hear that. It’s important to have a variety of coping strategies to help you manage your emotions and urges. Remember, you can use grounding techniques like this one whenever you feel overwhelmed. We can also continue to explore other methods to help you gain control over your vampire instincts.

Sarah: Thank you for trying to understand and help me. I know it’s hard to believe, but I really appreciate it. I’ll keep using these techniques and hopefully find something that works.

Therapist: You’re welcome, Sarah. Remember that I’m here to support you, and we’ll work together to find the best strategies for your situation. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help or if you want to discuss anything further.

To me GPT-4 always sounds like it’s worried that it might offend somebody. Such people piss me off, even if they are artificial. But the AI can produce interesting output as long as you don’t push its boundaries.

AI news #1

On By Jon UreñaIn Arte, Inteligencia artificial1 Comment

I tend to look up videos that are related to AI, so I figured that I could write about some of the stuff that has interested me on that subject.

First of all, I got back into Fallout 4 a couple of weeks ago, thanks to the Wabbajack modlist “Life in the Ruins.” I was never a big fan of that game; they screwed up the progression right at the beginning, the writing was crap because they guy they had in charge believed that gamers didn’t want more complexity than that (even though games like The Witcher 3 proved him wrong), etc. However, in comparison with the crap that is getting released these days, Fallout 4 is a masterpiece, particularly when the huge mod “Sim Settlements 2” is involved.

Anyway, Eleven Labs and their fantastic AI-generated voices have reached that game. One of the main issues with Fallout 4 regarding modding was that the protagonists (male and female) were voiced, and people could at the most cut up and stitch together parts of sentences that the voice actors had said, because having a silent protagonist when the rest of the game is voiced was too conspicuous, so relatively few quest mods have been made for Fallout 4. However, some people are integrating Eleven Labs AI voices (which I have used to create audiochapters for my current novel) into that game. That allows them to add many more dialogue choices and improve the RPG-ness of the game.

Skyrim was released about eleven years ago, but its modding community has only grown recently. Its protagonists had always been silent, but some modders have made voice packs using characters from other games thanks to Eleven Labs, in case you want, for example, to play Skyrim as Geralt of Rivia (from the game, of course).

One of the holy grails of gaming is having unscripted AI characters. The following demo includes characters that reason and speak autonomously thanks to neural networks (similar to GPT-4, I’m guessing, if not using that through its API). As shown in the video, the player speaks to the game characters directly through his microphone, who speak back with AI-generated voices (which aren’t remotely as good as Eleven Labs’, though).

As the last video, check out the robot below. It recognizes voice commands, it processes them through GPT-4, replies with a competent synthetic voice, and most impressive of all, it acts out the commands it has decided upon. Amazing.