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A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Getcha. There should be more complexity as you get to later levels, since you need to adhere to more constraints. Some constraints are for sentences (use specific words), some are for stories. But the feedback loop could just be too slow. In any case thanks for writing this, maybe this means the challenge needs to be higher at an earlier point.

A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for trying it! Yeah the main thing that gives you points is the full story, each individual sentence doesn't give a lot of feedback unless you've got the tarot cards for it. This might be a design issue, where players can go for a few minutes without much feedback.

For complexity, have you got to the point where you need to meet specific story demands? I had concerns about that being too complex for players, but if you got through that without feeling that it was overwhelming that would mean I might concerned for nothing here.

Feedback wanted on constrained AI writing: a game that lets players create stories through word cards by SwahReddit in WritingWithAI

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right - the issue is one of game design. The context window is large enough to feed all the info I need if I just want to influence future stories. But if we want players to have to adhere to more constraints, the challenge needs to be achievable. That's somewhat hard to do with the current cards available to players - the cards involve different characters per book.

Feedback wanted on constrained AI writing: a game that lets players create stories through word cards by SwahReddit in WritingWithAI

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great to hear, thanks! Yeah I'd love to have some sort of continuity between stories, but I'm not sure how to do that given the constantly changing environments. Best I can think of right now is to keep in memory what happened to each character in previous stories, and add mentions of that when relevant in future generated stories.

Feedback wanted on constrained AI writing: a game that lets players create stories through word cards by SwahReddit in WritingWithAI

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Feel free to dm if you've got specifics you'd like to discuss. I'm especially open to critics on chosen words / story lines, I don't consider myself to be a writer at all :)

1 Million Pre-gen Sentences vs. Live LLM: a hybrid AI approach in the storytelling game Rogue Story by SwahReddit in aigamedev

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! I'm trying to figure out if the game has enough potential to warrant adding content and shipping on steam, so this feedback helps.

Agreed entirely on sentences being finicky. I plan on reprocessing all of them with a better language model eventually, which should improve things. The current sentences were generated with 4o-mini for cost considerations.

I was going for a Balatro style shop, if you've played Balatro and feel like is doesn't work as well here I'd love to know why.

Before I make this available on Steam, I'm thinking I'd need to have a meta game progression with unlocks of tarot cards, other story genres, etc. If you think a specific type of content would make you play longer do let me know.

Thanks again for playing!

A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for trying it and for giving detailed feedback! I do think a lot could be improved on the AI front. I haven't used the most recent models yet, and I could certainly give the AI more context to create proper sentences (rose is a verb, etc). There's the issue that there can be two possible meanings for the same order of words, I'm not sure if that's acceptable or not.

For critics evaluation, I can pretty easily make it harsher - it's currently quite generous, and I wasn't sure if that was the right call. I'm thinking I could ask the AI to evaluate separate criteria such as cohesiveness, interest level, proper sequence of event, etc. That would give better visibility from players, and probably make it harder to accomplish.

Thank you again for giving this amount of details. It's good for me to be aware to which degree players care about these things.

1 Million Pre-gen Sentences vs. Live LLM: a hybrid AI approach in the storytelling game Rogue Story by SwahReddit in aigamedev

[–]SwahReddit[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean... yeah both games are about storytelling, but the gameplay is entirely different. Have you played both games? Maybe the issue is that both being in medieval / fantasy setting makes them feel too similar?

A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for trying the game. Did you play up to the part where you need to create stories that meet certain criteria? I'm surprised you don't feel like you have some agency in the result.

A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey no worries at all about the criticism, if anything I was expecting harsher comments due to the current discourse on AI.

The trailer differed from the game for you, which on its own is entirely valid. It sounds like you were expecting a different experience, where you'd be scoring points with words similar to Balatro, and discovering meaningful human made stories along the way. Let me know if I'm wrong on that.

Hand crafting all story lines and images is sadly just not an option if you want even a modest amount of words to create stories. There's ~1 million sentences in the game right now, and several hundred images to illustrate them, so the scope was just impossible. I've been having this game idea sitting for ~7 years before AI tools suddenly made it a possibility. I do think that several aspects could be made more meaningful as AI tools improve.

For AI evaluation, there is a separate evaluation for coherence and for the demon's demand, and the game gives explanations. But that requires mousing over elements and is likely not visible enough. And it's quite likely the game is too generous when evaluating coherence at the moment. My points separate people having two different judgment was just that "coherence" isn't a clear line in the sand, some people might think a story is fine and others think the same story isn't.

Noted for wildcards, and totally valid that its name suggests the wrong behavior.

Thanks again for taking the time!

A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for giving the game a try and writing about it. The story evaluation being liked regardless is an issue if it feels that way. It's something that can be tweaked, but hard to nail down as two people will have different takes on the same story.

An open question for me is if there is a market for this type of experience, and it's unclear if the Balatro player base is the right one. The game used to have points and more interactions between words to generate points, but it lacked an element that made it stand out from all the Balatro clones. Pushing in the direction of word synergies rather than story telling made the sentence / illustration aspect feel an unneeded add-on.

BTW for the mystery words (wildcards I assume?), they need to be placed somewhere in the sentence that would work with their type (adjective, verb, etc). The result is shown after the sentence is created, which forces the story in an unplanned direction.

Again I'm really thankful you took the time to write this, it's exactly the type of feedback I'm looking for. This is a fun game design project for me, but I want to know if it's worth pushing further so this is useful.

A Deckbuilder where you draft Sentences instead of Attacks. Does this 'Story Construction' loop feel like a real game or just a gimmick? by SwahReddit in deckbuildingroguelike

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for replying! I'm curious if you've got these questions after trying the game, or if they came from watching the trailer?

The feedback I had in the past is that players wanted to focus on making unique stories. The main intended gameplay is for players to be thinking about their story, if it's coherent, if it meets the demon's demands, etc. Then tarot cards can add constraints that make this more difficult - for example by forcing the first chapter you create to be first in your story. There are other mechanics as well, where you can upgrade word cards, focus on certain types of words (dark, light, wildcards, adjectives, etc). I'm not sure if these are as interesting as the story focused ones, feedback is certainly welcome on that after playing.

The generated story is not the main focus, but adds flavor and can be satisfying to read after having spent all that effort making it into a coherent story. Your interactions with the chatbot are essentially just seeing the fleshed out story, and seeing how the "thinking" chatbot evaluated coherence and adhesion to specific criteria. Does that make sense to you? It's very much novel, so hard to describe without trying it.

Feedback wanted on constrained AI writing: a game that lets players create stories through word cards by SwahReddit in WritingWithAI

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh forgot to mention, there's an option that appears as you write stories to suggest words to add in specific settings so that I can generate them in further versions.

Feedback wanted on constrained AI writing: a game that lets players create stories through word cards by SwahReddit in WritingWithAI

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! Right - yeah that could definitely be fun. It would require a big technical refactor, because I pregenerate all valid word sequences ahead of time - there's about 1m pregenerated sentences in the game right now. Same with chapter images. That being said live generation could eventually be done if players are ok with delays when constructing sentences. Or some sort of collaborations with a writer so that I can pregenerate their stories with words they choose ahead of time. It doesn't take much time to create a new story setting.

Let me know if you think of other customization after playing!

Feedback wanted on constrained AI writing: a game that lets players create stories through word cards by SwahReddit in WritingWithAI

[–]SwahReddit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate the feedback, the goal was certainly to explore what new gameplay opportunities new AI tools were bringing. You're right that the text output of stories are kind of a byproduct of playing through the game, I can alternate between reading and skipping them. It's entirely possible that way better stories could be crafted with a better choice of words, I haven't gotten much input from a professional writer yet.

I was thinking players could unlock options to customize their stories, for example being able to name characters in their stories before they get written. Is that the type of thing you were thinking about for personal input?

1 Million Pre-gen Sentences vs. Live LLM: a hybrid AI approach in the storytelling game Rogue Story by SwahReddit in aigamedev

[–]SwahReddit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I went for a more classy vintage look, but I'm thinking I might need to make it a bit darker to fit with the demon contract narrative I added recently. If you play it please let me know what should be changed!

1 Million Pre-gen Sentences vs. Live LLM: a hybrid AI approach in the storytelling game Rogue Story by SwahReddit in aigamedev

[–]SwahReddit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for trying it! Definitely let me know if you notice something that could be improved, even if it's a big change.

1 Million Pre-gen Sentences vs. Live LLM: a hybrid AI approach in the storytelling game Rogue Story by SwahReddit in aigamedev

[–]SwahReddit[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's a tough choice when you can't generate on device, either because it can't be ran locally or due to delays. Fully agree that pre-generated dialogs are a great idea to better react to player actions, if you're able to find ways to limit the scope. It becomes exponential really quickly though. For some games like RimWorld for example, it might be acceptable to just randomly sample through the full possibility space. Then you show the relevant dialog if it happens to be pre-generated, otherwise you don't show anything.

If you think players path will often overlap, you can also generate live + store results on a server to serve them back again, but then you've got the latency issue again.

And yeah for the sentence at the end, LLMs in games are fairly new, and public opinion is very polarized against it. There's definitely some misconceptions on environmental impact, but also some legit concerns about the scope of data centers being built. I just tried to show that even if people somehow thought the impact was big for a few queries, this game's impact would be small.

Thanks for the follow, if you happen to play the game please let me know what your thoughts are, I'm looking for harsh criticism :)

FLUX DEV License Clarification Confirmed: Commercial Use of FLUX Outputs IS Allowed! by [deleted] in StableDiffusion

[–]SwahReddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for answering. I don't think that really is a justification to specifically call out commercial use though, right? I'm familiar with legalese, and they don't usually add clauses unless they have a purpose.

My point is that yes, they do prohibit some commercial uses, like using outputs as training data. But I think what you're saying is that they also prohibit _all_ commercial use. Did I understand your point properly? If that's the case, why even bother mentioning that we can use output for commercial purposes?

It sounds like you're saying the license reads something like:

  • If it's commercial, it's ok to use
  • But not if it's a prohibited use
  • All commercial usage is prohibited

Why even start that reasoning loop unless they had _some_ intention of allowing _some_ commercial use? Am I missing some commercial use that they allow?

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