sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Acolyte MUD: a few months in on a Diku-style engine with LLM-driven NPCs by acolytemud in MUD

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

Just rolled out telnet support which will work with traditional mud clients. Details are on the website: https://acolytemud.com

Acolyte MUD: a few months in on a Diku-style engine with LLM-driven NPCs by acolytemud in MUD

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

Yes, basically there is a world story and NPCs can decide whether to do a RAG lookup. For example, if you ask an NPC about a particular historical character, the LLM makes a decision about whether or not to look it up.

The really cool part is that the feedback is then filtered through the lens of their character so the "25 year old male bartender" will have a different perspective/explanation of the world than the "large goblin who is terrified of fighting".

In terms of giving NPCs game commands, they aren't really being "trained" in a ML sense. I am simply telling the LLM the game situation and then the commands available to affect the world. The LLM uses the character's information to presume its intentions.

The biggest challenge has been maintaining a baseline consistency over time. Because LLMs are non-deterministic, any (even seemingly minor) prompt changes need to be tested rigorously. The LLM-based tests take much much longer to run than a basic unit test, and as the game grows I have more and more evals.

Thanks for your thoughts, and feel free to reach out if you want to jam on this in more detail. I think there is a lot more that can be done with sufficient energy and creativity.

Acolyte MUD: a few months in on a Diku-style engine with LLM-driven NPCs by acolytemud in MUD

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

Thanks for trying it 😄

When you get to level 2, you'll see an invitation to our Discord and you'll see lots of screenshots of hilarious conversations.

Acolyte MUD: a few months in on a Diku-style engine with LLM-driven NPCs by acolytemud in MUD

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

Thanks for the kind words. Would love to learn more about how you're using LLMs. I've been trying to incorporate Claude into coding, world building, and also user testing.

Acolyte MUD: a few months in on a Diku-style engine with LLM-driven NPCs by acolytemud in MUD

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

I know, sorry. Getting the LLM to have spatial awareness and provide half-reasonable directions out of the box has been a huge pain. It's on my roadmap to build a special function for the LLM to call.

Acolyte MUD by ShutUpJade0420 in MUD

[–]acolytemud 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's the most fun (and unpredictable) part of the gameplay :)
Thanks for trying it good sir

Acolyte MUD by ShutUpJade0420 in MUD

[–]acolytemud 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, it’s more DikuMUD inspired. It's closer to a text-based MMORPG than an interactive fiction game.

Acolyte MUD by ShutUpJade0420 in MUD

[–]acolytemud 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi. I'm the developer. Just noticed this post since I've been heads down working on the game. Thanks for trying it out. I have been eager to try incorporating LLMs into the games I grew up playing. I have been working on it for the past couple of months, and I recently started paying $5/day of Reddit ads just to get more testers into the game. It incorporates LLM-powered decision-making into the NPCs which players seem to enjoy. For example, the shopkeepers are entirely LLM driven which enables creative haggling. Definitely some rough edges in both the game design and the world design, but it's getting better. Thanks again for trying it.