Machine Creativity

[Matty]

The older I get the less willing I am to spend hours and weeks coding individual stats,  levels, game rules and interfaces.

Part of me has a dream which is to create a system that creates itself.

Kind of like procedurally generating an rpg or similar with a few parameters passed.

Actually more like a system that builds the system itself.

Like an exercise in artificially intelligent machine learning code and universe creation.

A simple version of this would be a database driven world that updates by a cron job with php scripts and the state of the world could be caught in a snapshot by opening a browser window at a point in time.

A bit like a simulation that is smart enough to generate itself.

Anyone else think like this?

[Derron]

A persistent world: yes, this is something cool (world continues to life without your presence).


A problem is: what happens to your character while you are not playing: is the character "idling" on the spot you left him? So could they get killed meanwhile? That would be some kind of "god mode" (you are the "invisible hand") especially if you let the character "auto play" during AFK-time.


Do you take the character out of the game? What happens to NPCs currently interacting with the character? Or other players suddenly "disappearing"?




The above situations are the (imho) biggest problems to solve - for a real persistent world.


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Regarding the procedural generation: the generator could use previous games and their "success rates" (progress of all players) to make it "harder/longer" (no pun intented). Or: if people do "dungeons" in a world more often, then the generator should consider creating more dungeons. If people do some certain dungeons often and others up to never, then it might be a good signal to make less dungeons but "more difficult/longer" ones - or to create more quests to "convince" the players to also visit other dungeons.




Regardings stats: a real simulation of the world would automatically "recognize" what talents are needed for what kind of environment. Everything is swampy? Fur might not become your friend while webfeet could help there. If you have icy environment this should be connected to "cold temperatures", "slippery ground". Your characters could have a "body temperature" and either get reaaaallly slow with cold temperatures (like frogs) or consume "health condition" (like humans). Health condition is some kind of "stat" which allows to stay on the current "HP"-value until the health condition is "consumed" ("you feel the ice crouching through your body").






bye
Ron

[ENAY]

Speaking of machine creativity. Even today I'm always blown away by rendering techniques that machines can do. Starting from cell shading, machine rendering has come a long way.

Animal render

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgPaCWJL7XI

[TomToad]

I have actually seen videos like that before.  i think it was on a TED talk.
Yeup, it was a TED talk.  Found it. https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality/footnotes

[Rooster]

We can now add abstract art to the list of thing that can be automated now.

It did give me ideas of how to make a alternate dimension look alien, or how psychic or sixth sense would look.
I think I've got an idea of what the trick behind it is. Still looks cool.