Sapphire overhaul
New model
Sapphire users have all been upgraded to Gemini due to its superior storytelling abilities. Compared to ChatGPT, I feel it has more depth, better plot development, and more realistic character responses. It was so good that for the first time in my life I felt emotionally invested in the characters’ outcomes.
For non-storytelling (event checks, entity generation etc), it uses a combination of Gemini or ChatGPT depending on which model performed better during testing.
In case some are wondering about the future of non-subscribing users, note that this technology improves rapidly and becomes cheaper over time. For example, today’s Free Cloud is actually almost as good as Sapphire when it first launched (apart from the speed).
New options
The Sapphire model now has two modes. Default for more creative and realistic plot development (with auto NSFW fallback if the model refused to generate), and NSFW-friendly if you want to have more control and literal interpretation of your actions.
Prompt overhauls
Several prompts have been revised to improve storytelling and event checks across all models. The biggest difference is you may notice a reduced incidence of story turns which end with your action without describing what happens next.
Configurable generated length
The length of generated text is now moddable and model-dependent, under the model-config directory (e.g. “2-3 sentences” or “couple paragraphs”). So far only Default vs Gemini are supported (Gemini obeys the length recommendation more strictly). Please note there's still a token limit on the output per turn, but this phrase can influence how soon into the generated text things start "happening", as well as the probability of a plot twist.
Player name and pronouns
You may now optionally specify your name and pronouns, when making a new game. The story prompt will take them into account.
NPC pronouns
I finally prompt engineered the LLM’s to produce descriptions of NPCs that include gendered pronouns “he” or “she”, rather than describing every single person as “they”. Fun fact: I thought this task would take 5 minutes, but it actually took almost a whole day.
Talk to enemy, Charisma revision
Due to popular abhorrence of talking to people “sheepishly” and “awkwardly” (as well as my own annoyance at my own mechanic), I’ve raised the minimum roll outcome of talking to NPCs to minor success. This means no more “awkwardly” talking to NPCs (unless of course you’ve enabled crit failures for simple tasks in the option menu).
At the same time, you are now allowed to talk to the current enemy you're facing. When talking to an enemy you have no such “minimum roll outcome” allowance, and get stricter punishments when you fail, which means Charisma is still an important stat.
Cheat codes
The console view (opened via ~) now includes a text input. The supported cheat codes are:
- reg - Restore all health and survival bars
- lvl - Gain 1 level
- item [item name] - Gives you an item with that name with rarity based on the default loot probability table
- item[number 1-5] [item name] - Gives you an item of that name, with the number dictating the rarity level, 1 being Common and 5 being Legendary. NOTE: No space between item and the number. Example usage: item2 Longsword
- gold [number] - Gives you that amount of gold
- abil [ability name] - Grants you a learned ability with that name
- roll [a number 0 to 3] - Sets an override for all roll checks at the specified number, with 0 being critical failure and 3 being critical success. This is reset when you reload the save or restart the game.
Improvement for open-ended turns
Instead of tacking on your text as the verbatim part of the story, open-ended now allows you to instruct the LLM in a free-form manner. This makes for a better gaming experience because it doesn’t require you to be a great writer to achieve great outcomes.
Misc
- The game now makes a backup save before saving, in case the save file becomes corrupted due to a crash
- Charm logic (tweaks inspired by a gripping story by Gemini in which a friend became possessed):
- If an enemy was defeated, charmed, and *not* injured, it’s considered charmed instead of defeated
- If an enemy has any NPC history or history summary, charm bypasses its plot armor
- Fixed chatgpt too tolerant of item similarity