[Update 4/29/2023: If you're looking for a free ChatGPT-like option, the closest thing is the recently added "Open Assistant" option. This gives a similar experience to ChatGPT but with slightly lower accuracy and much less reliable service. Original post below.]
ChatGPT has been a real game changer for AI Roguelite, and I’m very excited to continue improving it. To activate it, you'll need to subscribe to the Sapphire tier in the in-game link and select "Cloud generation (Sapphire)". It’s a work in progress and I’m working out some kinks, but I am already pretty mind-blown by how well it can generate a consistent story from the player’s actions.
Everything regarding prompting, text generation, and event checks has been completely overhauled to fit the new model. Here are, in my opinion, the most exciting improvements:
Story text quality
Instead of generating first the “action string” and then the rest of the story, the whole process is now consolidated end-to-end as the game can simply instruct ChatGPT to produce the desired story in natural language. This results in a much higher quality of story text overall.
Example: [Generate the next 3-4 sentences of the story, in which you expertly use your baseball bat on the white sofa.]
You cautiously take a seat in the chair he's offered, careful not to jostle any of his weeds, rocks or small animal parts. As you begin to chat, you notice a white sofa in the back corner that looks oddly out of place in this shamanic abode. In a moment of pure reflex, you reach for your baseball bat and take a majestic swing, smashing the sofa to bits. Jonas looks on in disbelief, but then chuckles and nods thoughtfully. "I was wondering how long it would take for someone to take care of that eye sore," he says with a shrug.
Story-based quest completion
A question such as “did the player complete the task to X”, while too complicated for previous models, is handled with decent accuracy by ChatGPT and is now a more viable way to complete quests than before. Previous solution was using a token prediction algorithm using a lot of math.
Organic follower intervention
The game no longer hand-holds the AI into deciding when the follower should intervene. It simply states in the prompt that you have a follower who may help you out in certain situations. The AI can at any point in the story “decide” to make the follower intervene. Without any extra prompt manipulation, ChatGPT generates dramatic stories/combat which often involve your follower saving your life.
Event checks
ChatGPT is sophisticated enough to answer every event check question in a single request with a giant list of yes/no questions, instead of using the logprobs logic that smaller models required. The event check accuracy is not perfect and is a work in progress. However, it’s already better than other existing options for most checks.
Caveats
Using ChatGPT for AI Roguelite currently requires the Sapphire tier subscription at $20 per month (with this subscription, you still have access to the older paid cloud models). In the future as the tech gets cheaper, similar functionality might be implemented for local or cheaper models.
For now, calibration and biases won’t work with ChatGPT because of lack of log probs in the output. The only way to adjust the false positives/negatives is by adjusting the wordings of the questions. Hopefully in the near future, ChatGPT event checks should be accurate enough that biasing won’t be needed anymore.
If you made a mod and want it to work with ChatGPT style prompting, you may need to fill out the new chatgpt-specific fields in the survival bar config files, as well as taking a look at event-checks-chatgpt and prompts-chatgpt.
There are rare cases where you may encounter a text completion refusal due to OpenAI censoring "unsafe" generations and responding beginning with "I'm sorry". I tested the limits of this and found that the chances of it happening are low, and are influenced by how much you deviate from the story. The vast majority of offensive NSFW and violent prompts should still pass as long as they're related to the existing story. Do note that if you encounter actual story text depicting a failure to do something, and you rolled a critical failure, that is working as intended.
Known issues for ChatGPT (fixes coming soon):
- New characters appearing need to be deduplicated better
- Text is sometimes produced in past tense
- Text is produced in larger quantities which causes scrolling UI usability issues
- Key plot point, new side quest, new item, and new ability are overtriggering
- Mood and energy change are too correlated
Known issue that won’t be fixed:
- Not fully compatible with survival bars of saves made before March 21, 2023. The game should still run but you may need to check the global “disable survival mechanics” option to avoid starving to death.
Misc
Added topic name input when auto-generating a world preset for a new game, to make it more interesting.