Dungeon crawling or lucid dreaming?(aiweirdness.com)
aiweirdness.com
Dungeon crawling or lucid dreaming?
https://aiweirdness.com/post/187645450357/dungeon-crawling-or-lucid-dreaming/
38 comments
I’m no expert, but it just seems like a lot of nonsense? This doesn’t fit my definition of a game as much as it just seems like a random semi-amusing chatbot.
Sure but the “semi-amusing” part varies a lot from person to person. It pattern matches into old neurons and rewards some people (like me) with much delight. It’s valuable nonsense to me at least.
It's only a little better than Emacs's m-x dissociated-press.
https://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/emacs/html_node/emacs_47...
>It is a mustatement that too much use of Dissociated Press can be a developediment to your real work. Sometimes to the point of outragedy. And keep dissociwords out of your documentation, if you want it to be well userenced and properbose. Have fun. Your buggestions are welcome.
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DissociatedPress
https://ftp.gnu.org/old-gnu/Manuals/emacs/html_node/emacs_47...
>It is a mustatement that too much use of Dissociated Press can be a developediment to your real work. Sometimes to the point of outragedy. And keep dissociwords out of your documentation, if you want it to be well userenced and properbose. Have fun. Your buggestions are welcome.
https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DissociatedPress
Agreed. The content on this site provides an endless source of giggling for me. I have tried and failed to explain to my wife why I find it so amusing. The author has a talent for presenting quasi-coherent computer-generated gibberish in a particular way, and like you, I guess I'm just highly attuned to it.
Well it's a gradient, isn't it? Call it a 10% game, where 50% is the threshold of minimal gaming satisfaction.
I don't know you can put it as a percentage.
The generated text might associate with what you type but there seems like 0% goals-as-such, 0% available choices-as-such, 0% dangers-as-such. Maybe you 10% "influence" over the random the thing spews but that doesn't seem 10% game even.
Edit: also, 0% constraints based on either passed actions or properties of things in the world. As others have noted, it will generally respond to the most obvious action of the scene with either a reason that action is impossible or some entirely unrelated.
Perhaps the thing could be trained to give a resource-print-out and then you'd have some idea where hard limits existed.
The generated text might associate with what you type but there seems like 0% goals-as-such, 0% available choices-as-such, 0% dangers-as-such. Maybe you 10% "influence" over the random the thing spews but that doesn't seem 10% game even.
Edit: also, 0% constraints based on either passed actions or properties of things in the world. As others have noted, it will generally respond to the most obvious action of the scene with either a reason that action is impossible or some entirely unrelated.
Perhaps the thing could be trained to give a resource-print-out and then you'd have some idea where hard limits existed.
Yeah, but have you noticed over the last few years it's getting better and better (i.e. less and less nonsense).
This is the beginning of machine reasoning and procedural storytelling
This is the beginning of machine reasoning and procedural storytelling
There's not much reasoning going on in those samples. It can stick a subject input you provide it into a sentence which is sometimes serendiptously funny (and usually grammatically correct tbf, although it looks like that's mostly because it heavily reuses direct quotes from its source material), but it can't handle the basics of game construction like responding properly to a request to go north after telling you there's a path to the north
My favorite pastime playing MUDs in the early 90s was to do dumb stuff.
> Eat horse
> YOU CAN'T DO THAT
> Eat horse
> YOU FEEL SICK
What I read in this article doesn't show much I (of AI) to me, but highlights how 30yrs ago there was a lot of creative thinking to generate an open seeming environment.
> Eat horse
> YOU CAN'T DO THAT
> Eat horse
> YOU FEEL SICK
What I read in this article doesn't show much I (of AI) to me, but highlights how 30yrs ago there was a lot of creative thinking to generate an open seeming environment.
That’s why I said “the beginning”
the first step is forming a representation of thought, so things like the embedding matrix inside word2vec form “thought vectors” - self organised representations of high level conceptual ideas, generalised to all knowledge.
And it turns out these vectors work under linear algebra (e.g. They are commutative) I think these will form the basis of machine reasoning in future
the first step is forming a representation of thought, so things like the embedding matrix inside word2vec form “thought vectors” - self organised representations of high level conceptual ideas, generalised to all knowledge.
And it turns out these vectors work under linear algebra (e.g. They are commutative) I think these will form the basis of machine reasoning in future
>There's not much reasoning going on in those samples.
but you agree there is some? that's the significance.
but you agree there is some? that's the significance.
The grammar might be better as is the sentence structure(still pretty bad), but from an information/story sense it's still about as gibberish as anything like this created before. Until AI can actually experience context, I really doubt there's any way to teach it to generate convincing stories without tons of supervision.
I've noticed that over the last 15 years, the teen supernatural romance section has grown from a shelf to rack to a row.
Chuck Tingle's NSFW dinosaur tinglers, bigfoot tinglers, unicorn tinglers, living object tinglers, and living place tinglers have become enormously popular.
https://www.chucktingle.com/ebook.html
Unlike the output of a neural network, his surrealistic enigmatically erotic prose is somehow coherent and uniformly stylized, makes perfect sense in terms of its own internal logic, and consistently rationalizes and explains even the most absurd topics he imagines.
Vox has covered his brilliant work:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/18/12775742/who-is-chuck...
>The secret behind internet erotica icon Chuck Tingle: his own life may be the best story he's ever written: Behind the surreal performance art, the gay dinosaur porn, and the political erotica may lie a beautiful reality.
>The list of things that Tingle’s narrators have had sex with includes, but is not limited to: the state of California; glazed donuts; the Dress; Bigfoot pirates; a gay unicorn biker and a gay unicorn colonel, though not simultaneously; Donald Trump’s attempt to avoid plagiarism accusations; Starbucks Christmas cups; a billionaire triceratops; a T. rex comedian and a clan of triceratops rappers (stand-ins for Bill Murray and the Wu Tang Clan); ghost boats; velociraptors from outer space; a secret-agent brontosaurus; the White House; the British pound; a plane; a train; a vampire night bus; his own books; press about his own books; existential dread; his own concept of linear time.
So much of it is also biting social commentary and political satire about current events and controversies, like "Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Manifestation Of My Own Ignorant Climate Change Denial":
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRH69VR/
Or "Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union":
https://www.amazon.com/Pounded-Pound-Socioeconomic-Implicati...
He counter-trolled the alt-right "Rabid Puppies" Hugo Award trolls:
https://www.therabidpuppies.com/
And wrote "Slammed in the Butt by my own Hugo Award Nomination":
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUC93RE
Here's another Vox article about his troll of the alt-right "Rabid Puppies":
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11759842/chuck-tingle-hugo-awa...
>Satirical erotica author Chuck Tingle's massive troll of conservative sci-fi fans, explained: Right-wing sci-fi writers tried to delegitimize the Hugo Awards by nominating a writer no one took seriously. Here's how he took them all by surprise.
This video explains his Literary Genius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5zLGZfheY
>The Literary Genius of Chuck Tingle: Chuck Tingle is an author of some of the best erotica of our time. From dinosaurs to unicorns to political satire, his writing never fails to elicit a sharp tingle down the spine.
https://www.chucktingle.com/ebook.html
Unlike the output of a neural network, his surrealistic enigmatically erotic prose is somehow coherent and uniformly stylized, makes perfect sense in terms of its own internal logic, and consistently rationalizes and explains even the most absurd topics he imagines.
Vox has covered his brilliant work:
https://www.vox.com/culture/2016/10/18/12775742/who-is-chuck...
>The secret behind internet erotica icon Chuck Tingle: his own life may be the best story he's ever written: Behind the surreal performance art, the gay dinosaur porn, and the political erotica may lie a beautiful reality.
>The list of things that Tingle’s narrators have had sex with includes, but is not limited to: the state of California; glazed donuts; the Dress; Bigfoot pirates; a gay unicorn biker and a gay unicorn colonel, though not simultaneously; Donald Trump’s attempt to avoid plagiarism accusations; Starbucks Christmas cups; a billionaire triceratops; a T. rex comedian and a clan of triceratops rappers (stand-ins for Bill Murray and the Wu Tang Clan); ghost boats; velociraptors from outer space; a secret-agent brontosaurus; the White House; the British pound; a plane; a train; a vampire night bus; his own books; press about his own books; existential dread; his own concept of linear time.
So much of it is also biting social commentary and political satire about current events and controversies, like "Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Manifestation Of My Own Ignorant Climate Change Denial":
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XRH69VR/
Or "Pounded By The Pound: Turned Gay By The Socioeconomic Implications Of Britain Leaving The European Union":
https://www.amazon.com/Pounded-Pound-Socioeconomic-Implicati...
He counter-trolled the alt-right "Rabid Puppies" Hugo Award trolls:
https://www.therabidpuppies.com/
And wrote "Slammed in the Butt by my own Hugo Award Nomination":
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUC93RE
Here's another Vox article about his troll of the alt-right "Rabid Puppies":
https://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11759842/chuck-tingle-hugo-awa...
>Satirical erotica author Chuck Tingle's massive troll of conservative sci-fi fans, explained: Right-wing sci-fi writers tried to delegitimize the Hugo Awards by nominating a writer no one took seriously. Here's how he took them all by surprise.
This video explains his Literary Genius:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz5zLGZfheY
>The Literary Genius of Chuck Tingle: Chuck Tingle is an author of some of the best erotica of our time. From dinosaurs to unicorns to political satire, his writing never fails to elicit a sharp tingle down the spine.
Looking at it from a different perspective this could basically be what the state of consciousness is engaged in during REM sleep. An exchange of action-responses with the “perception module” in maintenance mode splitting out chunks of trained data describing half-sensible representations of abstractions, doing so based on how the “decider module” reacts to it. In this overly simplified model, a dream is merely a conscious interpretation of a set of brief and segmented memories of this somewhat “adversarial” process between the two modules.
Interesting image.
One thing to consider, to further your thought exploration: it seems that in the human brain, both data and logic use the 'same hardware', i.e. storage and processing are reliant on the same physical structures. Memory, for all we know, is a factual impression whose topology is closest to giving it 'meaning'.
I picture it as having a mesh+distributed multi-CPU system, wherein CPU/core 'cache' is in fact all of memory (no 'external' RAM or cold storage, physically). Data seems sharded between CPUs, i.e. topology of neurons (notably diameter of 'network connections', axons and dendrites).
I can picture indeed chunks of data 'lighting up' and enabling some partial processing during REM / dreams. Another crucial observation, I think, is related to "EMDR" (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). It's both the natural way we deal with small traumas in our sleep, and has become a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences (think horrors of war, grave assault, etc).
This is purely mechanical and essentially helps de-correlate emotions from memory, i.e. you de-sensitize memory, learn to think about X without feeling the PTSD.
There is also a fundamentally "adversarial" discourse in the human consciousness: internally we both speak "as" and "to" ourselves, we freely move from "I" to "you" in monologue.
I don't have a proposition to tie all this. Just sharing food for thought.
One thing to consider, to further your thought exploration: it seems that in the human brain, both data and logic use the 'same hardware', i.e. storage and processing are reliant on the same physical structures. Memory, for all we know, is a factual impression whose topology is closest to giving it 'meaning'.
I picture it as having a mesh+distributed multi-CPU system, wherein CPU/core 'cache' is in fact all of memory (no 'external' RAM or cold storage, physically). Data seems sharded between CPUs, i.e. topology of neurons (notably diameter of 'network connections', axons and dendrites).
I can picture indeed chunks of data 'lighting up' and enabling some partial processing during REM / dreams. Another crucial observation, I think, is related to "EMDR" (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). It's both the natural way we deal with small traumas in our sleep, and has become a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences (think horrors of war, grave assault, etc).
This is purely mechanical and essentially helps de-correlate emotions from memory, i.e. you de-sensitize memory, learn to think about X without feeling the PTSD.
There is also a fundamentally "adversarial" discourse in the human consciousness: internally we both speak "as" and "to" ourselves, we freely move from "I" to "you" in monologue.
I don't have a proposition to tie all this. Just sharing food for thought.
For someone who played muds less for the grind and more for the discovery aspect, I could see this being an entertaining experience.
I really enjoyed reading the article, btw. The writing was great, almost as winding and random and dreamlike as the subject matter.
I really enjoyed reading the article, btw. The writing was great, almost as winding and random and dreamlike as the subject matter.
tldr; interesting results! But suitable for mass consumption.
theres something uncanny about unleashing this type of 'AI' creativity that just 'remixes' endlessly with no human curation.
It's like pulling up to an all-you-can eat buffet made out of really low quality 'mass' with no nutrients, and then just over-eating for the next 36 hours. Shoving fork after fork of dense slop into your stomach, and having your body essentially treat it as poison since you only could digest the first 30 minutes of food you shovelled down your throat. The rest is indigestion for all but the most discerning of minds.
theres something uncanny about unleashing this type of 'AI' creativity that just 'remixes' endlessly with no human curation.
It's like pulling up to an all-you-can eat buffet made out of really low quality 'mass' with no nutrients, and then just over-eating for the next 36 hours. Shoving fork after fork of dense slop into your stomach, and having your body essentially treat it as poison since you only could digest the first 30 minutes of food you shovelled down your throat. The rest is indigestion for all but the most discerning of minds.
I tried it out. As other commenters have pointed out, it doesn't produce much of a coherent story, but it does have its amusing moments. For example:
THE DOOR NOW HAS THE LETTERS "ME" WRITTEN ON IT
go through door
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT
you put your hand on the handle and turn
YOU PUT YOUR HAND ON THE HANDLE AND TURN IT WITH A ROAR
THE DOOR OPENSSomeone should put this in Dwarf Fortress, or even better, in Minecraft. Imagine Minecraft generating proper dungeons for you to explore. I don't know about game design to know how to do this or what's wrong with this idea.
SimCity 2000 had a random newspaper article generator.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/b102240b1a68b839c4c38b883f85e437...
https://procedural-generation.tumblr.com/post/134086657418/s...
>SimCity 2000 - Newspapers
>Simcity 2000 doesn’t just have terrain generation. Every city has between one and six newspapers that are updated every month with new stories about the city.
>The articles are clearly generated from templates, with liberal word substitutions. The templates frequently correspond to the current state of your city, with a few international news items thrown in. The absurdity of the word swaps and the tone of the templates fit in well with the rest of Maxis’s trademark humor.
>Later SimCity games would use news tickers, but I miss the extra bit of narrative connection you get with your citizens when you read an interview with them, even one constructed out of absurd templates. The news tickers tended to have clever headlines, but become exhausted fairly quickly, whereas the newspapers had predictable, even serious headlines and funny madlib text, which is I think what gives them more staying power.
>Fred Haslam, Debra Larson, and Chris Weiss are credited with writing the content for the newspapers.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/b102240b1a68b839c4c38b883f85e437...
https://procedural-generation.tumblr.com/post/134086657418/s...
>SimCity 2000 - Newspapers
>Simcity 2000 doesn’t just have terrain generation. Every city has between one and six newspapers that are updated every month with new stories about the city.
>The articles are clearly generated from templates, with liberal word substitutions. The templates frequently correspond to the current state of your city, with a few international news items thrown in. The absurdity of the word swaps and the tone of the templates fit in well with the rest of Maxis’s trademark humor.
>Later SimCity games would use news tickers, but I miss the extra bit of narrative connection you get with your citizens when you read an interview with them, even one constructed out of absurd templates. The news tickers tended to have clever headlines, but become exhausted fairly quickly, whereas the newspapers had predictable, even serious headlines and funny madlib text, which is I think what gives them more staying power.
>Fred Haslam, Debra Larson, and Chris Weiss are credited with writing the content for the newspapers.
There are already plenty of mods which do this. You could try Roguelike Dungeons, for example.
It feels more like a chat or than dungeon crawling.
I feel like one would get better results by procedurally generating the world then using words just to describe it. Although I'm sure something like that must exist already.
I feel like one would get better results by procedurally generating the world then using words just to describe it. Although I'm sure something like that must exist already.
What do you consider "better" in this context?
The thing with textual descriptions is that it is vague enough to let you fill in the blanks. The generated text relies on the human mind to complete it. Generating a world a la Minecraft loses that ambiguity, which in this situation might actually be a problem because it can no longer lean on our imagination.
The thing with textual descriptions is that it is vague enough to let you fill in the blanks. The generated text relies on the human mind to complete it. Generating a world a la Minecraft loses that ambiguity, which in this situation might actually be a problem because it can no longer lean on our imagination.
Better results in my opinion would be coherent gameplay.
This title amused me. For many years now, my dreams have actually felt a lot like dungeon crawling. Every night it is a new area to explore, often with strange challenges and puzzles along the way.
It does seem a lot like that... I have a good recollection of my latest dreams, right before I wake up, whenever I sleep too long. Today was specially interesting...
My recollection begins at na office, clearly not a place I have been before, white walls, an L shaped room, long white messy desks full of computers and papers, but everyone in the room was known to me. They were my co-workers.
I remember talking about something I am upset about. I find that I am upset that they think my code is unacceptable. My colleague next to me keeps to his computer, clearly avoiding contact. Someone rises from the right of my field of vision carrying an opened notebook in his hand. He is the most senior programmer and asks me to accompany him outside. "Outside", he says. I am taken aback... "are you asking me to leave?" (like a teacher would ask a child that is misbehaving). Outside, he says again. I say "No! I can prove I am right!"
Suddenly me, this senior programmer and the guy next to me was entering a brightly lit, wooden room. I know I have been there before, but it is all different. I realise they turned the place into something like an old museum. My thought is that they did that to protect the project I was working on.
I walk past the same long desks as before, now wooden instead of plain white, but covered in paper just as before. I walk towards a desk attendant, a woman I can't exacly see the face. I ask to see the archives of 2016-2017. Now I can suddenly see her face, its expression of secrecy, looking around. She takes me by the hand, up some stairs, towards a somewhat hidden door. The set is now like a barn, there are many people around, but they all have their backs to me. It still feels like they are looking at stuff in a museum.
She tells me, before going through the door, that I must keep close, there are several monsters in place to protect the archive and if I look I might get scared and run off, getting lost in the halls.
Beyond the door there is a mesh of corridors, desks and chairs to either sides, disfigured, gray people sitting, like they were in a bar, talking. The mood is agitated, and as we run past I feel some of them jumping up. I keep staring at the wooden floor as we rush through the maze.
We finally arrive at a dead end corridor, separated by a wooden grid frame without any doors. Can exactly tell how long it felt we were running for, many minutes, maybe hours. There is a wooden desk with benches at either sides. She starts taking files from shelves and setting them at the table, as I notice there are wolves coming at us from the end of the corridor. I step through the frame and take a wand of my coat. I realise I am powerful enough and make some sort of dance by the end of which a blast of air sets the wolves running off the other way, scared.
I go back to the table and I tell her I am an Auror (yes just like in Harry Potter, when I woke up I found it so silly, but the feeling was cool at the time) and she tells me I should have told her before, impressed.
Before waking up a flash of scenes rush through, me sifting through code printed in those files and realising I connected magic with code, and that all my code was really working after all and that that is the way that actual magic work, through those code abstractions.
Looking back at the dream, it feels a lot like a neural network generated plot, with two differences. The first is that the scenery and plot seem to change less often, and the second is that even though everything changes, some artifacts from the previous dream iteration still remains, influencing the next scene.
I have other recollections and they all go a lot like this, many times the dreams taking me back to the same place as before, but with all the previous dream elemnts still present, in an never ending quest until I wake up.
My recollection begins at na office, clearly not a place I have been before, white walls, an L shaped room, long white messy desks full of computers and papers, but everyone in the room was known to me. They were my co-workers.
I remember talking about something I am upset about. I find that I am upset that they think my code is unacceptable. My colleague next to me keeps to his computer, clearly avoiding contact. Someone rises from the right of my field of vision carrying an opened notebook in his hand. He is the most senior programmer and asks me to accompany him outside. "Outside", he says. I am taken aback... "are you asking me to leave?" (like a teacher would ask a child that is misbehaving). Outside, he says again. I say "No! I can prove I am right!"
Suddenly me, this senior programmer and the guy next to me was entering a brightly lit, wooden room. I know I have been there before, but it is all different. I realise they turned the place into something like an old museum. My thought is that they did that to protect the project I was working on.
I walk past the same long desks as before, now wooden instead of plain white, but covered in paper just as before. I walk towards a desk attendant, a woman I can't exacly see the face. I ask to see the archives of 2016-2017. Now I can suddenly see her face, its expression of secrecy, looking around. She takes me by the hand, up some stairs, towards a somewhat hidden door. The set is now like a barn, there are many people around, but they all have their backs to me. It still feels like they are looking at stuff in a museum.
She tells me, before going through the door, that I must keep close, there are several monsters in place to protect the archive and if I look I might get scared and run off, getting lost in the halls.
Beyond the door there is a mesh of corridors, desks and chairs to either sides, disfigured, gray people sitting, like they were in a bar, talking. The mood is agitated, and as we run past I feel some of them jumping up. I keep staring at the wooden floor as we rush through the maze.
We finally arrive at a dead end corridor, separated by a wooden grid frame without any doors. Can exactly tell how long it felt we were running for, many minutes, maybe hours. There is a wooden desk with benches at either sides. She starts taking files from shelves and setting them at the table, as I notice there are wolves coming at us from the end of the corridor. I step through the frame and take a wand of my coat. I realise I am powerful enough and make some sort of dance by the end of which a blast of air sets the wolves running off the other way, scared.
I go back to the table and I tell her I am an Auror (yes just like in Harry Potter, when I woke up I found it so silly, but the feeling was cool at the time) and she tells me I should have told her before, impressed.
Before waking up a flash of scenes rush through, me sifting through code printed in those files and realising I connected magic with code, and that all my code was really working after all and that that is the way that actual magic work, through those code abstractions.
Looking back at the dream, it feels a lot like a neural network generated plot, with two differences. The first is that the scenery and plot seem to change less often, and the second is that even though everything changes, some artifacts from the previous dream iteration still remains, influencing the next scene.
I have other recollections and they all go a lot like this, many times the dreams taking me back to the same place as before, but with all the previous dream elemnts still present, in an never ending quest until I wake up.
Thanks for sharing! Yes, mine often end up quite elaborate as well.
Here's a question for you: Are the people in your dream from real waking life, or are they more like characters in a story/NPCs in a game?
In my dreams I have charachters who aren't from real life. Like for example, I don't have a sister in real life, but in one dream, there's this person who is just casually my sister, and it all feels like it makes sense, even though in real life it makes no sense. In a related fashon, there's associations with people that aren't logical, but feel logical in the dream. For example, in one disturbing nightmare, I discovered a box belonging to my father - but there's no reason why in the dream I should conclude that the box is his, it's literally a box with zero context, but the context was somehow there none the less.
Here's a question for you: Are the people in your dream from real waking life, or are they more like characters in a story/NPCs in a game?
In my dreams I have charachters who aren't from real life. Like for example, I don't have a sister in real life, but in one dream, there's this person who is just casually my sister, and it all feels like it makes sense, even though in real life it makes no sense. In a related fashon, there's associations with people that aren't logical, but feel logical in the dream. For example, in one disturbing nightmare, I discovered a box belonging to my father - but there's no reason why in the dream I should conclude that the box is his, it's literally a box with zero context, but the context was somehow there none the less.
It shouldn't be hard to manually add some object permanence. Looks like that'd fix a lot of the nonsensical issues it has. Is it worthwhile to train a neutral net to realize, "no, you don't have a large bowl, butter, or sugar."
With a few crutches like that, it could be a funny storyteller!
With a few crutches like that, it could be a funny storyteller!
I feel like this game could be improved a lot with better training data. The neural network doesn't have training examples of things that are impossible, so it's responding in unexpected ways.
These descriptions all seem like nonsequitors which limits my interest. If it had any coherence it would seem super fun.
Sounds like when chatting to the sillybean Chatbot on google home.
Is there some way to embed a sense of continuity in these text generators?
It feels like we're close, but not there yet
It feels like we're close, but not there yet