regal ferry
I want to make Neuro the RimWorld narrator/storyteller. This is basically DM. There are a lot of parameters the storyteller controls, I think I want to use Randy as the base but make Neuro responsible for the events at the player's base.
Currently done: Neuro can spawn events
In the base game, Randy gives out events like this:
<categoryWeights>
<Misc>3.5</Misc>
<ThreatBig>1.4</ThreatBig>
<OrbitalVisitor>1.1</OrbitalVisitor>
<FactionArrival>2.4</FactionArrival>
<ThreatSmall>0.6</ThreatSmall>
<ShipChunkDrop>0.22</ShipChunkDrop>
</categoryWeights>
Misc category, "thrumbos passing" has a weight of 0.7, while "transport pod crash" has a chance of 1.5.The easiest thing to do is to give Neuro points over time that she can spend on weights. However, I think this can give her power to generate one-sided events. While this can be interesting, for more balance I think she should be given some restrictions - if she wants to destroy Vedal's base, she should wait for an opportune moment and not just flood him with mechanoid raids.
slate smelt
Gain points from good events and spend them on negative events
regal ferry
That's what I thought was an option, yeah. Another idea is to exponentially increase repeating events' cost and making it slowly go back to normal.
woven cave
That's what I thought was an option, yeah. Another idea is to exponentially incr...
that was what I was gonna suggest
slate smelt
Give her a 30 second cd minimum between events
woven cave
cause I dont really want the good vs bad points cause I want it to be about Vedal CONVINCING Neuro to give him good events
not Neuro being FORCED to help him
regal ferry
agreed
pine crescent
Give her a 30 second cd minimum between events
Hell yeah, psychic ships every 30 seconds
slate smelt
I see
pine crescent
cause I dont really want the good vs bad points cause I want it to be about Veda...
Honestly idk how feasible that is given how the shock collar streams went
slate smelt
What if the more good events she does the stronger a bad event would be, and vice versa
regal ferry
that's the thing, we are here to make neuro not have the option of ending the stream in 5 seconds
regal ferry
What if the more good events she does the stronger a bad event would be, and vic...
oh yeah i can control the combat strength of raiders when neuro spawns them
woven cave
Honestly idk how feasible that is given how the shock collar streams went
fair
im not saying it should be PURELY up to Neuro
but I want to incentivize the content around the Vedal v. Neuro dynamic
like maybe we DO add the points system, but it should be secondary to some other method to prevent negative event spam
but this is more on the conceptional level, idk how to achieve this idea with code
regal ferry
i'll list all the events in the "misc" category for an idea of what the options and the stakes are:
good
pine crescent
There definitely would have to be rather strict restrictions. Even with a point system it would be extremely easy to minmax.
woven cave
remind me what the numbers are, is it a value or weight?
regal ferry
basically 0 is the rarest 999 is the most frequent
pine crescent
Also getting her to understand the implications of all these different events will be challenging
regal ferry
i can give her descriptions
a bit of manual labor is alright, rimworld doesnt have that many different events
woven cave
also remember this mod is designed for play WITH Vedal
he can and WILL tell her (whine about) what she is doing
she'll get a lot of context from that
woven cave
a bit of manual labor is alright, rimworld doesnt have *that* many different eve...
if you need written stuff like that I can assist
regal ferry
yeah imo:
so she will have a pretty good idea of what's going on and whether it's good or bad
pine crescent
also remember this mod is designed for play WITH Vedal
he can and WILL tell her ...
Yeah that's fair
woven cave
@regal ferry Was looking at other modded storytellers, maybe we could use some sort of scaling system like this one uses?
idk the feasibility but its an idea
regal ferry
i'll list all the events in the "misc" category for an idea of what the options ...
so, stuff like toxic fallout is pretty bad, and it's 8.333 rarer than the chance of some regular events like short circuits
regal ferry
<@455756327755710464> Was looking at other modded storytellers, maybe we could u...
this is kinda part of the base game, theres something called "population intent" that adjusts the chance of giving out new colonists depending on the colony size
woven cave
this is kinda part of the base game, theres something called "population intent"...
ah okay okay
pine crescent
Wealth scaling difficulty is vanilla
woven cave
I see sorry
pine crescent
But i am sure that hitting up some experienced rimworld modders is a good idea. I am sure they have tinkered with these systems a lot.
pine crescent
Yeah that is what i was talking about
woven cave
that went "well"
well tbf it did have a hostile third party messing with it
regal ferry
no i'm talking about after the ddos
pine crescent
There are dozens of mods that introduce new unique storytellers. The modders have put a lot of thought into balancing that stuff.
regal ferry
the thing is, these are ultimately algorithms
woven cave
There are dozens of mods that introduce new unique storytellers. The modders hav...
true
but the biggest differnce is that they had control of ALL the variables
yeah what Chay is saying
Neuro will permanently be an unknown variable
thats hard to balance around
pine crescent
the thing is, these are ultimately algorithms
Yeah neuro will be different, but some base principles should still apply
regal ferry
i think the combination of making events hard to repeat and adjusting some parameters behind the scenes is generally a good idea
woven cave
agreed
okay once again, Chay if you end up needing help with the event descriptions for Neuro lemme know I can help with it
regal ferry
in vanilla expanded theres a storyteller that only produces bad events
probably a good idea to base neuro integration around it :^)
woven cave
in vanilla expanded theres a storyteller that only produces bad events
Empress Evil right? thats the one I sent a pic from earlier
regal ferry
yep
woven cave
hey I have a question
I havent played rim world in a while (like a LONG time)
regal ferry
Empress Evil right? thats the one I sent a pic from earlier
oh its code is super simple, its literally just randy but with good events removed
regal ferry
hey I have a question
I havent played rim world in a while (like a LONG time)
i'm not a huge rimworld player too i only played in multiplayer
then again
woven cave
the little coloured boxes that appear on the right when an event happens, if you click them is there info attached?
cause Im thinking (this is aside from the balancing issues) would it be possible to allow neuro to put in text whenever she makes an event happen?
like a reason or message like she does with timeouts
regal ferry
oh that's a cool idea
woven cave
I think that would be good content, though might be irrelevant due to Vedal being there
regal ferry
well, generally giving her more stuff to write into is always good, like minecraft signs
woven cave
agreed
regal ferry
might be a good idea to put her in charge of some random name generation too
woven cave
might be a good idea to put her in charge of some random name generation too
I was gonna suggest that earlier too yeah
regal ferry
when feasible
woven cave
ye ye
pine crescent
the little coloured boxes that appear on the right when an event happens, if you...
There is info attached but it is preset messages. Not sure how easy it is to modify that.
arctic merlinBOT
You have unlocked new role
pine crescent
It is possible for sure though
woven cave
There is info attached but it is preset messages. Not sure how easy it is to mod...
probably not too difficult I would imagine
regal ferry
just consider me able to modify whatever and don't worry about feasibility
pine crescent
probably not too difficult I would imagine
Yeah i would assume so
regal ferry
nothing scares me after making FTL integration
regal ferry
originally i also had the idea of telling her what event randy decided to generate and letting her just go with it if she doesn't feel like making an event herself
woven cave
originally i also had the idea of telling her what event randy decided to genera...
I was thinking of something similar along these lines
one of my fears is that neuro may get too locked in to listening to Vedal or chat
and may get too distracted to create events
like how overwhelmed she got in minecraft sometimes
so maybe her getting a "hey wanna do this" or "you should do an event now" sorta prompt may help her stay on task?
regal ferry
i'll list all the events in the "misc" category for an idea of what the options ...
here, the total event weight is roughly 17. So, assuming every event is from the "misc" category, e.g. "heat wave" has a 1/17 chance of occuring.
but the thing is thats just random. Random doesnt care what event it's generating, but the player does - heat waves are helpful at winter but very bad at summer
and neuro knows that (if i give her enough context)
the question is what curve to use for event cost
let me open up desmos i guess
one option - 17/x
this heavily punishes immediate repetition but allows it soon enough, fully resetting after 17 events
i could even go lower, making events even cheaper than the default value if they haven't been seen in a very long time
theres the boring linear option, i think this is taking too much control out of neuro's hands by punishing repetition too much
or i can go for something in the middle like this
another option is lower initial repetition penalty but slower backoff
i don't actually think she will repeat that much, i think it's just good to encourage event variation while leaving neuro enough breathing space to decide which events to use
also: i guess since the base game already balances events' difficulty, just letting neuro run wild is not gonna go that badly
oh just realized that i will also have to store the point values in the save file
woven cave
also: i guess since the base game already balances events' difficulty, just lett...
this is looking more and more feasible
regal ferry
yeah i now think that rather than encouraging neuro to spawn good events we should just encourage her to use a large variety of events
woven cave
yeah i now think that rather than encouraging neuro to spawn good events we shou...
in total are their more Good or Bad events in the game?
regal ferry
more bad events, but bad events also give loot so they arent all bad
anyway, returning to the example of there being a total of 17 weights:
i think it's a good idea to start with 1 point requirement per weight, then if neuro decides to use a weight its point requirement gets doubled
but also any time that a weight is not chosen it gets divided by a certain factor
in this case, it gets divided by 2 to the power of 1/17
this means that after 17 turns of not picking an event option its cost returns to normal, and if you dont use it for 34 turns its cost becomes half the original cost
and since i'm too lazy to do math about how much points i should give neuro, i will instead give points to her according to how much points it would cost randy to generate whatever he generates
but multiply it like 1.5 or 2 so she can have fun with it
woven cave
that sounds great
regal ferry
i'll list all the events in the "misc" category for an idea of what the options ...
but is it really a good idea? here, toxic fallout would originally cost 8.333 points, but after not using it for 17 misc events it would cost 4 points
hmm
it does sound close to what should happen ideally at least
so, on average, toxic fallout will occur every 141 misc events
so the idea is to roughly match that with how often neuro can trigger it
the variables at play here are:
i actually have no idea what kind of curve i want
if we take the probability graph of something occurring once per N turns it will turn out like this
red for toxic fallout, blue for something common like heat wave
well, inverse probability graph
so i guess i should roughly emulate this shape
my goal is something similar but with a softer start i think?
regal ferry
as an option, i could make common events' repetition penalty lower than rare events' repetition penalty (even more than usual)
overcomplicating it is probably not a good idea
regal ferry
with that in mind, my new idea is:
the question is whether a flat multiplier is enough to give neuro enough room for creativity, or if a different method of point calculation should be used instead
woven cave
that sounds effective
regal ferry
if neuro spams "heat wave" it will be funny, but if she spams "toxic fallout" it will be the end of the run
but i guess if i wanted to account for "can be safely spammed/can't be safely spammed" i would have to hardcode it for every event
which, again, might not be a bad idea
also, a lot of events in rimworld have a cooldown
for example, toxic fallout has a timeout of 90 days
regal ferry
with that in mind, my new idea is:
- each choice stores how many times it has *n...
looking at the cooldowns, this system will probably work fine
woven cave
looking at the cooldowns, this system will probably work fine
Thinking about it, Randy random is essentially a less refined version of what neuro will do
so it makes sense it has most of the countermeasures in by default
regal ferry
okay i will have to do some simulations
regal ferry
okay in my simulations this leads to low chance events being triggered more often than with randy even without the bonus
i'll try tweaking it a bit
(to be clear, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, i'm just noting it down)
i think this is because randy ends up giving lots of points by accident sometimes
honestly, i'll go with this, i wanted variety and i got variety, even if it's quite a bit more variety than i expected
[('volcanic winter', 127), ('toxic fallout', 176), ('crop blight', 482), ('flashstorm', 649), ('farm animals wander in', 729), ('alphabeavers', 731), ('wanderer join', 742), ('meteorite impact', 922), ('mass animal insanity', 952), ('ship part crash (defoliator)', 1119), ('heat wave', 1120), ('thrumbos pass', 1123), ('ship part crash (psychic)', 1159), ('cold snap', 1162), ('infestation', 1337), ('psychic drone', 1393), ('manhunter pack', 1427), ('psychic soothe', 1457), ('short circuit', 1642), ('wild man wanders in', 1745), ('ship chunk drop', 1804), ('resource pod crash', 1820), ('ambrosia sprout', 1822), ('herd migration', 1891), ('self-tame', 1946), ('transport pod crash', 2737), ('ransom demand', 3807), ('single animal insanity', 4469), ('enemy raid', 5427), ('visitor group', 6386), ('traveler group', 6497), ('trader caravan arrival', 6594), ('orbital trader arrival', 8681)]
^ randy simulations (not 100% accurate but relatively close)
[('volcanic winter', 572), ('toxic fallout', 787), ('alphabeavers', 1468), ('heat wave', 1475), ('cold snap', 1484), ('crop blight', 1490), ('infestation', 1769), ('ship part crash (defoliator)', 1835), ('flashstorm', 1879), ('psychic soothe', 1879), ('ship part crash (psychic)', 1881), ('psychic drone', 1892), ('thrumbos pass', 1978), ('short circuit', 2282), ('ship chunk drop', 2391), ('manhunter pack', 2540), ('ransom demand', 2554), ('mass animal insanity', 2574), ('wanderer join', 2602), ('resource pod crash', 2612), ('herd migration', 2673), ('self-tame', 2683), ('farm animals wander in', 2696), ('wild man wanders in', 2700), ('single animal insanity', 2705), ('ambrosia sprout', 2708), ('enemy raid', 2712), ('transport pod crash', 2735), ('meteorite impact', 2791), ('visitor group', 2884), ('orbital trader arrival', 2885), ('trader caravan arrival', 2953), ('traveler group', 3006)]
^ neuro simulations (not accurate at all but gives a rough idea of how much power she will have when compared to randy)
these are all the events btw
basically - the balance is not at all mathematically verified, but i think it will be good enough
i'll prompt her with something like "vedal winning = bad for content, vedal losing and ending stream = bad for content", everything else is up to her
regal ferry
^this is a fancy way of saying "the maths didn't quite work out but surely the balance will turn out fine anyway 
"
woven cave
again if you want help with prompt stuff I can help
giving context for certain things like for the heat wave (good during winter, bad during summer) seems like itll be a lot of manual labour
regal ferry
i think she can figure that out by herself as long as you tell her it significantly raises the temperature
woven cave
makes sense
regal ferry
again if you want help with prompt stuff I can help
giving context for certain ...
sorry this is a lot, dont feel pressurized to fill everything i can fill the rest
you can use the wiki for reference
here's my original atttempt (in a completely different format) but it only covers the core mod, you can use it for reference or copy most of it
woven cave
Okay yeah I can do this
regal ferry
by default, randy can control threats' strength, from 0.5x the original strength to 1.5x the original strength
should neuro be able to do that?
also, i think i'll leave randy in charge of incidents outside of the player colony, that should be fine right?
and should i support the player having multiple colonies?
woven cave
and should i support the player having multiple colonies?
up to you, Vedal probably wont play that long or that detailed right?
regal ferry
true
woven cave
should neuro be able to do that?
maybe but there needs to be some means of preventing her from just using max strength all the time
or not idk how the balance is
regal ferry
well its simple i can make using 1.5x the strength take 1.5x the points
woven cave
ah that makes sense
regal ferry
oh god, rimworld uses an old version of .net so i cant build mods for it targeting netstandard
regal ferry
oh its fine theres reference assemblies available nowadays
regal ferry
its pretty impressive actually, rimworld hasnt updated .net version in over 5 years
regal ferry
finally, it loaded without any errors
empty hollow
aww man i was making a mod with smth like this before hand but vedal never got back to me
want some of my assets?
regal ferry
want some of my assets?
i was originally planning to only change the game logic but it would be cool to add some neuro-related stuff into the game like in subnautica
do you want to release a separate content mod that i'll link to or do you want me to put stuff in the main mod?
(either is fine with me)
regal ferry
(WIP) Neuro RimWorld integration
regal ferry
i think i've finished the neuro integration code now i need to playtest it
wait this was quick so i have an idea
what if we tell vedal not to play the tutorial and make neuro help him learn the game?
i can load a bunch of lore dumps that neuro can access
and a bunch of guides that neuro can tell vedal if she feels like it
it's more fun if we can make her backseat
(to be fair i still haven't even started giving her info on what's going on in-game so that will have to wait)
something tells me these values arent quite right 
(i mean, they could be right for all i know, it just seems wrong)
ok it seems correct actually
aaaaa randy give me points
oh here we go
it works!
neuro can trigger events, and randy gives her points to do it
@rancid hedge i've finished this part, and now i'm working on sending neuro all info on what's happening in the game (and letting her look up specific info too)
sorry wrong ping 
i meant @woven cave
if you want, you can make a guide for neuro to backseat vedal
woven cave
if you want, you can make a guide for neuro to backseat vedal
yeah I think its best to have little "examples" for each event
like: Heat wave - Description of what it does + "helps player during the winter, hinders players during the winter"
or
Psychic soothe - description + "best used when the player is nice to you"
Idk how far to go with it, since I dont wanna direct her use THAT much
regal ferry
yeah I think its best to have little "examples" for each event
like: Heat wave -...
no i meant that she can also teach vedal the game
woven cave
no i meant that she can also teach vedal the game
how so?
regal ferry
well, first of all, she will have all the info about what's happening in the game
second, if vedal asks "how do i do X" or "so what do i do next", it would be nice if neuro could give him some tips on what he could do
woven cave
AAAh like a little guide for her?
regal ferry
yeah I think its best to have little "examples" for each event
like: Heat wave -...
and i think she really doesnt need that much handholding, let her figure it out
woven cave
okay I can try that, but Im also not the MOST experienced with Rimworld, we should find a expert player for the player advice
but I can do as much I can from the wiki and stuff
she can also google herself
regal ferry
i have like 200h in the game do i count?
woven cave
probably yeah
regal ferry
(also keep in mind vedal hasnt played it i assume so even basic advice would be helpful)
woven cave
exactly so I dont think itll be THAT big a deal
this is probably as detailed as you want yeah? (the gameplay part not the startup)
also also
chat will do a lot of heavy lifting in this case
backseating will actually be helpful for once
regal ferry
yeah i just thought it'd be nicer if neuro took chat's job here
woven cave
yeah yeah we can try
Im saying that chat will have the "meta' and more optimal features down I think
for us to inform her of all that would involve a LOT of text
regal ferry
i'll try to get as much info as possible from the game itself
theres this thing for example
woven cave
right right
btw how do you give her this info?
idk how her API works
would we just give her a searchable database? or a really big txt type file?
regal ferry
there are many ways, the most obvious one is to give her a list of categories and letting her pick which categories to get the text for
the api works like any other LLM API (with many caveats), the game tells her what she can do and she decides what to do
woven cave
the api works like any other LLM API (with many caveats), the game tells her wha...
Ive never seen or learned anything about LLM api so its all new to me
regal ferry
its not really anything surprising even if you havent
in the sense that its cool tech but it just works the same way any other API does
regal ferry
i'm doing something very ambitious right now - giving neuro list of all items that exists in the game and letting her query them and sort by various properties
most important thing here is actually creating a sane filter system
regal ferry
(your ping is useless)
empty hollow
(your ping is useless)
did you see my dm?
teal zodiac
Oh lol
regal ferry
did you see my dm?
i did, but my internet is around 10KB/s so i didnt get around to loading the pictures yet
empty hollow
oh rip
basically i had neuro, evil, anny (without ears), vedal hair
anny star apparel
and 3 statues
regal ferry
imo adding colonists inspired by real people wouldnt go well lol
or more fitting for a fan playthrough than an official one
empty hollow
it's just the hair
woven cave
@regal ferry I saw this looking at rimworld mods and stuff
I dont think we should do anything like this for obvious reasons, but the idea of giving her some sway over base mechanics is interesting
regal ferry
<@455756327755710464> I saw this looking at rimworld mods and stuff
I dont think...
i can do anything like that as long as it doesnt get neuro overwhelmed
woven cave
i can do anything like that as long as it doesnt get neuro overwhelmed
okay just wondering if it'd give you ideas cause I have none OM
regal ferry
rimworld is a large game so the biggest challenge here is how to make it understandable to neuro imo
scenic forum
There is the debug inspector
which exposes details about everything, but it might be pretty big and I don't know how you'd expose it
maybe a mod or whatever
or frequent saves
regal ferry
dont worry i know about it
and getting info from the game is not an issue at all
as i already said, the only issue is making stuff understandable for neuro and not overwhelming her
scenic forum
In terms of not overwhelming her what does she actually need?
Pawns of course
Plants are only needed for like blight, could possibly filter by trees/farms, but they do make up most of the data along with filth
buildings and blueprints, but you could probably trim a lot of that out, maybe only things in the home zone
and items maybe? but a summary is probably sufficient
rooms?
game conditions and events too
regal ferry
yeah and the thing is you say "pawns" but theres so much stuff you can say about a pawn
my point is its a lot of data and you need to know what to send and what not to and you need to give neuro access to specifically the data she needs
which is a lot of annoying plumbing work but that's what i'm working on
scenic forum
Oh wow I didn't realise pawns had so much data, but I am using psychology so that is probably making it bigger than it should be
empty hollow
i was going to try to feed her context any time a letter box pops up
scenic forum
Slept on it a bit but if shes just control events as the storyteller, unless youre playing with anomoly, the face up infomration should be enough right? and even that could be trimmed a lot
Like needs for example, you woulndt need the exact values of the needs, just overall mood and summary of buffs
health wise, bills, pain, consciousness, moving and hediffs
regal ferry
i'll start with everything remotely relevant and trim it down later, i'm just a bit busy with work rn
