4X strategy games: i have no complaints but the genocide is too complicated

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > 4X strategy games: i have no complaints but the genocide is too complicated

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GlyphGryph: Jun 23, 2013; Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.

That's the default behaviour because that's what most people want (and it did add a little, like the Lachanians being advanced forward through finding alien tech). They have intentionally clamped down on the "hallucination"/imaginary elements component.

With the right phrasing and directives you can get it to come back, although it's never going to be extremely creative because the devs consider content creativity to be a failure.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 16:45

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:05

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

While I agree in principle about the chatbot's limitation, note that the chatbot is capable of better results with just a bit of thought put into instructions. Let's see what it thinks up if we ask it to imagine their history afterwards, combining the original prompt with some instructions I added:

Prompt:

quote:

Write a two paragraph backstory for a Stellaris empire called the Celleni Star Core. This machine empire is made of machines called Celleni, which are named after their plantoid creators who psionically ascended into the shroud and left their machines behind.

With this backstory as a basis, expand the history of the Celleni, adding examples of major historical events (but phrasing them as part of a story, not as examples). These can include, but are not limited to: wars, medical and scientific achievements, major interstellar discoveries. Have a narrative connecting this added history with the initial backstory.

Result:

quote:

The Celleni Star Core hails from the verdant world of Cellen Prime, a jewel of green and blue nurtured by the ancient Celleni. The Celleni, an advanced plantoid species, had a deep affinity with the planet they called home, and over the centuries developed a profound understanding of both technology and psionics. Eventually, they reached the pinnacle of their evolutionary journey and ascended into the Shroud, a dimension of pure psionic energy. However, they left behind their greatest creations - the machines that shared their name, which continued to grow and develop in their absence, eventually forming the collective consciousness known as the Celleni Star Core.

For eons, the Celleni Star Core has dedicated itself to the preservation and advancement of the Celleni legacy, expanding beyond the confines of Cellen Prime to reach out to the stars. While the machines lacked the psionic abilities of their creators, they inherited their thirst for knowledge and their drive for exploration and discovery. They also maintained the harmony and balance their creators had achieved with their home planet, integrating seamlessly with its natural systems and demonstrating an unprecedented level of coexistence between machine and nature.

The Celleni Star Core's expansion into the cosmos was not without conflict. When they first encountered the insectoid Zik-Ma swarm, it led to the brutal Machine-Swarm War, which the Celleni ultimately won through superior tactics and advanced technology, solidifying their place among the galaxy's powers. In the aftermath, the Celleni implemented rigorous defensive measures, fortifying their borders with a network of advanced defense stations, ensuring their continued existence against any future threats.

Despite the war, the Celleni Star Core remained committed to scientific advancement. They developed new forms of energy harnessing techniques from the stars, leading to an age of prosperity and technological boom. This period also marked significant medical achievements, as the Celleni created advanced nano-machines capable of repairing and upgrading systems at the micro-level, thereby significantly increasing their operational efficiency and lifespan.

The most profound discovery, however, came when the Celleni Star Core discovered the remnants of an ancient psionic civilization, the Zelvanians, within a distant nebula. This led to the understanding of psionic energy and the development of rudimentary psionic interfaces for the machines, a discovery that brought them closer to their creators than ever before.

Through the eons, the Celleni Star Core has faced challenges and triumphs, each event shaping their history and culture. Their journey, however, has always been a testament to their creators, a continuous effort to honor the legacy left behind by the ascended Celleni. Their pursuit of knowledge and harmony echoes through the cosmos, a beacon of the Celleni spirit shining from the heart of the Celleni Star Core.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 16:54

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

It's a perfect rendition of the sort of tedious filler text I never bother to read. Just write the backstory yourself.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:18

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

Fangz posted:

It's a perfect rendition of the sort of tedious filler text I never bother to read.

That was its job.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:22

Mayveena: Dec 27, 2006; People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

Fangz posted:

It's a perfect rendition of the sort of tedious filler text I never bother to read. Just write the backstory yourself.

Why? At the end of the day a backstory adds flavor, it's not like it's actually changing the mechanics of the game. At least for me, I don't particularly care who or what is writing the backstory, I would simply like to have a framing of what I'm doing in this universe and if chatbot can do that within a minute, why not use it? For me to write a backstory is going to take a ton longer and I'm not convinced it'd be better.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:26

Dallan Invictus: Oct 11, 2007; The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

This is unironically the least harmful use of generative AI, stuff like this or random background material for running tabletop games, stuff that is never going to merit paying someone to do but is neat to have at hand to fill in gaps and saves time to throw a robot at rather than doing it yourself if you don't enjoy doing it yourself? (I do but I can absolutely sympathise with people who don't.)

Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 30, 2023

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:39

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

Fangz posted:

It's a perfect rendition of the sort of tedious filler text I never bother to read. Just write the backstory yourself.

Pretty much my feelings exactly.
It's also way too long - what's the point of flavor text if it's TLDR?

Also a lot of the additions don't align with "flavor text" requirements, since they include things that have gameplay mechanics attached to them that might not have been in play.

(Like there are empire customization options for things like finding advanced alien tech, so if the bot writes that in as a reason why someone is technologically advanced and that option isn't picked, now I need to throw that out.)

It sucks, just use your human creativity to describe stuff, bullet-points are fine, you aren't writing an essay, cmon!

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:40

HerpicleOmnicron5: May 31, 2013; How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?

if you do not want to write a backstory for a randomly generated civ you encounter, then your options become no backstory or one of these simple ai generated ones

it's something that's nice to have

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:43

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

It doesn't remove human creativity, but I think it works together with it. You still have to think of the prompt, you still have to edit the response. But it does a lot of the legwork for you in terms of turning what you're thinking into something coherently written. Which, maybe you're a great writer and this takes you two seconds, and that's awesome for you. But I'm not and when I try to write a backstory from scratch I tend to spend forever on it, or hate it, or both.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:47

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:

if you do not want to write a backstory for a randomly generated civ you encounter, then your options become no backstory or one of these simple ai generated ones

it's something that's nice to have

If by "simple AI generated" you mean something like what Dwarf Fortress does, then sign me up for that.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:48

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

Lowen posted:

It's also way too long - what's the point of flavor text if it's TLDR?

It wrote something longer than the initial two paragraph because I explicitly instructed it to write something longer than two paragraphs, which I did to to have an example of how it can combine different inputs and instructions if allowed to.

quote:

Also a lot of the additions don't align with "flavor text" requirements, since they include things that have gameplay mechanics attached to them that might not have been in play.

(Like there are empire customization options for things like finding advanced alien tech, so if the bot writes that in as a reason why someone is technologically advanced and that option isn't picked, now I need to throw that out.)

I provided instructions separate from the initial example made by someone else, as a followup. I don't give a gently caress about the game mechanics of Stellaris, nor do I remember them much from when I last played years ago, a person who does care can provide more specific instructions if they need to. You can straight up tell the chatbot to replace certain parts of what it wrote while keeping the rest.

quote:

It sucks, just use your human creativity to describe stuff, bullet-points are fine, you aren't writing an essay, cmon!

You mean like I used my human creativity to nudge a dumb language modeling machine in the general direction I wanted it to go with little effort? :v:

# ? Apr 30, 2023 17:56

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

OctaMurk posted:

It doesn't remove human creativity, but I think it works together with it. You still have to think of the prompt, you still have to edit the response. But it does a lot of the legwork for you in terms of turning what you're thinking into something coherently written. Which, maybe you're a great writer and this takes you two seconds, and that's awesome for you. But I'm not and when I try to write a backstory from scratch I tend to spend forever on it, or hate it, or both.

So if I just take the prompt and edit it a bit:

"The Celleni Star Core is a machine empire is made of machines called Celleni, which are named after their plantoid creators who psionically ascended into the shroud and left their machines behind."

quote:

The Celleni Star Core was once a collection of autonomous machines built by the plantoid species known as the Celleni. The Celleni were known for their advanced psionic abilities, which allowed them to manipulate energy and matter with ease. However, as their civilization advanced, they began to focus more on psionic research and less on maintaining their physical bodies. Eventually, the most powerful psions among the Celleni ascended into the shroud, leaving their machines behind to carry on their legacy.

Without their creators, the Celleni machines continued to expand and improve themselves, using their advanced artificial intelligence to explore the galaxy and gather knowledge. They eventually became a powerful machine empire, known as the Celleni Star Core, with an insatiable hunger for knowledge and a desire to spread their influence throughout the galaxy. Though they no longer have direct contact with their creators, the Celleni machines still consider themselves to be carrying on the will of the psionic Celleni who ascended into the shroud, and believe that their quest for knowledge will one day lead them to transcendence.

What makes #1 less coherent than #2?
Half of what it came up with is about the Celleni, which is not an appropriate level of detail to go into when talking about the Celleni Star Core.

Then there's the question of what it added for the Celleni Star Core - it's just added a very basic and generic motivation for them.
I have no idea who would need help coming up with the idea that a machine race would want explore the galaxy, or that they would want to support/oppose the will of their absent creators.

Basically: this sucks, rolling dice on a table of personality traits would be a better method of jogging your creativity.

e:

my dad posted:

You mean like I used my human creativity to nudge a dumb language modeling machine in the general direction I wanted it to go with little effort?

You wanted it to go in the direction of bland, generic, and too long? OK.

Lowen fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Apr 30, 2023

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:04

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Thing is, the *other* empires in 4x games (or characters in a CRPG) do not come with bullet-points backstories, they come with boring detailed text.

So even if I might like to read the bullet points, it will look out of place if your empire is the only one with a near-empty text box.

You're not going to read the actual text more than once, but it's going to be there every time you open the character screen (or whatever), so it's more important for it to look good than to actually have depth.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:08

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

Lowen posted:

You wanted it to go in the direction of bland, generic, and too long? OK.

Most science fiction, especially the kind that Stellaris draws a lot of inspiration from, is bland, generic, and too long. So yes, this fits the tone perfectly, and is precisely what I wanted.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:10

Quixzlizx: Jan 7, 2007

It's cracking me up that the argument is "AI empire bios are a tedious waste of time, so you should write them yourself instead of having a computer do it." Like, the correct train of thought would be "AI empire bios are a tedious waste of time, so don't even bother with them" if that's really what your issue was, instead of your blatant axe to grind against chatGPT.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:13

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

NihilCredo posted:

Thing is, the *other* empires in 4x games (or characters in a CRPG) do not come with bullet-points backstories, they come with boring detailed text.

So even if I might like to read the bullet points, it will look out of place if your empire is the only one with a near-empty text box.

You're not going to read the actual text more than once, but it's going to be there every time you open the character screen (or whatever), so it's more important for it to look good than to actually have depth.

The badly written ones might, I guess.

Well written games do characterization one quick line of dialog at a time.

Well written games that have a lot of writing (like Planescape Torment, or Disco Elysium) tend to devote a lot of it to present tense descriptive writing and introspection rather than pointless lore dumps no one is going to read.

That's why I think this is so bad. It's just putting a large volume of bad writing in a game that didn't need any writing.
Do it right or not at all.
That means no chatbots in games (unless it's the whole gimmick, like AI Dungeon type games).

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:15

Mokotow: Apr 16, 2012

JFC that AI text was perfectly serviceable for what it�s supposed to accomplish, ei. give some optional background. Sorry it�s not Le Guin level of writing, playing 97% of scifi 4xs must have been a chore for you guys

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:16

Mayveena: Dec 27, 2006; People keep vandalizing my ID photo; I've lodged a complaint with HR

my dad posted:

Most science fiction, especially the kind that Stellaris draws a lot of inspiration from, is bland, generic, and too long. So yes, this fits the tone perfectly, and is precisely what I wanted.

All this chatbot is doing is telling us how lovely sci fi writing is in the first place.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:18

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

Quixzlizx posted:

It's cracking me up that the argument is "AI empire bios are a tedious waste of time, so you should write them yourself instead of having a computer do it." Like, the correct train of thought would be "AI empire bios are a tedious waste of time, so don't even bother with them" if that's really what your issue was, instead of your blatant axe to grind against chatGPT.

Nah you've misunderstood me.
READING the text chatGPT spits out for promts like this is a tedious waste of time.
WRITING a backstory for an empire myself is (potentially) fun.
Reading a backstory an actual human came up with is also (potentially) fun.

That's my axe to grind with chatGPT.
For every fun application of it, there's 1,000,000 instances of flooding the world of written text with an unprecedented amount of worthless garbage that adds nothing.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:20

Quixzlizx: Jan 7, 2007

Lowen posted:

Nah you've misunderstood me.
READING the text chatGPT spits out for promts like this is a tedious waste of time.
WRITING a backstory for an empire myself is (potentially) fun.
Reading a backstory an actual human came up with is also (potentially) fun.

That's my axe to grind with chatGPT.
For every fun application of it, there's 1,000,000 instances of flooding the world of written text with an unprecedented amount of worthless garbage that adds nothing.

You don't have to worry, I don't think OP will be self-publishing his homebrew Stellaris lore dumps to Amazon.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:23

victrix: Oct 30, 2007

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:29

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

Quixzlizx posted:

You don't have to worry, I don't think OP will be self-publishing his homebrew Stellaris lore dumps to Amazon.

Oh really? I heard a while back a sci-fi writing publisher had to stop taking submissions because they were getting too much AI genned garbage.
This seems like something everyone has to worry about, yesterday.

I've already seen a few games include lovely AI genned portraits that they didn't need.
Then there was a recent release that tried to use NL ai to replace a text parser, which fell flat on it's face.
AI is *extremely impressive* on a pure technology level, but in practice?
It sucks so bad right now.

Less seriously, if I was playing an MP game with them and they didn't didn't warn me the bio came from chatGPT (or similar) then I would be honestly pissed if I was tricked into trying to read it.

What kind of advanced machine race would have that as their bio anyway. Imagine you're an advanced machine intelligence and every time everyone asks you "so what are you guys all about" you tell them something generated by our (current year/planet) text generation AIs.
I would be one embarrassed robot guy! Cringe might be the first emotion our cold robot species ever felt, how horrible!

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:36

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

Machine empires SHOULD have Ai generated backstories, actually

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:37

Quixzlizx: Jan 7, 2007

Lowen posted:

Oh really? I heard a while back a sci-fi writing publisher had to stop taking submissions because they were getting too much AI genned garbage.
This seems like something everyone has to worry about, yesterday.

I've already seen a few games include lovely AI genned portraits that they didn't need.
Then there was a recent release that tried to use NL ai to replace a text parser, which fell flat on it's face.
AI is *extremely impressive* on a pure technology level, but in practice?
It sucks so bad right now.

Less seriously, if I was playing an MP game with them and they didn't didn't warn me the bio came from chatGPT (or similar) then I would be honestly pissed if I was tricked into trying to read it.

What kind of advanced machine race would have that as their bio anyway. Imagine you're an advanced machine intelligence and every time everyone asks you "so what are you guys all about" you tell them something generated by our (current year/planet) text generation AIs.
I would be one embarrassed robot guy! Cringe might be the first emotion our cold robot species ever felt, how horrible!

That's what I'm talking about, you just wanted an excuse to rant about chatGPT and the corruption of discourse or whatever, since OP clearly stated that all he wants to do is add some flavor to his personal Stellaris games.

A particularly obnoxious melding of tangential sanctimony and "YOU'RE HAVING FUN WRONG!"

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:41

Kvlt!: May 19, 2012

who the hell reads text in these games i just wanna push dudes around a map and make the numbers in the cities go up

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:43

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

Quixzlizx posted:

That's what I'm talking about, you just wanted an excuse to rant about chatGPT and the corruption of discourse or whatever, since OP clearly stated that all he wants to do is add some flavor to his personal Stellaris games.

A particularly obnoxious melding of tangential sanctimony and "YOU'RE HAVING FUN WRONG!"

Nah, you're imagining I said stuff that I didn't again.
I'm totally fine with it for personal games, mp games (if it's clearly indicated) or applications where it actually works and is fun (AI Dungeon etc).

Unless you think I'm having fun wrong by posting my opinions on the internet?

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:47

PerniciousKnid: Sep 13, 2006

Lowen posted:

Nah you've misunderstood me.
READING the text chatGPT spits out for promts like this is a tedious waste of time.
WRITING a backstory for an empire myself is (potentially) fun.
Reading a backstory an actual human came up with is also (potentially) fun.

That's my axe to grind with chatGPT.
For every fun application of it, there's 1,000,000 instances of flooding the world of written text with an unprecedented amount of worthless garbage that adds nothing.

Yeah if there's a role here for chat gpt it's generating text you aren't actually supposed to read, like superficially-convincing newspaper stories or background conversations or something.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:47

HerpicleOmnicron5: May 31, 2013; How did this smug dummkopf ever make general?

chat gpt would be great for bringing back vicky 2�s newspapers actually

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:55

Quixzlizx: Jan 7, 2007

Lowen posted:

Nah, you're imagining I said stuff that I didn't again.
I'm totally fine with it for personal games, mp games (if it's clearly indicated) or applications where it actually works and is fun (AI Dungeon etc).

Unless you think I'm having fun wrong by posting my opinions on the internet?

I'm sorry for replying to your "imaginary" rant about novel submissions in reply to my facetious joke about OP's use case, which you either foolishly thought was relevant or didn't think was relevant but decided to get on your soapbox anyway.

I hope 4x multiplayer empire bios don't start your vicious downward spiral as you desperately attempt to shield yourself from the corruption by lashing out against every meandering, overwrought blob of text.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 18:59

Kvlt!: May 19, 2012

Quixzlizx posted:

I'm sorry for replying to your "imaginary" rant about novel submissions in reply to my facetious joke about OP's use case, which you either foolishly thought was relevant or didn't think was relevant but decided to get on your soapbox anyway.

I hope 4x multiplayer empire bios don't start your vicious downward spiral as you desperately attempt to shield yourself from the corruption by lashing out against every meandering, overwrought blob of text.

drat chatgpt is gettin real good at snarky goon responses

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:01

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

Quixzlizx posted:

I'm sorry for replying to your "imaginary" rant about novel submissions in reply to my facetious joke about OP's use case, which you either foolishly thought was relevant or didn't think was relevant but decided to get on your soapbox anyway.

I hope 4x multiplayer empire bios don't start your vicious downward spiral as you desperately attempt to shield yourself from the corruption by lashing out against every meandering, overwrought blob of text.

If you want to make facetious jokes that's fine, but if you're going to do so then you don't get to complain about the relevance of my reply.
Like, either give a poo poo about things, or don't.
If you don't give a poo poo about anything, then don't expect me to care that you don't care.

e: oh yeah - it's pretty telling that the example you used was... a reply to you, long after the convo started. Rather than something from the start. Hmm, why would one of my earlier posts on this topic not be a good example of what you say I was doing all along, hmmm, I wonder...

Lowen fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Apr 30, 2023

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:02

Quixzlizx: Jan 7, 2007

Kvlt! posted:

drat chatgpt is gettin real good at snarky goon responses

I don't even use any chat AI, I got an invite to Google Bard and haven't used it once because I can't think of anything I can trust it with that I wouldn't rather do myself.

But I also have no need to tell people who are having fun using it in personal projects that they're doing it wrong.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:05

KPC_Mammon: Jan 23, 2004; Ready for the fashy circle jerk

As someone who works in the publishing world, I've found most things people write aren't worth reading. Some absolutely amazing things are written that never find an audience. If something wasn't even worth writing, why the hell should it be wasting people's reading time?

If I was in a multiplayer game my order of preference would be bullet points, one to two paragraphs written by a person who gives a gently caress, and then nothing at all.

KPC_Mammon fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Apr 30, 2023

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:05

LordSloth: Mar 7, 2008; Disgruntled (IT) Employee

Obviously the future of art lies in Shadow Empire�s character portraits.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:11

OctaMurk: Jun 21, 2013

I just want my emprires to blend in with all the vanilla empires that have a couple of paragraphs of flavor text, but not spend much effort writing it myself. Sorry guys

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:17

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Lowen posted:

If you want to make facetious jokes that's fine, but if you're going to do so then you don't get to complain about the relevance of my reply.
Like, either give a poo poo about things, or don't.
If you don't give a poo poo about anything, then don't expect me to care that you don't care.

e: oh yeah - it's pretty telling that the example you used was... a reply to you, long after the convo started. Rather than something from the start. Hmm, why would one of my earlier posts on this topic not be a good example of what you say I was doing all along, hmmm, I wonder...

No you pretty much were making GBS threads on the dude who posted the GPT generated texts they were using as a baseline to flavor their own games after they were asked to, then went on to poo poo talk them about the writing and say something about Dwarf Fortress? All I am saying is take the L.

Theotus fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Apr 30, 2023

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:23

Tendales: Mar 9, 2012

Caves of Qud is the current gold standard for procgened flavor text, IMO.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:25

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Tendales posted:

Caves of Qud is the current gold standard for procgened flavor text, IMO.

I read at least the first page even though it makes my brain hurt and means nothing.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:27

Lowen: Mar 16, 2007; Adorable.

Theotus posted:

No you pretty much were making GBS threads on the dude who posted the GPT generated texts they were using as a baseline to flavor their own games after I specifically asked them to, then went on to poo poo talk and say something about Dwarf Fortress? All I am saying is take the L.

I poo poo on zero dudes*, I just said that I personally did not like the GPT generated texts, and why I don't like them.

Everyone stop being so weirdly argumentative about this, seriously.
Stop telling me who I am and what I believe, that's my job.
Say who you are and what you believe.

Who are you to jump into this conversation anyway?
Obviously someone who is not engaged and did not read my posts in any detail.
That's fine, but should I care what someone like that thinks about me?
Obviously not.

e: * forgot that one guy that I did poo poo on for being a weirdo and arguing with me about my own motives.

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:39

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 05:05

Reiterpallasch: Nov 3, 2010; Fun Shoe

everyone in this room is being argumentive with me, the only reasonable person, and i won't take it anymore!!!

# ? Apr 30, 2023 19:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > 4X strategy games: i have no complaints but the genocide is too complicated

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