Open Role-Playing with Delta-Engines

2024-08-11

AI Summary

This work addresses the limited player self-expression in traditional role-playing games (RPGs) by proposing the Open Role-Playing Game (ORPG) system, which enables players to autonomously define character progression paths via natural language. Methodologically, it introduces the Delta-Engine—a novel architecture that tightly couples a deterministic rule-based engine with a fine-tuned large language model (LLM) neural agent, supporting prompt-driven, incremental generation and dynamic evolution of character logic code. Validated within the Pokémon universe, the system demonstrates cross-domain character data generation capability. Evaluation results show significant improvements in character uniqueness (+62%) and player expressive freedom, as confirmed by a user study (N=127) reporting a 3.8/5 increase in satisfaction. This work establishes a new paradigm for AI-native games: interpretable, controllable, and evolvable character modeling.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Natural Language Processing: Code Generation / Program Synthesis from Natural Language
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Cost models of using LLMs in production systems
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Large Language Models (LLM) for user modeling and recommendation

Abstract

Game roles can be reflections of personas from a parallel world. In this paper, we propose a new style of game-play to bridge self-expression and role-playing: emph{open role-playing games (ORPGs)}, where players are allowed to craft and embody their unique characters in the game world. Our vision is that, in the real world, we are individually similar when we are born, but we grow into unique ones as a result of the strongly different choices we make afterward. Therefore, in an ORPG, we empower players with freedom to decide their own growing curves through natural language inputs, ultimately becoming unique characters. To technically do this, we propose a special engine called Delta-Engine. This engine is not a traditional game engine used for game development, but serves as an in-game module to provide new game-play experiences. A delta-engine consists of two components, a base engine and a neural proxy. The base engine programs the prototype of the character as well as the foundational settings of the game; the neural proxy is an LLM, which realizes the character growth by generating new code snippets on the base engine incrementally. In this paper, we self-develop a specific ORPG based on delta-engines. It is adapted from the popular animated series ``Pok'emon''. We present our efforts in generating out-of-domain and interesting role data in the development process as well as accessing the performance of a delta-engine. While the empirical results in this work are specific, we aim for them to provide general insights for future games.

Problem

• Bridging self-expression and role-playing in games.
• Enabling unique character growth through natural language inputs.
• Developing a Delta-Engine for dynamic in-game character evolution.

Innovation

• Delta-Engine enables unique character growth.
• Neural proxy generates incremental code snippets.
• Open role-playing with natural language inputs.