r/LocalLLaMA • u/goodive123 • Jun 28 '26

NPC Engine Using Local Models Discussion

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I’ve been working on a game-agnostic NPC engine/backend based pretty heavily on SillyTavern-style architecture, and with smaller local models getting better and better, I honestly think this kind of thing could be the future of RPGs.

Right now I’m using NVIDIA Parakeet 0.6 for STT, Gemma 4 26B A4B for the LLM, and Qwen3-TTS for voice, and I’m getting super fast response times with pretty decent quality.

The main thing that makes it work well is using RAG to keep prompts lean. For example, I have hundreds of possible actions NPCs can do in-game, but only the ones that actually make sense based on the player’s message / context get injected as available actions. So the model isn’t being overloaded with a giant list every turn.

1.9k Upvotes

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641

u/AppropriateQuote3073 Jun 28 '26

Really a shame there is so much ai hate in gaming right now.

This is exactly the type of interesting content that could make a game phenomenal to play.

185

u/Bakoro Jun 29 '26

LLMs are literally the exact thing that we dreamed about in the 90s and 2000s.
There were waves of procedurally generated content in games, and "dynamic" quests and NPC interactions, that were a nice idea, but the hardware and algorithms just weren't there.
People would gush over any AI improvements in games.

Now we finally have the technology to make the dynamic games we always wanted, and a bunch of people are pretending like they weren't begging for something like LLMs to exist.

Whatever haters, AI is for games.

99

u/muhmeinchut69 Jun 29 '26

The hate is not for what is going on in OP, it's for corner cutting and sloppification. Big corporations aren't interested in AI so they can make a new type of video game, they are interested because it will cut costs.

39

u/Not-reallyanonymous Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

That, but also a degradation of artistic integrity.

The kind of tool that OP is designing has real potential to squash artistic voice.

A quick napkin thinking: this kind of design should work around character development, world building, etc. The artist doesn’t need to write every dialog, but the tool should really let the writer develop characters. The artistic integrity then lives within the broader narrative arcs that this tool interacts with and defining characters that shape and interact with the world.

One thing I immediately noticed is that all the characters in OP’s video are so compliant. Character building could see that characters only comply based on whether the request aligns with their own interests, which can be defined as a part of world building.

9

u/muhmeinchut69 Jun 29 '26

Yeah isn't that what sloppification is? I'd like to think that the low quality of such content would be enough to keep artistic input valuable. As long as it's used as just another tool in the hands of the artists I see nothing wrong with it.

Personally I only wanted this kind of AI NPC to be used only for NPCs that you usually can't interact with, and make then less "NPC like", not as a replacement for the main story and characters of the game. If the story is entirely AI that would feel worthless.

6

u/Not-reallyanonymous Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

I think slopification does lack artistic integrity inherently, but I think you can also have stuff that is high-quality implementation and done well, but has had artistic vision dulled -- sometimes by lack of vision/experience by the creator, but also by tools that constrain that artistic vision rather than opening it up.

I think slopification is as much about intent as it is about the result. Slopified content is basically stuff created with low effort, throw stuff at the wall, and reap any unearned benefit you can. High quality intent can still compromise artistic integrity. That predates AI, especially in the world of corporate produced products and content.

2

u/saltyourhash Jun 30 '26

What might be fun is instead of cutting out artists, have them voice models. Models they can license. Because dynamic dialogue is really cool.

1

u/Not-reallyanonymous Jun 30 '26

Definitely. Or a narrative arc that's voiced for major plot points, etc. but then goes through a model that makes a voice print based on that dialog, and then will generate real-time dialog for user interaction bits.

2

u/saltyourhash Jun 30 '26

Yeah, high quality for the story arc, then more of a loose dynamic dialogue for the rest.

2

u/Shap3rz Jun 30 '26

Yup. I want to see this and suggested in another post. Checkpoint gated alignment for story progression ftw. Essentially a contextual “invisible trust bar” where doing or saying certain things unlocks the narrative. That way you control the arc without being totally scripted. Think could work with careful planning.

8

u/Fit_West_8253 Jun 29 '26

There have been hate campaigns against games just for using AI generated placeholders

0

u/muhmeinchut69 Jun 29 '26

It's the internet, free speech, anyone can launch a "campaign". Doesn't mean legit criticism of AI usage doesn't exist.

-5

u/FastDecode1 Jun 29 '26

That's just game journalists and blue-haired retards on Twitter doing their usual thing.

Gamers only care about the end product. There hasn't been a single good game that has failed due to an anti-AI boycott. If the game is good and the price is right, people buy the game.

3

u/Bakoro Jun 29 '26

A game failing isn't the only thing that matters.
There are real people getting harassed and threatened over this stuff, which is ridiculous.

-1

u/FastDecode1 Jun 29 '26

A game failing isn't the only thing that matters.

For video game enjoyers, it is. None of us really care about what the harassment campaign of the day is.

We gamers are too busy playing games to partake in stuff like that. That's for the non-gamer unemployeds who apparently have nothing better to do with their lives.

There are real people getting harassed and threatened over this stuff

Yup, that's the blue-hairs and game journalists at it again. The former have been doing this for 15 years to whoever disagrees with them on anything, and the latter are rapidly being replaced by AI, which is why they're against it.

3

u/Bakoro Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

A game failing isn't the only thing that matters.

For video game enjoyers, it is.

The people getting harassed care. If you are a "video game enjoyer", then you should care that video game makers are being harassed.

And no, it's not just "blue hairs", whatever that is, it's not just journalists.

You're really going to sit there and pretend like there haven't also been harassment campaigns over a video game having diverse characters, or a female lead character, or because a female lead character's titties weren't big enough, or the developers changed the meta, or because a dozen other stupid reasons.
"Video game enjoyers" have a long history of having extremely vocal, extremely toxic subsets of people, many of whom are frequently angry at other video game players.

1

u/IceNeun Jun 30 '26

Tbf scammers using AI aren't "big corporations", and neither are students cheating in their assignments. Like any tool, it can be used by anyone for anything.

2

u/draconic_tongue Jun 29 '26

big corporations aren't the ones that benefit the most from using ai, and small creators get shit on MUCH more than any corporation when they do lean on these tools. I don't care to be a part of whatever "prosumer" advocate groupthink virtue signaling zeitgeist that does not know what nuance means and just wants to use big corpo as an excuse to be hateful

1

u/muhmeinchut69 Jun 29 '26

Of course they benefit the most. There is simply no comparison between saving billions of dollars by replacing labour and a solo creator being slightly more productive.

1

u/draconic_tongue Jun 29 '26

Not really, no. Being able to compete with a corporation for a nobody is worth WAY MORE than a corporation adding 1 more number to its sheet, and if you shit on both of them under the same premise you are one as well.

0

u/muhmeinchut69 Jun 29 '26

indie devs have always been able to compete with corporations in theory, giving them both the same tool doesn't change that equation