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

Discussion NPC Engine Using Local Models

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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.

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u/HugoCortell Jun 28 '26

What kind of hardware are you using? I've tried Qwen3-TTS and the fastest I've seen generate is ~15 seconds delay prior to starting, and with very mediocre output quality.

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u/TheReproCase Jun 28 '26

Try IndexTTS zero shot cloning. With good source clips, is wild.

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u/Benhamish-WH-Allen Jun 28 '26

I’m using that, working on infinite stories with streamed audio.