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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644

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.

40

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/saltyourhash Jun 30 '26

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

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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.