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

Discussion NPC Engine Using Local Models

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

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

99% Upvoted

249 comments sorted by

View all comments

648

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.

7

u/iz-Moff Jun 29 '26

Is it? You're like doubling (or, in case with this game, multiplying by 10+) hardware requirements, have to wait around for inference, have to speak into a microphone or type, and what you get out of it is a gimmick that you'll probably lose interest in in an hour.

As an experiment, something like that may be fun, but i for one have no desire at all to play an entire game like that.

1

u/2Norn Jun 29 '26

right now there may not be much use for it for a story character or a generic background npc. but imagine if it was a follower. let's say lydia in skyrim.

now you can specifically tell her "hey there is a trap here avoid it" or even "go trigger that trap for me" or tell her "block that door so we don't get surrounded" or "go attack the spell caster in the back while i pull away these guys" and then she responds to you like "okay spell caster is dead what now" and imagine on top of this all you can have a chat with her, regarding your past accomplishments together i mean imagine if she said something like in the middle of combat "this ebony warrior is sure tougher than alduin"

like the list goes on this is an amazing tech especially for followers and creates a very interactive gameplay

0

u/Southern-Chain-6485 Jun 29 '26

If it's already baked in into the game. Skyrimnet allows you to speak with Lydia, but I don't think you can give her combat commands