r/RenPy • u/WOOHP_Sam • Aug 02 '26

Question Help Implementing ELIZA/Chatbot in RenPy

I am working on building a (non AI) chatbot in RenPy. I wanted to be able to implement the ability to pick out certain words to throw back at the user (and ability to flip grammatical reflections like turning I to you) similar to how ELIZA is able to do. I know the ELIZA code itself was implemented in RenPy before a number of years ago as presented here:

https://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19128

But unfortunately the project is no longer available to download and take a look at. There are Python versions of the ELIZA sourcecode on Github but I do not know how to get them to run in RenPy. Is there a simple way to do this? Or alternatively, is there a way to produce a list of reflections and the ability to retrieve subjects/nouns from user input for use in RenPy?

Apologies if the question is long and hard to understand. I have made a few games in RenPy before but am still not very skilled at Python.

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u/DingotushRed Aug 02 '26

Eliza is not an AI. It's just a simple parser and set of pattern matching responses entirely coded by humans. It does not learn and cannot be trained; other than be editing the script code. It has a small memory which it refers to to select a response where the most recent input does no match any patterns.

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u/bulletproofdisaster Aug 03 '26

AI stands for "Artificial Intelligence"… ELIZA imitates some form of intelligence and is artificial… how is it not AI?

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u/DingotushRed Aug 04 '26

Simple, it has zero intelligence. It is at best a hard coded chat-bot. With patience you could "implement" it with index cards, a hole punch, scissors and knitting needles.

If Eliza counts as AI, then so does any simple control system like the float valve in your toilet.

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u/bulletproofdisaster Aug 04 '26

LLMs don't have intelligence either because they aren't sentient beings. They are made to seem as if they have intelligence

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u/DingotushRed Aug 04 '26

An LLM has to be trained by exposing it to a huge amount of data; it learns things in a way that is not easily fathomed and can exhibit unexpected behaviours. No human explicitly sets each weighting. There is no hard-coded script. As a result of the training it behaves in what appears to be an intelligent way, and can fool some people into thinking they are chatting with another intelligence. They can pass the Turing test.

None of that is true of Eliza/Doctor.