Ai writing VNs?

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thelastsecret
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Ai writing VNs?

#1 Post by thelastsecret »

Today, I've played around with ChatGPT and asked it to write the beginning of a (pretty generic) VN. Here's the reply:
Certainly! Ren'Py is a popular visual novel engine, and I can help you get started with a simple scene using Ren'Py script. In this snippet, we'll set the stage for a high school romance story with the introduction of a new boy in the class during spring. Please note that this is just a basic example, and you can build upon and customize it based on your specific storyline and characters.

Setting up the Characters:
First, you need to define your characters. In your game directory, create a file named characters.rpy:

renpy

init python:
define eileen = Character('Eileen')
define new_boy = Character('New Boy')

Creating the Opening Scene:
Now, create an opening scene in a file named script.rpy:

renpy

label start:

scene bg_classroom_spring
show eileen happy at left

e "Ah, spring is finally here."

show new_boy normal at right
n "And so is the new boy."

e "I wonder what he's like."

show new_boy smile
n "His name is..."

$ player_name = renpy.input("What's his name?")

e "Ah, it's [player_name]."
e "He's just transferred to our class."

show new_boy happy
n "He seems friendly, with a warm smile."

e "Little did I know, my world was about to change."

jump classroom_scene # You can create a label for the next scene

Creating the Classroom Scene:
In the same script.rpy file, add the following:

renpy

label classroom_scene:

scene bg_classroom_day

show eileen normal at left
show new_boy normal at right

e "As [player_name] takes a seat, our eyes meet for a brief moment."

show eileen blush
e "Why does my heart race when he looks at me?"

show new_boy smile
n "[player_name], right?"

e "I nod, feeling a blush creeping up my cheeks."

show eileen normal
e "What will this new chapter bring?"

jump start_of_romance # You can create a label for the next part of the story

This is a very basic starting point, and you can expand and customize it based on your story's needs. Ren'Py has extensive documentation that can guide you through more advanced features and customization options.
It's kind of scary, isn't it? (Although there are of courfse still some bugs.)
What do you think?

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#2 Post by Donmai »

Not so scary at all. Or at least as frightening as a typewriter must have seemed to calligraphers or a motorized loom to hand weavers. AI is just another tool. It will not replace talented people, only make them more productive.
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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#3 Post by MapletreePaper »

Donmai wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2023 4:04 pm Not so scary at all. Or at least as frightening as a typewriter must have seemed to calligraphers or a motorized loom to hand weavers. AI is just another tool. It will not replace talented people, only make them more productive.
This is how I feel too. If you look into how modern AIs are made, you'll see that while they're certainly very knowledgeable, they're not actually that intelligent. That is why all the concerns about AI taking over creative fields, while understandable, seem completely overblown to me.

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#4 Post by Another_Tom »

thelastsecret wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2023 3:36 pm ...
At first, it's surprising how well this ai seems to work, but when you dig a little deeper and ask for ways to be creative, you quickly fall by the wayside. Not too long ago, I asked the chat-ai if she could create a fictional name for me that she would give to an undiscovered planet.

The answer was something like:
Sure I can, how about Aurorae, a planet that is characterized by its luminous atmosphere...blah blah blah.

Of course, everyone immediately thinks of Aurora, a natural phenomenon. And when asked if she invented this name on her own, she said yes, she created it on her own.
A second look at Aurorae <- turned out to be indeed her own creation, the ai had an "e" attached to it. :lol:

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#5 Post by Fuseblower »

I don't think it's scary.... yet.

But give it time and coupled with other data (like preferences known to Google and Amazon) it might eventually make games and movies tailor made for the client without any need for human creative input.

GoogleChan.jpg
GoogleChan.jpg (56.75 KiB) Viewed 18289 times

Of course, this is still in the future. For the moment, we humans still rule. Only human story telling could make me feel sorry for search engine Bing. Check out Merryweather Media's comic about gynomorphed browsers and search engines like Google chan shown above :D

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#6 Post by thelastsecret »

Wow, it's interesting how positive the comments are on this! Comparing with how much backslash AI art usually gets, this surprises me. Although – this is Lemma Soft, a place on the internet where people are probably more reflected on average...

I'm not sure about a lack of creativity of AI though. I have seen very creative solutions of AI already. Here are three examples:
  • I had asked ChatGPT for some specific story ideas for my last visual novel, and it came back with lots of things that didn't work for me, but looked creative, and a few things that I've even used for the story at the end. One might say that these ideas where just extracted from already existing stories, but isn't this how humans create story ideas too? Taking bits and pieces and combining them?
  • I have seen truly creative advertisement ideas with AI images. Ask the AI to make an advertisement for X and it sometimes surprises you truly (can't show the example here unfortunately).
  • Already a few years ago when AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, a world Go champion, some of its moves where hailed as highly creative by professionals.
Of course in all of these cases, the judgment depends on our definition of "creativity", so it's not a clear-cut case.

Regarding Ai developed visual novels, I see it coming too that the story will be optimized for the player. Combine with voice recognition and free text input and eventually you'll feel like talking to a real human when playing a game. A real human that is personalized to your dreams and wishes.

In any case, I will try whether ChatGPT is able to continue the story. Maybe I'll put his/her/its first little VN online eventually... :)

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#7 Post by MapletreePaper »

thelastsecret wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 12:24 am Although – this is Lemma Soft, a place on the internet where people are probably more reflected on average...
I couldn't agree more. The mods do a great job of maintaining this community and keeping the toxicity out. They should be proud!
thelastsecret wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 12:24 am Of course in all of these cases, the judgment depends on our definition of "creativity", so it's not a clear-cut case.
That's very true. For instance, I have little knowledge of Go, but I don't think an AI playing a board game can be called "creative". Its goal, at least in the case of AlphaGo, is to play the best moves every turn to win the game. If some of those moves happen to be novel or impressive, that's correlation, not causation.

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#8 Post by RizVN »

That's interesting. I have used ChatGPT before for creating YouTube video scripts for a fictional story. And despite the redundances, inconsistency, and word limitation, it manages to give me decent story blocks. I personally like how AI writing tools evolve, but at this point, manual editing is still necessary.

I'm not sure whether taking story blocks from AI writing, or from getting "inspired" by a real author, and then editing those ideas to make it your own is better. In both cases, editing is essential. And as you mentioned, creativity is built on what already exists. No human has made anything that was truly original. As long as you are careful not to outright plagiarize or copy, AI or not, it's all good.
Check out these cute games:
Love is War (Remake) (Romance-comedy)
How to Win Girls and Influence People (Romance-comedy)
DELIIDOL (Romance-drama)
Mahou Shoujo: Magical Shota (Romance-drama)

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#9 Post by Fuseblower »

RizVN wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 10:38 am I'm not sure whether taking story blocks from AI writing, or from getting "inspired" by a real author, and then editing those ideas to make it your own is better.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote that one way to get an idea for a painting is to take a sponge, soak it in paint and then throw it against the canvas. The spot it left would act as the starting point that ignited the creative process.

Waaay back when I was in school, we had to write essays/compositions of which we were given the very first sentence and then had to take it from there whichever way we wanted. I liked that approach. Of course, mine always quickly descended into stories of horror and gore (got high grades for it too :lol: )

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#10 Post by LeetMusic »

It's not exactly blindingly original. Anybody with a reasonable amount of experience with the tools and the genre could have made this in 15 minutes.

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#11 Post by RizVN »

Fuseblower wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 11:04 am
Waaay back when I was in school, we had to write essays/compositions of which we were given the very first sentence and then had to take it from there whichever way we wanted.
This seems like a fun way to write your 1st draft. The low expectations will help a lot against writer's block.
LeetMusic wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2023 8:26 am It's not exactly blindingly original. Anybody with a reasonable amount of experience with the tools and the genre could have made this in 15 minutes.
True. But as the AI said, this is a very basic starting point. It's an okay example of how to name and use variables, assets, and basic functions of Ren'Py.
Check out these cute games:
Love is War (Remake) (Romance-comedy)
How to Win Girls and Influence People (Romance-comedy)
DELIIDOL (Romance-drama)
Mahou Shoujo: Magical Shota (Romance-drama)

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#12 Post by thelastsecret »

LeetMusic wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2023 8:26 am It's not exactly blindingly original. Anybody with a reasonable amount of experience with the tools and the genre could have made this in 15 minutes.
Yes, of course, for everybody on this Forum this is trivial. But now imagine you have no coding experience whatsoever. Ren'Py makes it easy for you already, granted, but with ChatGPT it becomes trivial to start for everybody. Not talking about the language: a person who's bad at writing would get a lot of help with this!
Actually, I think about using such a method for writing visual novels in foreign languages, since a direct translation still produces results that are far from native language (e.g., for Japanese or Chinese).

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#13 Post by thelastsecret »

Fuseblower wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 11:04 am Leonardo da Vinci wrote that one way to get an idea for a painting is to take a sponge, soak it in paint and then throw it against the canvas. The spot it left would act as the starting point that ignited the creative process.
Reminds me on how AI image generation starts with some random noise on the canvas (set by the seed parameter). Pretty similar idea! :D

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#14 Post by Fuseblower »

thelastsecret wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2023 1:56 am
Fuseblower wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 11:04 am Leonardo da Vinci wrote that one way to get an idea for a painting is to take a sponge, soak it in paint and then throw it against the canvas. The spot it left would act as the starting point that ignited the creative process.
Reminds me on how AI image generation starts with some random noise on the canvas (set by the seed parameter). Pretty similar idea! :D
Yeah. Now that you mention it, it is kinda similar to a Kohonen network (a self-organizing map).

I've used it myself once, for a color reduction program. At first I was somewhat sceptical because the program was so simple to make and just compared randomly set colors to the much greater set of colors in a scan instead of looking at higher level relations (like setting weights to colors according to contrast detection). But the results were amazing and far better than what programs like Gimp achieved. I did make an alteration to the original concept though : my random set were gray scale colors.

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Re: Ai writing VNs?

#15 Post by Donmai »

thelastsecret wrote: Thu Nov 16, 2023 1:55 am Actually, I think about using such a method for writing visual novels in foreign languages, since a direct translation still produces results that are far from native language (e.g., for Japanese or Chinese).
As a non-native English speaker, I've always found myself in need of assistance when it comes to creating English versions of my Visual Novels. While I may have a good understanding of the language, certain nuances and intricacies can be easily missed or misunderstood. In the past, when Lemma Soft was buzzing with activity from enthusiastic members, it wasn't hard to find someone wanting to help. People often volunteered before we even asked. In 2013, arachni42 and pwisaguacate did an outstanding job editing my Li'l Red VN English text. Now, they no longer frequent this forum. Lately, I've been using one of TinyWow's AI modules to refine and give my text a more casual feel. While these tools cannot completely replace the invaluable guidance of a native speaker who truly understands the intricacies and nuances of the language, they bridge the gap and enhance my overall learning experience in countless ways.

By the way, TinyWow's Paragraph Writer module has rewritten the first two sentences (and the last one) of the above paragraph. My mainly self-taught English is not that good. :wink:
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