Built in One Day: Fully Playable RPG Tales Mythos Gen AI Virtual World Hackathon

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Today’s Highlights:

• 🐉D&D-Like RPG Tales of Mythos Wins LA Techweek Grand Prize💻

• 🛼Favorite Product of The Day: AI-Powered Shift Moonwalkers👟

Built in One Day: Fully Playable RPG Tales of Mythos Wins Virtual Worlds Hackathon Grand Prize

Just a couple of weeks ago, a16z presented LA Tech Week and conducted a Gen AI Virtual World Hackathon at the LMU Playa Vista campus. Developers, designers, and artists created immersive virtual worlds with Heroes and Villains as the big theme.

Provided with various generative AI tools and platforms including but not limited to WVS.IO, Charisma.ai, Resemble AI, and GPT4, numerous teams built creative storytelling media, like storybooks, educational virtual worlds, card games, and video games.

In just one day, a team consisting of designers, engineers, and coders Jon Radoff, Dulce Baerga, Fabrizio Milo, and Ali El Rhermoul, built Tales of Mythos, a Dungeons & Dragons-like role-playing-game.

Tales of Mythos’ Building Process

The team created a client-server model, utilizing Anthropic’s large language model (LLM)*, Claude, to generate the story and the gameplay. With Claude’s 100k context limit, the team was able to create a game with a consistent and vast story that could lead anywhere. Using Beamable*, a server was made to maintain the state, operate the chatbot, and integrate data from multiple generative AI technologies.

In order to generate the story, the LLM was trained to encode metadata* concerning the story progression and virtual world locations using an extensible markup language (XML)*. The metadata is then analyzed using Unity’s 3D Client to create the game’s spatial environment.

*LLM: large language model, models used within natural language processing that excel at language-related tasks

*Beamable: a platform used to build and scale the operations of live games, available in two forms; a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and a Private Cloud Deployment

*Metadata: a set of data that provides information about other data, summarizes basic information data, and eases the finding and working with instances of data.

*XML: extensible markup language, a text-based markup language that tags, identifies, stores, and organizes data.

Semantic Programming

After previously trying to create an adventure-style RPG using ChatGPT, which only has a context limit of 4,096 tokens, the team noticed that the game tends to lose its memory. ChatGPT’s functionalities weren’t enough to create anything cohesive that could resemble a game, and thus switched to Anthropic.

To create their model’s architecture, the team incorporated various components, including Beamable’s backend and elements of the UI in Unity, which they call the NLP-XML subsystems.

World and Character Building

The team uses NLP-XML, or natural language processing with XML subsystems, to replace traditional coding with a neutral network system. With this method, they were able to create a more cohesive, functioning, and consistent model. With NLP-XML, they generated realistic and “human” storytelling systems.

XML enables the team to not only power the traditionally-coded software, but to also connect different generative AI modalities. The team used Blockade Labs’ skybox generator to build the dynamic 3D world and scenes players can explore, and Scenario to create portraits of players’ characters and NPCs.

It is quite mind-boggling how much can be achieved with AI technology, and in so little time. Radoff, Baerga, Milo, and Rhermoul were able to build Tales of Mythos’ gameplay, characters, and world in one day, and were awarded the grand prize for Best AI Virtual Worlds Demo.

Favorite Product of The Day

AI-Powered Shift Moonwalkers

Have you ever wanted to get to where you’re going quicker but just don’t have the energy to run? You’ve considered riding a car or a motorcycle, but it’s walking distance so you feel bad about the unnecessary spending on gas or creating more pollution? You can stop worrying and have it all with the AI-Powered Shift Moonwalkers.

Start-up Shift Robotics launched Moonwalkers, a motorized shoe that utilizes AI and machine learning algorithms to speed up your walking, on Kickstarter in 2022. Shift managed to raise a total of $329,409 in funding, exceeding its $90,000 goal, and has made the Moonwalkers available for pre-order.

These moonwalkers allow you to:

• walk effortlessly with a 250% increase in speed, just as fast as your dogs

• overcome hills, “urban” terrains, and less-than-smooth sidewalks with an 8-wheel electric drivetrain regulating your speed

• preserve mobility and balance with an ergonomic hinge system

• charge your shoes anywhere with any USB-C PD charger

If you want to walk your usual pace or take the stairs, the Moonwalkers have Shift and Lock modes you can seamlessly switch between with simple gesture controls. And unlike skating, these AI-powered moonwalkers allow you to quickly adapt. No new skills are necessary and the learning curve could take under ten steps.

By fully charging for 1 and a half hours, you can walk for 6.5 miles of range.

Priced at $1,399 with a $50 pre-order deposit, 2,000 people have ordered the Shift Moonwalkers as of May 2023, and you can too by visiting Shift’s site! 

Meme & AI-Generated Picture

Job Posting

• Square - Technical Product Manager - Atlanta, GA (Remote)

• Splunk - Software Engineer Intern, Frontend (Fall 2023) - Anywhere in the US (Remote)

• IBM - Apprenticeship Program (Applications open until June 23) - Multiple Cities (Remote/Hybrid/On-Site)

• GitLab - UX Research Manager - Multiple Cities (Remote/Hybrid)

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