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Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

blog.jeffschomay.com

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Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#11

Post by ramses0 »

empath75 wrote: post #8

I hooked up an MCP server to a MUD and got some pretty amazing results, including Claude Code agents in separate windows chatting with each other and cooperating on building out a new section.

Do share, pray tell! Which MUD were you using? I've been poking around at MUD/MOO-adjacent capabilities and am having to hold the AI back from authoring it's own MUD/MOO capabilities instead of dorking with an existing server (likely that's full of security holes and complex bespoke startup+install configurations)

I'd like `mud_or_moo --state-dir ./tmp/some-mud` which stored most things as plain text or maybe SQLite if really necessary? The core of a MUD which was conceptually similar to a wiki-browser against markdown files (ie: room-001.md => exits => room-002.md) is what i'm angling towards, such that _editing and linking_ felt more comfortable and GUI to a human user.

Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#12

Post by empath75 »

ramses0 wrote: post #11
empath75 wrote: post #8

I hooked up an MCP server to a MUD and got some pretty amazing results, including Claude Code agents in separate windows chatting with each other and cooperating on building out a new section.

Do share, pray tell! Which MUD were you using? I've been poking around at MUD/MOO-adjacent capabilities and am having to hold the AI back from authoring it's own MUD/MOO capabilities instead of dorking with an existing server (likely that's full of security holes and complex bespoke startup+install configurations) I'd like `mud_or_moo --state-dir ./tmp/some-mud` which stored most things as plain text or maybe SQLite…

I forked evennia and added it. Took me a few hours with claude.

Once i had the core authorship mcp's working, claude itself created the whole world, including an initial tutorial sequence, combat, etc...

Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#14

Post by jongalloway2 »

I've been doing this lately, building a Godot game with Copilot CLI. I'm using Godot MCP Pro which can automate interactions and screenshots, and have the whole game script in a markdown doc. I was happily surprised when I asked for a walkthrough and it all just worked, found and fixed some regressions while I was sleeping.

Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#15

Post by lubujackson »

justindz wrote: post #6

What a great lunch read! I've been weekend-warrioring a terminal-based CRPG for a bit myself. I was recently exploring ways to use agents to help with balance testing, which is a real scale problem for solo indie dev. So far, all I've created is a fight simulator: essentially, have the current player state (stats, effects, gear, companions, etc.) do this fight, simulated, X number of times using one of the currently-…

I did something similar, but instead of having the LLM play the game I had it build an entire bot system to play the game. Bots require much more determinism, but I'd rather burn tokens encoding problem solving approaches and bot decision profiles than using LLMs for every turn of the game. This can be developed rapidly if you create an agent in a loop and say "figure out how to have the bot reach room 3 in under 10 actions" or something like that. It is easy for this to get bloated, but I found it makes a nice feedback loop that allows me to quickly test things like pacing changes and think of the game as a series of user actions that can be sculpted purposefully.

Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#16

Post by justindz »

lubujackson wrote: post #15
justindz wrote: post #6

What a great lunch read! I've been weekend-warrioring a terminal-based CRPG for a bit myself. I was recently exploring ways to use agents to help with balance testing, which is a real scale problem for solo indie dev. So far, all I've created is a fight simulator: essentially, have the current player state (stats, effects, gear, companions, etc.) do this fight, simulated, X number of times using one of the currently-…

I did something similar, but instead of having the LLM play the game I had it build an entire bot system to play the game. Bots require much more determinism, but I'd rather burn tokens encoding problem solving approaches and bot decision profiles than using LLMs for every turn of the game. This can be developed rapidly if you create an agent in a loop and say "figure out how to have the bot reach room 3 in under 10…

Thanks, this is another great idea and I'll consider it as an addition or alternative. Do you think this works in an open-world, non-linear type game?

Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#17

Post by ticulatedspline »

empath75 wrote: post #12
ramses0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do share, pray tell! Which MUD were you using? I've been poking around at MUD/MOO-adjacent capabilities and am having to hold the AI back from authoring it's own MUD/MOO capabilities instead of dorking with an existing server (likely that's full of security holes and complex bespoke startup+install configurations) I'd like `mud_or_moo --state-dir ./tmp/some-mud` which stored most things as plain text or maybe SQLite…

I forked evennia and added it. Took me a few hours with claude. Once i had the core authorship mcp's working, claude itself created the whole world, including an initial tutorial sequence, combat, etc...

Cool, I was thinking about this very thing. Was looking at CoffeeMud and wondered if I gave it a starting room and a clean slate if it could basically just build out a whole Mud from scratch.

Re: Letting AI play my game – building an agentic test harness to help play-testing

#19

Post by nickstinemates »

haunter wrote: post #18

Is there an AI which can "solve" the Path of Exile 1/2 passive skill tree yet?

Solve for what?

The degree of choice point-to-point in the skill tree is actually quite limited in most circumstances. There are obviously items, like thread of hope, intuitive leap, or inversion of choice items like unnatural instinct which change it slightly.

If the question is path optimization to utilizing these nodes, Path of Building already does a good job. If the question is "what single node will give me the most theoretical power." It also solves that.

That's actually the beauty of Path of Exile as a whole - the different systems works in combination to lead to an outcome. As an example, If you're a life stacking build, finding unique ways to get as many life/strength nodes as possible. That's your gear and your passive tree working in tandem.

Speaking about using AI to optimize characters - not just the skill tree - you'd need to build some pretty sophisticated tools which do not yet exist to make that happen. No AI alone would be able to do it.

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