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Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

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Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#31

Post by aeturnum »

Chabsff wrote: post #10
cyrialize wrote: post #8

Slay the Spire is my favorite video game of all time. I have 400+ hours on my Switch, 100+ hours on my phone, and 100+ hours on my PC. I'm obsessed. I think creating an AI for this game is quite difficult, but I'd love a chat bot to discuss decisions with - especially a bot that could take in the current state. It isn't enough to just take in the cards, but you should also take in relics, the counters on the relics,…

> For example, you may have the cards to kill an enemy now - but it may be more beneficial to wait - either to increment the counter on a relic, or to draw a card that does an effect on a fatal hit. How is this any different than chess? Solving this using a LLM is novel and interesting, but I'd feel confident in claiming that writing an AI bot for STS using "classic" AI methods would be pretty easy, actually.

I believe chess evaluation functions are always the difference between your opponent and you - i.e. it's "the same" to take a piece or avoid them taking yours. You must simply find any path to check.

STS, on the other hand, is about accumulating some resources while spending others. Which resources you want to spend and which you want to accumulate depend a great deal on your character and build. Skillful play often involves recognizing which resources you would benefit from losing at the current stage of the game. Training is also made much more difficult by how long you need to go to determine if you are on a winnable path. Power spikes are non-linear and many deck compositions would optimally play in a 'losing' way for a certain period of time before getting the pieces they need.

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#33

Post by cyrialize »

anonyfox wrote: post #12
cyrialize wrote: post #8

Slay the Spire is my favorite video game of all time. I have 400+ hours on my Switch, 100+ hours on my phone, and 100+ hours on my PC. I'm obsessed. I think creating an AI for this game is quite difficult, but I'd love a chat bot to discuss decisions with - especially a bot that could take in the current state. It isn't enough to just take in the cards, but you should also take in relics, the counters on the relics,…

At some point I stopped playing it (after, well, 100s of hours), because somehow I felt that its only getting harder without me getting any reward outside of the raw challenge itself - which then feels just like working. Is there anything I didn't really notice that feels rewarding on higher levels?

I absolutely adore playing at A20.

For me, the reward is having a deck that works well enough to tackle anything thrown at you.

This means many different things, but basically amounts to having the right amount of cards or relics that give you scalability for your attacks, a plan to mitigate attacks (with statuses or blocks), and a plan to handle beating the heart.

After a certain point, grabbing cards to beat the heart leads to beating other things easily - including Sword and Shield and the double Act 3 boss.

Funnily enough, I have the opposite problem. I'm often building decks that can beat everything easily except for the heart.

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#35

Post by cyrialize »

reidjs wrote: post #17
anonyfox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point I stopped playing it (after, well, 100s of hours), because somehow I felt that its only getting harder without me getting any reward outside of the raw challenge itself - which then feels just like working. Is there anything I didn't really notice that feels rewarding on higher levels?

I like that it requires a small amount of mental energy to perform the 'optimal' play in every situation. The obvious example is doing basic arithmetic to calculate whether you should block more or attack. At first, the game feels like it's deterministic with sprinkles of randomness, however, at high ascension levels it is the opposite - random chance until you get a broken deck that makes winning trivial. It's a slo…

As the other commenter said, it actually isn't like a slot machine.

I recommend watching runs from players that are going for win streaks. Many of the runs in win streaks are not slot machine decks. Going for a win streak forces you to take cards that you otherwise wouldn't have.

Watching runs in general will also show you that players win without broken decks. It's just that videos with the highest views tend to have broken decks because those are the most entertaining.

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#36

Post by barbariangrunge »

cyrialize wrote: post #8

Slay the Spire is my favorite video game of all time. I have 400+ hours on my Switch, 100+ hours on my phone, and 100+ hours on my PC. I'm obsessed. I think creating an AI for this game is quite difficult, but I'd love a chat bot to discuss decisions with - especially a bot that could take in the current state. It isn't enough to just take in the cards, but you should also take in relics, the counters on the relics,…

The main thing that’s fun about these games is figuring out how to gain insights about how to play better. I think offloading the theorizing and problem solving in any way would make the game less fun. See also: most (not all) use of strategy guides and walkthroughs

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#37

Post by raincole »

z0r wrote: post #22
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much, much bigger decision tree than Chess or Go.

There are more possible moves to consider in STS than Go? I've dumped a hundred hours into the former and thousands into the latter and I wouldn't agree.

Almost all the games you play on PCs have much bigger state spaces than Go.

To give an intuitve example on why StS's state space is large, imaging these two situations: In both case you have the exact same map, same deck, same HP, same potions and same relics. The only difference is in one case you have 100 gold and in the other you have 101 gold.

They're still two different states. And all the following states are different.

The size of space state doesn't necessarily translate to how difficult the game feels. Foundamentally Go has zero randomness while StS is full of randomness, so it's a little apple to orange.

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#38

Post by nkjnlknlk »

aaronharnly wrote: post #20

As an aside, what is the current state of "LLMs for NPCs" in video games? I don't really game or follow the industry, but I have to imagine both modders and publishers are working furiously to introduce more natural conversational experiences?

LLMs would have to first be natural conversational experience.

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#39

Post by cyrialize »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #19
anonyfox wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point I stopped playing it (after, well, 100s of hours), because somehow I felt that its only getting harder without me getting any reward outside of the raw challenge itself - which then feels just like working. Is there anything I didn't really notice that feels rewarding on higher levels?

No, the point of the ascension mechanic is that it gets harder and harder so that you need to play more and more optimally to have a chance at winning, there aren’t any benefits past ascension 1. If you aren’t the sort of person who wants a harder challenge just for the sake of challenging yourself, then there’s no point yeah.

The game is actually balanced at A5, so I usually recommend people to play there.

Re: Someone built an LLM-powered Slay the Spire bot

#40

Post by cyrialize »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #36
cyrialize wrote: post #8

Slay the Spire is my favorite video game of all time. I have 400+ hours on my Switch, 100+ hours on my phone, and 100+ hours on my PC. I'm obsessed. I think creating an AI for this game is quite difficult, but I'd love a chat bot to discuss decisions with - especially a bot that could take in the current state. It isn't enough to just take in the cards, but you should also take in relics, the counters on the relics,…

The main thing that’s fun about these games is figuring out how to gain insights about how to play better. I think offloading the theorizing and problem solving in any way would make the game less fun. See also: most (not all) use of strategy guides and walkthroughs

I 100% agree. At A20 I constantly find myself in situations where I have to pick a card I'd never pick because it is my best option at that time. This leads to me learning more strategies and insights.

For example, in a previous A20 run I had I took Metallicize as Ironclad late in Act 1 because I was facing the Guardian and I didn't encounter other good block plans. Prior to that, I tended to avoid Metallicize to save spots for other block cards instead as it was too slow. This situation made me realize that having a Metallicize in your deck isn't that bad, especially if you need block NOW and you can counteract having it in your deck later on with draw/exhaust.

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