AI Roguelite News

There's an outage in the image generation service for AI Roguelite Image Gen (affecting free and paid tiers). A mitigation has been pushed to temporarily switch to a different model until the issue is fixed.

[h2]Immersive Level Scaling[/h2]

The original leveling system was designed as an infinite dungeon crawl to encourage exploration during a pre-ChatGPT era where LLMs couldn’t write very well. The new system, dubbed Immersive level scaling, replaces the “infinite treadmill” aspect with a more meaningful power curve.

You can still select the old leveling system for a new run by selecting the Dungeon Crawl leveling system.

[h3]Power curve[/h3]
Enemies have tiers which influence combat generations and roll checks, and locations get danger levels which slightly influence generations and spawned entities. Leveling up feels more meaningful because the maximum tier/level is finite, with a max player level of 20 and max enemy tier of 7.

[h3]Currency[/h3]
Item monetary values are AI-determined based on a new concept called a currency guide, which is tailored to your world. This also means the AI gets to determine exactly how much money you received/spent on a turn (previously, it was overridden by the game logic for balance purposes, which confused many players)

[h3]Item quality[/h3]
The AI is now given full freedom to determine your item rarity from Common to Legendary.

[h3]Immersive HP changes[/h3]
The AI has been given more freedom to specify exact HP changes for the player and characters, which allows it to deduct tiny or large amounts. The damage is based on what happens in the story rather than scaling based on item/character level. To improve variation while maintaining AI coherence, I came up with the idea to use RNG for the prompt sent to the AI rather than applying it after the AI’s response. These values can be modded in misc/hp-delta-rng.txt.

[h3]Skill leveling overhaul[/h3]
In the new system, you invest points into skills as you level up instead of passively training them. To help undecisive players, asterisks will be displayed for your most commonly used skills. There is also a skill cap to prevent certain skills from becoming OP.

[h3]Crafting, foraging, harvesting, looting[/h3]
Crafting, foraging, harvesting, and looting are now available to be played as story actions rather than out-of-story actions. A new event check also improves the experience of crafting in this way.

[h3]Essences overhaul[/h3]
General edits to entity name/descriptions are now freely available and no longer gated by any setting or essence, because they’re commonly needed to fix AI or game engine mistakes, and impossible to balance.

• Essence of Opportunity is now activated by clicking on it. You will gain a roll check bonus on your next roll.
  
• Essence of Rewinding is used for undos and retries.
  
• Essence of Fabrication is also activated by clicking on it, and allows you to use non-story crafting (if playing with story-based crafting), or learn arbitrary recipes (if playing with non-story crafting).
  

[h3]AI-detected XP gain[/h3]
Added an event check for XP gain. It can be tweaked by following the README in the moddable files.

[h2]Customizable Scenario Settings[/h2]

Each scenario can now be individually customized with options, including:

• Leveling system: Whether to play on the new immersive mode or the classic dungeon crawl mode
  
• Plausibility/mechanics options: Which plausibility system to use, whether to bypass click-to-move plausibility, whether to allow unlimited undo’s, etc.
  
• Death outcome: Choose from no penalty, lose most items, or permadeath
  
• Free-form trading: Whether to enable the classic trading UI and trade without the story, or restrict yourself to trading exclusively via the story and the AI’s money/item event checks
  
• Various mechanics options: Whether to enable on-demand skill creation, classic loot system, farming, item depletion, classic foraging/harvesting/looting, max inventory items, and various other mechanics.
  
• “Continue without input” mode: Choose from default (same as before), Player is passive (less likely to take actions on your behalf), Passive with penalty (same as #2 but applies a penalty if you do it 3+ times in a row)
  
• Story turn length: Choose from Default, Concise, or Concise combat.
  

[h2]Retry last action[/h2]

Hold alt while clicking on the undo button to retry/reroll your last action.

[h2]Reduced item spam[/h2]

The event check context now includes your most recently used items, which should prevent most cases of duplicate items.

[h2]NAI image gen v4.5[/h2]

Added support for NovelAI image gen v4.5.

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• Improved sound effects service.
  
• Improved plausibility checking by adding a decoy choice called “Inappropriate” (unused by the game) to prevent the AI from labeling inappropriate actions as implausible
  
• Event checks can now finally detect multiple items or new NPCs in the same turn
  
• Added “move here” option when right-clicking an NPC on a location other than your own
  
• Rebalanced status bars and added numerous customization options in the edit details view, including a multiplier for each direction as well as modifiable thresholds
  
• Slightly increased Free Cloud context limit
  

[h2]Main[/h2]

• [p]Added a new plausibility system dubbed "Enhanced plausibility evaluation". It's stricter and can trigger for things that aren't physically impossible but seem overpowered or unreasonable. If this gives you issues due to AI quirks, please revert to Legacy plausibility checks (or disable them completely) in Options.[/p]
• [p]Added plausibility check for changing locations (can be bypassed by creative mode option)[/p]
• [p]Changed most implausible actions to fail in the story instead of be blocked outright, which seems to improve the experience for when a borderline action gets marked as implausible[/p]
• [p]Added a shorter turn length option which keeps story turns concise and reduces the chance the AI takes actions on your behalf[/p]
• [p]Split "creative mode" options to make it more customizable[/p]

[h2]
Misc[/h2]

• [p]Added moddable implausibility txt file implausibility-condition.txt[/p]
• [p]Added some plausibility cheat codes (instructions in console when pressing ~)[/p]
• [p]Removed old unused styles for Wombo image generation[/p]
• [p]Followers now heal with the “reg” cheat code[/p]
• [p]Fixed bug where player description would sometimes fail to save[/p]
• [p]Fixed item abilities failing to generate when playing in Russian[/p]

[p][/p][p]In other news, a big update with even more changes (not this one) is currently available in the alpha channel, but please note it's very buggy at the moment, so only try it out if you don't mind risking your save file.[/p]

[h2]Character classes[/h2]

Each preset now gets 8 pregenerated character classes by default. You can pick your class or regenerate the class choices on the left side of the new game view. Classes can be saved/customized in presets.

The AI is instructed to make the first 5 sound more standard and the last 3 more exotic, but you can alter or further expand on this in the custom instructions text box. Note: Some players reported issues with local/custom models failing to follow instructions when generating classes, but I didn’t experience such issues with default models including Free cloud.

The chosen character class influences the generation of the starting item, innate abilities, and starting passive skills, as well as the player background should you choose to regenerate it. It is also inserted into story and plausibility prompts, and may influence them in subtle ways.

After starting a game, player class can still be edited by right-clicking the player portrait and selecting "Edit details".

[h2]AI-generated status bars[/h2]

Status bars are the successor to survival bars. They are AI-generated to be custom tailored to your specific world. They can be pre-generated, or generated during a new game.

Status bars come in two varieties: Player status bars and World status bars. Player status bars are focused on the player circumstances. Classic examples are hunger and mood, but if for example you're roleplaying as a student, the AI might generate "Academic standing" as a status bar. World status bars are usually related to world state, e.g. civil unrest. Some status bars can fit in either category.

Each survival bar has a preferred direction (up or down), a few clues to the AI about what might cause it to improve or worsen, status effects to apply if it becomes good or bad, what should happen if it reaches the non-preferred end, and several other parameters which can be edited.

Survival bars can be edited either in the new game view or inside a game that has started. You can also use console commands to add new status bars after starting a game (instructions can be viewed when pressing ~).

[h2]Loading screen[/h2]

Implemented a proper loading screen for new games. The purple cave from the AI Roguelite logo will be displayed first, followed by location or faction images if they are finished generating before the game finishes loading. It also includes information at the bottom about which generation is currently being awaited on.

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• Added proper markdown display for italics and bold in the bottom-right story view
  
• Improved color contrast in new game UI
  
• Added support for custom instructions when regenerating world background or player background
  
• Changed default image gen back to Wombo since it's working again
  
• Migrated to a different sound effects service, since the previous one was discontinued
  
• Migrated Sapphire NSFW fallback to a slightly better model since the previous one was discontinued
  
• Fixed new game autogenerate issue where language could sometimes be wrong if you had just switched languages
  

The default free image generation option (Wombo) is currently experiencing an outage. The issue has been ongoing for about 36-48 hours. According to their Discord, the service is down for all users, even including regular Wombo users. There is no ETA on the fix, but the team has publicly announced that they are aware of the problem and working on a solution.

Meanwhile, to alleviate the issue, I pushed an all-new official free image generation option. This option is only available in the alpha and beta channels at the moment, but may be pushed to the regular channel soon. It is faster than Wombo but nowhere near as beautiful. Please feel free to give it a try if you want.