orion pt.1
Today feels like an important day for the orion project (the engine which powers Blightwood). I just looked up the repo's history and saw the first commit was on feb 2nd of 2024. I've taken long breaks and have had really intense times of focus. The last few weeks have been some of that focus time, spent ripping about and rebuilding systems, working primarily on generation, which I continue to debate the efficacy of for the project (a different discussion).
This morning though I sat down and actually read through a generated world from last night's test run - first the items, making some code tweaks to the procedures as a result, but then I read the world description and find my mouth ajar.
For so long, interesting narratives have been out of the reach of LLMs (at least to my level/taste) and after so much toil on generation, here was the first huge hint that with a small seed, something interesting was born.
The generated summary:
The USS Eternal Horizon is a 15 km generation ship launched in 2187, traveling for over 300 years with 50,000+ inhabitants divided into distinct sectors with unique cultures; society evolved beyond its original mission to reach Kepler-186f, featuring resource recycling, social stratification based on proximity to core systems and viewing ports, and customs like the 'Void Walk' and 'Resource Tithe'. The ship’s AI, ARIA, manages resources and spiritual guidance; political tensions exist between the Engineering Caste, Horizon Council, and the pro-return 'Returners' movement.
I guess good narratives are like good mysteries, they require you ask questions of them. "wtf is the void walk and resource tithe? what do the returners believe? was ARIA always in control of the ship?" Of course, this output is not a one-off paragraph, it was the result of an entire historical world generation, and all spawned from a single sentence prompt (which is a set of random thoughtless strings in my test process no less). To be clear, the output is much more than a paragraph, including many data points needed to run a simulative world (which is a result of a nuanced interplay between classical procedural systems and LLMs), but the summary is what first caught my eye.
I guess thing that excited me was not only the really interesting output but that my immediate reaction was to go in and talk to the inhabitants to find out more.
btw, in case you're curious: It turns out, 102 years into the voyage the resource management ARIA (Advanced Resource Intelligence Administrator) started engaging with the crew in a way that starting changing power structures and gaining more control, eventually leading to the current caste system (apparently this intelligence has spawned a niche religious movement on the ship who basically worship it). 269 years into the voyage, a great ideological schism erupted where 'the returners' plead the case that the ship is no condition to reach its final destination and should return to earth. Oh, and the 'void walk' is where kids are essentially thrown into an observation chamber for 24 hours to observe nothing but empty space and seemingly go through a pseudo-psychedelic experience (some are scared by this so deeply that they are trying to end the tradition - others revere it).
Many, many more interesting tidbits here, including how engineers (and others who control/maintain critical systems) essentially became the center of political power, how trade/currencies have developed on the ship and how governance works.
all of this to make a game about the zombie-infested wild west. 🐴