AI NPC time!

I've made major progress on the AI integration. This is probably the best part and most fun part so far, but it is also the part that may need to be cut depending on the reception and popularity of the game. It's a double edged sword in that I am using two separate AI platforms, one for the voices and one for the AI brains. This offers me the most amount of freedom to customize the voice to sound exactly how I want it to. However, the fact that its a different platform means I have a limit to how many words I can generate with that voice per month which is directly tied to the tier which I am subscribed at.

If I had a constant influx of money from sales or subscriptions to the game then it may offset the cost of running that voice and also the cost of running the LLM which powers the NPC. Those are of course issues I will have to figure out at some point, but more so if I am successful! So that is a problem for future successful gamedev me, right now I am focused on making the most interesting and fun experience as I can.

I think even without the AI there is a lot of fun things I can do with the sandbox and simulation so I'm not quite sweating it just yet.

Now for the fun stuff! I managed to get dynamic IK physics working for picking up objects in the game, however it is a little broken in that it only seems to work on the first try not on subsequent pickups. That's a bug that can be worked out in the future for sure, or I may go down the purely animation route as that might just be easier since the placement of the objects on the table respawn to their exact same location if they fall off onto the floor.

In the test video you can see a sample interaction I had with the NPC complimenting her and trying to get her to leave the restaurant with me. I will be setting up several triggers and motivations which will make it so that she has a much more dynamic conversation with the player and introduce a like/hate system so you can fail the date. Right now its pretty fun to see how the AI reacts to some of my more probing questions.