Artificial intelligence and EverQuest

Could a program be developed to use AI to update everquests graphics and systems to today’s standards? Could it replace a small army of programmers and artist and do the whole process in days instead of years?

AI isn't magic

I haven't seen an AI that's been able to finish a product from beginning to end that would be any use to me. It will spit out some usable code that will work for some parts of a program but it's just basic beginner stuff. Machine learning might be able to take over some repetitive tasks but for the most part, humans will still need to be in control and do the heavy lifting.

Might be worthwhile for a texture upscale.

Just hope they don't apply it to enemy NPC actions!

If there's one thing EverQuest is known for it's being an early adopter of new technologies. Just look at how fast they jumped on DX11.

Alexa - what's the fastest route between my house and the grocery store. Alexa - why am I now 3 states from my house?

There is no fucntioning AI. All those toys are actually LLM - Large Language Models. In layman's terms - chatty talking heads with blazing fast google search access and lack of sense.

Nevertheless, EQ might employ those into Norrath. It's imaginable to have some drunken dorf or ogre doing some creative non-scripted LLM-driven trash talk in some tavern. Or some tavern winch like LS patron may change "outfit" (visible ornamentations) and be an interesting party goer. LLM (AI) can drive such simple choir.

Codewriting or visual engine resources? Not so much.

Nope. As AI continues to develop you'll see some acceleration in the workforce where some jobs can be done more quickly with AI, likely by an experienced developer, designer or artist. This could, conceivably, result in a reduction of workforce where instead of 5 artists you need 4. But outright removal of entire departments or skillsets isn't on the horizon. Even stuff like generating 2d art that Midjourney at all are good at still needs careful handling by an experienced artist.

Here's a good example I enjoyed back in Sept 2022, should be easier now.

For quest building, bounding the constraints of an AI (specifically a large language model (LLM)) and integrating it with rulesets is non-trivial. It's something I'm a little disappointed there aren't more examples of. Here's one that's purely textual: https://medium.com/building-the-metaverse/creating-a-text-adventure-game-with-chatg-cffeff4d7cfd You can imagine encoding that into a game *somehow*. That somehow doesn't exist yet, but it definitely will in the future. Very exciting!

The Loyalty merchants (one in PoK and other in Sunrise Hills) change their primary and secondary to different appearances periodically. I don't interact with them often enough to note how often they change them or if it's only when the server is restarted. They'll even tell you which Marketplace ornament they're using, though sometimes it's one no longer for sale.

That is the big debate whether any real AI or well real I has been created from computers. I know some of the big companies that spent around 50 million and 5 years or so to finally create a robot arm that was able to pickup a ball without being told how to do it. That arm then worked with other arms that all had similar but different AI code and was able to teach the other arms to do it once it found out how.

Yea if it can create a functioning game is probably a long ways off, outside our lifetime I would guess but who knows it only takes that 1 accidental coding mistake for it to gain the ability to out think us, but we don't even understand how humans think so trying to code a computer to think and create is hard when we don't even understand how humans do it.

Heck some of the basics of the universe we have no clue about such as gravity, we know there is some kind of gravity that keeps us on the earth but it isn't anything we understand how it really works, it is just one of those black boxes we use for calculations based on what we know but we don't know how to create or remove it.

Human mind is pretty simple.
- Input (touch, taste, vision, etc endpoints feeding the mind data)
- Actions (abilities to move muscles of the body)
- Memory (actions and outcome of those actions for things we have done before)
- Goal (this is something our body is trying to accomplish)

The very basic of human starts with survival. I am hungry, then the mind goes through possible actions it can used based on memory of previous events to figure out what order to preform actions so that body gains food for survival and that can vary from basic anything that helps the body stay alive until we get free by not having trouble finding things to keep us alive and then goes based on taste that the body considers good or bad and makes us feel better.

I doubt they'd employ the very costly resources to do so, but I'd love to see a few NPCs that can somewhat carry on a conversation and maybe give out some interesting quests for special rewards.

The best thing I'm hoping for from AI for games is dynamic voice acting.

Like if a dynamic quest sends you get [item name] from [zone name] the NPC being able to speak a sentence saying that in a way that doesn't sound like magnetic tape clips spliced together.

from "Another settlement needs your help, I'll mark it on your map" to "Kaenneth, the people at Backwater Village need your help getting their stolen farm equipment back."

It was first generation AI, but third parties have long ago upsampled EQ textures for original model characters and armor.

You could search 'HD Everquest textures'.

That's great actually. it would be amazing if they split Quest NPC into its own chat filter so that text to talk can read quests. Hail and while they are talking we can start the quest.

You're all not thinking fully about this. All we need to do is program the AI to figure out how to fix EQ but also how to travel back in time. Then eventually even if it takes a few million years it'll figure it all out and come back and fix it for us. How about we ask for June 1st 2024 as the date to come back to?

If I could figure out how to travel back in time I wouldn't be thinking of a video game.

AI will fundamentally transform how video games are made in the realm of art, coding, audio, and NPC behavior.

Definitely first priority is to setup a VCR to record the lost 'Doctor Who' episodes.

QFT