stationmaster

Status Update: Experiments

Added 2021-07-18 17:00:25 +0000 UTC

In the last month, I took a bit of a break from the normal feature cycle to experiment with some more cutting-edge technologies. My results are listed at the end, but there's something more important to discuss here.

I've also used the time to think, and decided to add a more radical option to the next poll. Exalted has been out for long enough to people to see the concept. While I expect that it will change a lot with more development, the fundamentals will not.

The regularly-scheduled feature poll today will have a new option: "Screw this. We want Stationmaster 2."

If it wins convincingly, it will not be an instantaneous transition, though development on Exalted will slow considerably, and be primarily devoted to stabilization and the highest-priority features. Whatever the result ends up being though, it will help me gauge the feelings around the project. I've had a sense that people aren't as excited about Exalted, and, though few have said it outright, I'm beginning to think that I'm drifting from what the community wants.

And, without further ado, the experiments:

AI-assisted writing was by far the most successful. I will be adding a few new events to the next patch that were written in collaboration with GPT-3, and I think it will significantly increase both the quality and quantity of text content going forward.
VR is harder than I thought. It needs to be integrated, not just planned, from the start to be done in a reasonable amount of time. I think I could implement it in a new game. Implementing it in Exalted would require significant rework.
AI-driven animation is interesting, but not ready. I did a lot of tweaking, but couldn't get it to work anywhere near as well as the hand-crafted ones I've been using for Exalted. For now, character size will remain constant during sex animations.