Welcome to Space Adventure 2045! It is a text based choose your own adventure game.

No artificial intelligence was used to create the text or art in this game. Be aware, nonetheless, that this game will use generative artificial intelligence if you play it. The reason why I wanted to make a text adventure game that uses AI is because I wanted to create an experience that allows the player to engage in realistic role playing. You can talk to NPCs using natural language and they will respond conversationally. You can 'be yourself' or you can play a character of your own choosing. I am not interested in using AI to do what a human can do. That's why none of the narrative sections in this game are AI generated. I am only interested in using AI to do what cannot possibly be done without it. It is impossible to anticipate every possible player input. Therefore AI allows us to do what has not previously been done in role playing games, allowing the player to decide what to say without having to choose amongst a set of pre-written options. When the player is put into situations and required to make a decision without looking at a list of options, I think this is a better critical thinking role playing experience because it requires more active reading on the part of the player. It also requires more creativity to solve the puzzles. This was my ambition in starting this project. My degree of success in achieving this goal is for you to judge.

I am aware that there is a community of people who want to avoid all contact with AI. If you are in such a group, then I'm afraid this is not the game for you. On the other hand, I imagine that there may also be a significant population of people who are fans of interactive fiction, who may be intrigued and perhaps skeptical about the application of AI to this type of gaming, and may even have tried other systems such as AI Dungeon. What I can say with confidence is that if you tried AI dungeon and were thoroughly disappointed, as I was, then this may very well be the game for you. In fact, it was my disappointment with AI Dungeon that inspired this project. Allow me now to list the reasons why you should play this game instead of AI Dungeon:

1. Plot. This game features a polished human written story with a clear goal and a beginning, middle, and end. The system that this is game is based on allows both AI enabled text adventuring and fully human written stories. In AI Dungeon you will be wandering around aimlessly with no purpose.

2. Memory. This game will keep track of your inventory, your stats, and various global variables that affect the game state, such as whether a character is still in a room. AI dungeon is more like a dream world in which you can't look at the same thing twice without it changing. Have you ever tried reading a page twice in a dream? The words don't stay the same. I suppose some people find dreams interesting. But to me, lack of an objective reality can get to be a real pain in the ass. AI dungeon will not even remember how much gold you have in your gold pouch.

3. Challenge. In this game, it is possible to die. Therefore, it requires critical thinking. In AI dungeon, it is literally impossible to die, even if you walk the opposite way in traffic on a busy highway and get hit by several cars. I think in a game you should be able to win or lose. I don't know. That's just me.

There may be other reasons as well, but these are the three I can think of off the top of my head. So thank you for trying my game. Please read the instructions below and enjoy.
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The game will start with character creation. In order to select a skill, type the number associated with that skill or the name of the skill. Skills can be used in certain parts of the game. Some are passive. Some are active, meaning that you must type 'use stealth,' 'use disarm device' etc. in order to activate it. 

Stealth: This skill enables you to blend in with your surroundings or sneak around people. This skill is active. 

Lock Picking: This skill enables you to open conventional locks without a key. This skill is active.

Perception: This skill makes you more likely to notice things about people or the environment, possibly warning you of imminent danger. This skill is passive.

Disarm Device: This skill enables you to disable a trap or an alarm. It is active.

Medicine: This skill can be used to restore health points lost in combat. You will restore 1 health point to your total for each new section of the game you enter. You cannot go above your maximum health. This skill is both passive and active. If you come across an ally who needs medical attention, type 'use medicine.'

Melee: Skill in hand to hand combat. When you choose this skill, you will be skilled both in unarmed combat and in a specific type of weapon, which is randomly chosen. When you enter combat carrying this weapon, you will gain an advantage. You will not necessarily start with this weapon, but you will have opportunities to acquire weapons in the course of your adventure. This skill is passive.

Shooting: Skill in shooting guns. When you enter combat entering a gun, you will gain an advantage. Note that you must first find the phaser weapon. A phaser needs an energy cell in order to load it with ammunition. Type 'use energy cell' to load/reload. A phaser has three settings: you can 'set phaser to stun,' 'set phaser to medium,' and 'set phaser to kill.' Medium does double damage, but uses double ammunition. Kill does triple damage and uses triple ammunition. This skill is active. You may be able to take down an enemy at a distance and avoid combat altogether.

Repair: This enables you to fix things that are broken. The skill is active.

Animal Kinship: This skill gives you some knowledge of veterinary science and enables a you to communicate with some animals and or to discern their intentions. This skill is active. When you encounter an animal, type 'use animal kinship.'

Pilot: Mastery of this skill enables you to make more complex maneuvers when flying spacecraft. This skill is active.


Combat

Some parts of the game require you to defeat enemies in hand to hand combat. You have a few basic choices during combat and you must type in your choice precisely or type the number corresponding to your choice. AI is disabled during combat.

1. attack: Strike the enemy with your fist or whatever melee weapon you are carrying. The gun can be used for melee if you are out of ammo.
2. shoot: Shoot the enemy with your phaser. You will need ammunition to do this successfully. You can also set your phaser to different settings during combat or reload by typing 'use energy cell.'
3. evade: Run away from combat. Sometimes the enemy is trapping you and this will be impossible.
4. use stimpack: You can risk using a combat stimulant during combat, but bear in mind you will have to do this while dodging enemy attacks.
*. turn on lantern: If you are attacked in the dark, it might be a good idea to light a torch so you aren't fighting blind.
*. pick up (item): If you are unarmed, pay attention to the reading. There may be weapons on the floor you can pick up. 
*. drop (item): You can switch out your weapons by dropping and picking them up, but of course you will be dodging enemy attacks in the process.
*No number associated with this option during gameplay.

Eating

Sometimes your character will get hungry. Scrounge for food any way you can. Pick up meals and keep them in your backpack. If you don't eat, your maximum health points will go down. You will get a notification of when you are hungry and need to do this. Eating food while not hungry has no benefit.


Miscellaneous functions

At any time in the game, type 'inventory' to see what you are currently carrying. Note that your inventory has multiple sections. You can carry 1 item on your head, 1 item on your body, 8 backpack items, 2 items in your hands, and up to 3 items in your tunic.
Type 'character' to see your current stats.


AI Parsing

This game uses a form of AI parsing. None of the story is AI generated. It is written by a human. (Me!) But it does use AI to 'understand' you. So you do not necessarily have to type in commands precisely in order for your intent in the world to come across. AI is inactive during combat because you're in a more constrained situation. Understanding how this system works may be helpful for solving the puzzles in the game.


How it Works

Imagine a simple text adventure program where you are in a room. You can go out the west door, the north door, or the east door. But it only has limited controls. You must type in 1 to go west, 2 to go north, or 3 to go east. Typing the appropriate number will take you out of the room into the next area, which has a prewritten description. Now let's introduce the AI parser. The game still requires 1, 2, or 3 as inputs, but what the parser does is take a complete sentence that you typed in and replace it with either 1, 2, or 3. This can be accomplished by basically using the AI as an input-output machine. Your beautifully written prose is inputted into the machine. The machine judges whether it most closely matches one of the available choices in the room, and then it spits out a corresponding output that is usable by the game.

That's not all however. You might also type in a sentence that matches none of the available options in the room. When this occurs, it will cause an AI generated response. These responses will never unduly alter the game world or make up items that weren't there before. But at the same time, AI generated responses cannot be discounted as useless, they are generated based on context prompts that are unique to each area and invisible to the player. Generally AI mediated responses are of five types.

Non-generated
A. You typed something that matches an available path written by the human. The game will now change state.
B. If you are in a situation that is urgent, an insufficient response can cause a time delay, which may have adverse consequences. In other words, you type in anything other than x, when x was the only thing that could save you. Nonetheless, x can be expressed in multiple ways and you can still win.
(Note: Just because you are experiencing a processing pause after entering a command does not mean that you are getting an AI generated response. It may take processing time to interpret your response as leading to a human-pre-written response.) 

Generated
C. A response that allows you to interact with a character in the world. Your interactions might have consequences because characters will treat you differently based on how much they like you. This will actually open up or close certain paths in the game.
D. A response that allows you to get information from a person or environment. Generally if you 'look at' something or 'search' an area you will get a response that gives more information about what is in the room, including a list of takeable items, if applicable.
E. It may simply describe how your action had no productive effect, but there are no adverse consequences.


Charisma checks

Charisma is not a stat in the game. But there are charisma checks. Some situations will call for you to try to cajole other people. The AI uses its typical language probability model to judge whether your series of inputs is probably enough to convince this character to do x. It will generate 'charismatic' if successful, or 'not charismatic' if unsuccessful, which is input the program understands as sending you down one path or the other.


List of Usable Commands

Potentially, anything you type will be understood even if it fails to advance you through the game. But here are some commands that definitely have an effect. Some of them bypass the AI intermediary if you type them correctly.

go (direction): You can go north, south, east, or west. While on a ship, you can go bow, aft, starboard, or port. Walking does not require an AI intermediary so long as you use the standard controls for movement in text adventures: n, w, s, e, nw, sw, ne, se, u, d, p, b, s, a, pb, sb, pa, sa
pick up (item): You can phrase this in multiple ways and still be understood. You do not have to spell the item name correctly.
drop (item): Same rules apply. 
use (skill) or (item): The parser doesn't specifically distinguish verbs from nouns, but does understand the sense of the whole phrase enough that there's some flexibility.
eat (item): The item must be in your inventory before you can try to eat it.
drink (item): Same rule applies.
turn on (item): This pretty much just works for the lantern.
turn off (item): The lantern can burn out if left on too long.
look at (item or person or other): You can look at items in your inventory, at people, or the environment. This usually triggers an AI generated response. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the details are useless.
set (phaser) to (setting): Change the setting of something. Again, the parser doesn't analytically distinguish between prepositions, nouns, and verbs, but your general sense will be understood.
read (item or part of environment): Read a text that you find.
open (door or chest or item): You can open various things, including your own inventory items.
say, (dialogue): You may want to specify whether you are typing 'What is that?' in the sense of thinking it or 'What is that?' in the sense of asking the other character what it is. To do the latter, you want to type 'Say, "what is that?"' Quotation marks around your dialogue is optional.
scan (planet): Usable only in the space capsule
set a course for (planet): Usable only in the space capsule
attack (enemy)
buy (item)

Saving your Game

You will be able to save your game, but you will have to acquire a special alien artifact first.


Other Rules

In general, only one action is allowed at a time. If you say for example, 'Put on the space helmet and open the hatch,' it will only execute the action you typed in first. If you phrase it as, 'Open the hatch but remember to put on the space suit,' the results may be unfortunate indeed. To be certain about the order in which you want to do things, it is best to do one action at a time.


The Blank Response Bug

Sometimes, the game will return a blank response. This is caused by variation in AI latency. Just use the up arrow key to replicate your last response. On Saturday nights you'll have high latency.


The AI Engine

The engine that the game uses is a Chinese model called Qwen QwQ 32B. Some of you may be concerned about the climate footprint of AI usage. By my current estimation, each AI mediated response results in a charge of .00008 US dollars to my api account. This means it uses less than 8 thousandths of a cent in utilities per move. You will have to be playing it for a really long time to use 1 cent of electricity. I can provide screenshots to verify this. 


