I was having an issue with SLOP FIGHTER where the monsters weren’t talking about their mutations well enough. There was something missing. I realised the solution was simple. The monsters needed to talk about more than their physical abilities. They needed to talk about the forces that power them and the forces that emerge from them, also. It wasn’t too hard to work in a new category (of vital essences, if you’re interested) that give the monster linguistic context to feed its attacks. This solution didn’t require significant restructuring or cause smudged outputs. I’m pretty happy about that.
I also managed to (ask Claude to) solve a problem with animal parts not being connected to their semantic actions, e.g. teeth biting, claws tearing, etc. It’s one of those things where, like, I obviously don’t know how to code, but I can tell when words aren’t working. The problems get harder to find as the LLM smudges its outputs and I can’t tell if it’s just the LLM dropping the ball or if my sentences aren’t put together correctly.
I realise that the title of this post isn’t quite what my video game does. My syntax machine belongs to a different branch of linguistic theory that developed both from and in opposition to Noam Chomsky. I’m no expert in syntax, though. I’m learning. I am reading textbooks. One of SLOP FIGHTER‘s original goals was to be educational. You’re not supposed to look at it and go “This sentence doesn’t work, this game is dumb”, you’re supposed to ask “Why doesn’t this sentence work? What is wrong with this word that it doesn’t match the action?” because we know that, despite this LLM’s inconsistency, a syntactically valid sentence can be parsed by the human mind even if the words themselves don’t make sense.
SLOP FIGHTER is done now (lol), and I think it stands as an example of what LLMs, and language as a whole, can achieve. The underlying technology is also pretty interesting. LoRA adapters are interesting. Small models that can be integrated into real-world tech are interesting. Imagine you’re out in a field driving a tractor and you just ask it exactly how many litres of diesel are left. ‘Heyo Daisy, what you got in yer?’ for a simple example. There are likely all sorts of complex questions you could ask of a tractor.
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