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Chuck: Update 2

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atcDave

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I wanted to start with a quick look at my last few Wards of Gorion. Over the course of a run I often get quite attached to these characters!

Chuck is the protagonist this time. He’s a cleric/mage. [OpenArt]
Psyche finished not too long ago! She was a mage. {Co-Pilot]
Before that was Beryl. A Halfling Cleric/Ranger. [Co-Pilot]
Carolyn was a fighter-cleric. [Co-Pilot]
Goliath was a mighty Halfling Fighter. [Co-Pilot]
And Jaynee was a Cavalier. [Co-Pilot]

Goliath is someone I’d never done any AI art of before, and that Psyche is new. So yeah, I just wanted to play with my characters again…
Funny thing, I often run female characters because it effectively disables any issues I might run into with in game romances. Goliath courted and married Aerie in game. This time, I used the Tweaks mod to disable the romances in BG2. So Chuck will be free to pursue other interests.

*****

Sarah

We set out from the Friendly Arm Inn the next morning.

With the Addition of Jaheira and Khalid I’m feeling much better about our ability to survive, in particular to keep Chuck alive, for a while. [Co-Pilot]

Our newest team-mates bring us a mission of investigating a problem with the iron mines south in Nashkell. This is useful, although I admit my real goal is in seeing Chuck (and Imoen) improve their ability to fight and survive. We’d been warned an ogre was prowling the area south of the Inn.

When we did encounter the ogre, I immediately got in close so he wouldn’t notice the rest of the team. [Co-Pilot]

This worked as desired, Imoen put a couple arrows in him! Chuck hit with a sling bullet. And Khalid and Jaheira were right there helping out. This felt like an important battle for us. No one panicked, and we worked well together.

We got into Beregost, my home until just a few days ago. Here we met a young mage who was running from some sort of hit team.

Neera seems to be on the run from the Red Wizards. This automatically makes her a friend in my book. [Co-Pilot]

It seems to have something to do with her being a “Wild Mage”. I’m not up on all the nuance of that, but I know its different from how Chuck is learning magic. I gather it has more to do with emotion and intuition, less rigorous study. That could potentially make it dangerous to be her friend. I don’t really mean the Red Wizard part either, we dealt with a team that was hot on her heals. Its more that her magic can malfunction in very unexpected ways. Chuck insisted we would protect her. So be it.

Imoen and Neera. [Co-Pilot]

The area just south of Beregost gets a little wild if you get off the trail. I led us cross coutry, I’m not sure if Jaheira realizes I’m trying to get us more combat experience or not. But she gave me quite a look over that choice.

There is a swampy area around an old house there, that is often haunted by undead. We ran into a pair of ghouls.

Chuck cast Magic Missile again. I’m glad to see him confident in his casting. His anxieties concern me a little. He’s too nice and too smart to be brought down by such silliness. But he does act when the situation demands it. [OpenArt]
As we set camp that night he seemed thoughtful about how his life has changed and what he’s lost. [OpenArt]
I hope he knows I’ve got him covered. [OpenArt]

2 responses to “Chuck: Update 2”

  1. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    Revisting all your old protagonists is fun. I’ve been meaning to do something like that at some point – re-doing some of the first characters I did now that I’ve learned so much more about coaxing what I want out of the AI. Also have plans to expand the Mosnters and Mayhem series. Harpies, Elementals – lots of additional critters I’ve sorted out since the first set. Always more on tap…

    That’s an interesting variant on Imoen. Did you do something differently with her? The hair is styled a bit different, but that face also looks rather different than I usually got with my standard tags for her.

    OpenAI really is doing a fantastic job at consistent characters with the trained model. Seems like we haven’t seen as much variety in facial expressions from Chuck as we have from Sarah, but this is Episode 2. Hasn’t been much chance yet. Him working magic looks pretty good.

    I’m most interested in how well it lets you take those trained models and put them in fantastical backgrounds and situations. I’m currently taking Hero & Company through a mission that takes place entirely inside the mind of a mad conjurer. So things get a bit surreal at times. Not quite sure the baseline model that gets provided with OpenAI trained models would be up to that task, but I sure am spending a lot of time trying to get my characters to look like themselves in weird places. Of course the hardest is looking like themselves in pairs, and trained OpenAI models can’t do that at all. Ah for the future.

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Yeah I just had to put up my old characters, it just seems like a way of keeping them alive. I look forward to more monsters!

      for Imoen I changed her expressions, giggling didn’t seem right when heading out on an adventure! So this is just “smirk”. Otherwise it’s similar, but I think it jumbled her up with Neera maybe? And Her hair seems shorter.

      The stability of the Models is pretty awesome. But I fear Chuck may be limited by having a smaller base for training photos. Sarah was always the emotional heavy on the show, so I’ve got a better range of photos for her. I’m also very happy with the “enhance” feature, that makes the text description of the scene more lively. It leads to an interesting back and forth between Co-Pilot and OpenArt, using both in unexpected ways. I *think* I might be able to get game characters into the scene with models in OpenArt. I’m feeling a little better about what OpenArt can do now. Design a scene in Co-Pilot, enhance the description and add a model to the description, maybe? I’ve also tried layering characters in, so far most of my efforts look too cut and paste. As I said before, you loose a lot from the model if you use blend. But maybe, build a simple scene the same way for both models then layer them in? Yeah, I really wish I could use multiple models!

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