Sign up for a free recipe e-book →

DavesGaming

,

Chuck: Update 4

Published by

atcDave

on

Sarah

Today we are planning on doing a quick sweep around the area before we plunge into the iron mines south of town. I’ve been thinking hard about this team, and getting everyone ready for the possibility of some tough action in a confined space.

I’ve always been good at compartmentalizing and avoiding distractions… [OpenArt]
Sure Sarah I’m happy to help with that, why the different look today? And how is this going to work with putting a helmet on and off a dozen times? [Co-Pilot]
*sigh* [OpenArt]
Alright everyone, let’s go. Daylights wasting. [OpenArt]

We set out to the east, there was a local carnival in progress. It was not busy but a number of businesses and entertainers were getting ready for the day. Chuck thought we should ask around to see if anyone had spotted trouble in the area. Several reported an unusual number of Kobolds. I suggested a sweep of the area, this could be bad if visitors, families and children were traveling from town out this way.
Chuck was the first to see one small group of Kobolds to the side and he reacted quickly with a Sleep spell.

I told Chuck “Good job!” Its great to see him taking initiative. [OpenArt]

By noon we were all satisfied we’d scoured the area. Since we were still so close to the carnival it seemed like it would be fun to get lunch from venders there.

I had a really good time sitting with Imoen, Minsc and Jaheira. This is shaping up to be a great team! [Co-Pilot]

Then we headed south towards the mine, and did another area search.

In one place we ran into a couple of Ghouls. [Co-Pilot]

There were more Kobolds, and a strange moment with sculptor and a hostile bounty hunter. Small stuff. It was time to head into the mine. We talked to some miners who had a variety of interesting ideas about the source of their trouble! We didn’t get too far in when we encountered a group Kobolds.

A couple of the little buggers came up behind us, gave Neera a good scare. But I think our rear is pretty secure with Imoen back there. [Co-Pilot]
Sorry guys, but there will be blood… [Co-Pilot]

We faced a couple larger groups of Kobolds too.

As we continued deeper we started seeing more natural caves, the mine had been dug into a pre-existing formation. This could be a source of trouble.

A couple of Giant Spiders were dispatched. [Co-Pilot]

And we finally came to a cave that was fully decked out as an office and bed chamber. A half-orc in this cave suggested we were checking up on him. Interesting, there’s obviously another layer to this.

I informed him we were shutting him down. [OpenArt]

He called for help and a large number of Kobolds and skeletons responded. I charged the bossman while Chuck, Neera and Imoen all backed me up. Minsc and Jaheira protected the rear. We brought him (we later learned he was called Mullahey) down fairly quickly, then we all turned to clean out his small army.

Going through his papers revealed he had a mage, a contact back in Beregost. We hustled back to Nashkel for the night. We checked in with the mayor and showed all of our findings. Among them was a sample of the contaminant that was being used on the iron ore. He suggested the smith in Beregost might be able to counter its effects if we took the sample to him. We now had two reasons to head to Beregost in the morning, and decided that was what we’d do in the morning.
Then we were attacked by another assassin on our way to the inn. Right on the main street. Nervy and stupid. Especially since his bounty is for Chuck and he chose to face all six of us.

Nimbul was a spellcaster and a warrior. But he was not capable enough to go against six. [Co-Pilot]

All I can figure is he didn’t expect us all to stick together?
The next day, in Beregost, we talked with the blacksmith Taerom and gave him the contaminant samples. He was sure he could counter it. Then we went over the Feldpost’s Inn where Mulahey’s contact was staying. He was a mage named Tranzig, apparently just an intermediary. He didn’t seem to know much and quickly started trouble. Afterwards, we searched him and found a map indicating a bandit camp well north of here was where he’d been getting his orders.

4 responses to “Chuck: Update 4”

  1. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    Hat-hair must be a pain in the butt when you wear a helmet all day! Unless you’re Minsc, of course. Speaking of which, Minsc looks pretty Minsc-y in the pic with the Ghoul. Guess the Chaos Gods liked you that day.

    Co-Pilot doesn’t have the same fine detail on Chuck/Sarah as OpenAI, and of course you’re doing most of those pics from behind to obscure that, but for the most part its still pretty easy to pick them out in the CoPilot pics. Don’t see any CoPilot of Chuck in this one – is it really inconsistent with him? I’m going to have to experiment some more with that at some point. Having a reasonably consistent baseline for “character reaction shots” and such would certainly make things easier.

    The picture of Chuck is labelled “sitting with Imoen, Minsc, and Jaheira but that looks like Neera to me?”

    I’ve never really understood the point of Nimbul – or many of those similar ambushes in the saga – where one guy decides to take on a whole party. That’s just stupid unless they are massively more powerful, and they’re usually not portrayed as stupid. Just hiring a few mercs to soak up attention and keep people off his back while he let loose with spells could make him massively more threatening.

    Like

    Reply
    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Can you imagine the horror of helmet hair!

      I guess I was being too cutesy on some of that. My idea here is sort of patterned after the show, Sarah is smitten and refuses to admit it. So she tries to impress Chuck, and is left cranky when “being pretty” proves impractical. She does her best to be positive and encouraging, and pointedly ignores Chuck and Neera flirting. I can’t quite capture the moment from the show when Chuck is asking her to help him fix a date he ruined (with someone else) and she swallows down disappointment and helps him (“her favorite flowers are…”) As is typical of TV, it was dragged out too long. But here I won’t repeat that mistake, Neera will be the end of Chuck’s cluelessness.

      Chuck from behind is tricky, the AI does not like obscuring the face. But that one with Chuck and Neera is Co-Pilot. I think too much face is still there, but maybe it’s not so bad?
      It’s easier to do combat, at least Co-Pilot is more likely to keep the character square and hide their face when I tell it “from behind”. If it’s character interaction it does NOT want to show the back of the head.

      And I remain impressed with OpenArt’s renders! It is dependent on the model, so the Sarah model is more powerful and flexible than the Chuck model.
      And it is dumber about certain things. Like, the “story” in the first four renders. I started with the first and third one, then I did the one of Imoen helping out. I immediately thought Co-Pilot had done *much* better with details on a “rustic wood paneled private bedroom of a medieval inn”… and Sarah’s “tunic” looked more like linen and was less of a slinky form fitting thing. Once again, Co-Pilot simply understands the trappings of medieval fantasy better. So I went back and tightened down my terms and descriptions in OpenArt to make it look more like Co-Pilot. I should have started there!

      For Minsc, you did mention adding “body builder” to his description so I’ve been doing that. I also learned, from doing Aias, the power of “thick” mixed in. That seems to define the body-building muscular types as heavy-weights! The rest, I’ll plead lucky. The face and weapon came out right, both are barriers with him.

      Nimbul and the other assassins, yeah just adding a little muscle would make a huge difference. I think Beamdog learned some of the lesson, the Red Wizards coming after Neera all come with extra muscle.
      All I can figure is, Bioware was afraid of making those opening fights too hard for beginning players? And I have had to reload that Nimbul fight once or twice when he got something like Horror off on round one. Not often, but a TPK can happen! No doubt, the game does make all those early assassins look stupid though! It gets better when you start running into teams of them.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I think generally what folks list as the biggest strength of CoPilot is its ability to understand complex prompts. SDXL and others can get better results if you really know what you are doing and how to precisely manipulate the system, but CoPilot is just better at translating human speech to AI render prompts.

        That and DALLE-3 has a truly massive training set – so its far more likely to have imagery like what you’re asking for to start from that most other AI networks.

        Those two together is a powerful combination. If only it didn’t constantly kneecap itself with the irritatingly inconsistent filters. I was getting 50% image blocks on Grandmaster Danantar yesterday. No idea why. All I can figure is it must have thought he looked too much like some politician or actor it is “protecting”. Because “man in wizard robes seated in small roman ampitheatre” seems as inoffensive as humanly possible.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        That’s funny about the filter! I mean, it is a source of endless frustration. But for every block where I think (yeah, I can see why this one is tricky) I’ll get another that’s more “what on Earth?!”

        Interesting about the size of the training set. That’s not shocking to me, one of the things I’ve noticed with OpenArt is that multiple renders are more likely to be minor variations. You see some repetition of poses, angles, etc with Co-Pilot too; but generally MORE variation.

        Like

Leave a comment

Recent posts