IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

The Low-Tech AI of Elden Ring

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Classic behaviour‑tree / rule‑based AI dominates game scripting

“What you’re describing is behaviour trees.” – drunken_thor
“Stop calling everything AI, guys.” – raincole

2. FromSoftware’s NPC/quest design is intentionally opaque and stylistic

“Perhaps this explains why Fromsoft npc quests are easily the most inscrutable in all of gaming… Like, okay Hyetta, have another ‘grape’, …” – cgh

3. More sophisticated AI examples show what “high‑tech” can look like

“F.E.A.R 2 has the best AI that I can think of.” – gchamonlive
“My favorite high tech AI was Crysis… you can hear them yelling to one another.” – viccis

🚀 Project Ideas

[BehaviorTree Debugger Pro]

Summary

  • Real‑time visual debugger for behavior trees in Unity/Unreal that shows node traversal, performance metrics, and state changes.
  • Eliminates confusion over “AI” by letting devs label and profile actual decision logic.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Game AI programmers, indie devs
Core Feature Live graph view with step‑through, bottlenecks
Tech Stack Unity Editor extension (C#), Web dashboard (React)
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: $49/yr subscription

Notes

  • Directly addresses HN complaints about mislabeling behavior trees as “AI” and lacking inspection tools.
  • Would be adopted by studios to improve AI dev workflow and reduce debugging time.

[QuestFlow Designer]

Summary

  • Visual quest and NPC progression graph editor that auto‑generates constraints to avoid dead‑ends.
  • Exports clean JSON for Unity/Unreal, reducing manual scripting workload.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Narrative designers, indie studios
Core Feature Drag‑and‑drop quest nodes with success/failure branches, automatic NPC state tracking
Tech Stack Electron + React front‑end, Node.js backend
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Solves the “Hyetta quest” opacity issue highlighted on HN, giving designers a way to enforce progression rules without hidden dead‑ends.
  • Generates discussion potential by showcasing how structured quest flow can coexist with Fromsoft’s lore‑driven flexibility.

[AI Script Sandbox]

Summary

  • Online REPL for game AI scripting (Lua, BTML) with instant compile to native bytecode.
  • Provides side‑by‑side performance benchmarking of behavior trees versus script VMs.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Game AI researchers, students, indie devs
Core Feature Live benchmark, export to native plugin for Unity/Unreal
Tech Stack WebAssembly front‑end, Python backend, Docker sandbox
Difficulty High
Monetization Revenue-ready: $0.01 per compute hour

Notes

  • Gives HN users a concrete way to test performance claims around behavior trees versus scripting, addressing the “Regex are AI?” debate.
  • Enables experimentation that could lead to better‑performing AI pipelines, a hot topic in game dev circles.

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