Elements of Necromancy: Conversation

With Melbourne Universities Elements of Data Processing adding an 18% oral Component, the School of Necromancy had to follow in their footsteps. You, a necromancy student must now BE SOCIAL. AHHHH

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Inspiration

Initially, the game was going to be about teaching a robot built by Slavic/ Balkan creators the nuances of English through the same game mechanics created. This was tied to how I felt learning Croatian and my dad felt learning English. I could not find sprites for this. Consequently, you are now a necromancy student (cough cough compsci) learning the art of conversation. The university of Melbourne has added countless oral assessment components in comp sci courses. Necromancy students are about as social so let's teach them as well.

What it does

Elements of Necromancy: Conversation takes the player through the treche

How we built it

Pygame was the primary platform and everything that was built is an extension from the DeCoded workshops. Many additional features are added through love and labour to branch out and build my own personal project.

The project can be separated into 3 primary player-based sections: Meeting NPC's and teaching Jerry skills, talking with Jerry who has learnt skills and finally having Jerry's learning assessed.

Game states facilitate the transition between these sections of the game and the loading screen. Thankyou from Julian, StudentID 1756838 The GROQ AI is used to implement 1. NPC conversation and 2. Assessors Verdict. For the game to function the LLM doesn't solely interact with the player, but also itself. There is a built in teaching mechanism and also an assessment mechanism at play

Challenges we ran into

Sprites were hard to find for the original idea, meaning there was a total shift in the creative aspect of the game early on, even if implementation would have been similar. I'm happy the game ended up being more lighthearted than the original concept. I likely would have had Papers Please as an inspiration if I continued down that thought process.

Groq models also have a stunning tendency to not follow commands, meaning that specific skills could not be hard coded into the game for NPC's to teach. Instead, the NPC's can teach Jerry the Skeleton whatever they feel like. Honestly, it means the direction is a lot more open-ended.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud of the logic behind Jerry learning from the other NPC conversations. It was one of the tougher things to establish as there were no guides to implementing it, unlike how key presses and visuals were quite fleshed out in people teaching them.

The game also is very cute which brings warmth to my heart

What we learned

Python skills were polished like crazy with this. I felt like I got a good grasp with the Pygame system however I definitely can see how other platforms are better for development.

What's next for Elements of Necromancy: Conversation

Elements of Necromancy: Conversation is proof more can be done in the realm of game development for me. I felt like I became ConcernedApe with their passion for game creation which can't be stopped. I would love the game to have cutscenes, animations and refined skills but for now it proves a first shot was taken. For now, enjoy flying around the world, chatting to the characters and teaching Jerry social skills

Thank you so much from Julian Raic, student ID 1756838

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