From On High

Inspiration

The original idea was inspired by the KHE Hackathon's theme for this year: Futuristic Cavemen. With the game's setting taking place at the bottom of the tech tree, but the different players being controlled by the modern technology of AI. This gameplay of this project is inspired by the game series "Sid Meier's Civilization".

What it does

The game board is made up of hexagonal tiles. Each tile is a different color, representing different resources. The play chooses the starting location on the map for each of the AIs. After this setup stage, the AIs will take turn making their moves on their own. The AI can take a variety of actions, such as constructing farms, training armies, or trading with other AIs! The player can influence each AIs decisions by speaking to them as the a whisper from god. The player can also change the type of individual tiles on the board.

How we built it

The game was build in Python using Pygame. We used Ollama for the AI players. Google Gemini was utilized to support coding.

Challenges we ran into

We had a hard time at first finding and integrating a LLM into our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overall we are proud of how the game turned out. The base game is enjoyable to play and the AIs work as intended, creating a dynamic experience

What we learned

Much of our team had limited experience with Python before this project. Over the course of the project we learned a lot about programming in Python using Pygame. We also learned about running LLMs locally and integrating them into a program.

What's next for From On High

There were many concepts we did not have the time to implement into the game, such as food, diplomacy, and research institute mechanics. The game was also originally envisioned as multiplayer, with a different player acting as god for each chatbot. These mechanics and multiplayer functionality would be added in future development.