The World of Tap Dance

The Mayor, with his office temporarily outside of City Hall
Spatula Tony, a pro wrestling manager
Half-Eaten Donut, a lost soul
General Pina, Pineapple Army General
Banana, a wise fruit alien
Lead Sock, a revolutionary
Umbrella, the President of the Moon
Velociraptor, a lost time traveler
The Minister of Profit standing by a table with champagne
Sir Reginald, a grifting rubber chicken
Private Gelato-4, an Ice Blade Soldier grunt
Kevin and Pencil, a power talking elephant and his mute friend pencil

Inspiration

Tap Dance is a story that I wrote based on a conversation I had with ai, starting with the prompt "What's the most ridiculous thing you can think of?"

What it does

AI NPCs act as the characters from Tap Dance to give the player an understanding of the story through having conversations with the player. NPCs start listening when a player enters the trigger zone and respond after player speaks and stops for an adjustable amount of time. Each NPC is accompanied by a prop or setting that references their part of the story.

How we built it

I have very limited typescript and coding skills in general. I was able to use a multitude of ai platforms to get the script I was finally happy enough with to make this scene work. I built a couple of the buildings in blender and used public assets for much of the props on scene. I used gen ai for the characters, the sky dome and for the Pencil model.

Challenges we ran into

With such limited experience coding and the scale of the project that I want to deliver have been at odds on this project. I wanted persistent memory for the NPCs but I had to settle for what I got. The memory seems to work while a player is on scene but I was not able to get persistent memory for the NPCs to work. I spent way too much time trying to get things to work that may have not even been possible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am proud that I was able to get a good conversational NPC to work. Even though it's not exactly what I wanted, it works well as a conversational NPC. I am happy with the way the NPCs hold character while in conversation. I know I will be able to expand on this to create experiences in the future.

What we learned

I have gained a pretty good understanding of how to prompt llms to get a pretty advanced result. Be that code, storyline, character prompts or otherwise. I learned how to manage NPC character prompts to drive an overall story within a scene.

What's next for The World of Tap Dance

I plan on creating experiences for each character, akin to a theme park for the story itself. I plan on building on this scene to create a fun experience for players that will be accented by the Tap Dance story and characters.