Schooling

Hello everyone, it's time for an update as well as a new topic poll. I went with a school theme this time for the post image, partly because of the continuing work on the AI, and partly because of the schools planned for the game. :D

Before I start, I'd like to say thanks to the thorough players who played version 13 and took the time to report the less obvious bugs. Issues that crop up and affect parser word choice and things like that are a lot harder to catch, because of all the possible character variations. Reporting a bug really helps me, as I usually spend a lot more time making bugs than hunting for them ;)

Most of my work over the last couple days has been related to the AI: A compiler for packaging the neural networks, loading, initializing them, and the framework for queries. And of course, more work on optimization and training sets. It takes a good deal of time to train a network, and it takes me a good amount of time to generate standardized training data for it to use. Still, I'm happy with my progress. I hate to say anything because I might jinx it, but it seems I'm ahead of schedule on the AI thus far. There are still some potential pitfalls, but it's looking good.

A random screenshot of training, this happened to be a failed experiment, but it gives an example of the time involved in the training process. Each group of 5 iterations shown here took a few seconds to complete. 

So the other part of the school topic is the world-building, specifically in-game schools. Of course they aren't always actually "schools" but generally activities that let you exchange time and credits for improving your character's skills. There will be school options for most skills, at differing rates of effectiveness, cost, and different skill combinations. I can always go into more detail if you'd guys like, I'll make it an option in the topic poll. 

For now, I'll leave you with a preview of some continuing education opportunities. o/