civilAIzation | Devpost

Inspiration

Ever mused over Canada being the ultimate boss of the world? We took leaders like Putin and Hitler, imagined their strategies in Canadian hands, and thought, "Why not game it?"

What it does

You helm Canada. Your mission: global domination. Navigate tricky trade routes, master diplomacy, or go full combat mode against iconic historical leaders. It's strategy, fun, and history all in one.

How we built it

Unity is our main stage. We wanted the terrains to look stylized and the animations smooth, which meant a lot of painstaking hours for our front-end team. Now, the actual gameplay, like negotiating with Churchill or strategizing against Cleopatra, is where GPT-4 kicks in. We used some clever API integrations to get the AI to generate responses based on historical facts and possible outcomes. Yep, you can have an actual debate with AI-modeled world leaders!

Challenges we ran into

Meshing GPT-4 with Unity was an extremely difficult task. Getting GPT-4 to output anything formatted in a certain way is hard enough, so syncing real-time game events with AI decision-making had its moments. We also wanted the game to be more than just point-and-click, so blending historical accuracy with intuitive gameplay was crucial. We ended up spending the first 8-hours of development (roughly 1/4 the time) just perfecting the initial prompt, to the point where it can cost upwards of 2 cents per use!

On the other hand, we wanted the entire game to use real-world map data that responds dynamically to our requests, which was quite difficult to mesh again with the massive JSON dumps from GPT-4. In the end, however, we ended up being able to assemble all the systems together just in time!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We feel we accomplished a very significant amount on both the front-end and back-end. As aforementioned, creating a prompt that would be easy to interpret within Unity, fit within the scope of the actions and events of the game, etc. was an extremely arduous task for the backend team, extenuated by their desire to receive output in JSON format and nothing else! Plus, our team had to work tirelessly to create and scrape a massive set of historical exchanges to train the AI model on. On the front-end, however, converting these massive JSON dumps into procedurally-based animations and sequences was a daunting task that requires hours of deliberation and development. It is our personal belief that our team's commitment to delivering a one-of-a-kind historical experience has paid off greatly in the form of a product we are all very proud of!

What we learned

Technically? A ton about Unity's capabilities, API management, and harnessing AI's power (especially keeping it in line). But also that making games teaches patience, persistence, and the fact that caffeine is essential.

What's next for civilAIzation

More tech upgrades! Think Augmented Reality (AR) battlefields, expanding our GPT-4 database for deeper historical dives, and fine-tuning our game engine for smoother gameplay. Also, whispers are there might be an app version soon.

Dive in, gear up Canada, and let's rewrite some history!