Encounter Daedalus's Labyrinth

DaedLab is a Minecraft-like game inspired by the Thaumcraft mod. It will use machine learning for player abilities. So far, I have a single ability implemented, which is letting the player manipulate the world by blending between different maps. This project has been somewhat of a testbed for me, both for tech research and game design. I'm especially excited about the application of custom lightweight neural nets for emergent gameplay, specifically voxel diffusion and in-game reinforcement learning.

The idea for this game came about after I wrote a Minecraft mod for voxel diffusion. I used a lightweight locally running neural net to generate houses. Unfortunately, this involved a Java to C++ interface and inclusion of huge NVIDIA DLLs. It was clear to me that this wasn't a viable approach to ship a product to end users.

Things that might be fun to add to the game:

• Golem arenas with player-trained neural net brains
• Duplicating yourself as an AI-simulated double (Maybe even simulating text chat?)
• Player-trained infinite pocket dimensions as traps
• Auto-construction of bridges over chasms or stairs up cliffs
• Online multiplayer with dedicated servers
• Highly moddable with source-code included

I could write a lot more about each proposed feature, but I'd rather just build them and see what works. I'm sure the best ideas are ones I haven't thought of yet. If you want to join me along for the journey, join the newsletter so you can receive regular updates to the game.

Notes about the pre-alpha:

• This game is still very early in development. There's not much content right now.
• It only runs on Windows 10 or 11 right now and requires HLSL Shader Model 6.0

Credits:

• Programming by me (Tim) with some help from my brother Joshua
• Art by Joe Solo
• Colonnade map by Chloriz
• This website was cloned from the Handmade Network GitHub

You can reach me on Discord or X.

Timothy Barnes