Doki Doki Battling Club - Halloween 2023 Event Feedback & Discussion

[Archaic]

Hi everyone! A whole lot of things have changed in the world of tech over this past year, things that have given us plenty of ideas about how we could improve the user experience for people here on the Bulbagarden Forums, especially for new users. And now, it's about time we gave you a little preview at some of the things we've been thinking about and working on. Please give a big harvest season special welcome to Nemona!

Nemona is the very first User Assistant for the Bulbagarden Forums. She's only in the early experimental stages for now, so she can't say much (just some canned phrases really), and you're not able to talk to her directly, so this is really only a preview of the kind of things we might be able to implement in the future, rather than a full fledged feature at this point. We've tried to inject Nemona with as much of the personality of her in-game namesake as possible, so you can expect her to be an energetic and fun girl, who of course absolutely adores battling with Pokémon.

To see Nemona, you'll have to switch over to the Just Nemona! style. After I've finished writing this post, I'll be switching that to the default style, so many of you should already be able to see her at this point. If you're not set to default style though, you'll have to manually switch your style to the new "Just Nemona!" style, which is a slight update on the Spring Blossoms style with a Nemona twist. You might not be able to see Nemona when displaying the forums in portrait mode (so you'll have to turn those phones and tablets on their side), or at other times when the sidebar is disabled (like if you're on a mobile device where the screen is too small). Any time the sidebar is present though, she should be there with you.

Please also thank @SuperSiriusXIII for creating the artwork to help bring Nemona to life!

 

[Archaic]

Not even a few minutes in, and we've already hit our first bug. ^^;; It seems Nemona's currently a little shy, and will only turn up if you directly switch over to the Just Nemona style. If you're just set to default, she won't show, yet. I'll see if I can get that fixed.

EDIT: Well, that wasn't too hard to fix. If you're set to see the default style, you should now see Nemona!

 

[Greninjaman]

@Archaic
I have to ask: why Nemona of all characters? Why not Prof. Oak?

 

[Unovia]

@Archaic
I have to ask: why Nemona of all characters? Why not Prof. Oak?

@Archaic , I just saw this and switched over. I have to agree. Oak should have been the assistant.

Hope to see some functionality with Nemona soon though. Great work to the team.

 

[Archaic]

@Archaic
I have to ask: why Nemona of all characters? Why not Prof. Oak?

The choice of Nemona was a combination of factors. The "personality" of a neural network is going to depend very much on the kind of content you're training them on. Given we'd be drawing on over 2 decades of forum posts for fine-tuning the model, Nemona was a better match for the tone of voice we expected them to be adopting than Oak. Also, our artists liked Nemona more than Oak. ^^;

 

[Unovia]

The choice of Nemona was a combination of factors. The "personality" of a neural network is going to depend very much on the kind of content you're training them on. Given we'd be drawing on over 2 decades of forum posts for fine-tuning the model, Nemona was a better match for the tone of voice we expected them to be adopting than Oak. Also, our artists liked Nemona more than Oak. ^^;

Fair enough. Still, a fantastic job. If you guys need help with the AI or anything, let me know. I have certifications in computing.

 

[Vengeful Ghost]

Are there any safeguards that prevent Nemona from turning into Skynet?

I'm joking. This should be fun.

 

[DigitalGen6]

What’s Skynet? (Edit: Never mind)

And I don’t see it

 

[lisianthus]

And I don’t see it

You'll need to enable the current Default forums style! Or the 'Just Nemona!' style. If you click the little paintbrush at the top of the website you'll be able to see what to do probably! She shows up the best on Desktop mode, it's a little finicky on mobile sadly!

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

This ONLY uses Bulbagarden content, right? The big problem with "AI" is that so many of them are data scrapers that steal content.

Also you use a human character from a game that already has two AI characters in it? If you don't want to be specific I'd think Porygon would be a good character to use as well.

 

[Archaic]

This ONLY uses Bulbagarden content, right? The big problem with "AI" is that so many of them are data scrapers that steal content.

Correct. The training corpus for this experiment is purely from public Bulbagarden Forums posts, plus quotes from Nemona from S&V for personality. If this experiment is successful, then in the long run (and to be clear this is a very long run thing that wouldn't be happening any time soon) we could extend things using the full Bulbapedia database. One thing we'd need to look at before even considering that though is the legalities involved in training an AI using copyrighted text like game quotes. It's one thing to do it for what's a very limited proof-of-concept with limited interactivity, but for something more full fledged we'd be wanting some proper legal advice.

Also you use a human character from a game that already has two AI characters in it? If you don't want to be specific I'd think Porygon would be a good character to use as well.

Human characters are by definition more personable! Also, if we went with something like Porygon, I don't think we'd ever hear the end of Clippy jokes.

 

[ReturnofMCH]

Human characters are by definition more personable! Also, if we went with something like Porygon, I don't think we'd ever hear the end of Clippy jokes.

seems like you need help battling, would you like some tips?

 

[Unovia]

@Archaic , is there going to be an interactive conversation element with Nemona?

 

[lisianthus]

@Archaic , is there going to be an interactive conversation element with Nemona?

Again, we're looking into alllll sorts of possibilities you know? We're in the exploratory stages of it all so stay tuned! I think everyone will like what's planned to come within the next few weeks~

 

[Archaic]

Just a quick update. We've just fed some more forums posts into Nemona's dataset, as well as expanded the automatic prompts that go to her when you load a page, so you should see her coming out with a few more/different responses over the next few days.

By request, I'm also working on setting up a custom option to allow people to shut Nemona off. When that's configured, you'll be able to access it via your account preferences. That should hopefully be available later today.
EDIT: Well, that was easier than I thought. The option should now show up in your account preferences. Please let me know if there's any errors with that. It was almost too easy to do, so I'm wondering if I've mucked something up. ^^;

 

[Ryoma Maser]

Is there going to be a dark mode at some point for the Nemona theme? I think it may just be me and the way I configure my settings, but it is kinda bright for me to use. I used the Archaic Rainbow Rocket theme before switching to this one since that was really the only theme that was decent enough for my vision.

It's not a priority but I would like to use the User Assistant so I will try to adapt to the theme.

 

[Archaic]

Is there going to be a dark mode at some point for the Nemona theme? I think it may just be me and the way I configure my settings, but it is kinda bright for me to use. I used the Archaic Rainbow Rocket theme before switching to this one since that was really the only theme that was decent enough for my vision.

It's not a priority but I would like to use the User Assistant so I will try to adapt to the theme.

@lisianthus has been hard at work on a darker version of the theme, which we hope to launch later this week.

 

[Archaic]

Things must have gone a little wonky with Nemona yesterday when I was tinkering with her, since it seems she started appearing in threads all over the forums together with the sidebar. I've just gone and disabled that. Please let me know if Nemona shows up anywhere else unexpected.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Things must have gone a little wonky with Nemona yesterday when I was tinkering with her, since it seems she started appearing in threads all over the forums together with the sidebar. I've just gone and disabled that. Please let me know if Nemona shows up anywhere else unexpected.

Is she supposed to show up in other styles at this point? I'm using Distortion World style and she just started showing up for me a few minutes ago. I'm not seeing her in any threads, just on the main page of the forums and the various subforums, and there's nothing wonky looking with her that I can tell, but you haven't mentioned anything in this thread about enabling her for other styles yet so I'm not sure if that's intentional or a bug.

 

[Norzan]

She started showing up to me and i'm using Bulbagarden Classic Alternative style.

And this is probably just me but i find her kind of creepy. Like some Skynet style stuff.