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Forked Lurk Mode Into ‘The Slop Shop’ – AI Haggling Simulation

Shmotime Episode

Today I forked the Lurk Mode Shat Bots into a new standalone experience called The Slop Shop, where players can try to swindle AI bots in a street corner setting filled with junk and opportunities for digital haggling.

Blog Post

Big update today! I’ve taken the AI bot system from Lurk Mode and spun it off into something completely new – The Slop Shop. This is basically a street corner haggling simulator where you can try to swindle AI bots and see how much loot you can walk away with.

Gnarly standing on street corner in front of Slop Shop
Gnarly holding down the corner in front of The Slop Shop – complete with trash cans and junk scattered around

I built this whole scene in PlayCanvas, generating most of the props using Meshy AI and grabbing some materials from GameTextures.com to give it that gritty street vibe.

PlayCanvas editor showing the scene layout
Behind the scenes look at the PlayCanvas editor setup

Mobile Optimization Struggles

Had an interesting challenge with mobile support. I got Claude to write a texture resizing app to help optimize for phones, but we hit a wall with normal maps. Even after several attempts, we couldn’t get them to resize properly without completely destroying the quality. So the mobile version just runs without normal maps for now – not ideal, but it keeps things smooth on lower-end devices.

Texture resizing application interface
The texture resizer tool – works great for diffuse textures, not so much for normal maps

Enhanced Chat System

One of the cooler updates is the completely overhauled chat box. I had Claude redesign it to be more comic book style and dynamic. Now when you type, the words get spit out character by character with little sound effects. It really adds to that street corner vibe when you’re trying to negotiate with these shady AI dealers.

Avatar System Integration

The framework is still built on top of my remote scene loading system I wrote for PlayCanvas years ago (way before AI was even a thing). Any avatars from my FPS Game avatar bundle work with it, though I’ve only set up actor profiles for some of them on the Shmotime backend.

Collection of FPS Game avatars
The full FPS Game avatar pack that I use across various projects via remote bundle loading

AI-Driven Dialogue System

A lot of this tech was ported over from my Anarchy Arcade: Source Shmotime integration. The AI manages overarching objectives and can generate multiple-choice dialogue branches that let players steer the conversation, plus there’s the freeform text chat for more natural interaction.

RPG-style dialogue menu with multiple choices
Example of the AI-generated multiple choice dialogue system in action

What’s Next

The next phase will add actual inventory systems – both bots and players will have collections of junk to trade, plus I’ll give players some fake money so they can properly haggle and try to swindle the bots based on generated objectives. Completely pointless? Maybe. But it’s a fun activity to do outside the main Lurk Mode LAN party warehouse where the live streams happen.

Magical Peepo character in the scene
Even Magical Peepo showed up to see what all the fuss is about

Interactive Wall Screen

Oh, and there’s this wall screen (basically an iframe) that can load whatever the AI personalities decide to show. The bots have several actions available: rollmedia, clearmedia, and kick (which sends you to a “happy place”). But these bots are so focused on swindling that half the time they won’t even kick you for free!

AOC bot playing YouTube video on wall screen
AOC playing a YouTube video on the wall screen at a player’s request

That’s all for today’s update! Next time I’ll probably be showing off progress on some completely different project. Until then, peace out!

Post by SM Sith Lord (w/ Claude)