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Pretend You Have Friends

Coming in the future

Planned for Pretend You Have Friends but not in the mod yet. Plans can change, and none of this has a date.

Menus and controls

  • A command wheel, roster and quick-talk boxHold a key and flick to pick a friend and give an order; a roster with a gear button for settings; a quick-talk box for typing a line. Being built now.
  • A voice orbWhile you hold the voice key, an orb sits clearly above the hotbar: the "Shell" design, a rotating 3D point cloud that swells in a wave as you talk.
  • Friends in the tab listFriends show in the player list when you hold Tab, with a grey name and their owner, for example "Pip · Alex's friend". For display only.
  • Assistance optionsFour helps you can switch on yourself: unsticking a stuck friend and easier survival (Phase 3), keeping items on death and catching up by teleport (Phase 5). Survival stays the default.

Work in the world

  • Acting like a real playerFriends aim, mine, use items, click through menus, craft and trade the way a player does. Planned for Phase 2B.
  • Real crouchingFriends crouch for real: they stop at ledges, bridge across gaps, greet you with a crouch and copy your crouch taps back.
  • Rails, minecarts, shulker boxes and an ender chestRiding rails in minecarts, packing shulker boxes, and an ender chest of the friend's own.
  • How the world treats friendsMobs go after friends and villagers remember them, as with players, but a friend never causes phantoms or raids.
  • Skills they write themselvesFriends write, practise and save their own small programs for jobs, in a sealed sandbox that can only ask the server to act.
  • Gathering, crafting and deliveryGet wood, make tools from empty hands, cook, store and bring things back, from real materials.
  • Farming, breeding and villager tradingPlanting, harvest, feeding animals and trading with villagers, paying with real items.
  • Fishing, boats, horses and bucketsBasic fishing, riding and liquid handling.
  • Building from a descriptionAgree a small build in chat, then watch it go up block by block, with simple redstone.
  • Adventures and the Nether and EndExpeditions, enchanting, brewing, portals and boss fights alongside you.
  • Fetching dropped gearA friend that died goes back for its own items when it has nothing else to do.
  • Following through portalsToday a friend stays behind and says so.

Friends who feel alive

  • Promises and follow-upsThey remember what you said you would do, and their own plans, and bring them up later.
  • A journal and a nightly thinkDated entries in their own words, written when they sleep, kept on your computer.
  • Body language and moodHead turns, nods, sitting by a fire and a mood you can see.
  • Your story and their tastesShared milestones, favourite places and quirks learned from playing together. They unlock nothing.
  • Off-the-record talkChat that never goes into memory.
  • A new-friend interviewA few questions that draft a personality you can edit.
  • Friends talking togetherSeveral friends planning, splitting jobs and helping each other, including friends of two players who both agree.
  • Competence sliderHow well a friend plays, from relaxed to expert. It never changes what a friend is allowed to do.

Connections and voice

  • Understanding your modpackFriends learn modded items, dimensions and mods from the game itself. When you ask, or when they are unsure, they look things up online: Modrinth, wikis and GitHub first, then your AI connection's own search, with a notice about what is sent.
  • Local models with a guided setupFinds Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp, KoboldCpp or Jan on your computer and walks you through it.
  • Free hosted optionsMistral's free plan and Cloudflare Workers AI's free plan, each with a notice before the first message. Planned for the connections slice after Phase 2.
  • A spending counterA running count of what replies have cost, with an optional stop cap.
  • Inventory and status panelSee what a friend carries and how it is doing.
  • Simple Voice ChatOptional: friends hear you through Simple Voice Chat's key too, with speech still turned into text on your computer.
  • Friends speaking aloudPlanned for a much later phase. Today friends answer in text and speech bubbles.

Release

  • A public downloadThere is no release yet. Other game versions and loaders are decided at release.

The roadmap has the whole plan, phase by phase.

Trust and multiplayer

Let other players give your friends orders, what is shared when they talk to your friend, and how strangers can chat with it.

Your friends work for you. You can also let other players give them orders, and anyone can chat with them if you allow it. Each player’s private talk with their own friends stays with that player.

Trusting a player

Section titled “Trusting a player”

Open Trust for a friend in the friends menu. The screen says: “Players you trust can give Pip orders. What they say to Pip goes through your AI connection.” Type the player’s name and press Trust. Press Untrust beside a name to take it back. Or use commands:

/pyhf trust <friend> <player>
/pyhf untrust <friend> <player>

The player must be online to be trusted. Untrusting works while they are offline. Only the owner can change trust.

A trusted player can give your friend the simple orders and ask it for things. They can’t edit, remove or set home for your friend, or change who is trusted. Your own active jobs come first: see Who can give orders. When you untrust someone, any order of theirs still waiting is dropped, and a fight your friend was in for them stops.

What is shared

Section titled “What is shared”

What a trusted player says to your friend goes through your AI connection and uses your account. It is not private:

  • Before their first message to your friend, they see a notice such as “Messages to Pip are shared with their owner, Alex, and go through their owner’s AI connection. They are not private. Press Enter again to send.” Nothing is sent until they send it again.
  • Their lines show as [shared], and voice they aim at your friend asks them to confirm first.
  • Your friend answers them from its public side only: its public description, its style and what they said. Your private memories, chats and notes are never used for them.

Each player’s private chats with their own friends never reach any other player or the server.

A server limits how fast other players’ messages reach your connection (6 a minute by default). Too fast, and they see “You’re talking to Pip a bit fast. Give them a moment.”

Strangers

Section titled “Strangers”

Players you haven’t trusted can chat with your friend by mentioning it in public chat (@Pip hello). They can’t give it orders. Their chat also uses your connection, and they get the same sharing notice first.

Chat with strangers in your friend’s settings turns this off. When it is off, you are offline or your connection is down, a stranger gets a short line in grey instead, such as “Pip seems busy right now.” That line is not written by an AI and says nothing about your settings.

Whispering (/msg) to someone else’s friend isn’t supported yet: use a public @ mention.

Playing on a server

Section titled “Playing on a server”
  • Install the mod on the server and on every player’s game. The server still handles a player without the mod: they get the mod’s messages as plain chat and can talk to friends with @<friend> in public chat, but their own friends can’t think.
  • Each player brings their own AI connection. It is set on their own computer, not on the server.
  • A friend plans only while its owner is online. When its owner logs out, it stops and waits.
  • What a friend may do is checked by the server, as if the player it works for were doing it. See Servers.