Hi everyone, Creator X here!

I wanted to talk about my new project, PixelPal, which is an AI Companion combined with an AI Assistant.

Recently, I got back into retro gaming and decided to fire up some emulators. I completely forgot just how much of a pain setting them up can be! I mean, you can spend more time configuring emulators than actually gaming. And there are so many different ones now! Depending on the emulator, you still have to deal with cores, shaders, controller mapping, and so on.

Sometimes, you just want to use a specific emulator for specific games (for me, I prefer DuckStation for my PS1 emulation). A lot of the time, we just want to fire up these emulators to rest after a hard day of work, take a break from reality, or remember the old days and show our kids what gaming was all about.

So, about four months ago, after a bit of tinkering, I said to myself, "I wonder if there is a different way of doing this?" What if I built an AI assistant/companion that could help me with all of this? Something that could recommend a game, or that I could just chat with about different games?

That's when I started my journey and began building out PixelPal. I took the AI and recommendation engine technology from a previous project, stripped it down, and then rebuilt it specifically for retro gaming.

👾 Features and Development

When I started building PixelPal, I wasn't sure what features to include. The first step was to build the actual AI. After stripping down my original AI and taking its recommendation engine, I rebuilt it to be more focused on gaming.

Then came the features, which was the hard part. I did some research on common "pain points," and here are a few features I currently have:

• Assisting with Emulator Setup: You can use a prompt like, "Hey, can you help me set up RetroArch for my Windows machine?" PixelPal will then go through a guided setup strictly for helping you configure your emulator.
• Game Recommendations: PixelPal will also help you by recommending a game title from your library. We all have those days where we want to play something but have so many games we can't decide. Don't worry, PixelPal has your back. It will scan your ROM library and boom—help you decide.
• Privacy: Privacy is a big thing for me personally and as a developer. I have been slowly building privacy-driven methods into the AI.
  • It supports local integrations like Vosk (speech-to-text) and Piper (text-to-speech).
  • An on-device database is created on the first startup.
  • It also supports on-device training using your own .md files (this will need some improvement, but it's possible).
  • You have the choice to use API services like OpenRouter and ElevenLabs for voice.
  • I am still working on getting my hybrid AI tool to work fully. This will eventually give you the choice to switch between a local LLM or an LLM API (using OpenRouter and Groq).

What I really want you to know is that privacy, as I said, is important. We don't collect any of your data, nor do I sell any of your data. The only data that goes out is the data you choose to send via your own API keys.

Basically, the idea was to have your own built-in, privacy-driven AI gaming companion that learns about you through interactions. For example, it learns from your profile, your use of /launch and /recommend, what games you like, and it can also track your playtime.

FYI: Currently this is only for Linux at the moment. I didn't have enough time to build one for Raspberry Pi and Windows. I do plan to launch a version for both. So please be patient; Windows and Raspberry Pi users will also get a chance to test it out.  

⌨️ Chat Commands

Here are the current chat commands:

• /launch [game name] - Launches any game from your library
• /recommend - Gets AI recommendations for games you should play
• /launch emulator - Opens your configured emulators
• /now playing - Shows what's currently running

And just you wait until you see what I've got coming for its "personalities"—it's going to be interesting! I can't wait to see what all of you will be doing and what games you'll be playing.

Anyway, I think that's it. For a full roadmap, you can check it out by downloading the project.

Oh yes, since it's still very new, please try it out and give me some feedback about this project.

Thanks, all!