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As a game dev, most of this sounds unappealing. A "next gen" game engine would let me open it up and describe the type of game I was making and then plop me in

As a game dev, most of this sounds unappealing. A "next gen" game engine would let me open it up and describe the type of game I was making and then plop me into a scene with all of the basics set up via non-desctructive, procedurally-generated content that I could edit and refactor in a real-time environment and then one-click-export to common platforms. For example, I could type "a open world 3d game", or "a pong-like 2d game", or "a 2d platformer" or "an fps", and each of those prompts would generate a default scene, with whatever other detail I wanted to add to the prompt. Then I would be dropped into a beautiful landscape - to take the first example - which I could then use procedural tools to start building. A paintbrush lets me paint a city outline which is then procedural cut up into city streets and sprouts buildings. I click on one of the buildings and switch it's property from "realism" to "toon", with the 'on all related meshes' option checked, and the city flips from something out of GTA to something out of The Simpsons. I finish the design to my current liking (it can always be edited later, in real time), so I click the "add populous" button and it randomly generates some folk for me. I click on one of them and start giving him a backstory and quests. Etc, etc, etc. I have an idea, I get all of the boilerplate nonsense done for me, and then I start crafting. That's the dream. All of that is entirely do-able right now, today, with zero AI necessary (yay, wave function collapse!). And yes, AI could make that first bit pretty easy, so I'm not against it alltogether. Just saying that its usefulness, after that, is far more in the "generate other assets based on the ones I've already created" category, rather than the "drop in a character and autoconfigure my physics" arena. This strange idea that I would ever want an AI to be creative, instead of the very natural idea that I want AI specifically to do the tedious, complicated, error-prone bullshit that is inherent with how we interact with computers, in the most auditable, and precisely-editable way is just so exhausting. Let it go, guys; nobody wants AI generated creative work. We want AI to make creative work so easy that anyone can do it.

simion314 3y ago
I agree with you, I also looked into existing games that provide some level and quest editor and except Bethesda games there is almost nothing. So today if I have an idea and want to experiment I either have to mod Skryim/Falout or use RPG Maker. I tried to make something in Unity, it is such a waste of time, watching tutorials you see magic like "you import this model from X but notice it looks shit, that is because you need to go in this menus here and tick this checkbox here". Or I had the issue where I tried to make a character run, the C# code worked fine it moved the character around as I pressed the keys, but the run animation did not played even if I done all the steps correctly and the animation was 100% working, there was no fcking error,warning or hint on what is going wrong - just a waste of time for a solo person to try create a small thing (I do not want to sell any game so I am not a threat for the pro devs and I had not intention to put it on Steam either so please don't send me hate comments)
sim7c00 3y ago
honestly, a non visual artist game dev might be intetested in generative ai for art.. this is not at all a weird thought. theres lots of creators of gameplay systems and cool.ideas who dont have the hands.to male beautiful creative stuff. it would help them unleash their creative game ideas without the burden of making visual art. i like it honestly.. 'make me a nice wooden crate', 'make a city in style x'. why not?
- krapp 3y ago
  > 'make me a nice wooden crate', 'make a city in style x'. why not? For the first part, you can literally just buy game assets like this, if not find them for free. For the second part, game environments are designed. You can't just "make a city in style X" and drop a player model somewhere and expect it to be fun. And overall, the more you trust the AI, the less of your own creative vision you have control over. Either the AI is creating everything, looking as generic and mediocre as all AI art does no actual sign of unique creative vision on your part, or else you have to put in effort, in which case you don't need the AI.
krapp 3y ago
The thing is, "AI art" and the like aren't meant for creative people, they're meant for those who consider the act of creativity itself to be "tedious, complicated, error-prone bullshit." People who can't even comprehend it being fun and meaningful in and of itself, but who can only see the inefficiency of a human process which needs to be optimized and automated away so that a commercially viable product can be delivered to market as quickly and efficiently as possible. So that they can "be a writer" without knowing how to write, or "be an artist" without knowing how to draw. "Make a game" without being able to write a line of code. And most importantly at all, not have to pay writers, artists or coders a dime. This is why AI, for all of its potential good (and I do believe that potential exists, no technology has an inherent moral or ethical axis) can only inevitably be a cancer on society, because those developing it, putting up the funding and pushing the research, want the ends without the means.

simion314 3y ago

I agree with you, I also looked into existing games that provide some level and quest editor and except Bethesda games there is almost nothing. So today if I have an idea and want to experiment I either have to mod Skryim/Falout or use RPG Maker. I tried to make something in Unity, it is such a waste of time, watching tutorials you see magic like "you import this model from X but notice it looks shit, that is because you need to go in this menus here and tick this checkbox here". Or I had the issue where I tried to make a character run, the C# code worked fine it moved the character around as I pressed the keys, but the run animation did not played even if I done all the steps correctly and the animation was 100% working, there was no fcking error,warning or hint on what is going wrong - just a waste of time for a solo person to try create a small thing (I do not want to sell any game so I am not a threat for the pro devs and I had not intention to put it on Steam either so please don't send me hate comments)

sim7c00 3y ago

honestly, a non visual artist game dev might be intetested in generative ai for art.. this is not at all a weird thought. theres lots of creators of gameplay systems and cool.ideas who dont have the hands.to male beautiful creative stuff. it would help them unleash their creative game ideas without the burden of making visual art. i like it honestly.. 'make me a nice wooden crate', 'make a city in style x'. why not?

krapp 3y ago
> 'make me a nice wooden crate', 'make a city in style x'. why not? For the first part, you can literally just buy game assets like this, if not find them for free. For the second part, game environments are designed. You can't just "make a city in style X" and drop a player model somewhere and expect it to be fun. And overall, the more you trust the AI, the less of your own creative vision you have control over. Either the AI is creating everything, looking as generic and mediocre as all AI art does no actual sign of unique creative vision on your part, or else you have to put in effort, in which case you don't need the AI.

krapp 3y ago

The thing is, "AI art" and the like aren't meant for creative people, they're meant for those who consider the act of creativity itself to be "tedious, complicated, error-prone bullshit." People who can't even comprehend it being fun and meaningful in and of itself, but who can only see the inefficiency of a human process which needs to be optimized and automated away so that a commercially viable product can be delivered to market as quickly and efficiently as possible. So that they can "be a writer" without knowing how to write, or "be an artist" without knowing how to draw. "Make a game" without being able to write a line of code. And most importantly at all, not have to pay writers, artists or coders a dime. This is why AI, for all of its potential good (and I do believe that potential exists, no technology has an inherent moral or ethical axis) can only inevitably be a cancer on society, because those developing it, putting up the funding and pushing the research, want the ends without the means.