21 ms·

Building an AI game studio: what we've learned so far

287 points by FredrikNoren 2y ago

acureau 2y ago
This looks like the perfect tool for rapid prototyping. I am not yet sold on this being a viable method to produce commercial games, but I do think you guys are on to something. Very cool!
kkukshtel 2y ago
I'm very into the idea of using AI to change the types of games we make, but I think that "prompting the game to do stuff" is barking up the wrong tree. As the top comment says here, you can develop non-intelligent solutions to do what is going on here in probably the same if not less time. This is more like "end of chain" AI work and doesn't center AI as necessary for the game itself. If anything this is using LLMs as a shortcut for keyboard shortcuts or something, which is fine, and likely necessary work to get to something new and interesting, but already makes the category error at the top of constraining what is possible based on the need to fit the LLM into the rules box.
RecycledEle 2y ago
I wonder why their studio is named after a way to cheat on exams?
FredrikNoren 2y ago
Hi HN. We want to make it possible for anyone to build games without first learning to code or make art, by giving them access to an “AI game studio”. It’s early days, but here’s what we’ve learned so far building this product. Would love to hear what everyone thinks, and see if we can find some alpha testers for this!
- EwanG 2y ago
  Having done a couple indie games myself over the years, I think you're addressing many of the pain points of building such a game. However the REAL problem as an indie gamer is getting a marketing/get-the-word-out campaign such that said game produces enough income to cover the cost of making it. Will you be adding a "marketing" add-on to this to help developers actually get their games noticed and played?
  - FredrikNoren 2y ago
    So far we've focused 100% on the creation side of things, but we're absolutely interested in helping people on the marketing side too. Something we've discussed here is; since it's an online platform, could it be possible for creators to form communities around their games as they are being built (even more than now), with perhaps features to engage your community around what you create (imagine that your players can comment on things in the game as they play test it, for instance). This is quite speculative for now, but it's something we're interested in exploring.
    - intended 2y ago
      Same issue - who is going to play it? There are many indie games that never got made, lots of iterations of the current hotness (the Vampire survivors era may almost be over?) People still play CS:GO. People still play The Sims. There are an infinite number of alternatives. Professional game devs will talk about marketing because thats the problem when it comes to selling games. The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other.
      - Philpax 2y ago
        > The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other. That's the plan :-)
  - omneity 2y ago
    Marketing is hardly something that can be done via an "add-on" or some mechanical approach. It's more of a mindset, getting yourself and what you're working on known is something you need to do throughout the entire process, before, during and after the release of a game.
- ryanlbrown 2y ago
  Is this like GameMaker but AI-based, or is it more lofty and at risk of biting the hand that feeds it?
  - FredrikNoren 2y ago
    I'd say it's something in that direction (GameMaker) yeah. One big difference (other than the AI part) is that both building and playing is multiplayer by default. (Though of course, you can choose to make things single player and to build solo). With biting the hand that feeds it; I sure hope not! :) I've built my fare share of obscure indie games, and we in the company have friends and family members who do now as well, so the aim is to build something that can help people like this.
- ganzuul 2y ago
  It looks like a new kind of sandbox game and it certainly is a very promising concept. It might allow for entirely new types of collaborative storytelling. e.g. if a player marks an item as 'important' the next level generated builds on that thread. Personally I would love to have a dedicated tool for generating mods for established games like Minecraft and let simple drawings be given life in game worlds.
- sarahduck 2y ago
  If you want people to be able to make games without having to "make art", I feel like you've misunderstood what video games are. Part of me thinks this might be a good idea for children, as I grew up on simple game creators like Warioware DIY. But I also hate to think that children would grow up simply telling the computer what to generate instead of being encouraged to do it themselves in some capacity.
aredox 2y ago
What a neat idea! Next: a strategy game where you give orders in plain text, instead of hundreds of clicks per minutes
- ainiriand 2y ago
  https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  Thanks! Oh yeah that would be really interesting to explore! We haven't done much with LLMs on the play side yet, but we know that there's so much that can be done there, that can open up for totally new types of games.
- bloopernova 2y ago
  Has anyone tried to create an LLM based crew on the bridge of a ship or spaceship? Being able to delegate tasks to competent subordinates would be very helpful.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    Even a failed attempt at this would be great - imagine your crew frequently misunderstanding your orders and the ensuing chaos.
    - phone8675309 2y ago
      Or them giving you the answer to questions you give them in an ambiguous manner.
    - bloopernova 2y ago
      "Incompetent Bridge Crew" is a game that I'd enjoy playing, that's a great idea!
    - klondike_klive 2y ago
      I sometimes feel like the corpus of videogames is approaching a parody of my entire career.
mysterydip 2y ago
How will you ensure the content created for a game is free from copyright violations? Or is that up to the user to determine?
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet, but I believe this would fall under the same laws and restrictions as any other online platform (YouTube, TikTok etc.), it's just that the production tools are different.
  - nicklecompte 2y ago
    This is an unacceptably lazy and reckless comment: your very first example blatantly plagiarized from Star Wars. You even called the bombs "BB-8 bombs" to make them look like the robot! It's just a dumb demo, but it means your product has no safeguards against copyright infringement, and you don't even care. I suspect you might say "users of our technology assume full responsibility for copyright violations" or whatever, but what are your customers supposed to do if your product plagiarizes something more obscure than Star Wars? They can't be expected to check every generative AI output against every IP. You and your team need to take responsibility for the copyright problems your tool is guaranteed to create as currently implemented. I really hate this "better to seek forgiveness" approach to copyright OpenAI has encouraged.
  - jsnell 2y ago
    That seems like a ridiculous stance. The safe harbor laws that those platforms depend on are for user-generated content. Here it's your platform that's generating the infringing content. (And obviously it's not by accident, you're practically reveling in it with your choice of demo.)
  - tredre3 2y ago
    > We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet That's how we know you're the real deal! Move fast and break things, laws and such are mere details. Capture the market first, work around problems later.
spacecrafter3d 2y ago
This is incredible. Thanks for the great write-up!
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  Thank you!
EncomLab 2y ago
Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020. Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.
- bckr 2y ago
  I think that, while making a game is not hard, making an excellent game is hard. And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. It takes fast iteration with user feedback to find the fun, then a ton of polish to make it extraordinary. It has to be so good that, out of those 73,000 games and counting, I’ll spend some of my money and time on it. The way GenAI can help here, I think, is the first part of this problem. Help me iterate quickly to find the fun. Then, let me export to Unity / Godot / Unreal to begin the polish process.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game; just compare "pop culture" (optimized to be commercially successful) vs "high-brow culture". Even if you are not the "extremely high-brow taste" kind of person, there exist quite some video game genres in which excellent games are produced, but the audience of these games is a quite small (but sophisticated) niche audience, so that just by volume, games of these genres likely won't make a lot of money.
    - admax88qqq 2y ago
      That really just depends on your definition of "excellent" You have defined it to mean "high brow"
      - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
        > You have defined it to mean "high brow" Both in - "high brow" - niche genres categories (which I both gave as examples) you will likely find quite some games that that are excellent, but won't make a lot of money. But don't pick too much on these categories since my central point is "Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game".
MCLAU155 2y ago
we are in need of a good 2D strategy game such as Advance Wars or Fire Emblem that can be played with infinite variations
- report-to-trees 2y ago
  What do you mean by infinite variations here?
  - skadamat 2y ago
    I'm guessing they mean with some type of procedural generation or another randomization approach in mind that creates a bunch of new maps, bosses, vehicles even! Advance Wars, if I recall correctly, has a hand-crafted set of maps and battles structured in a campaign story. So once you're done, you're done. Replay-ability is a bit limited. I absolutely loved Advance Wars and my brother and I played the heck out of it growing up!
    - __loam 2y ago
      Replayability is overrated imo. The old advance wars games on gba and ds took hours to beat and had excellent map design. There's also something cool about the no strings attached development model of old cartridge games where the game had to be perfect on release that is very endearing.
    - report-to-trees 2y ago
      Interesting, yeah I guess that makes sense. I always thought those strategy games were missing a competitive community and better PvP experience but I could also see how more replayability would make them more popular.
      - TulliusCicero 2y ago
        I think it's hard to make those PvP modes compelling to most people, being turn-based with longer turns is rough (card games get away with it because turns are typically pretty short). It's hard to think of popular turn-based video games where it's popular for multiplayer and the turns are long.
zengineer 2y ago
That's sweet! Like the UI and threads approach. How does it generate 3d models? Btw there is also https://frvr.ai https://frvr.ai for more casual games
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  Thanks! We're using a service called Meshy (https://www.meshy.ai https://www.meshy.ai) to generate 3d models.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
bogwog 2y ago
They mention using a service called Meshy for generating models, and I noticed that they have a free plan where the generated assets have a "license" of CC-BY-4.0[1]. Any lawyers in here that can comment on that? They're claiming copyright ownership over models generated from customer prompts, and I doubt they trained their model exclusively on stuff they own/licensed. 1: https://www.meshy.ai/pricing https://www.meshy.ai/pricing
- jprete 2y ago
  "They're claiming copyright...." Who is "they" in this sentence, the company from the OP or Meshy? I'm guessing the company from the OP?
  - bogwog 2y ago
    "They" would be Meshy. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you can't grant a license to some IP unless you own it.
    - jprete 2y ago
      Thanks for the clarification; I genuinely wasn't sure which you meant.
- jsheard 2y ago
  https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f8ef6-e562-7e19-b0d7-5f6b1bde271e https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f8ef6-e562-7e19-b0d7-5f6... https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f4d04-6a56-701e-9abc-62a3a0c155c1 https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f4d04-6a56-701e-9abc-62a... IANAL, but I think Blizzard and Marvel would beg to differ that these are kosher for commercial use. They're also very poor quality models but that's a separate issue.
  - viking123 2y ago
    I like how the first one has two faces, one on the front and one on hair at the top
Ito10 2y ago
Not a bad idea. But what's next? For example, I am indeed interested, but will anyone really play the game I make with AI? If I spend the same time watching YouTube and learning Godot or Unity, will it be more likely to make games and even make money, and I can also use Meshy to produce my assets. Unity also has Muse (though it's hard to use). If the games I make don’t make money, what is your business model?
wokwokwok 2y ago
I think most people don't actually want to make games. Most people want to take an existing basic game, and tweek it a bit, incrementally, adding new art, ideas and levels, and removing the stuff they don't like. They definitely do not want to write code. They most certainly do not want to debug generated code and I think you've hit the nail on the head with 'generating actual code sucks, is hard and basically doesn't work' with current models. What I see in the demos looks different though; it looks like you have a configuration driven set of basic game elements and let the AI tweek the structured and easily-to-validate-schema config. Which I think is fantastic. "Make this unit bigger", "Add new type of fighter", "Get rid of this unit", "make the terrain here smoother and add a lake"; I feel like this kind of structured tool use is currently possible, if you write a framework of constrained actions (which is what it appears you've done). So, props to you. This feels like something that is both actually novel and interesting. ...but; I feel there is going to be a difficult path ahead. The more generic you make the engine, the more different types of games you can make with it; however, in doing so, the tools you have (eg. "modify unit config", "generate 2d sprite for unit", etc.) will have to become more generic; and the more generic they become, the less effective the agents will be at using them. Our current batch of GPT4-ish models seems like they're relatively well suited for using specific tools with specifically constrained inputs to plan and achieve goals; however, as the tools become generic, the solution space balloons out widely and you start getting random crap instead of actual real solutions to tasks. Specifically, I'm skeptical about your generic `createOrUpdateRule` and that you can effectively scale it to complex interactive behaviors; it just feels like the agents will never express complex ideas with that kind of coding; it'll only ever be an array of trivial behaviors. Maybe that's all you need in some cases; but I don't think you can build actual games that way. So, practically speaking, this might actually only ever really work as like a 'super modding tool' that takes basically a fully working game and lets you mod it in a very specific set of ways; but that would mean creating a 'template game' for various different game types, and different 'modify game' tools for each one. Otherwise, the final product is never going to really be beyond 'unit moves back and forth randomly'. ...but, that would still be really fantastic. I guess, I hope you don't get lost trying too hard to build a generic Unity clone using AI that is kind of so-so (ie. generates random code that doesn't work and you have to constantly debug), instead of an amazing thing that is slightly less generic, but lets you do amazing things within a specific set of restrictions.
hatenberg 2y ago
So ... does every single AI demo put copyright and intellectual property infringement on the box? Just asking? How on earth can an entire ecosystem be so damn tone-deaf and lack self-preservation?
- spaceguillotine 2y ago
  shhh you will scare the VC bros and their dreams of doing nothing and making billions off others work.
- stale2002 2y ago
  > tone-deaf Maybe. I'm not sure why that matters though. Better to be hated than not even noticed. > and lack self-preservation Arguments like this confuse me. Copyright infringement is everywhere. Not just among companies, but also among individuals. Any time someone draws fan art of the Mario and posts it on this internet, this is illegal copyright infringement. But basically nobody ever gets sued for that kind of stuff, unless you get huge and bothersome enough to be noticed. And if you've gotten to that point, you've already basically won. And you can just fix the issue later, if they actually bother telling you to stop. But it doesn't matter, because you have already found success.
  - hatenberg 2y ago
    They are baiting the mouse with the star wars items
SubiculumCode 2y ago
This doesn't happen to be the AI game startup at which the host of the wonderful Last Week in AI podcast works? https://lastweekin.ai/ https://lastweekin.ai/
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  Nope, that's unrelated.
  - SubiculumCode 2y ago
    Very cool stuff Mr. Noren. Thanks for sharing!
Pingk 2y ago
How robust is the system to fix bugs? Can you just point at a thing and say "fix this bug"? How does that side of it work?
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  So it's hard to give a number on how robust it is, but yes, simply telling GPT that "this doesn't work" or "try again" does work a lot of the time. We're trying to give GPT as much context as possible to help it figure out where things went wrong. Currently that means giving it type errors, execution errors, self-critique and user feedback. But we're working on expanding that; for instance we want to experiment with automatically generating tests that validate things are working as they should. We also want to add a GPT based "debugger" that can help you pinpoint exactly what went wrong.
  - halfmatthalfcat 2y ago
    Sounds like a nightmare tbh. Half the fun is the actual coding (aka the journey). I guess if you want to be a prompt engineer that sounds like fun but it sucks all the art of programming out of it.
    - Philpax 2y ago
      (I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.) Yeah, this is definitely something we're considering. The majority of us are programmers and have similar feelings about the joy of programming. The two things I'd say we've discovered along the way are that: 1. People who aren't programmers can build games with this, and that's worthwhile in itself (giving this to a non-programmer and watching them realise an idea they have is delightful!) 2. Working over concepts, not code, allows for much faster iteration and experimentation. I'm a fast programmer, but nothing compares to clicking somewhere, saying "do this", and being able to play around with it within a minute. We're still navigating the boundary between traditional game making (including programming) and AI-infused game making; I hope we'll find a happy balance that keeps everyone empowered and happy :)
arvindrajnaidu 2y ago
This is really cool thanks for sharing. I have built a generic app builder that follows the same idea. I am dealing with the same problems! It is an iOS app called Burning Idea, it lets you build small apps by talking to it.
arvindrajnaidu 2y ago
Could you leave the tapping and chatting to the AI? This way, I can let it work on some basic guidelines and let it surprise me with a game every day.
- pierd 2y ago
  Since it's all chat based you can actually start by asking it for game ideas and tell it to proceed with making it. Unfortunately and definitely not surprisingly the resulting game is usually quite bland.
anotheryou 2y ago
Any plans for LLM based agents :) ? NPCs will be amazing. AI Dungeon is probably a good example for character setup and story snippets to weave in (so you don't get all generic "helpful assistants") :).
- Philpax 2y ago
  Hi there! I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump. We've done some internal research into this and are excited to explore it in future, but we're not currently working on it at present - only so many problems we can tackle at the same time :) Looking forward to playing around with it more down the line!
  - anotheryou 2y ago
    looking forward to everything either way :)!
jarjoura 2y ago
I know this is a small team and experimenting, but in my mind, this engine is already limiting the potential of games it can output. I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game. The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but it also has to meet some level of quality bar and work on any platform.
- Philpax 2y ago
  (I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.) We experimented with a few different form factors, including integrating into existing game engines, before taking this path. Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind. Our platform's entirely on the web, so you can link your current game/game creation session to someone else and have them join you. This works on most modern browser, making it easy to build and share games. That being said, you're not wrong that the current scope of games is limited. That's OK with us for now - we'd like to focus on getting the core experience as good as possible with the current scope and then expand outwards, instead of trying to build something that attempts to solve everything and works for nothing.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    > Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind. How does that pan out? There's hundreds of millions of dollars of product development in Unity and Unreal specifically for game design. How will you ever catch up? Godot got $8m, for the people who authored it, what does it have to show for it? It seems like hopelessly little money. Maybe you said to the investors, "You don't want to be locked in" or whatever. The browser still an engine. Mobile Safari and Chrome are also moving targets. You're still playing in someone else's back yard. There are no games that are designed to be played in Mobile Safari and also make money. I mean the browser also has AI assistants. Obviously I want you to succeed but this sounds more like a good story than a good strategy. It doesn't hold up to an ounce of scrutiny. Right now it sounds like it's not interesting to develop the toolset for Unity because they are already doing it.
hdlothia 2y ago
This is very impressive. If i'm understanding the post they basically created an inrernal api and just have the llm use that api. Seems like a great way to workaround llms struggling to keep track of large codebases.
- pierd 2y ago
  Yip. It's like a tiny game engine and then the LLM makes games using it.
viccis 2y ago
Wonder how well this will do given that, going by reactions to even fairly anodyne AI usage in games, gamers really really loathe gen AI used to make games and game assets.
- ugh123 2y ago
  I feel like that loathness is largely coming from the game design community, particularly asset and environment artists.
- antifa 2y ago
  I can't think of any high effort, non-cash-grabs, non-asset-flips that were dragged through the mud for using AI.
  - __loam 2y ago
    Which games like that used AI?
  - viccis 2y ago
    Palworld was a big one. Tribes 3 is another.
SrslyJosh 2y ago
The models look awful. If only there was a place where you could go to download human-created 3d models, either for free or a nominal fee. /s
Bjorkbat 2y ago
I think a part of the reason why I'm kind of dismissive of AI when it comes to creative endeavors is that I haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution. For example, AI website builders. It's impressive as a tech demo that you can prompt an AI to make a website for you, but otherwise I don't think this is going to be disruptive to the web design industry since it's already pretty easy to make a website using a drag-and-drop builder like Squarespace or Webflow. Granted, it can get complex when you add certain special features on these platforms, but same goes for an AI-generated website. AI doesn't eliminate the complexity, it just hides it. At best it'll get you maybe 80% of where you want to go and you can get to the remaining 20% by hand. At worst, the complexity is so thoroughly hidden that addressing it isn't an option. It simply does not allow you to manually edit the outputs, or makes it unreasonably difficult to do so. In that same vein, an AI game maker is pretty impressive as a tech demo, but I feel like it isn't a huge improvement over a code-light game maker. You're not eliminating the complexity of making a game, just hiding it. Nonetheless, it's a pretty interesting tech demo.
- fabiopolimeni 2y ago
  Uhm…, even you use something low-code, or even no-code tool, you still have to learn how to code (former) or learn how to use some kind of visual scripting tool (latter). If you could simply type in plain English what are the mechanics you have in mind instead, then this new (simpler) way of creating game logic it may has the potential to unleash creativity from a broader audience. It is like saying why would I need a photoshop brush if I can manually paint every single pixel canvas 1 by 1. Not the same thing imo.
  - jprete 2y ago
    If the AI doesn't get the mechanics right, and you have subtle game-breaking bugs that make it impossible to complete, you will never be able to fix it.
    - fabiopolimeni 2y ago
      AI can create bugs, sure, as well as humans do. With time, I am more inclined to think it will be easier to ask an AI to fix them for us rather than the other way around. There is a non-intuitive feature of current LLMs, and that is, they are capable of refining over and over their own previous outcome. You can ask to revisit it, to improve it, check it, etc etc. use this to fix its own bugs.
cmovq 2y ago
First thing I noticed in the demo is the lasers casting shadows on the ground. Which doesn’t make any sense
__loam 2y ago
AI is so creatively bankrupt and hated by nearly every professional in the industry that isn't a programmer that using it feels like a real liability.
iamleppert 2y ago
This is genius! I currently work on attention loop games (the kinds you see ads for on your social newsfeed). A big bottleneck is the number of new games we are able to produce per week. New games generally have a better ROI and get more installs and clicks than older games, which age out. Having the ability to programmatically generate new games would be amazing. It would be great to have the game completely generated by AI, and then pipe the screenshots into a video AI tool to create the ads. Will it support slot based games and gambling card games? My head is just buzzing at the possibilities and the opportunity for profits from this!
- superb_dev 2y ago
  Finally we can shovel garbage attention stealing games at an unprecedented rate! New games per week is an insane metric.
- to-too-two 2y ago
  Maybe this is a totally different market from what I'm in, but as an indie game developer, this reads dystopian to me.
- rched 2y ago
  This is the darkest timeline. You want to leverage AI to automate the cycle of creating low quality games to display in low quality ads that leverage gambling mechanics to entice clicks?
  - __loam 2y ago
    I think they're taking the piss.
- klondike_klive 2y ago
  If you want a picture of the future, imagine a lucky 7 stamping on a human face forever
ccppurcell 2y ago
Question: the demo uses star wars imagery, including X wings and tie fighters, going as far as naming BB-8. How are you not getting sued to kingdom come?
Jasper_ 2y ago
Spot the fun logic bugs! Here's a great example of where AI requires some careful attention to detail: const tentsFacingNorth = getAllUnitIds() .filter(unitId => getUnitString(unitId, "unitStrings/tags")?.includes("tent")) .filter(unitId => Math.abs(getUnitRotation(unitId) % (2 * Math.PI)) < 0.01).length; This code only works if getUnitRotation() returns values between -pi and pi, with north pointing up. This isn't an unheard of convention, but it would surprise me -- if you asked the AI to generate movement code I'm sure it would do const moveX = Math.cos(); for instance. I would more traditionally expect a range of 0 to 2pi, but then this code wouldn't work for anything close to 2pi on the other side. And if the range was -pi to pi, why have the modulo use 2pi :) Additionally, "facing north" probably implies a bigger epsilon than 0.01 radians. That's only half a degree! Even if it was super tight, I would expect maybe 10 degrees slop in either direction, which would be 0.17 radians. The gameplay programmer way to do this would be to get the facing vector and dot that with the vector for north, and compare the results. Dealing with angles isn't worth it. Oh, also, I'm guessing getUnitString().includes("tent") would work for anything with substring tent, so no adding tentacles to your game.
- wasteduniverse 2y ago
  [dead]
PeterisP 2y ago
I think this would have more chances of success if it focused on just one aspect of game creation, instead of trying to solve engine development, gameplay development and content development all at once. I.e. if an programmer wants to create a game, then getting the artwork in a consistent style is a big problem, and solving that alone (i.e. as a plugin for Unity or Unreal or Godot or whatever) would be both powerful and difficult. Conversely, if someone without programming skills wants to create a game, then it would be best to focus solely on the AI assistance for gameplay design with a fixed, well-known engine and an integrated well-populated market for content, and assume that they will get the content packs there, leaving that problem out of your scope but making it easy to integrate the AI-generated logic with the pre-made content packs.
gieksosz 2y ago
Common remark about game making (also here) is that “there are already a lot of games, building them is not the limiting factor“, and yet I find myself without anything to play despite these 70k games on steam. I like playing city building games, all the good ones I already beat and there is nothing new that seems any good!
parentheses 2y ago
I find the "threads" approach to prompting in a complex app very intriguing. Did you experiment with threading at different levels and how they interact? If so what can you share about this?

287 points by FredrikNoren 2y ago

This looks like the perfect tool for rapid prototyping. I am not yet sold on this being a viable method to produce commercial games, but I do think you guys are on to something. Very cool!

kkukshtel 2y ago

I'm very into the idea of using AI to change the types of games we make, but I think that "prompting the game to do stuff" is barking up the wrong tree. As the top comment says here, you can develop non-intelligent solutions to do what is going on here in probably the same if not less time. This is more like "end of chain" AI work and doesn't center AI as necessary for the game itself. If anything this is using LLMs as a shortcut for keyboard shortcuts or something, which is fine, and likely necessary work to get to something new and interesting, but already makes the category error at the top of constraining what is possible based on the need to fit the LLM into the rules box.

RecycledEle 2y ago

I wonder why their studio is named after a way to cheat on exams?

FredrikNoren 2y ago

Hi HN. We want to make it possible for anyone to build games without first learning to code or make art, by giving them access to an “AI game studio”. It’s early days, but here’s what we’ve learned so far building this product. Would love to hear what everyone thinks, and see if we can find some alpha testers for this!

EwanG 2y ago
Having done a couple indie games myself over the years, I think you're addressing many of the pain points of building such a game. However the REAL problem as an indie gamer is getting a marketing/get-the-word-out campaign such that said game produces enough income to cover the cost of making it. Will you be adding a "marketing" add-on to this to help developers actually get their games noticed and played?
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  So far we've focused 100% on the creation side of things, but we're absolutely interested in helping people on the marketing side too. Something we've discussed here is; since it's an online platform, could it be possible for creators to form communities around their games as they are being built (even more than now), with perhaps features to engage your community around what you create (imagine that your players can comment on things in the game as they play test it, for instance). This is quite speculative for now, but it's something we're interested in exploring.
  - intended 2y ago
    Same issue - who is going to play it? There are many indie games that never got made, lots of iterations of the current hotness (the Vampire survivors era may almost be over?) People still play CS:GO. People still play The Sims. There are an infinite number of alternatives. Professional game devs will talk about marketing because thats the problem when it comes to selling games. The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other.
    - Philpax 2y ago
      > The alternative is to make game creation fun - which then gets you to Roblox territory. Have people make games and share them quickly with each other. That's the plan :-)
- omneity 2y ago
  Marketing is hardly something that can be done via an "add-on" or some mechanical approach. It's more of a mindset, getting yourself and what you're working on known is something you need to do throughout the entire process, before, during and after the release of a game.
ryanlbrown 2y ago
Is this like GameMaker but AI-based, or is it more lofty and at risk of biting the hand that feeds it?
- FredrikNoren 2y ago
  I'd say it's something in that direction (GameMaker) yeah. One big difference (other than the AI part) is that both building and playing is multiplayer by default. (Though of course, you can choose to make things single player and to build solo). With biting the hand that feeds it; I sure hope not! :) I've built my fare share of obscure indie games, and we in the company have friends and family members who do now as well, so the aim is to build something that can help people like this.
ganzuul 2y ago
It looks like a new kind of sandbox game and it certainly is a very promising concept. It might allow for entirely new types of collaborative storytelling. e.g. if a player marks an item as 'important' the next level generated builds on that thread. Personally I would love to have a dedicated tool for generating mods for established games like Minecraft and let simple drawings be given life in game worlds.
sarahduck 2y ago
If you want people to be able to make games without having to "make art", I feel like you've misunderstood what video games are. Part of me thinks this might be a good idea for children, as I grew up on simple game creators like Warioware DIY. But I also hate to think that children would grow up simply telling the computer what to generate instead of being encouraged to do it themselves in some capacity.

aredox 2y ago

What a neat idea! Next: a strategy game where you give orders in plain text, instead of hundreds of clicks per minutes

ainiriand 2y ago
https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/
FredrikNoren 2y ago
Thanks! Oh yeah that would be really interesting to explore! We haven't done much with LLMs on the play side yet, but we know that there's so much that can be done there, that can open up for totally new types of games.
bloopernova 2y ago
Has anyone tried to create an LLM based crew on the bridge of a ship or spaceship? Being able to delegate tasks to competent subordinates would be very helpful.
- Tade0 2y ago
  Even a failed attempt at this would be great - imagine your crew frequently misunderstanding your orders and the ensuing chaos.
  - phone8675309 2y ago
    Or them giving you the answer to questions you give them in an ambiguous manner.
  - bloopernova 2y ago
    "Incompetent Bridge Crew" is a game that I'd enjoy playing, that's a great idea!
  - klondike_klive 2y ago
    I sometimes feel like the corpus of videogames is approaching a parody of my entire career.

mysterydip 2y ago

How will you ensure the content created for a game is free from copyright violations? Or is that up to the user to determine?

FredrikNoren 2y ago
We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet, but I believe this would fall under the same laws and restrictions as any other online platform (YouTube, TikTok etc.), it's just that the production tools are different.
- nicklecompte 2y ago
  This is an unacceptably lazy and reckless comment: your very first example blatantly plagiarized from Star Wars. You even called the bombs "BB-8 bombs" to make them look like the robot! It's just a dumb demo, but it means your product has no safeguards against copyright infringement, and you don't even care. I suspect you might say "users of our technology assume full responsibility for copyright violations" or whatever, but what are your customers supposed to do if your product plagiarizes something more obscure than Star Wars? They can't be expected to check every generative AI output against every IP. You and your team need to take responsibility for the copyright problems your tool is guaranteed to create as currently implemented. I really hate this "better to seek forgiveness" approach to copyright OpenAI has encouraged.
- jsnell 2y ago
  That seems like a ridiculous stance. The safe harbor laws that those platforms depend on are for user-generated content. Here it's your platform that's generating the infringing content. (And obviously it's not by accident, you're practically reveling in it with your choice of demo.)
- tredre3 2y ago
  > We haven't looked into exactly how this will be handled yet That's how we know you're the real deal! Move fast and break things, laws and such are mere details. Capture the market first, work around problems later.

spacecrafter3d 2y ago

This is incredible. Thanks for the great write-up!

FredrikNoren 2y ago
Thank you!

EncomLab 2y ago

Hard facts: Steam has over 73k games - and is growing at over 10k games per year and increasing. The median game on Steam earns less than $800 - down from $4k in 2020. Making a game is not hard - marketing a game is.

bckr 2y ago
I think that, while making a game is not hard, making an excellent game is hard. And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. It takes fast iteration with user feedback to find the fun, then a ton of polish to make it extraordinary. It has to be so good that, out of those 73,000 games and counting, I’ll spend some of my money and time on it. The way GenAI can help here, I think, is the first part of this problem. Help me iterate quickly to find the fun. Then, let me export to Unity / Godot / Unreal to begin the polish process.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > And I think making an excellent game is a lot like reaching product-market fit. Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game; just compare "pop culture" (optimized to be commercially successful) vs "high-brow culture". Even if you are not the "extremely high-brow taste" kind of person, there exist quite some video game genres in which excellent games are produced, but the audience of these games is a quite small (but sophisticated) niche audience, so that just by volume, games of these genres likely won't make a lot of money.
  - admax88qqq 2y ago
    That really just depends on your definition of "excellent" You have defined it to mean "high brow"
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > You have defined it to mean "high brow" Both in - "high brow" - niche genres categories (which I both gave as examples) you will likely find quite some games that that are excellent, but won't make a lot of money. But don't pick too much on these categories since my central point is "Making an excellent game takes quite different skills than creating a commercially successful game".

MCLAU155 2y ago

we are in need of a good 2D strategy game such as Advance Wars or Fire Emblem that can be played with infinite variations

report-to-trees 2y ago
What do you mean by infinite variations here?
- skadamat 2y ago
  I'm guessing they mean with some type of procedural generation or another randomization approach in mind that creates a bunch of new maps, bosses, vehicles even! Advance Wars, if I recall correctly, has a hand-crafted set of maps and battles structured in a campaign story. So once you're done, you're done. Replay-ability is a bit limited. I absolutely loved Advance Wars and my brother and I played the heck out of it growing up!
  - __loam 2y ago
    Replayability is overrated imo. The old advance wars games on gba and ds took hours to beat and had excellent map design. There's also something cool about the no strings attached development model of old cartridge games where the game had to be perfect on release that is very endearing.
  - report-to-trees 2y ago
    Interesting, yeah I guess that makes sense. I always thought those strategy games were missing a competitive community and better PvP experience but I could also see how more replayability would make them more popular.
    - TulliusCicero 2y ago
      I think it's hard to make those PvP modes compelling to most people, being turn-based with longer turns is rough (card games get away with it because turns are typically pretty short). It's hard to think of popular turn-based video games where it's popular for multiplayer and the turns are long.

zengineer 2y ago

That's sweet! Like the UI and threads approach. How does it generate 3d models? Btw there is also https://frvr.ai https://frvr.ai for more casual games

FredrikNoren 2y ago
Thanks! We're using a service called Meshy (https://www.meshy.ai https://www.meshy.ai) to generate 3d models.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

bogwog 2y ago

They mention using a service called Meshy for generating models, and I noticed that they have a free plan where the generated assets have a "license" of CC-BY-4.0[1]. Any lawyers in here that can comment on that? They're claiming copyright ownership over models generated from customer prompts, and I doubt they trained their model exclusively on stuff they own/licensed. 1: https://www.meshy.ai/pricing https://www.meshy.ai/pricing

jprete 2y ago
"They're claiming copyright...." Who is "they" in this sentence, the company from the OP or Meshy? I'm guessing the company from the OP?
- bogwog 2y ago
  "They" would be Meshy. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that you can't grant a license to some IP unless you own it.
  - jprete 2y ago
    Thanks for the clarification; I genuinely wasn't sure which you meant.
jsheard 2y ago
https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f8ef6-e562-7e19-b0d7-5f6b1bde271e https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f8ef6-e562-7e19-b0d7-5f6... https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f4d04-6a56-701e-9abc-62a3a0c155c1 https://app.meshy.ai/preview?web=018f4d04-6a56-701e-9abc-62a... IANAL, but I think Blizzard and Marvel would beg to differ that these are kosher for commercial use. They're also very poor quality models but that's a separate issue.
- viking123 2y ago
  I like how the first one has two faces, one on the front and one on hair at the top

Ito10 2y ago

Not a bad idea. But what's next? For example, I am indeed interested, but will anyone really play the game I make with AI? If I spend the same time watching YouTube and learning Godot or Unity, will it be more likely to make games and even make money, and I can also use Meshy to produce my assets. Unity also has Muse (though it's hard to use). If the games I make don’t make money, what is your business model?

wokwokwok 2y ago

I think most people don't actually want to make games. Most people want to take an existing basic game, and tweek it a bit, incrementally, adding new art, ideas and levels, and removing the stuff they don't like. They definitely do not want to write code. They most certainly do not want to debug generated code and I think you've hit the nail on the head with 'generating actual code sucks, is hard and basically doesn't work' with current models. What I see in the demos looks different though; it looks like you have a configuration driven set of basic game elements and let the AI tweek the structured and easily-to-validate-schema config. Which I think is fantastic. "Make this unit bigger", "Add new type of fighter", "Get rid of this unit", "make the terrain here smoother and add a lake"; I feel like this kind of structured tool use is currently possible, if you write a framework of constrained actions (which is what it appears you've done). So, props to you. This feels like something that is both actually novel and interesting. ...but; I feel there is going to be a difficult path ahead. The more generic you make the engine, the more different types of games you can make with it; however, in doing so, the tools you have (eg. "modify unit config", "generate 2d sprite for unit", etc.) will have to become more generic; and the more generic they become, the less effective the agents will be at using them. Our current batch of GPT4-ish models seems like they're relatively well suited for using specific tools with specifically constrained inputs to plan and achieve goals; however, as the tools become generic, the solution space balloons out widely and you start getting random crap instead of actual real solutions to tasks. Specifically, I'm skeptical about your generic `createOrUpdateRule` and that you can effectively scale it to complex interactive behaviors; it just feels like the agents will never express complex ideas with that kind of coding; it'll only ever be an array of trivial behaviors. Maybe that's all you need in some cases; but I don't think you can build actual games that way. So, practically speaking, this might actually only ever really work as like a 'super modding tool' that takes basically a fully working game and lets you mod it in a very specific set of ways; but that would mean creating a 'template game' for various different game types, and different 'modify game' tools for each one. Otherwise, the final product is never going to really be beyond 'unit moves back and forth randomly'. ...but, that would still be really fantastic. I guess, I hope you don't get lost trying too hard to build a generic Unity clone using AI that is kind of so-so (ie. generates random code that doesn't work and you have to constantly debug), instead of an amazing thing that is slightly less generic, but lets you do amazing things within a specific set of restrictions.

hatenberg 2y ago

So ... does every single AI demo put copyright and intellectual property infringement on the box? Just asking? How on earth can an entire ecosystem be so damn tone-deaf and lack self-preservation?

spaceguillotine 2y ago
shhh you will scare the VC bros and their dreams of doing nothing and making billions off others work.
stale2002 2y ago
> tone-deaf Maybe. I'm not sure why that matters though. Better to be hated than not even noticed. > and lack self-preservation Arguments like this confuse me. Copyright infringement is everywhere. Not just among companies, but also among individuals. Any time someone draws fan art of the Mario and posts it on this internet, this is illegal copyright infringement. But basically nobody ever gets sued for that kind of stuff, unless you get huge and bothersome enough to be noticed. And if you've gotten to that point, you've already basically won. And you can just fix the issue later, if they actually bother telling you to stop. But it doesn't matter, because you have already found success.
- hatenberg 2y ago
  They are baiting the mouse with the star wars items

SubiculumCode 2y ago

This doesn't happen to be the AI game startup at which the host of the wonderful Last Week in AI podcast works? https://lastweekin.ai/ https://lastweekin.ai/

FredrikNoren 2y ago
Nope, that's unrelated.
- SubiculumCode 2y ago
  Very cool stuff Mr. Noren. Thanks for sharing!

Pingk 2y ago

How robust is the system to fix bugs? Can you just point at a thing and say "fix this bug"? How does that side of it work?

FredrikNoren 2y ago
So it's hard to give a number on how robust it is, but yes, simply telling GPT that "this doesn't work" or "try again" does work a lot of the time. We're trying to give GPT as much context as possible to help it figure out where things went wrong. Currently that means giving it type errors, execution errors, self-critique and user feedback. But we're working on expanding that; for instance we want to experiment with automatically generating tests that validate things are working as they should. We also want to add a GPT based "debugger" that can help you pinpoint exactly what went wrong.
- halfmatthalfcat 2y ago
  Sounds like a nightmare tbh. Half the fun is the actual coding (aka the journey). I guess if you want to be a prompt engineer that sounds like fun but it sucks all the art of programming out of it.
  - Philpax 2y ago
    (I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.) Yeah, this is definitely something we're considering. The majority of us are programmers and have similar feelings about the joy of programming. The two things I'd say we've discovered along the way are that: 1. People who aren't programmers can build games with this, and that's worthwhile in itself (giving this to a non-programmer and watching them realise an idea they have is delightful!) 2. Working over concepts, not code, allows for much faster iteration and experimentation. I'm a fast programmer, but nothing compares to clicking somewhere, saying "do this", and being able to play around with it within a minute. We're still navigating the boundary between traditional game making (including programming) and AI-infused game making; I hope we'll find a happy balance that keeps everyone empowered and happy :)

arvindrajnaidu 2y ago

This is really cool thanks for sharing. I have built a generic app builder that follows the same idea. I am dealing with the same problems! It is an iOS app called Burning Idea, it lets you build small apps by talking to it.

arvindrajnaidu 2y ago

Could you leave the tapping and chatting to the AI? This way, I can let it work on some basic guidelines and let it surprise me with a game every day.

pierd 2y ago
Since it's all chat based you can actually start by asking it for game ideas and tell it to proceed with making it. Unfortunately and definitely not surprisingly the resulting game is usually quite bland.

anotheryou 2y ago

Any plans for LLM based agents :) ? NPCs will be amazing. AI Dungeon is probably a good example for character setup and story snippets to weave in (so you don't get all generic "helpful assistants") :).

Philpax 2y ago
Hi there! I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump. We've done some internal research into this and are excited to explore it in future, but we're not currently working on it at present - only so many problems we can tackle at the same time :) Looking forward to playing around with it more down the line!
- anotheryou 2y ago
  looking forward to everything either way :)!

jarjoura 2y ago

I know this is a small team and experimenting, but in my mind, this engine is already limiting the potential of games it can output. I don’t know, but Unity is already pretty much point and click game building. I spent a few weeks building a card game with it during lockdown, and without a lot of code, I had an ugly, and basic, but totally playable game. The hardest part to a game is building something fun yes, but it also has to meet some level of quality bar and work on any platform.

Philpax 2y ago
(I'm the in-house AI engineer at Braindump.) We experimented with a few different form factors, including integrating into existing game engines, before taking this path. Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind. Our platform's entirely on the web, so you can link your current game/game creation session to someone else and have them join you. This works on most modern browser, making it easy to build and share games. That being said, you're not wrong that the current scope of games is limited. That's OK with us for now - we'd like to focus on getting the core experience as good as possible with the current scope and then expand outwards, instead of trying to build something that attempts to solve everything and works for nothing.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  > Our rationale was that we wanted to go beyond the existing engine integrations (i.e. Unity already has an AI assistant) and reimagine the entire game creation experience with AI and multiplayer in mind. How does that pan out? There's hundreds of millions of dollars of product development in Unity and Unreal specifically for game design. How will you ever catch up? Godot got $8m, for the people who authored it, what does it have to show for it? It seems like hopelessly little money. Maybe you said to the investors, "You don't want to be locked in" or whatever. The browser still an engine. Mobile Safari and Chrome are also moving targets. You're still playing in someone else's back yard. There are no games that are designed to be played in Mobile Safari and also make money. I mean the browser also has AI assistants. Obviously I want you to succeed but this sounds more like a good story than a good strategy. It doesn't hold up to an ounce of scrutiny. Right now it sounds like it's not interesting to develop the toolset for Unity because they are already doing it.

hdlothia 2y ago

This is very impressive. If i'm understanding the post they basically created an inrernal api and just have the llm use that api. Seems like a great way to workaround llms struggling to keep track of large codebases.

pierd 2y ago
Yip. It's like a tiny game engine and then the LLM makes games using it.

viccis 2y ago

Wonder how well this will do given that, going by reactions to even fairly anodyne AI usage in games, gamers really really loathe gen AI used to make games and game assets.

ugh123 2y ago
I feel like that loathness is largely coming from the game design community, particularly asset and environment artists.
antifa 2y ago
I can't think of any high effort, non-cash-grabs, non-asset-flips that were dragged through the mud for using AI.
- __loam 2y ago
  Which games like that used AI?
- viccis 2y ago
  Palworld was a big one. Tribes 3 is another.

SrslyJosh 2y ago

The models look awful. If only there was a place where you could go to download human-created 3d models, either for free or a nominal fee. /s

Bjorkbat 2y ago

I think a part of the reason why I'm kind of dismissive of AI when it comes to creative endeavors is that I haven't seen it do something that isn't already possible using a "not-intelligent" solution. For example, AI website builders. It's impressive as a tech demo that you can prompt an AI to make a website for you, but otherwise I don't think this is going to be disruptive to the web design industry since it's already pretty easy to make a website using a drag-and-drop builder like Squarespace or Webflow. Granted, it can get complex when you add certain special features on these platforms, but same goes for an AI-generated website. AI doesn't eliminate the complexity, it just hides it. At best it'll get you maybe 80% of where you want to go and you can get to the remaining 20% by hand. At worst, the complexity is so thoroughly hidden that addressing it isn't an option. It simply does not allow you to manually edit the outputs, or makes it unreasonably difficult to do so. In that same vein, an AI game maker is pretty impressive as a tech demo, but I feel like it isn't a huge improvement over a code-light game maker. You're not eliminating the complexity of making a game, just hiding it. Nonetheless, it's a pretty interesting tech demo.

fabiopolimeni 2y ago
Uhm…, even you use something low-code, or even no-code tool, you still have to learn how to code (former) or learn how to use some kind of visual scripting tool (latter). If you could simply type in plain English what are the mechanics you have in mind instead, then this new (simpler) way of creating game logic it may has the potential to unleash creativity from a broader audience. It is like saying why would I need a photoshop brush if I can manually paint every single pixel canvas 1 by 1. Not the same thing imo.
- jprete 2y ago
  If the AI doesn't get the mechanics right, and you have subtle game-breaking bugs that make it impossible to complete, you will never be able to fix it.
  - fabiopolimeni 2y ago
    AI can create bugs, sure, as well as humans do. With time, I am more inclined to think it will be easier to ask an AI to fix them for us rather than the other way around. There is a non-intuitive feature of current LLMs, and that is, they are capable of refining over and over their own previous outcome. You can ask to revisit it, to improve it, check it, etc etc. use this to fix its own bugs.

cmovq 2y ago

First thing I noticed in the demo is the lasers casting shadows on the ground. Which doesn’t make any sense

__loam 2y ago

AI is so creatively bankrupt and hated by nearly every professional in the industry that isn't a programmer that using it feels like a real liability.

iamleppert 2y ago

This is genius! I currently work on attention loop games (the kinds you see ads for on your social newsfeed). A big bottleneck is the number of new games we are able to produce per week. New games generally have a better ROI and get more installs and clicks than older games, which age out. Having the ability to programmatically generate new games would be amazing. It would be great to have the game completely generated by AI, and then pipe the screenshots into a video AI tool to create the ads. Will it support slot based games and gambling card games? My head is just buzzing at the possibilities and the opportunity for profits from this!

superb_dev 2y ago
Finally we can shovel garbage attention stealing games at an unprecedented rate! New games per week is an insane metric.
to-too-two 2y ago
Maybe this is a totally different market from what I'm in, but as an indie game developer, this reads dystopian to me.
rched 2y ago
This is the darkest timeline. You want to leverage AI to automate the cycle of creating low quality games to display in low quality ads that leverage gambling mechanics to entice clicks?
- __loam 2y ago
  I think they're taking the piss.
klondike_klive 2y ago
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a lucky 7 stamping on a human face forever

ccppurcell 2y ago

Question: the demo uses star wars imagery, including X wings and tie fighters, going as far as naming BB-8. How are you not getting sued to kingdom come?

Jasper_ 2y ago

Spot the fun logic bugs! Here's a great example of where AI requires some careful attention to detail: const tentsFacingNorth = getAllUnitIds() .filter(unitId => getUnitString(unitId, "unitStrings/tags")?.includes("tent")) .filter(unitId => Math.abs(getUnitRotation(unitId) % (2 * Math.PI)) < 0.01).length; This code only works if getUnitRotation() returns values between -pi and pi, with north pointing up. This isn't an unheard of convention, but it would surprise me -- if you asked the AI to generate movement code I'm sure it would do const moveX = Math.cos(); for instance. I would more traditionally expect a range of 0 to 2pi, but then this code wouldn't work for anything close to 2pi on the other side. And if the range was -pi to pi, why have the modulo use 2pi :) Additionally, "facing north" probably implies a bigger epsilon than 0.01 radians. That's only half a degree! Even if it was super tight, I would expect maybe 10 degrees slop in either direction, which would be 0.17 radians. The gameplay programmer way to do this would be to get the facing vector and dot that with the vector for north, and compare the results. Dealing with angles isn't worth it. Oh, also, I'm guessing getUnitString().includes("tent") would work for anything with substring tent, so no adding tentacles to your game.

wasteduniverse 2y ago
[dead]

PeterisP 2y ago

I think this would have more chances of success if it focused on just one aspect of game creation, instead of trying to solve engine development, gameplay development and content development all at once. I.e. if an programmer wants to create a game, then getting the artwork in a consistent style is a big problem, and solving that alone (i.e. as a plugin for Unity or Unreal or Godot or whatever) would be both powerful and difficult. Conversely, if someone without programming skills wants to create a game, then it would be best to focus solely on the AI assistance for gameplay design with a fixed, well-known engine and an integrated well-populated market for content, and assume that they will get the content packs there, leaving that problem out of your scope but making it easy to integrate the AI-generated logic with the pre-made content packs.

gieksosz 2y ago

Common remark about game making (also here) is that “there are already a lot of games, building them is not the limiting factor“, and yet I find myself without anything to play despite these 70k games on steam. I like playing city building games, all the good ones I already beat and there is nothing new that seems any good!

parentheses 2y ago

I find the "threads" approach to prompting in a complex app very intriguing. Did you experiment with threading at different levels and how they interact? If so what can you share about this?