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Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

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Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#102
post #5

“ can it build a game idea I've had for years, in a single shot?” Do people do no research or introspection when they’ve had an “idea for years”? There are countless examples of this exact game. I played this on the Gameboy Advance! There’s like 50 of them on the App Store right now. The standard “this almost certainly exists wholesale in the training data” applies, but I’m also interested in how you carry an idea fo…

While I agree that it isn't revolutionary that it could implement this from a single prompt, what's surprising to see is how well done this one is compared to the other tries. The controls and movement are smooth, the animations aren't jittery, the ui makes sense, there's a clear progression in difficulty. This model clearly "understands" the implementation of this game far better than the others did.

Yes, this subtly seems worth noting. That smoothness suggests that even if many of the concepts are common/non-original, the bringing together of various pieces in a form that works well on modern mobile browsers is still impressive - browsers are moving targets and even if there are open source versions of this, it's comparatively rare they'd get continual care and attention to stay fully current (unless implemented via an o/s engine)

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#103
post #5

“ can it build a game idea I've had for years, in a single shot?” Do people do no research or introspection when they’ve had an “idea for years”? There are countless examples of this exact game. I played this on the Gameboy Advance! There’s like 50 of them on the App Store right now. The standard “this almost certainly exists wholesale in the training data” applies, but I’m also interested in how you carry an idea fo…

90% of everything is crap according to the late SF write Theodore Sturgeon. That was true before AI and it remains true presently. Does it really matter whether this game was in the training data or not here? I guess if one is trying to assert it can build original ideas (and it can, I've done it), but it seems like this is the equivalent of pulling something from Stack Overflow and customizing it given the description of the problem.

IMO the ability to describe a game and let the AI implement a PoC is pretty wild. It's a signal as to whether such an idea is worth pursuing further to me rather than a finished product. And I am enjoying all the experimentation with existing genres as well as the occasional truly original experience due to the dramatically lower cost of entry. What these efforts lack currently is the playtesting and polish that is hard without a human in the loop. So much like agentic engineering, the productive work is in being a centaur. It surprises me how much pushback this is getting from the demographic that embraced the relatively inscrutable git over simpler alternatives for small teams along with the tower of Babel of equally inscrutable frameworks and APIs.

It's not unlike Martin Scorsese admitting upfront he's using GenAI as a creative tool to visualize scenes for his scripts. The predictable backlash that he dare use AI in any way for any aspect of his craft despite his irrefutable oeuvre is a sign of the times more than a legitimate objection to me. Ask the users of deviantArt to stop working with Photoshop and see how that goes.

Having worked in the game industry in the past and adjacent to Hollywood over my career, they were already top heavy exploitative cultures before AI. And any auteur that thinks they can replace humans with agents is as tuned in to GenAI as the tech CEOs and VCs that happily announced layoffs and instituted tokenmaxxing benchmarks to measure the "incredible" boost in productivity AI enables.

So my question, ahead of the mandatory downvotes for not chanting along with the torch-bearing mob against AI in every way is: beyond the CapEx and the buildout issues (both legit IMO), how is AI impacting you negatively and personally?

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#104
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Ostrich effect and we all do it. You enjoy toying with your own idea so much, that your brain shields you from the pain of finding out it already exists. Deep down you know it probably exists. It's harmless, unless there's other people's time and money involved.

> You enjoy toying with your own idea so much, that your brain shields you from the pain of finding out it already exists. Doesn’t look like the author toyed with the idea at all, though, apart from having it in their head. Considering how they describe themselves (Check the About/Home page), if they had toyed with it at all they would have already built it. I also don’t see why finding out it exists would be “painfu…

I think you misunderstand what was meant by "toying with your own idea" here. I interpret it as daydreaming about it.

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it isn't revolutionary that it could implement this from a single prompt, what's surprising to see is how well done this one is compared to the other tries. The controls and movement are smooth, the animations aren't jittery, the ui makes sense, there's a clear progression in difficulty. This model clearly "understands" the implementation of this game far better than the others did.

Yes, this subtly seems worth noting. That smoothness suggests that even if many of the concepts are common/non-original, the bringing together of various pieces in a form that works well on modern mobile browsers is still impressive - browsers are moving targets and even if there are open source versions of this, it's comparatively rare they'd get continual care and attention to stay fully current (unless implemented…

Still, if the code for multiple similar games is in the training data, then that's worth thinking about.

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#107
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, “an idea I’ve had for years” and “something that has never been done before” are not the same thing.

This is fair! I am possibly attaching some notion of originality to the word “idea” in the context of a project that others don’t.

yes you are

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#108

I think it’s impressive that an LLM can take you to a local maxima in one-shot. But once you start maintaining it, improving it and fixing bugs, you’ll eventually need to rip it apart and put it back together again while understanding how it all works. This is why I think the better approach isn’t to one-shot but to have the architecture in your head and build it up piece by piece, with the AI accelerating the code w…

> you’ll eventually need to rip it apart and put it back together again while understanding how it all works.

This is what spec .md files are for, skill issue

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#109
post #95

When you say €20 worth of tokens is it fair direct API call price or subsidized claude code?

Direct API access I’m afraid, it was not my intention to spent it all in one go on this. But after 12€ I didn’t want to stop anymore

[dead]

Re: Shepherd's Dog: A Game by Fable

#110
It’s sad that someone can think about a game for years and never really spend the time to just build it out. This is a very simple game even a CS student could build for an assignment. But now we’re supposed to be impressed an AI can one shot it for $20 dollars.
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