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Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

marianogappa.github.io

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Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#171

Post by taftster »

starchild3001 wrote: post #30

What I like about this post is that it highlights something a lot of devs gloss over: the coding part of game development was never really the bottleneck. A solo developer can crank out mechanics pretty quickly, with or without AI. The real grind is in all the invisible layers on top; balancing the loop, tuning difficulty, creating assets that don’t look uncanny, and building enough polish to hold someone’s attention…

> neither can tell you if your game is actually fun

I think this is the core insight. An AI will not be able to experience a game (or anything else for that matter) remotely in the same way that a human can experience it. It might be able to guess, based on human rankings of other similar games. But AI will never be able to actually have fun playing your game.

This concept will define the workforce that comes out of this AI boom. Maybe an AI can write a document or code like a human, only based on past samples of similar behavior, but it won't be able to synthesize exactly what it means to be a human. The human element will still need to be traded on. Your value as a human cannot be replaced, you might just have to think differently about that value.

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#172

Post by [deleted] »

davepeck wrote: post #99
zerr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My litmus test for generative AI: generate a complete spritesheet for a 2D pixel art action game, e.g. only for the battle tank or main hero movements. No success so far.

Ive never once successfully gotten a usable sprite sheet out of ChatGPT. The concept seems foreign to it and no matter how hard I try to steer it it’ll find a way to do something hopeless (inconsistent frame sizes; incoherent animations; no sense of consistent pixel sizes or what distinguishes (say) 8-bit from 16-bit era sprites; it’ll draw graph paper in the background for some reason; etc etc.). If anyone has a set…

[deleted]

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#174

Post by MangoToupe »

uncircle wrote: post #125
yonatan8070 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game companies already collect heaps of data about players, which mechanics they interact with, which mechanics they don't, retention, play time, etc. I don't think it's much of a stretch to take this data over multiple games, versions, and genres, and train a model to take in a set of mechanics, stats, or even video and audio to rate the different aspects of a game prototype. I wouldn't even be surprised if I heard…

> Game companies already collect heaps of data about players, which mechanics they interact with, which mechanics they don't, retention, play time, etc. Yes, that's how games like Concord get made. Very successful approach to create art based on data about what's popular and focus groups.

Isn't Concord massively unpopular? I'd think that's a terrible example

Edit: yup, it shut down nearly a year ago

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#175

Post by jongjong »

It feels like all the 'low hanging fruit' ideas in the software space are basically gone, made non-viable because of too much competition. It was already somewhat the case that software industry was very competitive, even before people could code entire apps with AI... At least you could find a niche which was too small to be of interest to big VCs. Now, it's like, regardless of whether you choose a big idea or a niche, you have to compete on a global scale with either big VC or big AI...

This only leaves a few areas; niches which are both small and require very complex solutions; or software with low profit margins which have high risk of failure and short-lifespans (which is what most games are). Due to media saturation, for the former approach (complex niche), you basically have to market the solution to people door-to-door, one-by-one.

My experience of the game sector is that it's very difficult. Before you even begin coding, the definition of runaway success is basically "Attain a few million views, then watch traffic dry up completely as the game becomes completely irrelevant over 6 months." I could never get into games because knowing that you probably won't get recurring income is just too demoralizing as a starting point. Building a game like Minecraft is basically outside of the realm of possibility... Games like Minecraft, World of Warcraft are essentially 1 in a million games. You're better off just buying lottery tickets.

That said, I think the game sector seems to be more meritocratic than all other sectors of software that I'm aware of... Not sure that's saying much but I do think there is a correlation between quality and 'fun level' of the game and the short-term adoption of the game.

Most other sectors of tech are a maze of regulatory capture, network effect monopolies or the sector is fully government-controlled to begin with. It would be nice if governments would tell people "Don't do a startup in this sector because we already decided which company will control that sector." because it sucks to find out after building a solution for 1 year.

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#176

Post by frozenlettuce »

davepeck wrote: post #99
zerr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My litmus test for generative AI: generate a complete spritesheet for a 2D pixel art action game, e.g. only for the battle tank or main hero movements. No success so far.

Ive never once successfully gotten a usable sprite sheet out of ChatGPT. The concept seems foreign to it and no matter how hard I try to steer it it’ll find a way to do something hopeless (inconsistent frame sizes; incoherent animations; no sense of consistent pixel sizes or what distinguishes (say) 8-bit from 16-bit era sprites; it’ll draw graph paper in the background for some reason; etc etc.). If anyone has a set…

that might be possible by asking it to create an 3d model with animations (based on a template) and then capture the sprites. but then again, not sure if building it would be worthwhile because 1) openai might add that as a native product (like what happened with .ppt generation) or 2) the capability to do so might be 6 months away

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#177

Post by SpecialistK »

MangoToupe wrote: post #174
uncircle wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Game companies already collect heaps of data about players, which mechanics they interact with, which mechanics they don't, retention, play time, etc. Yes, that's how games like Concord get made. Very successful approach to create art based on data about what's popular and focus groups.

Isn't Concord massively unpopular? I'd think that's a terrible example Edit: yup, it shut down nearly a year ago

I think it was a sarcastic example - in other words, all the data and metrics and trend-chasing in the world is not a replacement for human vision, creativity, and risk-taking.

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#178

Post by fluoridation »

SpecialistK wrote: post #177
MangoToupe wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Concord massively unpopular? I'd think that's a terrible example Edit: yup, it shut down nearly a year ago

I think it was a sarcastic example - in other words, all the data and metrics and trend-chasing in the world is not a replacement for human vision, creativity, and risk-taking.

Was Concord made the way it was because of data? I got the impression that the designers were chasing misguided trends with the art direction, and on top of that the game part was just mediocre.

Re: Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

#180

Post by nkrisc »

davepeck wrote: post #99
zerr wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My litmus test for generative AI: generate a complete spritesheet for a 2D pixel art action game, e.g. only for the battle tank or main hero movements. No success so far.

Ive never once successfully gotten a usable sprite sheet out of ChatGPT. The concept seems foreign to it and no matter how hard I try to steer it it’ll find a way to do something hopeless (inconsistent frame sizes; incoherent animations; no sense of consistent pixel sizes or what distinguishes (say) 8-bit from 16-bit era sprites; it’ll draw graph paper in the background for some reason; etc etc.). If anyone has a set…

Have you tried drawing?
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