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Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

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Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#31

Post by EwanG »

John-Rosebud wrote: post #21
EwanG wrote: post #16

I have a VN that I have wanted to complete for years. Having built and deployed using RenPY, the problem is something I wonder if Rosebud can support: 1) I'm a programmer not an artist. If I give a description of a character can the AI create a 2D version of it that will be consistent? 2) I'm a programmer not an artist, if I give a description of a scene/background can the AI create a 2D version of it that will have…

At the moment this process is probably more manual than we'd like. You can definitely make characters and backgrounds. We're using our own custom AI Agents to generate the games and what we'll do next is expose them for the games to leverage too. At that point you should be able to have the game self-generate based on rules.

So it sounds like I should "keep an eye" on this space and hopefully at some time in the future give this a try. Do you have any VN examples currently just to see where it's at?

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#33

Post by somedude895 »

btown wrote: post #4

Next up: an AI that can watch a deceptive mobile game ad and actually create the game that they're falsely advertising! Jokes aside, this is very cool. There's always the interesting tension of vendor lock-in vs. portability that defines the low-code space. Roblox's social ecosystem allowed it to make exclusivity to its platform a selling point to incentivize creators, but that might be harder for browser delivery -…

> watch a deceptive mobile game ad and actually create the game that they're falsely advertising!

Guy called Fat Dino on Youtube actually does that. His videos are pretty entertaining: https://youtube.com/@FatDino?si=4r2wKj63ohClIXxD

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#34

Post by Farida-Rosebud »

tzm wrote: post #32

Congrats on the launch. I'd love to import existing characters and assets into the creation process. Is this on the roadmap?

Thank you! Yes, users are able to import assets right now. What do you mean by characters specifically, spritesheets?

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#35

Post by lishali88 »

mushufasa wrote: post #30
EwanG wrote: post #16

I have a VN that I have wanted to complete for years. Having built and deployed using RenPY, the problem is something I wonder if Rosebud can support: 1) I'm a programmer not an artist. If I give a description of a character can the AI create a 2D version of it that will be consistent? 2) I'm a programmer not an artist, if I give a description of a scene/background can the AI create a 2D version of it that will have…

I could see something that bootstraps a renpy project with art + applying the correct framework as saving someone days or weeks of time, overcoming the barrier to get started. For example, there are different patterns if you want a simulation that has time as a factor, versus a classic choice-based VN. A lot of people building games struggle with where to start for their specific idea; it's a lot of research and if y…

We have a bunch of trending projects that you can already clone from (see https://play.rosebud.ai/home "trending"), and this was in closed beta, so once we open the app to more users there will be a lot of projects to give new creators projects to start from immediately.

You can already kind of export the code because we show most of the game code. However what we're aiming to do is to make it easier to build in platform without worrying about deployment. Also we are aiming to bring an audience to play your games immediately via the Rosebud platform so you don't have to share elsewhere.

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#36

Post by jncfhnb »

Ehhh. Don’t like it.

Let’s be clear. Unreal is used to make games. Roblox is used to make Roblox games. Those are completely different. It sounds like what you want is to be a big platform that collects rent from people who make games. But people who make their own games aren’t going to want to be in your sandbox like Roblox if that’s what you’re hoping for. What you’re proposing making is cool. It’s dev tools. I would like some dedicated tooling to generative AI art assets. That is a business on its own. Not a very big moat but it’s a useful service.

But all of this tooling to generate art and stuff is not relevant to the service of being a game platform. The cool thing about Roblox and Fortnite is that you’re just sprinkling some creative sugar over Roblox and Fortnite which people already liked.

Let’s assume you knock it out of the park on everything your page shows. it feels like you’re an asset store that, rather than charging reasonable prices for those possibly custom made assets, wants a % of game revenue as a royalty? It might feel viable because you’re targeting people who as a matter of skill and expertise absolutely cannot execute without this, but I’m not seeing this happen much successfully.

So… yeah. Tl;dr Figure out if you’re Roblox, unreal, or an assets store.

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#37

Post by Farida-Rosebud »

EwanG wrote: post #31
John-Rosebud wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment this process is probably more manual than we'd like. You can definitely make characters and backgrounds. We're using our own custom AI Agents to generate the games and what we'll do next is expose them for the games to leverage too. At that point you should be able to have the game self-generate based on rules.

So it sounds like I should "keep an eye" on this space and hopefully at some time in the future give this a try. Do you have any VN examples currently just to see where it's at?

We have one game in progress by one of our beta testers that has some VN vibes/elements: https://play.rosebud.ai/games/91d54c96-378d-4c64-b71b-4841fc...

Here you chat with this grandma, make here drink coffee inside and go outside (she'll comment on both of the actions a bit haha).

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#38

Post by lishali88 »

jncfhnb wrote: post #36

Ehhh. Don’t like it. Let’s be clear. Unreal is used to make games. Roblox is used to make Roblox games. Those are completely different. It sounds like what you want is to be a big platform that collects rent from people who make games. But people who make their own games aren’t going to want to be in your sandbox like Roblox if that’s what you’re hoping for. What you’re proposing making is cool. It’s dev tools. I wou…

There's no confusion at all about whether we are trying to a UGC platform to make games (i.e AI Roblox). We are definitely not an asset store. Even though you can create assets in Rosebud, it's a feature of the entire workflow, which is focused on converting user descriptions to games.

I think some confusion may be arising from just going to rosebud.ai and seeing the demo video. Instead go to https://play.rosebud.ai/home to make games and play the games other people already made to test it out! Love to hear your comments about the development experience there!

You are right that there is a developer tool angle here, but I think what's interesting to experiment with respect to the business model is whether developers want to be charged first by using the tool (like unity) versus only when they are successful (like unreal). Roblox is able to collect rent because they help the developers build an audience. What we have to show is that our platform can also help developers build an audience to justify collecting rent.

Re: Launch HN: Rosebud (YC S19) – Turn game descriptions into browser games

#39

Post by mushufasa »

lishali88 wrote: post #35
mushufasa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see something that bootstraps a renpy project with art + applying the correct framework as saving someone days or weeks of time, overcoming the barrier to get started. For example, there are different patterns if you want a simulation that has time as a factor, versus a classic choice-based VN. A lot of people building games struggle with where to start for their specific idea; it's a lot of research and if y…

We have a bunch of trending projects that you can already clone from (see https://play.rosebud.ai/home "trending"), and this was in closed beta, so once we open the app to more users there will be a lot of projects to give new creators projects to start from immediately. You can already kind of export the code because we show most of the game code. However what we're aiming to do is to make it easier to build in plat…

I think a lot of indie developers have $0-50 (total; the same as RPGMaker license cost) willingness to pay to start working on a game, but would LOVE help monetizing that game. There's a huge dance on itch.io where a lot of niche games are alpha-quality passion-projects, so they start off for free (demo), and then the creators eventually start asking for money to keep working on the game, typically using Patreon.

Even though there's other creator platforms that charge less % than Patreon, like ko-fi etc., and itch.io has built-in payments, patreon still seems to be the prime destination. I think it's because a lot of the patrons are already on patreon so creators hope it's easy for them to add new creators to their list? Also because game progress can take a while, and something like patreon lets them give devlog updates and preview images and run audience polls to keep patrons engaged in the process.

Anyway, there's a oauth integration between patreon and itch.io so that creators can only distribute to patrons, as an alternative for people paying for a point-in-time game version. I think that is a newer feature.

I'm not sure if itch.io exposes functionality such that you can publish these rosebud games there, but they do already allow you to have hosted in-browser games like with renPY and Twine.

Understood your strategy may be to become the destination for these things, but you may be able to get early distribution faster by making it easy to push these games to existing platforms that have network effects around discoverability already. Though I suppose someone could just create an itch.io page with a link to your hosted game??

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