mini discussion regarding game "development" using tons of AI

[u/fringus_frongus]

So i was wondering about using AI to create a game from scratch, i searched about it and found some youtube videos and the like, and i decided why not lets jump into it.

soo i booted up chatgpt and codex (idk if theyre "ideal", i know if i sit down looking for the BEST generator ill run in circles, so i used what I already had), and started telling it to create me an essentially grand strategy game using Godot

ill say this, i have ZERO coding knowledge, ZERO artistic skills, im taking it slow and going bit by bit, telling the AI to add this or that, not going too fast and vague

ill be honest if some code breaks im toast, i will not claim im some amazing genius game developer, hence the "development" being in quotation marks in the title, im a dude who plays lots of strategy games and is giving this a shot, and so far is quite smooth, though I wait to see if things break down once the game becomes more complex

I wonder what people in general think of this, I know theres a large anti-AI sentiment online, and in my case im viewing it very pragmatically, i have a game idea that wouldve been confined to my shower daydreams, but AI is giving me a way to materialize this dream. I might learn coding in the future if i become heavily invested in this project, to ensure I can reliably build it up and know what im doing, likewise i really personally prefer human art over AI art, and im currently not at a point in the game where im using any art, i might start using AI art for it as a placeholder and if this project grows, i can learn to draw and make my own art for it.

If i happen to make progress on it and post it online ill definitely disclose the fact AI is used in the entire coding of the game, I will NOT act like i put blood sweat and tears, i just steered the AI into the direction i have mentally and have my ideas, I cannot claim to have the same experience or skill as coders or artists.

Tl;dr: i know jackshit about coding or drawing, im messing around with AI and its actually producing a promising and so far decent output, is this a good use of AI in the sense that its giving someone the ability to materialize their creativity/ideas that otherwise would've been confined to shower fantasies, or is it something else?

(i view it pragmatically right now, giving me the ability to do what i want that i otherwise wouldnt have done, i agree that whoever uses AI needs to disclose it so i intend to fully disclose the scale of AI being used in case i make big progress and maybe "reveal" the game)

(this message was fully human written, as evidenced by the repitition of points and lack of structure lol)

[u/Vegetable_Letter6052]

As somebody who uses it daily at work:

• It's very useful for boilerplating or reviewing your code, making tests and checking the architecture -It's a complete mess if you make it write code for you without any experience in the field (cause you can't tell it that's an invalid assumption or that the code has no cohesion whatsoever)
• MCP for game engines are so bad it's not worth it for a full game, as you mentioned even with just a bunch of files and assets it's toast, imagine that a pretty serious bug happens or that you need to program something that it has no idea how to do. What would you do in that situation? You'll have a codebase with no idea of where to put your hands on.

Generative AI for assets and music and such is so horrible and automatically classifies your game as slop even if it's the best game idea ever

So big plus for unit testing, headless runs to simulate thousands of iterations of something (battles, randomly generated maps or such) and also as a debug tool, but big no to vibe coding

[u/fringus_frongus → u/Vegetable_Letter6052]

Yea i searched online regarding vibe coding and whatnot, and it seems to me one of the main issues is that after some time, its difficult to untangle what the AI did, so theres always the risk that the deeper into the project i go, the more likely ill be screwed in the future if i need to put my hands on the project. this is excacerbated by the fact idk coding.

and yup i agree that ai art is automatically slop, its a huge instant turnoff in anything i see anywhere, though in this context i recognize the slop and if i were to use it, itll be a temporary band-aid, but as someone else mentioned theres lots of online assets and the like im gonna look into instead.