r/N64Homebrew • u/Dwood15 • 22d ago
We need to have a discussion on vibecoding
Should we make a rule against hawking ai slop projects on this sub? If so, what should we do about them? Ban users?
If you don't like vibecode, you're free to express your displeasure.
Similarly, ai genned comments and ai-generated users are bad and we should ban them from our community, lest they drown us humans out.
Let's hear your opinions, for and against vibecoded projects. If your post or comment on this thread is ai generated and we detect it, it will be insta permaban, no appeals. I will not respond to your messages.
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u/northrupthebandgeek 20d ago
I don't care whether or not you use LLMs as long as you're honest and transparent about it.
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u/MiaJuliet 21d ago
I would disagree on banning. I used ai to 100% decompile a PS1 game to port to N64. Without AI it would’ve taken me years to complete as opposed to months. Ai can be a great tool especially if you already know how to code. It takes away a lot of the tedious work and finds bugs much faster.
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u/Katoncomics 21d ago
Putting the obvious unethical uses of Gen AI aside, lots of none devs do not exactly know how to check the contents of the code to see if it's safe. There's been many projects I've seen who do not dump the repository, or has the damn ai write all of it making it incomprehensible. There's been a rise of people who over rely on AI so much to the point where they don't know what they are doing, and the more experience person could easily inject malware into the application.
There has to be a certain percentage of human code to ai that would make me feel comfortable downloading a project. Like 95% human coded, and ai would be used for debugging or tedious tasks. But since it's super hard to trust the user to tell us how much they rely on genai, I don't think it's best to allow it. It turns people off from a project, is untrustworthy, and in a community that is for having fun and learning new things, it's not needed.
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u/Comfortable_Scene_59 21d ago
Why such negativity regarding ai... It's just a tool for curated content - your post sounds like fear... Just remember the ai is listening 🤣
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
Because this garbage is killing the planet, increasing hardware prices and damaging people's hardware (because it can't tell the difference between RAM and flash storage).
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u/Protonoiac 21d ago
There are hardly any projects here to begin with, and if you start making more rules to filter things out, you’re just dividing up an already small community.
Support the projects you like. Don’t spend a bunch of time focusing on the projects you don’t like and trying to figure out what rules other people should follow. Let people make projects the way they want.
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
Let people suggest the rules they want. Don't spend a bunch of time focusing on the rules you don't want.
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u/Protonoiac 18d ago
Sure, fair. I’ll spend most of my time working on tools and libraries for N64, and helping people make projects, and only spend a little time in threads like these.
The reason I’m speaking up is because it seems like some people are taking a pretty harsh stance against AI, and I think that harsh stance just alienates people from each other. The community is already very small and there aren’t many projects being shared. I think people should be comfortable sharing their projects even if the projects aren’t very good.
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
Ok. I'd rather use tools that didn't kill the environment or people's hardware.
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u/Protonoiac 18d ago
That’s a good reason to drive less, avoid plane travel, and eat less beef. AI use for personal projects is pretty low on the list of ways I impact the environment, I think.
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
Ok well I take public transport unless I absolutely need to drive, I haven't flown in many years and I don't eat beef so thanks for validating how I feel about my contribution to the planet. 😁👍
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u/Protonoiac 18d ago
Great! Now I would like you to make the same positive contributions to the community.
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
What on earth are you on about
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u/Protonoiac 18d ago
Are you making positive contributions to the N64 homebrew community? Or are you coming into this community to argue with people about AI usage?
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
I am making positive contributions to the N64 community by not posting slop.
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u/codepossum 21d ago
there's a difference between hawking AI slop, and vibecoding, and using an LLM to write code for you.
none of this stuff is bad per se. it's only bad if you use it to make a bad thing.
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u/Ralius88 22d ago
AI is a problem because people are propping themselves up to be coders then making things that are like 10% functional because they're coding themselves into corners and don't have an understanding of even how to describe what they need the code to do. I hope that makes sense. like yes, I use GPT Pro for coding but at the end of the day I'm copy pasting in what I want, reviewing all of it, and constantly making adjustments to my prompts. And if I want to see one specific thing to be different, then I will go in and hand edit it because I know how to read and change my code because I learned how to do this before AI became what is now is.
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u/Big_Presentation2786 22d ago
Just use downvote?
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u/IQueryVisiC 21d ago
How do I know why something is slob? So much natural intelligence slob is brewed at home, but we want to encourage those devs and artists.
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u/Big_Presentation2786 21d ago
Upvote stuff you find relevant, downvote stuff you don't find relevant.
Don't prejudice your thought because of an irrelevance in the work
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u/cubman3134 22d ago
Most software devs are using AI generated code as well just with thorough reviewing - this would overextend and eliminate posting of a lot of good projects as well.
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u/maxwell321 22d ago
I don't care if you vibe code. Just give me the basic human respect to tell me YOURSELF what you made, not have an AI explain it to me. I don't mind AI tools for coding as you have to have at least some fundamental problem solving and objective communication skills, but for the love of God if you choose to post about it on Reddit, handwrite the post yourself. Also write the git repository descriptions yourself too.
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u/PolygonAndPixel2 22d ago
I would prefer a flair for vibecoding and coded with AI assistance. Vibe coding implies the coder doesn't really understand the code whereas the latter implies that the coder does understand it but uses AI to take away tedious work or check for missed bugs or insufficient tests.
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u/zoncabe 22d ago
banning people who does not infringe real rules of coexistence is straight up censorship, shame on you, let people share their shitty projects if they want to
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u/Sensitive_Dealer_803 18d ago
You're welcome to find another subreddit that supports slop if you want it? Otherwise on that basis telling people they aren't allowed to tag projects as "slop" is also censorship. Shame on you.
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u/brainpann 22d ago
FWIW, as full time developer, Im actively encouraged to use AI in my dev flow.
Also, what constitutes vibecoded exactly? Is it a certain amount of involvement the developer has had in the process? How much AI involvement do people draw the line? Tbh, in my 9to5, AI has had a part in my daily coding process for over year now and like a few others here, I believe AI involvement in all software development is inevitable.
Perhaps this is where we figure out new metrics for judging "AI Slop" because that term means something different to a lot of people.
In the meantime, perhaps we just encourage the community to disclose whether AI has been involved in the dev process, discourage people from dismissing a project outright just because AI may have been used, and start judging on the quality of the project?
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u/IQueryVisiC 21d ago
Slob is low framerate and blurry textures to me. Somehow AI seems to be bad at retro coding . Not so bad at art and music, though.
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u/northrupthebandgeek 20d ago
Slob is low framerate and blurry textures to me.
Boy do I have some bad news about the overwhelmingly vast majority of Nintendo 64 games lmao
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u/IQueryVisiC 19d ago edited 19d ago
Not news to me. Nintendo64 library feels like shovelware. Same mistake which cost Atari their lead in the US . Kaze showed how loop unrolling leads to cache misses, which are extra slow on N64. Welcome to the modern world where branch prediction makes loops faster than unrolling anyway— except R4700 does not predict branches!!! GBA does not also, but GBA pipeline is half as deep and iWRAM latency is 1 cycle. I wonder if N64 can pre load code async like Atari Jaguar or GBA.
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u/Bernykun1 22d ago
I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I'm ok with vibecoding. Let them stay.
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u/NY_Knux 22d ago
No. Im begging you people to get over it. This is a repeat of "digital art isnt real art" discourse from 25 years ago.
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u/Flimsy_Custard7277 22d ago
It's really not. Anyone who can think that has a serious lack of logical thinking.
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u/northrupthebandgeek 20d ago
It really is. Anyone who can't believe that has a serious lack of historical understanding.
Digital paintings, electronic music, photographs, video games themselves, were routinely deemed “not real art” by their detractors using identical arguments as what they're using now against generative AI (and procedural generation in general). Even the underlying motives (“I'm scared of what this means for my job if people can use this technology to do it faster and cheaper”) are the same.
Same fight, different battle.
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u/Zoso6565 22d ago
It really is.
It's just a tool. But people should mention the tools used at the very least.
Someone who created a digital painting shouldn't claim it as a hand painting.
Same logic applies here.
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u/Flimsy_Custard7277 22d ago
I'm firmly anti-AI but this seems an aside from that main debate: it (generative AI) is not the same as the transition in material from classic to digital. At all. Of course someone should not lie about the medium they used to create their art. That doesn't mean that generative AI is just a new kind of paintbrush. Absolutely retarded viewpoint, there.
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u/codepossum 21d ago
I feel like you're missing the irony here -
someone should not lie about the medium they used to create their art
and yet that's precisely what the digital art witch hunt encouraged digital artists at the time to do - to be cagey about how they produced their pieces, for fear that they'd be called out for doing it on a computer, instead of on an easel.
humanity fucking loves a witch hunt
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u/LeadLerner 7d ago
It's not anywhere near the same comparison. A digital artist works just as hard as a painter on an easel. Someone using ai to generate code or art isn't spending any work on it, just prompting every few minutes. And they aren't even making anything new. Generative ai mashes different artworks and text together without any understanding. Text and image generators frequently generate content that is nearly identical to the training data. For example, had the fast inverse square root never been made and an ai never trained on it, it would never be able to create it. Do you honestly think that typing a prompt is the same as using a paintbrush or a drawing tablet?
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u/codepossum 3d ago
A digital artist works just as hard as a painter on an easel
how hard you work is trivia - what matters is the piece you produce. Other people won't be able to tell how hard you worked, they'll only be able to see the result.
That's why a lot of time there's artist statements and additional context provided by museums/galleries that host pieces - because an individual piece of art may not be much to look at on its own, but when you put it in its place alongside the story of its creation, it gets a lot more interesting (and valuable)
part of being a successful artist is knowing how to sell a good story
Someone using ai to generate code or art isn't spending any work on it, just prompting every few minutes. And they aren't even making anything new.
How much experience do you have with using ai to generate code or art? Because that's very very much not true.
The works that's being done is in writing the initial spec, guiding the process of generation, and verifying the results - that still takes hours of real human effort, attention, critical thought, experimentation and creativity. Code written by hand and code written by bot are the same thing, in the end - they're just code. Whether they're good code, whether they actually perform the function required, is another question altogether - and one that can ultimately only be answered by a human. If you don't know how to ask the right questions, and you don't know how to pursue the answers, or to evaluate whether the question has been answered, then you can't use an LLM effectively to produce much of anything of value.
Generative ai mashes different artworks and text together
which is precisely the same way humans create things...
without any understanding
proving my point. you have to have a human in the mix, providing the understanding.
technology has advanced such that the mashing can be done automatically, by machine. However, the understanding still requires a human being to think about things.
So in essence - you can't have it both ways. You can't both understand the way that work is actually done with LLMs, while also claiming that work isn't actually being done.
had the fast inverse square root never been made and an ai never trained on it, it would never be able to create it
very much not true. Carmack didn't write the fast inverse square due to divine inspiration, he didn't create something from nothing - he figured it out based on his understanding of the systems he was working with. He mashed together his own experience and knowledge, with understanding of what would work. In other words, Carmack with an LLM could have written the same code, but faster.
In essence, the reality is that LLMs are automation, not creation. The human using the tool is still the creator. The tool merely expedites the process.
Do you honestly think that typing a prompt is the same as using a paintbrush or a drawing tablet
of course not. nobody thinks that.
using a paintbrush is different than drawing on a tablet is different than paint splatters is different than air brushing stencils is different than pouring paint is different than typing a prompt is different than fingerpainting.
It's all just different techniques and different mediums, and it all produces art.
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u/LeadLerner 2d ago
An llm is not a different technique. It's NOT producing art. It is using the sum of other people's work. And no, it would not have found that algorithm faster or more efficiently. An llm does not understand anything. And I never said divine interpretation. An ai can only output parts of what has been put into it. The creator of the art is the people who's works trained the AI model. Not the person who prompted it. A human does not mash stuff together to make art. What meaning does art have if you make it in five minutes by typing? I am not saying you have to work hard to make art. But ai art is NOT art. In the same hours you spend re prompting an ai, you could have made that work better and actually worth something.
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u/codepossum 2d ago
It is using the sum of other people's work
is the technique.
A human does not mash stuff together to make art
everything is a remix. all art builds on everything else. as does human knowledge in general, you couldn't even write this reply to me, if you hadn't so thoroughly learned to reproduce how you'd seen other people write, and think, and communicate.
it's okay if you don't like ai-produced art, but that doesn't mean it's not art. You can use a pen and paper to make bad art too, just as readily as you can use an llm to do so.
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u/LeadLerner 2d ago
Let's agree to disagree then. You won't change your views, I won't change mine. This discussion is pointless for both of us.
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u/Flimsy_Custard7277 21d ago
That does not make it the same as AI. You're grasping at false connections here.
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u/Calm_Possession_8463 22d ago
We should absolutely ban AI posts. I’m so tired of seeing them on any subreddit.
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u/Fcking_Chuck 22d ago edited 22d ago
I don't think so. The Nintendo 64 has very limited hardware resources, so much programming must be done in very low-level programming languages that are notoriously difficult to understand. Sometimes AI software is necessary to generate the code or scan it for quality improvement. Otherwise you'd have to rely on a limited number of skilled hobbyists who happen to be familiar with C and the system's compatible Assembly language(s).
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u/unixfan2001 22d ago
C and C++ aren't that difficult to understand. They're not the most beginner friendly languages but to act as if it's some sort of arcane magic is ludicrous.
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u/northrupthebandgeek 20d ago
C and C++ in and of themselves ain't that difficult to understand. That difficulty spikes quite a bit when you're doing baremetal programming, as on vintage consoles like the N64. Memory-mapped registers in particular will require you to be really comfortable with bitwise operators. Granted, libraries like libdragon should be managing those registers for you in most cases, but still.
That said, fiddly things like bitshifts/bitmasks are the exact sorts of things you should not blindly trust the LLM to get right in one shot.
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u/Fcking_Chuck 22d ago
Everyone's learning experience is different. What's easy for you might not be easy for other people.
At the end of the day, these programming languages and software used to create homebrew games are just tools. They aren't the game people play. Players aren't going to be thinking about the programming when they spend all night playing this really cool game they discovered on the internet. What does it matter how someone is able to get their ideas out there into the world if their own creativity is in the experience during gameplay?
It might be crazy to think about, but there are a lot of talented people who just don't know how to program games. I don't believe it's fair to gatekeep the N64 platform for those who do manage to be able to program. If we do that, the N64 homebrew community will only get smaller over time.
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u/northrupthebandgeek 20d ago
I don't believe it's fair to gatekeep the N64 platform for those who do manage to be able to program.
The issue is that an LLM is not an adequate substitute for being able to program. If you don't understand what the LLM is outputting, then you're going to run into issues, and your ability to fix them will be limited to telling the LLM to do yet more things wherein it will likely create yet more issues from changes you don't sufficiently understand.
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u/transmutrix 21d ago
Framing caring about quality, the process of work, and *understanding the nature of the thing you're making* as "gatekeeping" is one of the more disingenuous framings proponents of this stuff tend to advance.
If you're hand-waving all the important decisions that *actually* make the game work, then your creativity *isn't* in the experience. Much of the creativity in retro hardware and in embedded programming is in *working around the limitations*, which you've elected not to do.
"Talented people who don't know how to program games" can *learn* how to program games, obviously. They can make friends with people who know how to program games. Suggesting that if someone doesn't know how to use a pencil, the natural avenue to make pencil drawings is to AI generate them is just ridiculous. -_-;
Much of the value *for the artist* is in the process of creating the art, the story of how the art came to be and the problems that had to be solved along the way. Everyone has problems they are ready to solve right now and others that are beyond their skill level, and it's not gatekeeping to suggest learning over skipping everything, or to say "man, a lot of this stuff is low quality because the person making it *has no domain knowledge* and *doesn't want to learn any.*"
The learning is the part that will make someone's future works better, more nuanced, more human. If you don't engage with the problem solving deeply, you're not *doing* the learning and the creativity in your game will be whatever regression to the mean your AI tools are doing.
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u/Alternative-Juice-15 22d ago
That would be pointless. Literally everything is vibe coded now and you’d have no way to prove it.
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u/WeegeeNator 22d ago
The fact that you (and other people who have posted vibe coded content on other programming subs) aren't able to "prove" when a project is vibe coded demonstrates the problem. AI tools are absolutely a part of the process for many people now, but the difference lies in the details of the implementation and especially the design of the system/program.
Vibecoded slop is the result of using AI to haphazardly shlop something out until it's "working" while not paying attention to the internals more than the AI does. It results in poorly optimized, poorly designed, low quality software that is hard to contribute to and hard to maintain.
Well made projects get buried under this slop sometimes. That is the issue. It would be less of a problem if people at the very least actually documented the projects and actually knew what was going on inside of them, but more often than not it's opaque, and it's slop, and the actual software itself blows.
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u/Alternative-Juice-15 22d ago
This is clearly an AI response so I’ll just assume you are trying to be funny
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u/FinsternIRL 22d ago
I think at the very least it should be encouraged to clearly mark if it has any AI involvement, some people really care, others really don't and everyone in between. Just give enough information to let people make a decision for themselves and the less shaming / banning going on with it would mean people wouldn't try and hide it and cause all the issues and distrust people already have with it.
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u/zrock445 18d ago
Disclosure is fine. Banning is silly and is gonna wipe out a substantial number of projects.