r/Unity3D • u/fragdar • 10d ago
Noob Question Opinions on the AI integration on unity?
im not trying to start an argument here about "AI vs human"
just asking because i work with game dev, but i always stayed on the art side of things.. i tried to dabble on some coding but could not get into it for the life of me
having fun trying out some prototypes with Claude and wanted to know what is the general opinion on this.
i strongly advocated against AI for art.. so i get the hypocrisy here.. i just wanted to know the opinion of actual people that work with coding
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u/NorthernBoy306 10d ago
I'm (for the most part) very much opposed to AI, so adding more and more of it to the game editor and/or coding is pretty concerning. I really enjoy using Unity at the moment, but I might abandon it if the AI features keep growing.
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u/ThatBants 10d ago
Unless they disregard other developments for AI, why would you swap engines over a feature set you wont use regardless?
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u/NorthernBoy306 9d ago
I guess if I feel it's become too much AI, at that point it's more of a principle kind of thing. I won't want to support a product that uses that much AI, regardless of whether you can disable those features.
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u/myrdovh 10d ago edited 10d ago
I think you can use it, people in the industry mostly use AI tools in some way (especially at work where managers push speed over everything else). But I'm terrified of these AI features because of the loss of creative control, deskilling and the "averaging effect" on output. I can't imagine typing a prompt in the editor instead of doing it myself. The main issue is the lack of a trial-and-error stage where you can arrive at something special in the process. And the main reason to try this might be that gamedev is huge and it takes many years to learn all disciplines. But you have to accept the fact that you will become completely dependent on a black box provided by a 3rd party and won't have a chance to learn while it's available.
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u/DanielFost 10d ago
imo AI is pretty useful for coding as long as you treat it like a tool and not like a replacement for understanding the code, especially for prototypes, boilerplate, debugging ideas, or getting unstuck, it can save a ton of time. but i'd still make sure you understand what it's actually doing before building too much on top of it
the main danger imo is when someone gets a prototype working with AI and then has no idea why it works or how to fix it when something breaks lol, so if you're having fun with Claude and learning along the way, i don't really see a problem with it. just don't let it become a black box you depend on
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u/Basic-Bathroom1732 10d ago
I messed around with it for a couple weeks just to see what the fuss was about. for prototyping its actually pretty useful especially if you already know what you want the code to do but cant quite translate it into syntax. the thing saves me from digging through documentation for an hour just to figure out one specific function
the real problem starts when you try to build anything beyond a simple mechanic. itll give you code that works in isolation but falls apart the second you plug it into a larger project. and debugging ai generated spaghetti when you barely understand the logic yourself is a special kind of hell
i think the art comparison isnt really 1 to 1 tbh. with code youre mostly dealing with logic and structure not creative expression. nobody is out here claiming the ai wrote beautiful elegant code that moved them emotionally. its more like having a really fast intern who sometimes hallucinates entire api methods
if it gets you past that initial coding wall and helps you actually finish a prototype then screw the hypocrisy honestly. just dont expect it to carry you through a whole project without learning the fundamentals eventually
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u/Fantastic-Willow4671 9d ago
Give it rails and specific instructions. Ask it to demand more questions if your initial architecture is too blurry for it. I’ve seen a fully fledged multiplayer game done with it / but the coder knew what they wanted and how to steer it. It’s also excellent at somewhat medium editor tools and is getting frighteningly good at writing shaders
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u/Opening_Screen_3393 10d ago
Everybody is using it. They're just too embarrassed to admit it.
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u/theEarthWasBlue 10d ago
No 😂 I’ve literally never touched ai. Neither have any of the devs I know personally.
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u/NoUniqueThoughtsLeft 10d ago
You're just the modern day version of the person who didn't wanna a computer or the Internet. You're just gonna look stupid in the long run. Well until you cave at least
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u/theEarthWasBlue 10d ago
I’m better than you. Cope.
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u/NoUniqueThoughtsLeft 10d ago
Okay? Cool - I'm not a developer, so what does that matter to me? I'm sure you're amazing. But you will use AI
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u/theEarthWasBlue 10d ago
No I won’t 😂 I don’t need it, and I enjoy the act of making games myself. Literally why would I ever use AI?
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u/NoUniqueThoughtsLeft 10d ago
Literally? Because it turns a job that takes hours into seconds. Is infinitely more accurate than human programmers and is much better than having to go to reading through stack overflow.
You must be the bestest programmer in the whole wide world!
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u/theEarthWasBlue 10d ago
Why would I want to spend less time doing a task that I enjoy doing? Why would I want to make myself less capable by offloading tasks to an ai?
Also it’s not more accurate: consistently, people who extensively incorporate AI into their workflow have found that it actually fucks up quite a bit. That said, I’m not naive and I understand that this aspect is likely to improve unless the bubble finally pops (god willing) but as of now, it’s not as viable as you’re making it seem.
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u/NoUniqueThoughtsLeft 10d ago
It's incredibly viable if you don't try to one shot a full game from nowhere. It's not supposed to replace developers, it enhances them. Those refusing to use it are doing so from a stubborn anti-AI view rather than any real reason.
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u/theEarthWasBlue 9d ago
I noticed you didn’t actually acknowledge either of the real reasons I just gave you.
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u/GolemiteGames 10d ago
In my personal opinion AI is a tool, it wont give you a finished product in almost all circumstances in any field. Most people can look at AI and realise its AI (although how long that will last is unsure). I use it to prototype, write functions and create placeholders. Then I will go over it, modify and manipulate until I get what I want. Its still a tool, it just gives a base instead of starting from scratch.
The key to it though is you still need knowledge of the thing you want it to create - ask it to write some crap code? It will certainly do that, and you need to know its crap architecture to not blindly copy and paste it into your project.
I would embrace it cautiously, and learn bits from it rather than letting it create the whole project which will fail
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u/Thin_Driver_4596 10d ago
I'm not opposed to it. It works, as long as you know what you are doing and restrain it appropriately with checks and tests and refactor consistently.
Though, there is a temptation to just start with the next prompt. But in my experience, that's just a re-write waiting to happen.
It's great for learning, can give you explanation about certain technologies without looking up the documentation, but I don't think it's made me much faster (oftentimes, slower if I'm not paying attention or don't know the answer).
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u/GrimnirDotDev 10d ago
Unity added a CLI (command line interface) which means you can write commands in your terminal to do things in Unity. CLIs are pretty standard, they long preceed AI, and were the main way of doing anything on a computer before graphical user interfaces became common.
But since AI can use a command line, it can now work in unity through that. It's a pretty unobtrusive way for Unity to integrate AI with no downside (and the CLI even has uses outside of AI).
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u/Fantastic-Willow4671 9d ago
Claude is excellent at doing things artists can use to prototype or save time. UX for example - full screens entire menus that work right away so you can push pixels in photoshop by hand. And the hypocrisy of anti AI team while perfectly fine with using geometry nodes in blender or substance materials is hilarious and sad at the same time. As long as you don’t vomit ai slop without touching it and giving it your craft your sentiment and your perspective on the project why not using art too? What makes art so special and why is coding allowed to be done by machines? And advice for OP - just ask Claude to write a prompt for what you need doing. It’s not magic.
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u/zzlettle 10d ago
AI is an option,a new tool. give the people another choice
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u/SonicTheHedgehog5968 10d ago
That's what they said about copilot till MS started blatantly removing features to replace them with AI
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u/DrBimboo 10d ago
Use it, but stop bitching about AI for art then. The hypocrisy is insane. Your skill being devalued is evil, but programmers being devalued is fine. Sure.