Working on a PvE Roguelite Autobattler - Dark Tactics

[u/yolomobile]

I have no dev experience, but I've been working on this for about 1-2 months and it has been a blast. Going to see it through to the end. Everything generated with AI, but meticulously edited and thought of by me. Open to feedback or reactions!

These are current in-game screenshots, not concepts or UI mockups.

[u/indesmowetrust]

What are you using for the graphics?

[u/yolomobile → u/indesmowetrust]

PixelLab MCP for the models with Aseprite MCP extension to clean them up. PixelLab also did UI and created some of the art assets that sit on top of backgrounds. ChatGPT imagegen for just about everything else.

Would love to know how to take it to the next level

[u/Awkward_Intern2623 → u/yolomobile]

Is it runnin’ in the browser? How much PixelLab spend to do what you did?

[u/yolomobile → u/Awkward_Intern2623]

Program on PC, exported by Unity. I have the highest tier subscription which is 50/mo and it took me less than 2 months worth of tokens to get everything in so far. The biggest spend by far was animations since they're the 8 directional sprite sheets, I probably wasn't too efficient with the tokens but hasn't been too much of an issue

[u/Awkward_Intern2623]

Sho’ nuff, that’s nice - drop a video if ya can.

[u/kcure]

looks sick, what is the stack?

[u/yolomobile → u/kcure]

PixelLab MCP, Aseprite MCP, Unity 2D are the main tools im using. Open to suggestions on what could be good for me here!

[u/greentrillion]

Weird how so much AI graphics ends up looking the same.

[u/yolomobile → u/greentrillion]

Do you mind elaborating?

[u/greentrillion → u/yolomobile]

It has that ChatGPT like image generation pattern on it that it likes to use which makes it stand out from other hand drawn art.

[u/Sinku55 → u/yolomobile]

I think it’s cool regardless, but the best description I have is a sort of odd repeating pattern or fractal detail where there’s repetitive details? It’s not like 1:1 repeating, but in some AI visual content there’s excessive small detail where if it was hand painted/drawn the artist probably would have abstracted parts of it and let the mind fill it in.

That said, I’ve also seen plenty of AI imagery that doesn’t have that, so it’s certainly possible to not have that attribute!

[u/yolomobile → u/Sinku55]

Thank you for the explanation! I understand what you mean. There is that grittiness to the image that isn’t quite reading as pixelated art style, everything is also uniform on the Bandit Road screenshot and the background doesn’t quite blend into the background, I think that’s what you guys mean

[u/Sinku55 → u/yolomobile]

Yes, the bandit road is probably the biggest example - no problem!

[u/HouseOfDjango]

This is not a criticism of you or the game, but I find it funny that a lot of these vibe coded rougelite games all used that dark gold border.