I’m currently developing a short indie horror game for itch.io. I went to school for 3D animation and I’m fully capable at modeling, animation and all that. But I’m incompetent when it comes to programming. I tried Sololearn to see if I could learn c sharp, but I barely made it past the intro section. I also bought playmaker and Emerald AI hoping that would make it easier. But the documentation for playmaker is either limited or outdated. Emerald AI I do have a grasp on though. I wanted to code it myself, but based on my struggles, it seemed more and more likely that I’d have to get outside help.
I’d like to work on indie games with other people, but I’ve learned no one wants to take you on unless you can prove your skills in an already existing game. Which is a big reason for why I want this game made. I’ve signed on for many game jams only for my teams to flake out every time. I’ve met multiple coders on discord who were willing to help on my game in exchange for assets, who then ghosted me. I don’t have much money these days, so hiring is both unrealistic and excessive for a game that I need for portfolio reasons (wish I had spent that playmaker money on this instead.)
The game itself isn’t very complicated: player needs to flip four switches to unlock an escape door while avoiding patrolling enemies. So I don’t think these coders were turned off by the offer, especially when I was willing to make all the assets for an open world game.
At this point, I just want to have a completed game. I loathe the idea of resorting to AI (especially as an artist) but if I can’t find any other options, I may just have to go with it. I’d really rather it doesn’t come to that, so I need advice.
How should I proceed from here? Would it be unethical to use AI to just do the coding and correct it here and there with what little coding knowledge I have? What should I do to get this game done?
Edit/PS: I could spend the years it would take for me to learn coding, but that’s not my end goal. I want to be a game artist and learning to code seems like it would be a distraction from that. Is it wrong to think that way?
You must log in or # to comment.
This might be overkill for your project but you already have the hard part of making a game in unreal figured out. You can model and animate. You can get really really far in Unreal without coding at all, just by using Blueprints(visual scripting). Look into making a game in Unreal Engine with Blueprints only.
honestly, my objections to ai code is less about ethics, and more about it being shit code that needs a fair bit of finesse from someone who knows what they’re doing to get something actually usable. for your use case, it might work, and you have my permission as a random stranger to give it a shot. (but i hope you find a coder to work with cause i think it would result in a much better game for you).
That’s kind of the big issue when starting out, finding like-minded people that are willing to work with you. Your best hope is to try again to find somebody that’s at your level and wants to help with the game. If you have any local gamedev community, even if it’s just your country, I’d highly recommend looking there as opposed to random people online because (in my experience) people tend to be more serious in smaller communities, especially if you can meet up IRL.
I don’t think anybody really cares if you use AI for your free hobby projects. The problem is that AI is really bad at gamedev, so you’ll suffer a fair bit with broken code and not knowing how to tie everything together in the game engine.
I want to be a game artist and learning to code seems like it would be a distraction from that. Is it wrong to think that way?
Not at all. Not everybody wants to be a solo indie dev that’s trying to be good at everything, most people I know are either just a programmer or just an artist. Get good at what you do and try your best to find a teammate you can trust who’s also serious about it.
It sounds to me like you’re looking for someone to give you permission to use AI code generation. If that’s the case, then here you go:
I, Entwine, a professional software engineer, decree that DesertCryptid shall have permission to utilize any Artificial Intelligence product to generate code for his game starting today, and until we reach AGI (at which point my decree will hold no weight).
Anyone who disagrees with my decree shall have to face me in a code review (to the death)
Do you have art samples and a spec for what you want to build? If it’s small enough / straightforward enough that the code can be knocked out in a weekend, someone here might be interested in taking it on…
I can link the game design doc I put together a while ago. I can also link my demo reel which shows a bit of the game in it. Game design doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fop7yNvhnxam-apBTn6JviC3xLA5DA5h-kDE7GqtEQM/edit?usp=drivesdk
Demo reel (the game can be seen in the clips marked CH 05):https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TGbW56UFDTaohnO8qBodsnDhvxR03xQZ/view?usp=drivesdk
This looks bigger than a weekend project, but doesn’t seem insanely huge. I think there’s probably a fair bit of complexity hiding in those enemy interactions though…
Looking at the demo reel, the wire mesh walls could be problematic – is the flashlight supposed to be noticeable by enemies through the mesh? Can the enemies path to the player? Getting that to feel right could be tricky.
How exactly are the enemies supposed to move around the map? Also, are there only one of each of the four types, or are there multiple instances? (Is getting past each one its own self-contained encounter?) Do you have the whole thing essentially mapped out already (e.g. from whatever you made for your demo reel) or is the real level design TODO?
Another thought that came to mind looking at your GDD is that you’re missing sound effects for things like ball hitting (various materials), and footsteps on (various materials) that you’ll likely want to have.
I don’t think I’m the right person to take it on – you probably want someone with more, uh, mainstream 3D engine experience. I am curious what you used to produce the demo reel though.
the gdd makes it sound simple enough since you mostly just need simple bots to nav around and a small amount of scripting, hopefully someone here would be kind enough to take a look at it for you (or reccomend some addons for which ever engine youre using)
In my opinion, for your situation, AI is not going to help if you don’t know enough programming ALREADY, what is probably going to happen is that you’re going to achieve a certain progress and then get stuck.
I suggest you take a look at no code/low code solutions since your game does sound not too hard to make.
Take a look at rpg maker and construct 3
You’ll be able to use AI for the scripting you’ll need.
I had a friend use rpg maker with success in the first years of high school, before “the internet” was available, and he knew nothing about programming (he’s now a doctor)
Disregard ethics for a second. I would argue it is much more unethical to use AI generated art in a game than it would be to use AI generated code. Here’s why:
AI art steals the role of artists because it uses algorithms to produce a product that has never existed before, like an artist does with colors instead of math.
AI code isn’t great. That’s why so many experienced coders are being hired to come fix the nightmare code that companies used AI to generate after firing all their coders. But that’s because AI only knows how to put together code that has already existed, which means all an AI is really doing is interpreting your input and producing an output - just like you would do if you thought of what you wanted your code to do, spent countless hours pouring through search results, forums, textbooks, etc., slapping some shit together, and running it through a validator. Most applications have validators built into the workspace, meaning if you write something that doesn’t work or make sense, it’s going to tell you (and probably even tell you how to fix it). So, just think of AI as a slightly smarter validator. You write some really bad code (what you want the code to do in English) and the validator goes “this English code makes no sense, here’s what it should look like.”
There’s no guarantee the “corrections” it makes will actually work, fit into the code you already have, be organized in the most efficient way, or be the best way to handle that particular task. But, a huge chunk of a coder’s time is thinking about things like that anyway. So let the AI fix your English code into whatever language you’re actually trying to speak, and you deal with the other half: is this how I want it to work?
But that’s just me. 🤷🏻
Edit: If after all that you’re still not feeling very ethical, then show a coder your product and see if they’ll use their brain’s LLM to validate better code.
