Is AI the future of Indie RPGs?

[Viata]

I'm sick of AI art

Never was into it, anyway. I have no interest in AI doing fun stuff. To each their own.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I’m also getting weary and believe many KS projects are using AI art and it fooled me. I’m talking mostly pnp art though and not gaming art on console/computer. I’m sure that is happening as well.

The asset stores that use it/allow it predictably are overflowing with garbage.

I think it is a recognised issue now. Enough that there will soon be filters in n most services to filter out this kind of thing.

It does beg the question if anyone has made money out of all this. Its flopped pretty hard but the tech corps aren't quite ready to give it up yet.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

To whit: the Church of Flesh uses meat as the basis for their architecture and infrastructure... but its adherents are vegans.

Sounds like it was written by NovelAI. They have a problem with habitual contradictions in their models. There are also misspellings, indicating that the user is either using a lower-tier AI or is making edits himself.

The art looks pretty decent though. Compare it to games of this style 30 years ago. And those games required a whole team to make, not just one guy with some free time.

Pull the stick out of your ass, dude.

Let that sink in for a moment.

If you insist.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I’m also getting weary and believe many KS projects are using AI art and it fooled me. I’m talking mostly pnp art though and not gaming art on console/computer. I’m sure that is happening as well.

Most Kickstarter art is already thrown together by hacks who use shortcuts like Photobashing (i.e., grabbing parts of real images and either painting over them or altering them slightly).

In the end, all that should matter is the quality of the product, not how it was made. If you don't like the art or writing of a project, don't buy it.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

To whit: the Church of Flesh uses meat as the basis for their architecture and infrastructure... but its adherents are vegans

Sounds like the writer is woke and couldn't stop himself from preaching, even when it doesn't make sense (especially when it doesn't).

The fact that the heroine is an attractive woman makes me suspect otherwise.

There's tons of other problems in the writing. The Church of Flesh champions individualism and chaos as values, yet has a hierarchical structure. Most of humanity joined it because "humans are naturally individualistic."

I’m also getting weary and believe many KS projects are using AI art and it fooled me. I’m talking mostly pnp art though and not gaming art on console/computer. I’m sure that is happening as well.

I've gotten very good at spotting it but I'm also paranoid now and getting lots of what are probably false positives tho. But in general AI art is easy to spot if you're looking because it doesn't do fine detail well, or really anything having to do with basic composition that all artists learn as part of the craft and internalize into their muscle memory.

Where AI art gets difficult to discern is when it is trying to replicate people, since that's where all the effort on training it goes, naturally. When it comes to creating attractive people, it's actually pretty good. Nowadays you have to look very closely at the details of their anatomy to see the flaws.

I'm now seeing clickbait being made on known topics and the giveaway is that the images are off model. I recently saw a video on captain marvel brie larson, but the thumbnail immediately gave it away because the AI generated face clearly wasn't brie larson.

To whit: the Church of Flesh uses meat as the basis for their architecture and infrastructure... but its adherents are vegans.

Sounds like it was written by NovelAI. They have a problem with habitual contradictions in their models. There are also misspellings, indicating that the user is either using a lower-tier AI or is making edits himself.

The art looks pretty decent though. Compare it to games of this style 30 years ago. And those games required a whole team to make, not just one guy with some free time.

Pull the stick out of your ass, dude.

Pull that techbro dick out of your mouth, dude.

I’m also getting weary and believe many KS projects are using AI art and it fooled me. I’m talking mostly pnp art though and not gaming art on console/computer. I’m sure that is happening as well.

Most Kickstarter art is already thrown together by hacks who use shortcuts like Photobashing (i.e., grabbing parts of real images and either painting over them or altering them slightly).

In the end, all that should matter is the quality of the product, not how it was made. If you don't like the art or writing of a project, don't buy it.

Yeah, AI was made precisely for that kind of low quality lack of effort. It has consistently lowered quality across the board.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Pull that techbro dick out of your mouth, dude.

Man, you are one angry faggot.

Guy makes a game and here you are shitting yourself because of muh writing or muh geometry. Just don't buy it, dumbass.

Yeah, AI was made precisely for that kind of low quality lack of effort. It has consistently lowered quality across the board.

Because quality was soooo high before. Because people weren't shitting out RPGMaker trash 24/7 and getting ignored.

Just. Don't. Buy. It.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Here's the guy's game btw. https://tim-rachor.itch.io/zarathustra

OH NOOOOO! THE HECKING GEOMETRY IN THIS FREE GAME! I'M HAVING AN ASTHMA ATTACK! ITS DECLINING MUH QUALITY!


https://kwatsu.itch.io/dreamscape-highschool-remastered

Phew! That's better! Look at this beautiful hand-drawn art!

This is what the elites want to steal from us with their technococks!

 

[quaesta]

Here's the guy's game btw. https://tim-rachor.itch.io/zarathustra

OH NOOOOO! THE HECKING GEOMETRY IN THIS FREE GAME! I'M HAVING AN ASTHMA ATTACK! ITS DECLINING MUH QUALITY!


https://kwatsu.itch.io/dreamscape-highschool-remastered

Phew! That's better! Look at this beautiful hand-drawn art!

This is what the elites want to steal from us with their technococks!

You say this as a joke but god damn I love high-effort shit art. It's so bad but it's good kind of tone, and I appreciate the bumps for it.

 

[Rincewind]

OH NOOOOO! THE HECKING GEOMETRY IN THIS FREE GAME! I'M HAVING AN ASTHMA ATTACK! ITS DECLINING MUH QUALITY!

Did you miss the memo that this site is 90% populated by entitled neckbeard types? That's the "gamer" variant of armchair-philosophers...

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

You say this as a joke but god damn I love high-effort shit art. It's so bad but it's good kind of tone, and I appreciate the bumps for it.

Except it's not high-effort. The guy probably traced it by the look of it. It's cobbled together junk that he's charging money for. That's a lot worse than some free AI game to me.

But again, I can just not buy it, so it doesn't really bug me.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

You say this as a joke but god damn I love high-effort shit art. It's so bad but it's good kind of tone, and I appreciate the bumps for it.

Except it's not high-effort. The guy probably traced it by the look of it. It's cobbled together junk that he's charging money for. That's a lot worse than some free AI game to me.

But again, I can just not buy it, so it doesn't really bug me.

That you cannot buy it does not make it any less irritating.

 

[ProphetSword]

I try to use AI not for the future of games, but for updating the past. Like this updated artwork I'm working on for Champions of Krynn...

I'm hoping some genius out there can use their skills to inject images like this in place of the pixelated EGA artwork so that we can get more people interested in these classics.

A guy can dream, I guess.

AI did that? Did you animate them and put them in FRUA or ICEBLINK engine or similar?

These are being made specifically for Dungeon Craft and FRUA. If people want to use them for IceBlink, I can make them available, but no one has asked about it yet.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Not an rpg, but not inappropriate to mention here. There is this 80s/90s nostalgia English visual novel called The Lost Delinquents of Rollings High that is in development since 2020.


Had a successful kickstarter in 2022. (Full disclosure, I’m a sucker for retrowave and backed it. So I have a stake in this.)

The creator, alias “Martin Jago“, admitted in Jan and Feb 2023 on Twitter to using AI tools in the concept process to compensate for his limited drawing skills and low budget. It said so on the itch.io page too.

In Aug 2023 the artists and voice actors he hired with kickstarter money left the project in protest because they don’t want their work to be fed into AI. The artist claimed Jago lied about using AI to edit sprites.

Kickstarter and Steam, the platforms Jago uses, have both instituted anti-AI policies since. No clue how this will impact the game now.

After these allegations came to light, Jago made a statement in Aug 2023 that he was taking a break from social media for a week and would return with a new demo. He said not to listen to detractors. As of this writing, he hasn’t made a peep since. 4 months of radio silence, no indication that “Martin Jago” is even still alive.

Who in this situation is in the wrong? The sprite artists, voice actors, and platforms for being against the inevitable AI future? Jago for using AI instead of developing his own drawing skills that he actually has? The kickstarter backers for believing his ridiculously ambitious promises that he obviously wouldn’t be able to keep on that budget?

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

In Aug 2023 the artists and voice actors he hired with kickstarter money left the project in protest because they don’t want their work to be fed into AI.

That's retarded. Editing with AI is like Photoshop editing. It *is* Photoshop editing now that Photoshop includes a multiple AI features.

I doubt the guy was "feeding" anything they made into an AI to replicate it or anything. And even if he was, a) he paid for it and b) AIs aren't advanced enough to replicate this (very generic) art exactly anyway. And what does the art have to do with the voices?

Your Chinese girl game was the victim of politics, not AI.

Who in this situation is in the wrong? The sprite artists, voice actors, and platforms for being against the inevitable AI future?

Yes.

Also, the platforms aren't against AI. They're just siding with companies like Adobe, who can train their own AIs from stock photos.

Photoshop has an AI feature that the Steam is fine with and that guarantees licensing.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Some guy made a simple adventure game using all AI-generated assets:


It's about as ugly and unergonomic as you would expect. The basic geometry is atrocious and even what are supposed to be hideous amalgamations of flesh look mediocre somehow. The writing is probably the only thing that wasn't written by AI, but boy it sounds like it was written by an AI because the setting it sets up sounds completely nonsensical. To whit: the Church of Flesh uses meat as the basis for their architecture and infrastructure... but its adherents are vegans. Let that sink in for a moment. If the worldbuilding is intentionally stupid and meant to be a commentary on human stupidity, then kudos to the creator. But somehow I doubt that's the case.

I think that the game is kinda impressive at least from a technical position. But thats mainly because I find the idea of AI very fascinating and its impressive to see how far the technology has developed in a couple of years

But then I find very boring topics like Technology Development and Politics interesting

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Some guy made a simple adventure game using all AI-generated assets:


It's about as ugly and unergonomic as you would expect. The basic geometry is atrocious and even what are supposed to be hideous amalgamations of flesh look mediocre somehow. The writing is probably the only thing that wasn't written by AI, but boy it sounds like it was written by an AI because the setting it sets up sounds completely nonsensical. To whit: the Church of Flesh uses meat as the basis for their architecture and infrastructure... but its adherents are vegans. Let that sink in for a moment. If the worldbuilding is intentionally stupid and meant to be a commentary on human stupidity, then kudos to the creator. But somehow I doubt that's the case.

I think that the game is kinda impressive at least from a technical position. But thats mainly because I find the idea of AI very fascinating and its impressive to see how far the technology has developed in a couple of years

But then I find very boring topics like Technology Development and Politics interesting

I did some research on the dev. He’s done several games before without AI, so this is a sudden switch. I suspect he’s using AI assets and writing as some kind of artistic statement in itself.

I find tech and politics more depressing than anything. Reading the news just reinforces my misanthropy.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Some guy made a simple adventure game using all AI-generated assets:


It's about as ugly and unergonomic as you would expect. The basic geometry is atrocious and even what are supposed to be hideous amalgamations of flesh look mediocre somehow. The writing is probably the only thing that wasn't written by AI, but boy it sounds like it was written by an AI because the setting it sets up sounds completely nonsensical. To whit: the Church of Flesh uses meat as the basis for their architecture and infrastructure... but its adherents are vegans. Let that sink in for a moment. If the worldbuilding is intentionally stupid and meant to be a commentary on human stupidity, then kudos to the creator. But somehow I doubt that's the case.

I think that the game is kinda impressive at least from a technical position. But thats mainly because I find the idea of AI very fascinating and its impressive to see how far the technology has developed in a couple of years

But then I find very boring topics like Technology Development and Politics interesting

I did some research on the dev. He’s done several games before without AI, so this is a sudden switch. I suspect he’s using AI assets and writing as some kind of artistic statement in itself.

I find tech and politics more depressing than anything. Reading the news just reinforces my misanthropy.

Artistic Statement? So I guess he's trying to like me advocate for perhaps the democratization of the arts?

I know a fancy statement

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Ok. Time for AI to try and write Lunar 3.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Ok. Time for AI to try and write Lunar 3.

I'm assuming you mean the unreleased third installment of the Lunar Series,

The Lunar 3 Dream Ends;​

Or am I thinking of a different game here?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

With Lunar 2 characters? My Lunar discord pals will scrutinize this.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

With Lunar 2 characters? My Lunar discord pals will scrutinize this.

I just went off this article https://neverendingrealm.com/opinion/throwback-bit-thursday-the-lunar-3-dream-ends/ I've never personally played the games

 

[puur prutswerk]

It dies in a socaity.

 

[Tim Rachor]

Hi everyone, I found this discussion very interesting and thought I'd chime in.
I'm the developer of Zarathustra, the game discussed here and thought I could shed some light on the discussion.

First of all: No I'm not vegan and not pushing any woke agenda. XD
The idea the the members of the Church of Flesh are vegan is simple: they worship the Flesh, so they don't eat it. But it's only a single short remark in the game, so I wouldn't read too much into it.

For why I made the game with AI:
No it's not meant as a statement, but I did intend to spur up some discussion because it's a topic I'm personally very interested in and still quite undecided on many aspects of it. (Thus the game is free)
As you've already seen my former games were all made without AI, but also without Pixel Art... because I'm unfortunately really bad at that.
I've written a story and build this world around a few topics I found very intriguing and I'm a huuuge fan of retro point and click adventures, so I wanted to tell the story as an episodic game for years now. But I've never seen the possibility to achieve that dream, as I have a full time job and the risk to spend money and hire an artist is really too high for me. Especially for such a niche game.

When we did some experimentation with AI at my company I've played around with pixel art images and Dall E 3 netted results that I've found acceptable to tell the story I wanted to tell. After another month or so of experimentation to see if I could turn the story into an adventure and generate the necessary locations for it I started working on the project.
I know my way of story-telling is not for everyone and it is objectively lacking... I'm not a professional author and most of my games are more gameplay focused. But still I've got ton of positive feedback from people who love the world-building and characters... and that means the world to me, more than money ever could!

Will I use AI in future projects? Probably not for the time being, especially as Steam doesn't allow AI content on their platform anyway. I would love the artists which work had ben monetized without their consent to be compensated, but I feel like technology is (again) moving faster than ethics here.

 

[Krice]

One thing where AI could be useful is upscaling pixel art... It would be great, because when you make a decision to upscale something like tile graphics it's not going to be easy to do, since upscaling algorithms are not smart, they can't add details etc.

 

[Socrates]

I regularly work with "AI" due to my occupation, mostly in the vein of machine learning. It's mostly marketing even for the top shelf products and their capabilities are frequently overblown. I do see graphics and art being really the first practical foray for AI directed game design in general. Anything else is likely way off even for massive studio budgets. I do see a path forward for emergent gaming options in terms of questing and reactive dialogue but the sheer cost of investment to develop something like that for a title would be astronomically expensive and time intensive.

Unfortunately, my cynical side tells me it will largely be the new version of the unity asset flip style game scam that's been rearing it's ugly head for about the last decade or so. Flipped content will just be transformed into, "AI director wants you to kill generic npc at X-Y coordinate" copy and pasted 1,000 times with insignificant variation.