Is AI the future of Indie RPGs?

[anvi]

Almost lol

 

[Aghoric Visions]

Its a nifty tool for those with no artistic talent, and perhaps a seemingly stable stepping stone. The mainstream will certainly abuse it to churn out more groomer propaganda, but that leaves the market wide open for us actual humans to fill the void with genuine content.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I just looked at a pnp ruleset and I'm damn sure it is ai generated.

Takes From the Loop.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

One day, Todd Howard promised Radiant AI™, and GPT-4 actually coded it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

how do you know it isn't Todd in the machine?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The future of Todd Howard is as a cybernetic being:

 

[v1c70r14]

Its a nifty tool for those with no artistic talent

I keep reading this online but I don't think it's true and the two types of people that say this are either butthurt artists or clueless people who think artists are magicians. It's a tool that can be used by professional artists and those with more modest talents alike to supercharge their workflow, but those entirely without it will never produce anything all that great or even good with it. Most artists don't draw things freehand, or without reference. Comics were often just photobashing a page from an adult magazine or a lingerie ad together with a bunch of other photo and print material collected from whatever physical sources they had at hand which are then either copied or traced over. Concept artists already used the img2img workflow before AI was even a thing, they just did things manually, and I've seen art like this end up in the final game.



When Victor Pflug overshared about how the video game art sausage was made and people were disappointed the game art didn't spring directly from his creative genius but WW1 photos and stuff like that he responded with that actually making collages and twisting them around slightly is a high art form. No idea what his stance on AI is but it'd be hypocritical to be against it when it's just the same thing but slicker.

That whole art debate aside, knowing what is actually behind the artist kayfabe since camera obscuras were invented, you can see how untrue it is that nothing is required by the user just by looking at the latest post in this thread. Anyone can type in "Todd Howard as a cybernetic guy" into their model of choice but it's not going to be aesthetically pleasing. In fact, it might not look very cyborgy at all. But if you know precisely what you are after you can use AI in a tons of different ways in your process. You could photobash something together in photoshop, use img2img to let a model turn it more coherent, keep regenerating the parts you're not happy with. And it doesn't have to end there, you could trace over it, keep working on it in a digital painting program, turn it into pixel art Pflug style.

The reason so much AI art sucks isn't because the models are bad, it's because the people using them are. You could use it to generate a pulp cover for your fiction, drawing up a sketch for it to use and using the precisely right parameters, then refining the image in different ways until it is just right and fits what you had in mind writing the piece. Or you could just type in "super duper cool monster fighting giant monkey, artstation, funko pop, 4k, behance" and get the absolute shit your taste, knowledge and skill has earned you.

Meanwhile, I'm not that great at painting or drawing, but this is what even a little interest in different art forms gives you despite Microsoft's version lacking regeneration tools and img2img and me investing the bare minimum of time and effort...

What a passing interest in film gives you.

Architecture and photography

Comics

General illustration

Cybernetic Todd Howard didn't need to look like crap and I don't think the tools can be blamed for it. Sorry Zed, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just illustrating my point. For some people it ends with the kind of stuff I posted, and it might be good enough for their purposes, but it doesn't need to end there and the guys and girls that can improve results like these are the ones that can benefit the most from them.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I will say a lot of the city art is relatively dark and creepy. I'm guessing these generators are better thsn the one i used months back. In fact, ig only let you create about 20 images total and thrn demands payment. Yeah, fuck that.

 

[Egosphere]

I find that artwork in 3d isn't that important since there are so many assets used nowadays, like quixel type stuff, that deploying AI in triple A games might not even make much of a difference. I guess it can give you free textures, which might save you some $. For 2d games, yes, anyone can be much more productive with AI. Generating the art wholecloth is probably overkill, but generating images which you then manipulate in photoshop, throw a few filters on top and voila, you can have some decent, cohesive art for your game.

Writing might happen as well, but I think AI writing will never be Avellone or Kirkbride tier, for the simple reason that the dataset is mostly average writing. But triple A stuff today already feels greatly worn, automated etc. The mind that steers the AI is still the one that makes the final call on what appears in the final product. So I don't expect there to be some sort of revolutionary change in the industry.

The coolest AI thing I've seen is the voice generation. That is awesome. So far it's text to speech, but if they make a speech to speech algorithm, then anyone with a knack for expressive speech would be able to single handedly VA dozens of characters in his game. As such, I think there's a silver lining to everything. Small teams have a lot more options to play around with.

 

[Egosphere]

I do know there were research papers that could turn photos into 3d objs, that is obviating the need of scanning with LIDAR. That is also an interesting prospect. However, the geometry of such models is bad, and it seems that progress in automated retopology has not progressed much over the years.

 

[Egosphere]

Its a nifty tool for those with no artistic talent, and perhaps a seemingly stable stepping stone. The mainstream will certainly abuse it to churn out more groomer propaganda, but that leaves the market wide open for us actual humans to fill the void with genuine content.

I wonder how long it will be before a small studio of no more than 10 people is capable of making a TES style open world RPG. A spiritual successor to morrowind, but with the graphical fidelity of a mid 2020s game.

 

[anvi]

^ TES is so bad that some indie games are already close. But I wonder if indie companies will be able to have a good AI. I suspect the big companies like MS/Bethesda will be the only ones who have the good AIs.

 

[Egosphere]

^ TES is so bad that some indie games are already close. But I wonder if indie companies will be able to have a good AI. I suspect the big companies like MS/Bethesda will be the only ones who have the good AIs.

I meant just leveraging AI in crafting and population a substantial 3d world. Afaik indie games don't yet have the full 3d aspect nailed down, although Skyrim isn't a particularly high bar to clear. AI for enemies is also an interesting prospect, but it feels like we've gone backwards over the years in that respect. GOAP implementation in FEAR already worked really well, and that was back in 05. The ceiling for complex behaviour in shooters has probably already been somewhat skirted. Even without heavy models running, some modern games (like ARMA 3) struggle to implement enemy behaviour - they respond, but not quickly enough to feel smart. You need to artificially limit your own pace in order to give the game a chance to come up with a plan.

It would be cool to see a very complex AI in a first person/third person RPG where the enemy can avail of the environment.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Backrooms AI.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

Its a nifty tool for those with no artistic talent

I keep reading this online but I don't think it's true and the two types of people that say this are either butthurt artists or clueless people who think artists are magicians. It's a tool that can be used by professional artists and those with more modest talents alike to supercharge their workflow, but those entirely without it will never produce anything all that great or even good with it. Most artists don't draw things freehand, or without reference. Comics were often just photobashing a page from an adult magazine or a lingerie ad together with a bunch of other photo and print material collected from whatever physical sources they had at hand which are then either copied or traced over. Concept artists already used the img2img workflow before AI was even a thing, they just did things manually, and I've seen art like this end up in the final game.



When Victor Pflug overshared about how the video game art sausage was made and people were disappointed the game art didn't spring directly from his creative genius but WW1 photos and stuff like that he responded with that actually making collages and twisting them around slightly is a high art form. No idea what his stance on AI is but it'd be hypocritical to be against it when it's just the same thing but slicker.

That whole art debate aside, knowing what is actually behind the artist kayfabe since camera obscuras were invented, you can see how untrue it is that nothing is required by the user just by looking at the latest post in this thread. Anyone can type in "Todd Howard as a cybernetic guy" into their model of choice but it's not going to be aesthetically pleasing. In fact, it might not look very cyborgy at all. But if you know precisely what you are after you can use AI in a tons of different ways in your process. You could photobash something together in photoshop, use img2img to let a model turn it more coherent, keep regenerating the parts you're not happy with. And it doesn't have to end there, you could trace over it, keep working on it in a digital painting program, turn it into pixel art Pflug style.

The reason so much AI art sucks isn't because the models are bad, it's because the people using them are. You could use it to generate a pulp cover for your fiction, drawing up a sketch for it to use and using the precisely right parameters, then refining the image in different ways until it is just right and fits what you had in mind writing the piece. Or you could just type in "super duper cool monster fighting giant monkey, artstation, funko pop, 4k, behance" and get the absolute shit your taste, knowledge and skill has earned you.

Meanwhile, I'm not that great at painting or drawing, but this is what even a little interest in different art forms gives you despite Microsoft's version lacking regeneration tools and img2img and me investing the bare minimum of time and effort...

What a passing interest in film gives you.

Architecture and photography

Comics

General illustration

Cybernetic Todd Howard didn't need to look like crap and I don't think the tools can be blamed for it. Sorry Zed, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just illustrating my point. For some people it ends with the kind of stuff I posted, and it might be good enough for their purposes, but it doesn't need to end there and the guys and girls that can improve results like these are the ones that can benefit the most from them.

Yet it cant even generate simple moderately quality/consistent assets for my game. I grow very tired of the whole "you havent got the prompt right" or "anytime soon" arguments that the proompter enthusiasts keep regurgitating over and over. Its capacity to me appear to be incredibly limited, that is to say, I have no doubt it will be widely employed to make rubbish - but beyond that the uses are limited.

 

[v1c70r14]

Yet it cant even generate simple moderately quality/consistent assets for my game.

My thesis is that it's worthless in the hands of people that suck. Either you just plain suck, or you're trying to use it outside a good use-case, which means you suck, or you don't integrate it into a larger process, which still means you suck. AI can produce assets for a pipeline just fine, and despite not investing much time into it I can generate consistent results and others with more tools can generate different angle renditions of the same character or item. Need textures for your project? It can do that. Need promotional art or still images? It can do that too. Enemies or wall art for your dungeon crawler, an art pass over your isometric pre-rendered backgrounds? Got it. What it won't do is to make you suck less.

 

[v1c70r14]

The coolest AI thing I've seen is the voice generation. That is awesome. So far it's text to speech, but if they make a speech to speech algorithm

Isn't that already a thing?

 

[Monk]

"Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior"

Figure 1: Generative agents create believable simulacra of human behavior for interactive applications. In this work, we demon-
strate generative agents by populating a sandbox environment, reminiscent of The Sims, with twenty-five agents. Users can
observe and intervene as agents they plan their days, share news, form relationships, and coordinate group activities.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03442.pdf

 

[Monk]

https://play.aidungeon.io/main/home

 

[Egosphere]

The coolest AI thing I've seen is the voice generation. That is awesome. So far it's text to speech, but if they make a speech to speech algorithm

Isn't that already a thing?

It is but I don't think it has what text to speech has in the form of ElevenLabs. As of yet it's most likely confined to people setting up the models on their own hardware.

 

[v1c70r14]

The coolest AI thing I've seen is the voice generation. That is awesome. So far it's text to speech, but if they make a speech to speech algorithm

Isn't that already a thing?

It is but I don't think it has what text to speech has in the form of ElevenLabs. As of yet it's most likely confined to people setting up the models on their own hardware.

I've seen one or two services, it's still early in development and not nearly as impressive as something that you can make with ElevenLabs tech, but it is working.

 

[Egosphere]

The coolest AI thing I've seen is the voice generation. That is awesome. So far it's text to speech, but if they make a speech to speech algorithm

Isn't that already a thing?

It is but I don't think it has what text to speech has in the form of ElevenLabs. As of yet it's most likely confined to people setting up the models on their own hardware.

I've seen one or two services, it's still early in development and not nearly as impressive as something that you an make with ElevenLabs tech, but it is working.

there's going to be a lot of scams involved with people altering their voices to sound like the victim's relative, or some other such nonsense
but cool to see nonetheless

 

[Tweed]

AI is the future of character portraits:

Now if we just generate EGA style animated 8-bit we'll be halfway towards a Wasteland clone.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Digimon digital Mobsters. (Rat a tat a tat tat tat)

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Yet it cant even generate simple moderately quality/consistent assets for my game.

It can, you're just too lazy and stubborn to try to train a model and/or lora to do it.

My thesis is that it's worthless in the hands of people that suck. Either you just plain suck, or you're trying to use it outside a good use-case, which means you suck, or you don't integrate it into a larger process, which still means you suck. AI can produce assets for a pipeline just fine, and despite not investing much time into it I can generate consistent results and others with more tools can generate different angle renditions of the same character or item. Need textures for your project? It can do that. Need promotional art or still images? It can do that too. Enemies or wall art for your dungeon crawler, an art pass over your isometric pre-rendered backgrounds? Got it. What it won't do is to make you suck less.

In this case, he's exclusively talking about things like creating an interface or creating isometric tilesets.

His standard is also that it should be instantly useable without any work on his part to clean it up, or incorporate it into his design process.

In other words, he's not actually looking to use AI and is just trying to set a high standard that he feels is impossible so that he doesn't feel threatened as a programmer/amateur graphics designer.

Actual artists are already using AI in their creative processes. People, including myself (a non-artist), have used AI to create content for games, books, videos, internet ads etc.

But this guy is still in every AI thread on the site gaslighting himself that it's all a nothingburger. Sad.