A retro game designer(BASIC) made many, many games...

Started by round157, January 23, 2025, 03:04:29

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round157


Derron

I cannot stand such things there: AI based "logos" and then the screenshots. Judge the logos and you see how many "efforts" are put into checking what .. is used.

games.jpg
... I mean ... using AI to generate assets is surely a way to go for many - but why isn't he using them to polish the ingame screens? This way it simply looks like "cheating" the people.

The logos (on first glance) look really good (but pay attention to the upper dice in towers and tumbles). You just need to create a similar background without the logo (or create a background and a transparent logo to put on top) this way you could use it as background for your static looking board games.
There is potential in this AI stuff (if you have time and patience for creating halfly consistent assets - albeit surely AI models exist for exact this thing ...).

You could spit out a lot of games with not too bad looking visuals ... but here .... argh ... why?


bye
Ron

round157

Quote from: Derron on January 23, 2025, 07:25:38I cannot stand such things there: AI based "logos" and then the screenshots. Judge the logos and you see how many "efforts" are put into checking what .. is used.
... I mean ... using AI to generate assets is surely a way to go for many - but why isn't he using them to polish the ingame screens? This way it simply looks like "cheating" the people.


Good points!
:)


Xerra

What is telling you the guy is using AI for his logo's and stuff, Ron?

All I see is a guy who's made a lot of games. A lot more than I have.

Personally, I don't have a problem with using AI for stuff such as loading screens or logo's. Not all of us have the talent to do this ourselves, or the cash to pay someone else to do it instead. We want to make games and are hampered by the demand that everything needs to look amazing or people won't even look twice at our work.

A lot of coders out there who take the time to turn out game after game yet won't share them because they're worried that people will be critical about their efforts because they are using basic pixel art because it's the extent of their abilities.

Or they get accused of using AI and being lazy, which can be complete rubbish.

I wish I was as motivated enough to turn out as many games as this guy has done. Fair play to him.

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Steve Elliott

It reminds me of the 80's cover art on those old ZX Spectrum games. Amazing art that sparked the imagination. The graphics at that time could not possibly be as good as the cover art, but it gave us a glimpse of what the game was about - and our imagination filled in the blanks! This was a good thing.

Today with the incredibly powerful machines we have I don't think that's acceptable, and feels it like you're kinda conning people. Because if you have the talent or can get somebody with the talent in art then the screenshot and cover art should be the same. If you're producing coder art then be honest and not get your AI Artist to grab attention, only for people to be disappointed.

For me gameplay will always be the most important part of a game, sometimes I've thought hmm graphics aren't the best, but the gameplay was really good! This guy has been very productive - which is fantastic. I haven't yet played any of his games so cannot comment on gameplay. Although, is he the kind of guy that knocks out game after game without any gameplay or polish? Then that would mean a soulless experience for gamers. More polish and better images would be better IMO,  and above all gameplay - just don't try and make out you've got a Nintendo quality game when it's more a proof of concept or very basic game...So I guess I agree with both of ya.  :D
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Xerra

The games of the 80's were hit and miss with their honesty, if we think about it. There were the ones that had really nice covers with amazing artwork, and the game would be an absolute pile of poo, and actually look it. Things improved massively when a standard was kind of adopted where you had a nice cover to attract you into looking closer at the box, and then you flipped it over so you could have a look at the actual in-game screenshots. 

Apart from the times when they showed screenshots from another platform and didn't tell you. But then us guys that knew computers could always tell what was Speccy compared to C64. Just look for the colour clashing :)

Who knows if this guy has AI created his itch.io screens to promote his games or not. But, like the rest of us, he's just one guy trying to get his games out there to be played, just like the rest of us. Not like he's charging people to play them either.
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Derron

What is telling me he is using AI for the "cover shots"? 

Did you even check the upper dice ... "oops AI did wrong" :D

Did you check his website logo? this is not a spelling error but AI doing it ... wrong as it tended to do a year ago (they improved a lot on this!)
logo.jpg


For me the most important (and this is what Steve pointed out already):
If you paid an artist (or have an artist friend at hand ... or are the artist yourself) then why do it only for a cover shot and not the rest of the game?
As he also pointed out: it is like these often very cool VHS-tape-covers 30-40 years ago ... way too often way better than the movies in it :)

Just imagine you see a movie cover with some fantastic scifi space battle, big ships etc ... and when you start the movie you see two hands holding some spaceship-done-with-24-lego-blocks and doing some "pew pewwww" sounds with his mouth, crashing the bricks into each other ... and movie ends. This is the feeling I get when judging "cover + ingame screenshots". It is as if they tried trolling me.


And this is why I also wrote: if you use AI to generate your cover art (...I think it is a useful resource if you do not have time/passion/skill/money to get the results differently) - why not use it for the game assets too?
Tiles for a match 3 game could surely be created from AI, same to say for decorative elements etc.

This is super doable with these kind of games which only have "cover + menu + single static ingame background screen + some assets")
 

But this is where that developer did not pay attention too: just a fancy looking cover art ... and then ... some unpolished "proof of concept" look in the game itself. It is disappointing for users, they won't even look at other games of them then (except the gameplay would be soooo intriguing right on the first glance that the "visual shock" isn't letting you do an instant-game-quit).


So to repeat it again: use AI to your advantage - and for games this means: do it where needed (so also ingame :D).

We could even discuss if we should try to do something similar (create an AI-asset based game) but with the risk of legal issues (you know that a lot of AI stuff could be based on existing work). Would possibly teach us a bit on how to use these tools to our advance (eg a tool to generate assets, another to remove backgrounds to use them as assets etc).


bye
Ron

Coder Apprentice

#7
Not commenting on this particular example of LARRYBTOYS with AI cover art, just in general about retro graphics.

Actually I like the charm of a nicely drawn, painted cover art and a "one pixel chasing another pixel" aesthetics combo. Why self limit ourselves how far we can go back in graphics fidelity? As long as the developer, publisher is clear about how the game looks and plays and that the beautiful cover art contrasting the primitive graphics is a design choice, I don't see this being an issue.

Xerra

The reason this guy has used AI for his cover art is because it's easy. You ever tried to use AI to generate game art such as sprites and background elements? It's useless. I've had a go and never had anything useful.

When I did ROTQ the end of last year, I was determined that not one asset (apart from the logo on the title screen and the game over screen which I did with Logomaker) was going to be used that I didn't draw myself. I absolutely suck at doing it but I'm trying more and more anyway because it's one of those things that anyone who makes games has got to at least try and get to a level of coder art, even without natural talent. If I could have used AI to generate even the simple images I created then, believe me, I would have.

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Xerra

To add to that, there's an argument that I could just pay someone to do graphics stuff for my games, but I don't charge anything for them so I'm just basically throwing money away. Have you seen how much artists charge to do game graphics as well, nowadays? As you are always having to change things when making a game, they tend to work by an hourly rate, and it's soul-destroying for your average guy who just likes making games and wants to get them noticed, rather than out to make money.
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Steve Elliott

I think it's more about setting people's expectations than lack of artistic talent.

But if you're not charging for a game then yes do your best and make the gameplay the priority instead.
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Dabz

I've toyed with images and stuff in AI, and I'm not a big fan, they tend to look, well, a bit greasy, and, over complicated in some way, even with simple stuff, there are elements in them that just make the image odd.

I dunno what it is about the stuff that it produces, but my eyes just are'nt keen.

Dabz
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Pfaber11

I asked AI how to make smoke in AGK Studio and it had a list of instructions on how to do
it using the particle emitter. All the tools are there in AGK Studio it's just a matter of reading through the commands every now and then. I don't like the particle editor much still it only cost me a few quid. I now know of the command particle emitter and this is what I shall use to make smoke and for explosions.    
Windows 11 home edition
PureBasic 6.20 and AppGameKit studio
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Pfaber11


how to make smoke in agk studio
Creating smoke effects in AppGameKit Studio can be a fun and rewarding process. Here's a basic outline to get you started:
  • Create a Particle Emitter: This will be the source of your smoke. You can customize the emitter's properties to control the appearance and behavior of the smoke particles.
  • Set Particle Properties: Adjust properties like size, color, and lifespan to achieve the desired smoke effect. You can also add randomness to these properties to make the smoke look more natural.
  • Update Particle Positions: In your game loop, update the positions of the particles based on their velocities. This will create the illusion of movement.
  • Render Particles: Draw the particles on the screen. You can use blending modes to make the smoke look more realistic.



Hey Santiago I know I've got your name a bit wrong apologies. 
Windows 11 home edition
PureBasic 6.20 and AppGameKit studio
ASUS Vivo book 15 16gb ram 256gb ssd
HP Desktop; AMD 3700 A10 16GB ram 2 GB graphics card windows 10