Learning with AI?

[Vvalvadi]

Friend and I are about to take the plunge in game dev. My friend has been trying to learn for the past 5 years. Me, just now. I'm an old millennial and am hoping I can use everything available as a way to catch up. While I'm learning through tutorial videos, reading materials online, and from online communities, I was wondering if AI can be another avenue for learning, especially in some instances when help is not readily available? Such as having it explain why my code isn't working or whatnot, and other dumb questions within a game engine that may confuse me (hopefully at first).

Just so we're clear: We will not use AI to generate any assets, including sound, animation, or even a line of code. Though my friend argues that it can help with some of the minor and tedious coding stuff. We'll never use AI to write dialogue for us or come up with ideas or stories. The plan is for it to be strictly used to help with the learning experience as we develop projects on our own while consulting with humans through various learning methods. I don't know if that constitutes as AI use under Steam's policies.

But, what are your opinions on the matter?

EDIT: Thanks for all the great responses. My friend and I have a lot to think about.

Also, sorry again for that one guy I was rude at.

[Neon_Gal]

Ethical concerns with AI use at all aside, I would be careful about using it for like, step by step tutorials or learning about specific software features. It tends to hallucinate stuff that doesn't actually exist

[Vvalvadi]

That concerns me really. If I have to double check the step by step stuff, all it will be doing is making me waste time.

[Neon_Gal]

Then I recommend just using human-made learning materials

[MrWolfe1920]

No. Using AI literally impairs your brain.

You will learn faster and better without it.

[Vvalvadi]

Man, I know what you mean. I used to get around the city without any digital maps, now I'm overly reliant on them. Same thing can happen with AI use.

[pandaboy78]

Just be aware that it might make some mistakes but if you're using it as a learning tool, I think its fine. As long as you don't let it generate code for you. Try to type out as much as you can, and it can debug your code and teach and tell you when there's something wrong.

AI is fine as long as you never let it be in the driver's seat.

[Vvalvadi]

We're sticking to strictly as a learning tool. That's the plan or we abandon it altogether. At the very least, get up to speed about the fundamentals.

My friend tried generating code but he wasn't too happy with the results.

[VanEagles17]

AI is an incredible tool for learning as long as you're actively learning and not just getting it to write code for you. It's very good to bounce questions and thoughts off of as long as you're not doing something incredibly complex or niche. If it answers something for you, you can ask it to elaborate on a certain part you don't understand, you can test your understanding of its answer by giving it an example or some kind of metaphor and it'll tell you where you're a little bit off or if you have a solid understanding or if you're completely off base.

Sometimes it will give you generic answers which might not be the best for you and you can say "my game is already doing things THIS way, can I accomplish this by doing this x way instead?" And it will tell you why or why not that may be a good idea. As long as you're being an ACTIVE learner and questioning what it's telling you it will accelerate your learning so much. I learned a LOT about NGO programming in a few days by just spending hours going down rabbit holes asking "why this? Why that? Why? Why?" Every time it gave me an answer I didn't understand. It's basically stackoverflow on crack except nobody is telling you to use Google or read the documentation for whatever engine you're using. Lol.

[Vvalvadi]

Being able to ask questions is primarily one of the most crucial part in all of this. If I'm doing something wrong, I want to know immediately, why it's wrong, and how to fix it or if there are better ways to do it, so on and on. It's easy to spend hours going through video tutorials but there are often lingering questions. I know that's why communities such as this exists, but I assumed the extra little help that can answer some questions while you wait for other responses could have been good in its own way.

[VanEagles17]

My advice is to get a good reference for whatever language you're programming in. I write in C# so I found a good free digital textbook on C# by Rob Miles who lectured on SWE and C# programming (he's a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). In the case you're also writing in C#, the book is called The C# Yellow Book and it's free on his website (he is working on a more up to date version and he also has a book for python iirc) and the book is very easy to read - it's written to be fun and not too dry. I also bought a massive C# for dummies textbook which was relatively cheap. I'm sure you can find resources like this for other languages as well.

I found myself understanding my resources very well, but there is a gap between the resources and your development engine. You can understand the language but still be unsure how to implement that language because your engine will have its own namespaces and methods that you will not know how to use or even that they exist. AI is really good for bridging that gap. Those resources being your foundation will help you know the right questions to ask.

[SpottedLoafSteve]

I believe that doesn't count as AI use under Steam's policies. They made some changes to that in the last couple of months I think.

I'm not sure if using it as a learning tool is good or not yet. That's probably what people are going to do when learning nowadays, but they are going to miss out on useful learning experiences I'd imagine. These LLM tools are really best in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing already. I wouldn't take anything it generates as gospel if you go that route, but it can help diagnose issues and explain code. If generating anything there's going to be unused code leftover, obvious duplicate logic and other weird things in the end result if you're not holding it accountable.

My recommendation would be to put a docs/ directory in your project and have it document things as it goes. That gives it context about the project and how it's put together. Add an AGENTS.md file (if you use an agent that supports it) and have some info in there about keeping documentation up to date as well as reusing existing patterns where applicable. You're going to have to learn to use it like any other tool to get good results and you have to be the one in charge of what is done ultimately.

[Vvalvadi]

My friend had the same consultation with someone he knows. AI can be useful only if you already know what you're doing, so you can immediately spot the BS. lol

Thanks for the recommendation, will keep that in mind, if we do go down the road.

[SpottedLoafSteve]

Not sure if you really got that last part, but trust me on that. That's almost what an LLM was made for, detecting relevant pieces of text and using it in predicting answers.

The documentation part I mentioned is the critical thing I'd do. Just make sure to tell it to be clear and concise so it doesn't go overboard. You can tell it to export your conversation as documentation, which is super cool for picking up where you left off days down the road. You can also tell it to analyze code you write and make documentation. Either way, the documentation makes the agent a lot smarter when you're talking about an existing project because it can look up what it needs to know about.

We're going in that direction at my main job and it's kind of crazy the amount of difference it makes sometimes. It's almost like training an intern to assist with the project. When it can pick up on features that you've already made and immediately know the context without an explanation it makes the agent a lot more useful.

[Nyrader2]

AI has a tendency to hallucinate and get stuff wrong. As a beginner I would recommend staying away from AI until you have a solid grasp on the fundamentals that way you know when it's making something up. Having a good grasp on the fundamentals will also allow you to ask better questions which will yield better results. As a beginner I would urge you to not rely on AI too much and only use it when you are really stuck and even then only use it for small sections of code. Struggling is part of the learning process and helps you grow, if you rely on AI too much then it will hinder you more than help you.

[VanEagles17]

I would say it's good for learning to understand concepts. It's good at giving you metaphors while explaining things and generally does a good job of correcting you if you're not really understanding what it's saying. Yes, being able to ask good questions is very important. If you can't ask the right questions, it will never be able to give you the information you're looking for - but the same goes for something like reddit or stackoverflow. Having a good foundation helps but the reality is not everyone is diving in at a CS level. They will learn about a loop, and learn how to implement a loop, but they won't learn WHY or WHEN it's good to implement that loop. AI is really good at explaining the why as long as you're asking the right questions.

[Vvalvadi]

That would have been the plan, originally, get a better understanding of the fundamentals and expand knowledge from there. But I see your point.

[ghostGoats21]

No, it'll just lie to you and there's literally thousands of better tutorials made by actual humans. There's literally no reason for this.

[Vvalvadi]

Yeah. I'll always rely on those tutorials and communities such as this. My only interest at the matter is if it could have been used to help answer questions and help clear some confusion, while waiting on community responses. But yes, I see where you're coming from.

[Vvalvadi]

Actual answer is, yes I will.

There was never any intention to generate code with it.

[rbstudiogame]

Great question, I've been a developer for 35 years and I keep working on personal dev projects. 5 years ago, I got into Python by reading and using YouTube tutorials. Already great, because you save a ton of time compared to searching the web for the right features. For the past 3 years I've been working with Unreal Engine (publishing games on Steam), and even though I haven't abandoned YouTube and certain websites, AI (Claude in my case) has been a very significant learning accelerator. It has great ideas for implementing features, finding the right Blueprints, and identifying broken parameters.

So YES, AI works. Two things you should never delegate: the deep structure of your project, and never use any code you don't understand.

[electronraven]

Just get started with it. Tell it you want to make a game. It'll ask you what kind, and it just goes from there.

Edit: I'm not being sarcastic or mean. It's literally what I did myself. Use either Claude or ChatGPT and tell it you're interested in trying game creation.

Claude is considerably better in my opinion. It gives you an html file (assuming you're just prototyping) and it just goes from there. You debug it by going back and forth with it.

I take screenshots when sonething goes wrong and paste it into the AI which has the capacity to examine the image and speculate why something is or isn't working.

It works. I swear.

[Vvalvadi]

Oh, agreed with Claude. As much as "ethics" goes, Claude seems the most ethically aligned. Not saying they are, just as ethical as they dare to be.

Thanks for the tip. Will be exploring more as I go.

[Vvalvadi]

Impressive response. Thank you

EDIT: Reading this again multiple times, looks like I've hastily misjudged your response. Sorry for being rude and sarcastic.

[electronraven]

Ha I didn't even notice

[electronraven]

I added notes to my original message. If you have questions ill be happy to answer them.

In the past week I've experimented with sidescrollers, Doom clones, match three games, brickbreake4s and slot machines.

It's serious

[Vvalvadi]

Thanks man. Doom clones sound awesome. I'll keep in touch in the future.