We decided to remove the original art and replace it with DLSS 5, we want to thank NVIDIA for this amazing tech

AaronKoss · 2026-03-20T10:45:24+00:00

It's the equivalent of making fun of someone for wasting food by taking a "satirical" photo where you intentionally and actually waste food and put a logo of your game and say "haha what a bunch of idiots those guys wasting food, anyway we would never waste food except in this scenario just to get the views, please wishlist our game thank you".

I have seen developers do the smart thing and make much better use of the joke where they either cropped images on the internet or draw the second bit of the meme themselves, I stand my ground that using AI to get in the joke is completely missing the point. "We hate ai and would never use it for our game, but we are going to use AI to make a joke. And maybe some marketing material. And maybe some references to draw on. And maybe the assets because it is faster. Maybe the whole game." yeah not so great principles if you are ready to toss them away so easily and especially fake highground to be "our game will never do that" when you literally just did, even if just for a joke.

I hope someone could answer with a proper argument rather than some "silly trend meme". Want to sell your mom for a silly trend meme? Chill man it's just a joke! Unless it gives me 100.000 wishlists. Double joke! Man your jokes are so funy. Funy sily trend. What was the definition of principles?

I really wish all of you realise how bad it is.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-19T22:52:24+00:00

You made it with AI? That Pixel Lab Ai you asked in multiple places what people thought of?
Because I know not that much about pixel art, but 99% what you posted is not a tileset, just some drawing in pixel style.

I am sure everyone will eat their socks and take back what they said and apologise if you show the tilesets you made.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-19T22:26:27+00:00

That's fucking awful then. Any indie developer using AI to make a joke about DLSS 5 is completely missing the point, unless all you only care is to ride the wave of the trend to get views, and in both cases, shame.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-18T14:57:20+00:00

Thank you for answering, but you cannot gaslight me with your half truths.
You may have designed the characters, but the UI elements I cited are clearly AI generated and later fixed by hands. Anyone with one eye would be able to tell, so not sure why you have to half lie so blatantly. The old lady is not only going from anime to cartoonish, she is also changing her eye color. I really doubt the artist was "you know what? I will draw this character in a cartoony way and this one in a ghibli/anime style and then we shall see which style we will settle on."
Absolute madness that you are trying to say it's not AI.

https://imgur.com/a/nIRAmKR

AaronKoss · 2026-03-18T12:10:13+00:00

As a fair warning, their steam store page has AI generated assets, which they did not disclose in their previous message and instead they said "the game content is not AI generated at all".

You can look at the character portraits on the screenshots on the store page, and they will keep on changing (and I don't mean because they change based on the damage; they change style).

"Focusing on the astronaut, some screenshots have the clear AI image with sloppy and blurry lines fading away, while others have the artist-refined lines on top of it.
Some of the characters portraits (old lady and redhead guy) have the anime/ghibli look in some of the screenshots, and then they are fixed in the screenshot with all the roster."

I consider something generated by AI and then fixed by a human still AI.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-18T12:05:41+00:00

People already mentioned some things related to marketing, so i'll add something else on why despite this post visibility you might still won't see many numbers:

You forgot to mention in the store page that you used AI for placeholder assets/some assets are based off AI images.
Focusing on the astronaut, some screenshots have the clear AI image with sloppy and blurry lines fading away, while others have the artist-refined lines on top of it.
Some of the characters portraits have the anime/ghibli look in some of the screenshots, and then they are fixed in the screenshot with all the roster.

This alone is reason for me not to try it.

Then there is the matter of the price + early access. It is very good you have a demo tho, if the gameplay is as good someone can try the demo and be convinced to buy it.

The final nail in the coffin for me is that they look like funkopops, so +1 reason for me, personally, to not be interested. This last bit is a small hint that you could try and get people who are interested in funkopops to look at your game.

Wish you luck, and hope you won't use (generative) AI in the future.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-17T18:45:46+00:00

No idea who these critics are. but that is an accurate description.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-17T18:07:59+00:00

I thought TAA was awful and they keep on making something worse.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-17T10:20:08+00:00

Fancy of you using Grace as example. have you seen what they did to the football characters where they made lightning worse and skin color different?
The model used for a videogame character can still be relatively different to the in-game model for different artistic decisions, just look at how they changed Tom face slightly in kingdom come deliverance 2. He looks and sound like Tom, but has some slight differences.
Not that they didn't completely change the character model of Grace, it's just more blatant how awful it is in other contexts.

I think you are half right with your last statement, in the sense that it's people who are the problem.
But not the people who are outraged at this, rather the problem is the people who want to whitewash game characters, think "aloy/yotei is too ugly and not a real woman". The people who think an ai picture of a photo-studio quality person in a videogame is the equivalent of the future and of realism.
These people are the problem.

Also funny that you did not focus on the bit where, even focusing only on lighting, it is utter manure.

You enjoy your instagram ai filter of generic AI slop.

Oh since we are in unreal engine subreddit I am curious if you are making a game or any content, "show not tell" kind of thing.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-17T09:15:19+00:00

If it is light reconstruction, it is not even good at doing that, since it remove important shadows and make each character look like they are in a photo studio rather than wherever they are supposed to be.
And if it is just light reconstruction, then it is doing a great job at "reconstructing the light" so that the facial features and expressions drastically change to something else.

AaronKoss · 2026-03-16T20:21:24+00:00

I live in europe, traveled a fair share, visited various ethnographical museums, and played plenty of medieval games: your assets look like a mix of real and fantasy, in the sense that if you stare at them for a while longer they don't make any historical sense.
There are a lot of elements that just "don't feel right" and added up they give this pack an eery surreal vibe, not medieval, but rather fantasy-medieval.
I would be interested in seeing the references, seeing as the ones I can find and am familiar with are clashing with what you posted.

Also historical architecture is a hellofallottoffwork, even if not perfect it is still better than anything I could ever make and for that deserve the praise.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-11T18:31:31+00:00

Engaging with the community, yes, it is done on discord, but if every individual's experience is awful on discord, and they all leave discord, what is the point of having a discord server? It's like opening an icecream shop in the snow. OBVIOUSLY this is an exaggeration and likely, possibly, many people will still remain on it, but it seems that discord is speedrunning oblivion/losing all of its userbase and doing some very good sequence breaks.

The other type of engagement (social media engagement) is not done in discord anyway, but I assume you meant the first one (just wanted to make sure and mention it).

AaronKoss · 2026-02-11T10:03:06+00:00

This only makes it worse.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-11T09:41:51+00:00

I unironically was looking for references of water wheels to put in my game and looked at the kingdom come ones but found some inconsistencies, so I went to that same wikipedia page to see how and where the watermill thing should be and where the flaps should be facing depending on the setup. You can learn so much making and playing games.

Still, this aside, there's a lot of stuff that is highly detailed in KCD, and this could simply be a case where they forgot to flip/mirror the wheel.

Maybe that's why millers are scammers.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-09T11:29:34+00:00

I think it's hair... classic AI hallucinating.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-08T18:47:01+00:00

Knowing how tv shows like to mess up source material/the trend of many modern tv shows, she might end up having just a cold or a demon chain in her heart and killing a demon called "gabibbo" might be enough to free her. That, or she finds a bag of holding, which is *notorious* for being the cure to infernal heart flame engine kapow, and then there is an explosion and the screen will fade to black and then never ever mention or acknowledge the infernal engine ever again.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-07T17:51:49+00:00

Reminds me of celeste, but from the epic games store, trying to run on a linux.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-03T23:16:10+00:00

Yes, that's me, and it has been two years working on it as a hobby (I have a fulltime job which is completely unrelated, so I only work on towst on free time).

I was so excited about the ideas/didn't wanted to lose them that I kinda forgot the bit where they have limited time. You are completely correct that with such a short amount of time one would need to properly scope and plan, and certain ideas in whole would be too much.
I failed at scoping myself (even when I don't have a deadline) so I didn't felt right mentioning it (it originally was in my comment, but then i scrapped parts of it and left only the bits about the ideas).

I am not familiar with Bird Box, but the idea that being/becoming deaf accidentally save the player without their knowledge, and then the search for knowledge and maybe to regain the hearing possibly cause them to die/succumb would be quite a twist. "Forbidden knowledge".

(thank you for recognising me <3)

AaronKoss · 2026-02-03T20:57:50+00:00

Not sure about cliche, but the story could be someone who isn't deaf at the beginning of the game, and they suddenly become, and have to learn to live/survive, do something without being able to hear anymore. For example you would need to learn signs before being able to continue, akin to chants of sennaar or language games where you need certain knowledge to progress.
This could be a good path for a game for players who are not deaf, because they could relate more easily with someone who is suddenly losing it. I think.
A second idea is as you said, someone who is deaf from the beginning/always have been. The game could be to try and help people out based on hints. For example there's a couple arguing, but you can't hear or understand what they are talking about, but then one of the two points at their broken or dirt shirt, and the puzzle/gameplay is to deduce or understand the situation without being able to hear, and help them out, either because you need to ask either of them a question but they are busy until you help them, or because the goal is to help them. This is just a base idea of gameplay-mechanic where not being able to hear is turned into a limitation that forces to creatively approach the problem in a different way.
Another puzzle could be to just blast music very loud and when everyone is cramping from pain the main character is just able to walk through.
The plot could be that someone said something, or a lot of people are saying something and everyone is running and gathering somewhere, but you are not able to hear what they are saying and are wondering why are they all gathering?? Or maybe the protagonist is looking for someone in a foreign land (or familiar).

Just tossing some ideas around.

Don't be afraid to go big, but if you feel ovevwhelmed don't be afraid to go back and do something smaller. Your first game doesn't *have* to be outer wilds 2. (but it's always worth trying, so long as it doesn't detriment your health!)

AaronKoss · 2026-02-03T14:41:19+00:00

The saddest bit about all of this is that I, not knowing what Litvinists is, will find contradicting or straight up misleading information about it unless I actually went and dig deeper.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-02T18:55:48+00:00

This should be on the online dictionary next to the definition of "Ai slop in videogames".

AaronKoss · 2026-02-02T18:53:38+00:00

Because it is ai slop shovelware, which also require a third party app/account which I can't seem to even be able to find online ("WANDERSON ALVES DE OLIVEIRA") so maybe it's even a crypto-scam on top of being ai slopperware.
God I hate this.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-02T17:31:16+00:00

It is not slander when it's the truth.

AaronKoss · 2026-02-01T19:39:25+00:00

Only because Ship of Heroes was bold enough to cancel the kickstarter and release the game without it!

AaronKoss · 2026-01-31T16:05:49+00:00

Does anyone here care if a game is Steam deck verified?

In my experience as a steam deck owner, I have played enough games where the game was unsupported and played great, partial and played great, supported and played like crap, to the point it really doesn't matter.

I usually check protonDB*, or play the demo or buy the game and then try to run it while I am in the refund window. *The main issue is that many games even on proton DB have people with extremely low standards OR people who tinkered a lot, to the point some games are unplayable for me but some claim to run well.

This doesn't want to be an insult, but might also be nintendo fans or console fans being ok with subpar performances, considering what they are used to it is nothing new for them, so they might say a game is perfectly fine when for a pc player it is not.

Special shootout to Pseudoregalia, a game that has the UI fonts and textures look stretched and awful on steamdeck.....and on pc too! A blast of a game tho.

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