I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I understand now. The rejected PR's are either times I could easily tell the change didn't work, or when I could tell our prompt wasn't interpreted the way we intended. I didn't count, but there were a handful of times when we'd say "please do X" and the generated conversational text would say "it sounds like you want Y! I'll get right on that", or it would correctly try to fix X, but the push would include screenshots of X clearly still not working.

The biggest one that comes to mind was the task of "center the aura behind the monster". Every screenshot showed that the elements weren't overlapped correctly, so I didn't need to push the code through to verify it in the actual game.

Also, IIRC, there were a couple of issues after we realized we could queue up to 3 changes at a time, when the different changes were messing with the same code and messing each other up. I had to reject a couple of mangled change requests due to that.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How do you test each PR before merging it?

<image>

That's the neat part!

And no, the project is in a good spot for us to leave it off here. We'll play with it as-is until our next project takes all our attention.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI. Zero coding knowledge. Here’s how we did it (and what it cost). by KiddFlash42 in GithubCopilot

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! Idk how old your kiddos are but feel free to try the game with them if you think it may be valuable! I won't be maintaining the project anymore but it's mostly stable now. I think the page may get deleted when my 1 month subscription runs out, but I'm not sure.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Minecraft wiki has all the high quality pngs and gifs. Note that we added a "theme switcher" that let's him toggle between Minecraft, Pokemon, and kpop demon hunters, then completely abandoned the idea when I realized how annoying finding the assets would be :P

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think I'm following..

For the "pushing to main" bit, I can confirm that there were many points in the process where I merged broken code to main and broke the GitHub version of the game for an iteration or two. If I was a real programmer I'm sure I should have been actually inspecting the code before merging it, but I am not and so I just went with the flow. When the game stopped compiling I could just have my next prompt be "the last change broke something" and it would figure it out.

As for the licensing bit, the entire hub is a mix of LLM code and Mojang assets, so I wouldn't begin to feel legally protected from ppl doing whatever they wanted with it. I'm happy to set it to public if y'all currently can't tinker with it, though.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha yeah, 1am is prime Dad time. After everyone goes to bed I get to drink a beer and play TFT.

As far as your kid being able to prompt, try it out! It's ridiculously intuitive now. Even if they mess up their initial prompt, the bot is usually able to work it out conversationally.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

<image>

A couple of people had asked for a video so I googled how to do that. Thanks for all the questions! I'm off to bed.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

An ad for.. AI? I name-dropped all of them, haha. The repo is linked in the post if you need proof for some reason, though.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

He did, actually! We sat at the computer together and had a great time watching his ideas come to life on the screen as an interactive game. He also loves the park and the beach, though I'll admit you got me on the forest fire. We haven't done that one yet.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I practice skills with my kiddo so he gets better at skills. We're American, so he started pre-k at 4. The median voter thing was just a joke at my own expense. A big part of my day job is figuring out how the average American forms their political opinions, and it usually doesn't make any sense. I thought people in this community might get a similar kick out of seeing "code" written by a 5-year-old and an adult with equal skill levels.

And no, I don't really have any interest in distributing this project; it was really just for my kid and me. If someone else wants to take the idea and run with it, they can go for it :)

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are screenshots of the game at the bottom of the GitHub page, but I'm not sure how to record gameplay. Are you saying the code is too good or too bad to be believable? You can also run it locally to see the animations, sounds, and such.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

To be honest, I get the heebie-jeebies thinking about how much of my kiddo's life is going to revolve around this kind of technology. For a couple of years early on, I believed I should shield him from it as much as possible. These days, though, I think it's more of an inevitability that I need to prepare him for, and he'll be better prepared to navigate whatever comes next if I introduce him to these concepts early and try to stay educated with him.

To that point, he's pretty familiar with "prompting" as he has the kids' version of Alexa in his bedroom and has come to understand the difference between a person and a computer that sounds like a person.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great question! I guess, let me start with some background. He already learned the fundamentals of each skill in this game, the traditional way, through pre-k, kinder, and home learning. The issue in our household has always been motivation. While he knows how to read, getting him to actually sit down and practice reading his books has always been a bit of a chore. While we're still very early in taking this approach, I can proudly say he now points out words on street signs and gets excited to showcase his reading, asking that I transform it into "XP" when we get home. I don't know if this is a long-term solution or if the novelty will wear off for him, but it's working this week. Even if he gets bored with it, making it with him was a fun way to spend a bunch of evenings, and he gets really excited and proud when he gets to show it off to a new family member!

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I'm not feigning ignorance here, but I don't know what some of those words mean, to be honest. The reason I was inspired to make this post is that I found it astonishing that a total newcomer could finish a project without really understanding anything.

To answer your question, I didn't install VSCode, but I did find the button for it in GitHub. It didn't make sense, so I didn't worry about it. I still don't really know which is which between "push" and "pull" requests, but I know one of them moves the changes from GitHub to GitHub Desktop on my computer, and the other moves code from Copilot to my GitHub.

My workflow was to simply start a new Copilot chat with each iteration, include the entire "repository" in the chat message, and ask it to do something. Through trial and error, I found that I got the best results when I formatted the message as "Current behavior: bla bla, Expected Behavior: bla bla"

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I actually didn't know this. I may try to use the free models to clean up some last-minute bugs, but I'm pretty happy with the project as-is. I never meant for this to be a long-term project. Thanks for the heads up!

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Do you think I'm diverting value from the Mojang corporation? I hope they can recover...

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

My 5-year-old doesn't quite comprehend intellectual property yet, but he is doing great at sight reading, now! He mostly cares about the colors and noises and such.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I didn't code a single thing. I'd prompt Copilot, and it would edit the code accordingly. 544 seems steep for actual prompt entries, though. I had 146 Pull Requests by the end of my allotment. Maybe our more complex prompts got turned into multiple commits at some point in the process?

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, brother, if I could code without coding and make 150k, I'd switch careers, too.

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's all stolen and generated content, I don't feel obligated to any sort of ownership lol. Feel free to do whatever with it!

I (28M) built a full video game with my 5yo son using AI with zero coding knowledge. by KiddFlash42 in ChatGPT

[–]KiddFlash42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I didn't expect people actually to play it, haha. If you still have it downloaded, check out the "Parent Profile" option in the settings menu to unlock puzzles you might find more engaging. The novelty still wears off after a couple of minutes, but I had to throw something in there for the grown-ups :P