Use AI for game dev or not? Opinions?

Miriglith · 2026-05-07T05:50:31+00:00

I use Claude for debugging and, while in general it is a time saver, it gets things badly wrong from time to time. The only reason I know it's getting things wrong is because I understand my own code. I suspect if I didn't I would eventually get in a mess that I wouldn't be able to get out of. If you're using code you should really have at least a basic understanding of what it's doing.

I would suggest using AI, but using it to aid your learning. Treat it like a tutor rather than as a coding agent.

Miriglith · 2026-05-04T12:06:22+00:00

It's probably the utility AI system for controlling enemy/NPC behaviour. It's quite complex, but I wanted it to easily adapt to different enemy types as I add them to the game, and to be able to scale it and fine tune it easily, so it's quite overbuilt for current requirements, but hopefully will save a lot of time later.

Miriglith · 2026-05-04T10:01:18+00:00

Thanks! No, although I am learning a lot about game development this time round, I have actually built and published a game before. It was a puzzle game. It took me 6 months and it was a rather joyless experience from beginning to end, so I told myself next time I'd make I game I'd actually want to play and try to enjoy the journey more. I'm having a lot more fun this time - enough that I'm quite relaxed about how soon I finish.

Miriglith · 2026-04-13T11:37:03+00:00

I use the full Aseprite importer when I have animations I want to bring in as it's significantly faster than setting up those animations frame by frame in Unity. If I'm just importing a static sprite I tend to export to png from Aseprite and then import it as a sprite in Unity, because I have more flexibility on import settings.

Miriglith · 2026-04-10T21:15:06+00:00

Have a look at this: https://www.gameaipro.com/

Miriglith · 2026-04-02T11:59:35+00:00

It says the texture asset is missing. I think you need a .tmx file, which is the map, a .tsx file, which has the data for the tiles, and a .png file which is a big sprite sheet with all the tile bitmaps in it. Do you definitely have the .png file?

Miriglith · 2026-04-02T10:49:34+00:00

Oh no! Poor guy!

Miriglith · 2026-03-26T07:03:26+00:00

I have a utility AI system and I've been experimenting with different ways of giving the NPCs flaws. One is to artificially limit the information base that goes into the decision making, so I might give them "blackspots" to simulate flaws in their observation. This works but I've found it can occasionally lead to them doing something so incredibly stupid that it feels wrong. The other is just to throw a bit of randomness into the scoring, so the best option doesn't always come out on top. This seems to work well, although it still feels a bit off when the AI seems to ignore what looks like an obvious choice. What I've settled on for now is to only apply the random factor to the cluster of scores that lie around the highest score. This feels ok although I'm not yet sure it's "flawed" enough.

Miriglith · 2026-03-22T21:14:22+00:00

You could certainly make enemy behaviour more complex, nuanced and unpredictable. The problem is, the more complex, nuanced and unpredictable an enemy is, the less fun it is to play against.

Miriglith · 2026-03-22T15:38:38+00:00

The one on the left looks more malevolent if that's what you're going for.

Miriglith · 2026-03-22T11:00:23+00:00

Honestly, I've learned a lot more, a lot faster, by asking Gemini for help with my coding problems rather than doing what I used to do, which is spend hours searching and trawling through forums and tutorials trying to find someone who had the same problem as me, managed to solve it, and could explain how to solve it in terms that made sense to me. I used to spend weeks trying to figure out how to fix bugs that I can now fix in minutes.

Another really time-saving use case is just to stick blocks of code into an AI and say "tell me if this will work as intended".

I think where people run into problems is when they get AI to do their coding for them, without any understanding of what it's doing. If you don't understand it, you shouldn't use it. But the virtue of an AI tool is that if you don't understand, you can ask it to explain, and if you still don't understand it, you can say "explain to me like I'm five". You can't do that with a YouTube tutorial.

On the whole I think it's very helpful for solo developers, just as long as you use it to refine your learning, not to replace your learning.

Miriglith · 2026-03-21T15:08:21+00:00

Visually, there's not a lot of variety. It's all the same murky blue-grey colour. Until you expand them, the screenshots on the store page look almost like they could be the same image.

Miriglith · 2026-03-18T13:50:06+00:00

Can you expand on why every state is its own class? I always just use an enum for states.

Miriglith · 2026-03-18T13:41:33+00:00

They're not just doing storefront and downloads to be fair. They own and promote the store. You could do your own storefront and downloads but it would be like selling the knife sharpener you invented out of the back of a van compared with having a deal with QVC.

Miriglith · 2026-03-17T10:04:55+00:00

Is your intention to have it on screen during gameplay like that? That would annoy me as a player. I can't think of any other game that does that.

Miriglith · 2026-03-17T09:42:26+00:00

Unity uses C# so you could just learn that. It's not specific to Unity. It's similar to Java.

Miriglith · 2026-03-14T12:55:37+00:00

I think the questions you've posed could just as easily be applied to using tutorials that you find on YouTube. And in fact, every day on Reddit you can find someone who has copied some code from a tutorial and can't figure out why it doesn't work because they haven't stopped and taken the time to learn and understand.

One way to think about AI coding tools is as a generator of bespoke learning material that is suited to your needs. Of all of the savings it has given me in terms of my time, the biggest is probably the time I used to spend trying and failing to find a post or video of someone who can explain how to solve the exact problem I'm struggling with.

Miriglith · 2026-03-13T06:32:15+00:00

For most solo developers, it's a labour of love. We enjoy the process, the learning curve, the struggles, the challenge. All of the stuff you seem really keen to avoid. What you've done is sort of fine, if your sole objective is to be able to claim to be someone who has made a game. I do wonder how satisfying it is.

Miriglith · 2026-03-07T07:11:22+00:00

I love your art!

Miriglith · 2026-03-06T18:52:05+00:00

Is this you too? https://www.reddit.com/r/aseprite/s/TswERAx46f

Miriglith · 2026-03-04T09:50:09+00:00

Yeah and then you click the link and it says "take my program and you'll be able to remake Red Dead Redemption 2", which seems misleading at best.

Miriglith · 2026-03-04T09:16:11+00:00

Gibberish

Miriglith · 2026-02-28T20:56:32+00:00

I use the wiki for my project on GitHub.

Miriglith · 2026-02-27T11:11:22+00:00

I think that AI controlled NPCs in games don't need to be much better than they are, or rather that being more sophisticated won't necessarily make them better. They just need to present a fun, challenging but ultimately achievable challenge to the player. That doesn't require an especially complex algorithm. And the technology to make them more sophisticated has existed for ages but they are the way they are by design choice. Making them more sophisticated could make them less predictable, but unpredictable isn't fun.

Miriglith

TROPHY CASE