More and more games seem to suck on thier own, but can be great with mods. You have entire platforms like roblox where all the games are more or less mods. How long until the platform itself is community created and managed and the viability of games created by companies dissappears?
There are free engines available, and many of the paid ones have cheap or free tiers available for smaller projects. Also, if you want to actually publish your mod, there are likely to be a bunch of costs, like buying licences to use copyrighted characters, settings, ect. Even more so if you want to publish your mod as a standalone product, where you need to buy a licence to resell the entire original game.
That said, prehaps it would help to think of the game engine as a foundation, and the games as a completed house. If you want to make something, you can look at existing houses and imagine putting an extention on, or a new coat of paint. If the house is particularly well contructed, maybe its even easy to do. Still, at a certain point, theres no more you can add or change without it being easier to tear everything down and start from the foundation, or entirely from scratch. Its not a limitation of the design of the house, its just an intrinsic fact when you’re working by building off someone else’s completed work.
Now, if we start from the foundation (engine) instead we have less to start with, meaning its going to be a lot more work than doing minor changes, but the hardest part is still already done for us. This is what most people do when making games. Its far more flexable than modding, esspecially because you have a selection of engines available at different prices, with different strengths, weaknesses and specializations. GameMaker for simple 2D games, RPGMaker for making jrpgs, Unreal for 3D action games, ect.
Finally, you could skip both these options, and design and build everything from scatch. Its the option that gives you most freedom by far, but its generally not worth it unless you’re making something thats very small, that is so unique that nothing else will work, or that you’re dedicated and what a perfect fit for.
I think you are still thinking from a perspective of making money. I am thinking more like opensource software.
A free engine or engines that handle generic stuff. Then some plugins for common features on top. After that, opensource licensced graphics for tons of things like lights, tables chairs… with associated sounds for moving or breaking. A total noob, could use AI to slap together a concept. Then they or others could tune it if the concept seems fun.
And of course at any point someone can fork it and go in their own direction.
Essentially community, not “developer” driven games.
So, basically you’re describing open source, public domain game development (rather than just an open source engine like Godot) by the sound of it. This does happen, games like Luanti or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but very rarely. Unlike mods, which tend to be small, quick-and-dirty projects, game development is usually much larger in scope and more difficult. It’s normal for the process to take years of work from a collective of skilled developers and artists. That amount of work is usually just too much for someone to willingly give away for free.
Right, and I was pondering how long until developing a game on opensource components becomes an equivalent effort to what modding is today. With well polished games becoming less common, large mods that overhaul games becoming more common, and AI improving over the next years. That feels like a direction that things may go.
As is, theres no sign things will go that way quickly. The increase in larger mods is more a product of increased funding and increased (legal) support from publishers. Things like Roblox’s microtransactions make it very profitable, even if a lot of time or money is spent in development. For more general game development, most of it hasn’t changed in about a decade, and I don’t see AI affecting much. AI can’t reliably create good results in any field, nonetheless combining them. Basically, making any large project just costs too much to give away for free.
Yeah, it could still be a good while away. AI can help a lot in some places. Not so much in others. Like if you had modules and plugins that can work like legos to make a very simple game. AI can help get your initial game wired up. For the work of making it unique or interesting, AI can’t help as much. Though it could quickly spin up lots of graphics to choose from and such so that a person with no graphics skills could make their game have its own look. The other place it can help is in running tests. Like for new hardware that an engine or what not needs to support. It can even help add tests to some extent, but you still need a skilled person to look over what it did.
My understanding is that there are a lot of boring mundane tasks needed for maintaining the framework and such. The kind of thing that turns off opensource contributors. So maybe some of that can be offloaded and help get more people involved for free on a product that they can then use for free.
Like if you had modules and plugins that can work like legos to make a very simple game. AI can help get your initial game wired up.
This is basically how modern development tools (I.E. the Unity Editor) work - they let you import all the resources then provide a framework for connecting it all together.
That said, this process of connecting everything is also one of the parts AI is actually worst at. As AI doesn’t understand context or logic, it can’t fit things together in a complex or meaningful way, nonetheless a unique way. Its for the same reason AI is bad at large/complex programming tasks (like game development). AI can make passable (albiet not great) individual art assets, but when you need to fit them together in logical ways, things start to fall apart. The same problem applies to testing. Tests where an agent effectively hits random buttons aren’t very useful, since they’re too inefficient. You need logical, structured and/directed testing, which AI can’t meaningfully do.
Basically, for easy, boilerplate stuff, its going to be largely done by the engine, or assets you import. Anything else is too complex or too important for AI.
I know the engines do that. But I mean even more. Like it could expand to the point that I could have a fully functional game just by adding some plugins. Not a great game. But something that was technically playable. I don’t think you can do that today.
And as far as AI and testing. I am talking more mundane. Like say you already have good tests. But you just need to run them on additional hardware simulations or something. That is an edit it can do. Tweaking for that hardware and rerunning is also a pain. You could let it do that, then review the changed. That kind of stuff often requires digging through documentation and what not that can be very time consuming all for just one new peice of hardware. The AI can do that and iterate until things work. The dev just has to validate that the AI didn’t cheat to get a pass.
For writing new test. Of course you can’t just tell it to make up tests. You have to dirdct it a lot. But once you tell it what you want it to test, it can write that, and interate on getting the test to work. It would be great if it was better at it than it is now. But I think over the next years it will get better. But I expect you still need to be the brains that tell it what to test.
But also, if someone records a playthrough of a bug, you can probably tell it what the bug in the playthrough was, give it the playthrough and tell it to write a test.
I’m not talking about expecting AI to do the real thinking. I am talking about it acting like a very junior dev that you can give well described tasks to, and like a reasearch assistant that can dig through large amounts of documention to get the information you need. Both of these things dev probably don’t generally enjoy doing.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
There are free engines available, and many of the paid ones have cheap or free tiers available for smaller projects. Also, if you want to actually publish your mod, there are likely to be a bunch of costs, like buying licences to use copyrighted characters, settings, ect. Even more so if you want to publish your mod as a standalone product, where you need to buy a licence to resell the entire original game.
That said, prehaps it would help to think of the game engine as a foundation, and the games as a completed house. If you want to make something, you can look at existing houses and imagine putting an extention on, or a new coat of paint. If the house is particularly well contructed, maybe its even easy to do. Still, at a certain point, theres no more you can add or change without it being easier to tear everything down and start from the foundation, or entirely from scratch. Its not a limitation of the design of the house, its just an intrinsic fact when you’re working by building off someone else’s completed work.
Now, if we start from the foundation (engine) instead we have less to start with, meaning its going to be a lot more work than doing minor changes, but the hardest part is still already done for us. This is what most people do when making games. Its far more flexable than modding, esspecially because you have a selection of engines available at different prices, with different strengths, weaknesses and specializations. GameMaker for simple 2D games, RPGMaker for making jrpgs, Unreal for 3D action games, ect.
Finally, you could skip both these options, and design and build everything from scatch. Its the option that gives you most freedom by far, but its generally not worth it unless you’re making something thats very small, that is so unique that nothing else will work, or that you’re dedicated and what a perfect fit for.
I think you are still thinking from a perspective of making money. I am thinking more like opensource software. A free engine or engines that handle generic stuff. Then some plugins for common features on top. After that, opensource licensced graphics for tons of things like lights, tables chairs… with associated sounds for moving or breaking. A total noob, could use AI to slap together a concept. Then they or others could tune it if the concept seems fun.
And of course at any point someone can fork it and go in their own direction. Essentially community, not “developer” driven games.
So, basically you’re describing open source, public domain game development (rather than just an open source engine like Godot) by the sound of it. This does happen, games like Luanti or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, but very rarely. Unlike mods, which tend to be small, quick-and-dirty projects, game development is usually much larger in scope and more difficult. It’s normal for the process to take years of work from a collective of skilled developers and artists. That amount of work is usually just too much for someone to willingly give away for free.
Right, and I was pondering how long until developing a game on opensource components becomes an equivalent effort to what modding is today. With well polished games becoming less common, large mods that overhaul games becoming more common, and AI improving over the next years. That feels like a direction that things may go.
As is, theres no sign things will go that way quickly. The increase in larger mods is more a product of increased funding and increased (legal) support from publishers. Things like Roblox’s microtransactions make it very profitable, even if a lot of time or money is spent in development. For more general game development, most of it hasn’t changed in about a decade, and I don’t see AI affecting much. AI can’t reliably create good results in any field, nonetheless combining them. Basically, making any large project just costs too much to give away for free.
Yeah, it could still be a good while away. AI can help a lot in some places. Not so much in others. Like if you had modules and plugins that can work like legos to make a very simple game. AI can help get your initial game wired up. For the work of making it unique or interesting, AI can’t help as much. Though it could quickly spin up lots of graphics to choose from and such so that a person with no graphics skills could make their game have its own look. The other place it can help is in running tests. Like for new hardware that an engine or what not needs to support. It can even help add tests to some extent, but you still need a skilled person to look over what it did.
My understanding is that there are a lot of boring mundane tasks needed for maintaining the framework and such. The kind of thing that turns off opensource contributors. So maybe some of that can be offloaded and help get more people involved for free on a product that they can then use for free.
This is basically how modern development tools (I.E. the Unity Editor) work - they let you import all the resources then provide a framework for connecting it all together.
That said, this process of connecting everything is also one of the parts AI is actually worst at. As AI doesn’t understand context or logic, it can’t fit things together in a complex or meaningful way, nonetheless a unique way. Its for the same reason AI is bad at large/complex programming tasks (like game development). AI can make passable (albiet not great) individual art assets, but when you need to fit them together in logical ways, things start to fall apart. The same problem applies to testing. Tests where an agent effectively hits random buttons aren’t very useful, since they’re too inefficient. You need logical, structured and/directed testing, which AI can’t meaningfully do.
Basically, for easy, boilerplate stuff, its going to be largely done by the engine, or assets you import. Anything else is too complex or too important for AI.
I know the engines do that. But I mean even more. Like it could expand to the point that I could have a fully functional game just by adding some plugins. Not a great game. But something that was technically playable. I don’t think you can do that today. And as far as AI and testing. I am talking more mundane. Like say you already have good tests. But you just need to run them on additional hardware simulations or something. That is an edit it can do. Tweaking for that hardware and rerunning is also a pain. You could let it do that, then review the changed. That kind of stuff often requires digging through documentation and what not that can be very time consuming all for just one new peice of hardware. The AI can do that and iterate until things work. The dev just has to validate that the AI didn’t cheat to get a pass. For writing new test. Of course you can’t just tell it to make up tests. You have to dirdct it a lot. But once you tell it what you want it to test, it can write that, and interate on getting the test to work. It would be great if it was better at it than it is now. But I think over the next years it will get better. But I expect you still need to be the brains that tell it what to test. But also, if someone records a playthrough of a bug, you can probably tell it what the bug in the playthrough was, give it the playthrough and tell it to write a test. I’m not talking about expecting AI to do the real thinking. I am talking about it acting like a very junior dev that you can give well described tasks to, and like a reasearch assistant that can dig through large amounts of documention to get the information you need. Both of these things dev probably don’t generally enjoy doing.