I had only played with the AI-generation stuff without any real thought as to how I can actually benefit from it. But with the release of Don't Dig Up the Dead, I had a happy accident when using AI to generate some supporting art.
Don't Dig Up the Dead uses a mix of borrowed and original in-game assets. Music and sound came from some packs and some of the animation came from other games, but a large part of what you see is my own art and I'm proud that I was able to put something together that felt like it all belonged. There's enough of "me" in what people see that I'm not embarrassed to show it off.
I marched along making my game and got it to a very happy spot that I thought I was ready to release and be done. But then AI showed up. I took the bait like the rest of the world and started playing around with the art generation AI to see what it would do...just for fun without any real intent to use it for anything. But then I thought, "hey, I could use this to make art for my game." My game was done so this wasn't about generating pixels or sprites, just supporting material, like cover art and promotional stuff.
My friend recommended Midjourney so I gave it a shot. I fed it the phrase, "a ghost coming out of a hole in the ground rising above a man standing in a forest holding a shovel as he watches in horror," which is what I imagined the box art for Don't Dig Up the Dead might look like. Much to my surprise, it spit out something pretty spot on:
The colors, the mood, the spooky figure at the top of the hill...it all lined up with what was in my head. Pretty amazing. The guy in the middle wasn't quite right but a few more feeds into the AI machine and I got one that worked, so I combined two AI generated images into one, added some text, and got my box art.
This became my promotional art that looks nothing like the actual game...but that's in the spirit, right? Like every other box art from any pre-2000 game, the art sells the idea and the mood. The game will look totally different but you'll carry that cover image into the game while you play. It's something we have all experienced but for my own PICO8 games was usually out of my grasp due to resource limitations. I'd love to make sweet art for every game but I just don't have the time (or patience, or software, or motivation). But the AI art can kickstart that process and give you some pretty great results that are unique to your game. No more ripping things from Google and hoping no one complains. Even though AI did the work, I'm happy to show it off when telling people about my game.
I haven't tried using AI to generate actual game sprites and I'm not sure I'd really enjoy doing that, but for supplemental content that wouldn't have otherwise been created, why not? I'm in with no shame.
Hi @morningtoast:
This should really be one of the whistle-blower's jobs, not me. I'm looking at you guys, you know who you are.
Though I'm going to say it here:
The AI artwork is truly amazing. Your picture above is awesome and perfect for your game. Nicely done. Gold star to support.
I was using AI art myself to build a personal game for myself in Blitz that may never see the light of day.
Yet - I think what it does is scrape existing art by other talented artists and then cobble it together based upon what your text entry says. Art done by other people - and not give any credit to them besides.
This might be a good time to discuss the morals and implications of it. If it truly is free art to all with no consequences, then all good and well.
But if not. Well, already some professional artists in DeviantART are up in arms about this form of creation method.
This is also not directly against the people who use the system but who CREATED the systems to begin with.
What are your thoughts on this, guys ?
I was waiting for someone to bring the issue up despite hoping they wouldn't, lol. Oh well.
I'm not sure anyone wants to dive deep into the morality of AI in this post. I'd prefer people see this for what it is, a story about how I used a new tool to support my work that others might learn from.
Look, AI is a tool and it's here...and seemingly here to stay. So I'm going to use it.
For us one-man hobby devs, AI support is going to be a big help to fill in the skill gaps we might not have (or have time/budget for). AI can't do it all (yet) and I don't think any of us want the machines to do it all. We still want some of the fun.
However...I also found out that all AI is not created equal. I fed the same info into the DALL-E AI and got a result that was a little different although in many ways, a lot scarier! LOL
It all does depend, @morningtoast.
I spent 16+ hours a week back scraping the internet for the very best of AI art sites, Dall-E was definitely not one of them. :) And came up with some incredible results. Let's see ...
"a ghost coming out of a hole in the ground rising above a man standing in a forest holding a shovel as he watches in horror"
Here is a render from the top with those exact words on the fastest render:
Yet also you get THIS if you simply search for "zelda"
Here you can clearly see it's cobbling the image from other pictures someone else painted.
. . .
But let's get specific. We are programmers and not all of us are artists. And using AI art would indeed help to add artwork to games across the programming languages.
So let us see what happens to the DEVELOPERS of the systems and maybe not focus so much on the USERS of them. I suspect ultimately what will happen is all the free ones out there currently will start to charge money for the use of their systems and some of these proceeds will go to a massive public organization that supports real artists that will trickle payments to them if they see their art is being used in these engines.
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