Best Artificial Intelligence Tools to assist in Unreal Engine Development for Indie Titles

[Tyranicon]

I'd much rather see more solodevs

Same here. But no AI, thank you. That is, I have no problem with people using AI for helping with code problems (stack overflow sucks now and search engine are all horrible at this point) and even use AI drawing to help with concept art. But when the plot was done with the help of AI, maybe character dialogues, and the art and music has AI all over it, then I have 0 interest in that.

Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to expect more great devs enter the scene, the most visible sign of AI is going to be a tsunami of poorly made slop.

You think the asset swap period of steam was bad? Lol just wait. It's already happening on mobile, but no one with good taste cares about mobile.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

AI Tools For Coding (For the essential game code and speed along development of the Alpha)
AI Tools For 3D Modeling (Mainly for the random generation of Terrain like some of those blender tools)
AI Tools for 2D Art Generation (Mainly to help come up with rouge ideas for concept art)

If you find this, you gotta wonder why should I buy your game if I can just use the same tools to make my own game instead.

Theoretically, its a huge barrier reduction for

• Programmers who want to make cool new game mechanics but are bad at art
• Artists who want to make a game but can't program
• Writers who actually want to be useful for something besides fanfic

Of course nothing in the near future will actually beat a living human for any of these, but consider the following: large teams suck ass and I'd much rather see more solodevs than yet another drama-filled incompetent indie team.

Disregard the haters. Be an ubermensh, use all the tools that are available to you. Make the best game you can.

Yeah thats the plan anyway, to be honest I'm mainly look at this as streamlining like the models and characters will be hand made and even the environmental details but wanted to perhaps have a element of procedural generation for random encounter zones that would select a number of predesignated title sets like the OG fallout which was why I wanted the 3D modeling AI tools.

AI Tools For Coding (For the essential game code and speed along development of the Alpha)
AI Tools For 3D Modeling (Mainly for the random generation of Terrain like some of those blender tools)
AI Tools for 2D Art Generation (Mainly to help come up with rouge ideas for concept art)

If you find this, you gotta wonder why should I buy your game if I can just use the same tools to make my own game instead.

Thier might have been a misunderstanding I placed in the brackets what I'd use them for XD

3D was for something like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ligKs9aXKsA&ab_channel=Gamefromscratch

Stuff sought of like this when it comes to 3D modeling AI tools as they use like google maps and stuff to help generate the terrain and environment. This would then be customized or used as like a placeholder for level testing purposes

As for Art it was more a jumping off point for inspiration similar to mood-boards and character references

and the Code was just to help make it more efficient and avoid silly errors and speed along production, I mean their will still be errors (duh) but like any streamlining is appreciated in a production especially when you have a small team.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

I'd much rather see more solodevs

Same here. But no AI, thank you. That is, I have no problem with people using AI for helping with code problems (stack overflow sucks now and search engine are all horrible at this point) and even use AI drawing to help with concept art. But when the plot was done with the help of AI, maybe character dialogues, and the art and music has AI all over it, then I have 0 interest in that.

I don't think I was gonna go that far XD, ultimately AI is a tool to assist development not replace it entirely, as that kinda gets rid of the fun of development and games design.

Plot wise and characters its all been done more or less by me with the assistance of my brother (the programmer)

 

[tritosine2k]

generate the terrain and environment.

Even if this was reliable it wouldn't be on par with minecraft . Then you'd raytrace it offline to look half decent (like realtime raytracing is crap even in MC).

 

[Bohrain]

Have you uh, ever worked on a software project before? Even if the computer writes working functions for you, you still need to know what you want and what hooks to what.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

generate the terrain and environment.

Even if this was reliable it wouldn't be on par with minecraft . Then you'd raytrace it offline to look half decent (like realtime raytracing is crap even in MC).

Well that is possible I mean a million things will probably go wrong in any games development, and this one included, I mean we've already faced set backs and such, PC blowing up due to a faulty upgrade and so on. But hay nothing ventured nothing gained right!

 

[Viata]

Lol just wait

No need for that. I hardly have interest in modern games and when I do, it's because someone I know mention it and it checks the things I like in old games. I can easily ignore all the trash being released because I have no interest in what is being released anyway.

 

[tritosine2k]

generate the terrain and environment.

Even if this was reliable it wouldn't be on par with minecraft . Then you'd raytrace it offline to look half decent (like realtime raytracing is crap even in MC).

Well that is possible I mean a million things will probably go wrong in any games development, and this one included, I mean we've already faced set backs and such, PC blowing up due to a faulty upgrade and so on. But hay nothing ventured nothing gained right!

yeah that's why you should look at pseudo 3d instead of unreal...

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Have you uh, ever worked on a software project before? Even if the computer writes working functions for you, you still need to know what you want and what hooks to what.

Yeah mainly with the Unreal Engine, I'm familiar with its blue prints system though I'm not familiar with C+ and C++ and only ever lightly dabbled in the Behaviour Trees, luckily my brother and teammate is a much more sophisticated coder than me, so I guess we'll be dumping me on the UI design.

generate the terrain and environment.

Even if this was reliable it wouldn't be on par with minecraft . Then you'd raytrace it offline to look half decent (like realtime raytracing is crap even in MC).

Well that is possible I mean a million things will probably go wrong in any games development, and this one included, I mean we've already faced set backs and such, PC blowing up due to a faulty upgrade and so on. But hay nothing ventured nothing gained right!

yeah that's why you should look at pseudo 3d instead of unreal...

pseudo 3D isn't terrible, in fact I enjoy a lot of games that have the whole pseudo 3D look to them aka Fallout and Marathon (1994) however I would much prefer the game in a low poly 3D aesthetic as I kind of grew up with games from that sought of time period so that's most likely a nostalgia bias on my part, again that's a future problem for fixing the art style currently the focus is on the tech-demo being re-built, repaired and upgraded with additional systems.

 

[tritosine2k]

Idk why people think there's some functional "baseline" 3d graphix you can get away with in 2023 and it's minimum effort... With this stuff nowdays
you will be slaving away before you know it with the v-bucks-man laughing all the way to the bank. xD

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Idk why people think there's some functional "baseline" 3d graphix you can get away with in 2023 and it's minimum effort... With this stuff nowdays
you will be slaving away before you know it with the v-bucks-man laughing all the way to the bank. xD

Get away with? You mean like audience accepting a level of lower poly graphics or like time consumption of 3D modeling vs 2D sprite work.

On the former IDK i think audiences if we aren't talking about the "broader audiences" are pretty accepting of any graphics, like the sought of guys/girls playing old video games or small indie titles properly care more for aesthetic and art style over graphical fidelity.

As for time consumption IDK I have an idea to use a mixture ideally of sprites, 2D artwork and 3D models ranging from weapon effects, particle systems to character models. Likely the models will have post-processing applied to them meaning they will have a pixel effect.

 

[tritosine2k]

I don't think this 2D equals old vs 3D equals new and shiny is a "watertight " thought tbh.

Also this is no good performance target/metric. That's like saying I need ray to trace rays ( all the time !!!) because that's the thing to do. In reality noone cares about tech it's a whole lot of fetishism/salesmanship/specsmanship . ARPG are full of 2D because camera allows it. Its called impostor tech. 3D has to use impostor by definition hell textures are a form of impostor. 3D works in the first place because they save a lot with hacky (and 2D) tech not because the foundation is solid.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

I don't think this 2D equals old vs 3D equals new and shiny is a "watertight " thought tbh.

Also this is no good performance target/metric. That's like saying I need ray to trace rays ( all the time !!!) because that's the thing to do. In reality noone cares about tech it's a whole lot of fetishism/salesmanship/specsmanship . ARPG are full of 2D because camera allows it. Its called impostor tech. 3D has to use impostor by definition hell textures are a form of impostor. 3D works in the first place because they save a lot with hacky (and 2D) tech not because the foundation is solid.

I don't think I said 2D equals old or 3D equals new and I think I was saying that the audience don't care in general about shinny graphics rather they care about the overall style of the work aka the art direction (again beyond the moist dense casual gamers that only buy the triple A release but I think its safe to say that a Indie CRPG is kind of already excluding that target audience).

I however have no idea what you mean by "imposter" as it relates to 3D, I mean games as far back as the Battlezone release in 1980 have had the capability to portray 3D graphics. Think you might have a slight bias towards 3D and just to reiterate I have nothing against 2D or Pixel Art graphics.

Also in general we are so off topic about AI tools and software on this threat XD

 

[tritosine2k]

Not really offtopic because it's claimed theres some new form "assistance" that justifies some 3D production pipeline. And that's quite a bit extraordinary given 3D games dried up in recent years coupled with overall STEEP quality decline meanwhile 2D - 2.5D makes bank on mobile and that can justify 3D in reality because by then you can afford it.
Some small QoL improvements don't justify 3D, UE5 is straight up the opposite (of justification).

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Not really offtopic because it's claimed theres some new form "assistance" that justifies some 3D production pipeline. And that's quite a bit extraordinary given 3D games dried up in recent years coupled with overall STEEP quality decline meanwhile 2D - 2.5D makes bank on mobile and that can justify 3D in reality because by then you can afford it.
Some small QoL improvements don't justify 3D, UE5 is straight up the opposite (of justification).

Huh? I mean yeah 2D is used a lot in the mobile space but I think your being a bit to aggressive towards 3D I mean there's hundred of great games that use the technology in many different ways, games deeply enjoyed by audiences and in particularly here RPGs from KOTOR to Dragon Age Origins, and theirs also plenty of great in the works Indie games or released Indie games that use 3D models and environments to great affect Project Zomboid is a great game, which uses mainly low poly models.

 

[tritosine2k]

...

Project Zomboid

looks like Alone in the dark 1. Literal 1992 gfx. ( Were getting close to what AI can currently do xD )

I can't consider this art direction in 2023, indie whimsicality maybe

KOTOR to Dragon Age Origins,

no way these would fly in current year either. What would fly from that generation is RAGE 1 == tons of prerender and insane talent. Rage not only would fly it even scales to this day because 16x MSAA. Something you get for "free" in pseudo 3D... Not a bad performance target in fact it might be top tier.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

...

Project Zomboid

looks like Alone in the dark 1. Literal 1992 gfx. ( Were getting close to what AI can currently do xD )

I can't consider this art direction in 2023, indie whimsicality maybe

KOTOR to Dragon Age Origins,

no way these would fly in current year either. What would fly from that generation is RAGE 1 == tons of prerender and insane talent. Rage not only would fly it even scales to this day because 16x MSAA. Something you get for "free" in pseudo 3D... Not a bad performance target in fact it might be top tier.

Again your saying it from like a "broader audience" preceptive but I'm saying gaming niches exist and some of those; be it retro gamers or indie enthusiasts don't care so much about graphical fidelity. They just want fun games the offer unique experiences.

 

[tritosine2k]

Someone needs a reality check there are 10.000 indie games a year only on steam and most never recoup cost. Wonder how many because some blind 3D faith and just end up as galley slave cogs in the ue5 machine with manual uv mapping as their "superpower" xD

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Someone needs a reality check there are 10.000 indie games a year only on steam and most never recoup cost. Wonder how many because some blind 3D faith and just end up as galley slave cogs in the ue5 machine with manual uv mapping as their "superpower" xD

Yeah a lot of Indie games fail, weather they are 2D, 2.5D or full 3D titles, be them RPGs, Platforms or Rouge-likes but I don't think weather or not a title is gonna be successful financially should be the deciding factors, the question we should ask ourselves the most "is this fun to play" and "what is the overall player experience" games that succeed often have excellent player experience and also are fun to play.

 

[deama]

I've used various AI stuff for coding for my work and right now the most serious option is to use chatgpt 4. With the recent context size increase to a massive amount, adding in ability to create custom fine-tuned GPTs for more specific tasks, and there really isn't much competition. The subscription should also carry on over to whatever else they release, and give you access to the dalle 3 to help with image generation etc... The downside is that there's a limit of 40 posts/prompts per 3 hours, but it's not really that bad unless you're doing something like translation work...

I've played around with other models for coding but they don't work as well. I think 2nd best was google's bard, but it has a context size limit that won't be addressed until the new subscription is released in a few months, but no idea if openAI will release chatgpt 5 by then, or if the google one will be any good.

There's AI music generators, they're starting to just now come around to being decent, so that option might be available later on during the last legs of the development.

For 2d > 3d there's something like this:


It's a bit iffy, but there's a new one being developed that worked better, not sure when that's releasing. It's by a different project group.

 

[deuxhero]

AI music was the first instance of generative AI. It may be better and more flexible now and/or use totally different core execution, but it's not new.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

I've used various AI stuff for coding for my work and right now the most serious option is to use chatgpt 4. With the recent context size increase to a massive amount, adding in ability to create custom fine-tuned GPTs for more specific tasks, and there really isn't much competition. The subscription should also carry on over to whatever else they release, and give you access to the dalle 3 to help with image generation etc... The downside is that there's a limit of 40 posts/prompts per 3 hours, but it's not really that bad unless you're doing something like translation work...

I've played around with other models for coding but they don't work as well. I think 2nd best was google's bard, but it has a context size limit that won't be addressed until the new subscription is released in a few months, but no idea if openAI will release chatgpt 5 by then, or if the google one will be any good.

There's AI music generators, they're starting to just now come around to being decent, so that option might be available later on during the last legs of the development.

For 2d > 3d there's something like this:


It's a bit iffy, but there's a new one being developed that worked better, not sure when that's releasing. It's by a different project group.

Dam that pretty impressive to be honest you could even just re-texture the model couldn't you to improve the overall look. I didn't think something like that was possible to be honest.

So ChatGPT has a subscription mode as well thats something to consider its not exactly free but at the same time its likely cheaper than having a dedicated coder come in, they can be hella expensive.

Also sorry for the late reply Christmas was sought of hectic

 

[deama]

Here's another good one that's "free", seems better than the previous one.

 

[MarathonGuy1337]

Here's another good one that's "free", seems better than the previous one.

That's super impressive especially for generating a lot of terrain and small objects

 

[gurugeorge]

I'd much rather see more solodevs

Same here. But no AI, thank you. That is, I have no problem with people using AI for helping with code problems (stack overflow sucks now and search engine are all horrible at this point) and even use AI drawing to help with concept art. But when the plot was done with the help of AI, maybe character dialogues, and the art and music has AI all over it, then I have 0 interest in that.

I don't think I was gonna go that far XD, ultimately AI is a tool to assist development not replace it entirely, as that kinda gets rid of the fun of development and games design.

Capitalism doesn't care about your fun.