Ø22 [ What is real ]

AI is everywhere now. A small update on my game project, and a collection of images I found inspiring.

Billy Sweetman

Mar 31, 2023

👋 Whoa, it’s the end of March already, wow.

March really flew by and felt like a bit of a slog. We had a few colds pass through our house so it always felt like we were operating at 80%. Spring break is here how ever and I’m excited to go on our family trip and explore a little bit.

AI

What a rollercoaster the last few weeks have been. It feels like everyone is launching an AI-enhanced product or utility driven by AI. It’s an exciting time to see a major shift in how we do things.

I’m cautiously optimistic about AI in general. I’ve used a few tools here and there to check them out, see where the edges were, and see what I could create with them.

Image generation is kind of cool, but I have too specific of an idea in my mind and it’s never quite right. However, it is funny to see things like, what if Wes Anderson did Alien?

ChatGpt is also pretty fun. I’ve mostly used it to generate D&D story ideas or ask it to rephrase some stuff for me. It’s been a good idea generator that I can use to remix and create something new. Almost like a collage monster made from different parts of various magazines.

I’m not totally sure AI will reshape the design industry. I can see some quick wins, low-hanging fruit that doesn’t require any craft that would be nice to be automated. Specifically in design system generation but I’m keeping my eye on things like Galileo to see what it can do.

While there will be some incredible gains in efficiency, productivity, and even creativity because of AI. I do wonder what the eventual cost will be.

Ethics teams being let go is concerning. Chatter about teams being fired and replaced by a single “prompt” engineer can seem sensationalized but also not at the same time.

It’s here and it won’t be going anywhere.

Game Updates

I’ve been working through the 3rd level a bunch, well as much as I could in March. My goal is to have this level wrapped and released on all the platforms that I plan to for early access here at the end of April. I have a few more areas I need to finish, fix some bugs, retexture a few things, and continue to work on the writing a bit. Hopefully, I’m starting to build up an inventory of assets so the next level comes together a bit faster. I still need to work through redoing levels 1 and 2 but that shouldn’t take that long… I hope. Anyways here is a new screenshot.