cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/28095114
Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.
But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.
102 Comments
Gust@piefed.social · 98 pts · 1d
Stupid games, stupid prizes. I'm really glad the gaming community at large is presenting a resounding "fuck off" to sloperators and their plagiarism machines trying to steal the work of actual creatives. It's disgusting, and should be met with sharp rebuke
Eggyhead@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 16h
There was enough slop out there in the gaming world before AI stole center stage. And yet there are so many games getting released every day that it’s genuinely difficult for new developers to get noticed. Tried+true studios are hitting diminishing returns. Gamers have a cornucopia of options old and new, and can afford to say no in this market much more easily than in most other markets.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world · 79 pts · 1d
Man, if this is true – that they agonized over the cutscenes but decided they couldn't and that AI would be better* – then I feel legitimately bad for them.
I went in assuming it was strictly a lazy "ah, fuck it" kind of thing, but even though this still wouldn't be acceptable, it seems like this team really is hard-working, cared about the final product, and actually did think AI could deliver a good experience. Deluded, but that seems like part of a larger culture of delusion in SK.*
* Notably, the article remarks on how sentiment around AI in South Korea is vastly more positive than e.g. the US.
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world · 64 pts · 1d
That's basically a statement for the press to try to minimize damage. He even said they had the cut scenes done and later replaced them with AI. Bullshit.
They are mad they got caught and it's the AIs fault for not being good enough to hide it.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
"if that choice hurt your experience, the fault is not in the tool. It is in our own shortcomings."
The director literally outright says it's their fault for using the tool.
And what do you mean "got caught"? It's very obvious. They mistakenly thought most audiences would enjoy it, not that audiences wouldn't notice. Which makes sense given the overwhelming difference in the perception of AI between SK and the West. He even outright says he expected people to notice: "I expected some of you would be disappointed by our use of AI. I did not expect it to become this big."
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works · 24 pts · 1d
The very first thing you need to become an artist is a sense of taste. Everything builds from that. If in his judgment he thought that art looked good enough then what does that say about him as an artist.
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 1d
What game with slop have people ever enjoyed? They are not that stupid.
If using a "tool" is wrong, then the fault is the "tool".
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
Please open this article, Ctrl+F down to "% who say the increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life makes them feel ...", and tell me which country is at the very bottom, with 16% "more concerned than excited", 66% "equally concerned and excited", and 22% "more excited than concerned".
It's like you're refusing to understand the concept of a cultural barrier.
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 16h
I guess that's a problem for the Korean game industry then. If you want to sell to the international market, you're going to need to do some research. Not doing so is wilful blindness. No one in gaming doesn't know that globally players absolutely hate detectable AI anything. Just including AI in your process makes people uncomfortable. Expecting a major part of your game to be entirely generated content and that just being overlooked takes some pretty delusional confidence.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works · -9 pts · 23h
All that matters is rabid AI bad.
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 40 pts · 23h
I'd rather see the "bad" things than Ai.
Honestly if the rest of the game is good, I would rather have some napkin sketches, or a computer based paint software.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 23h
I'm 100% with you. Bad art with genuine effort put into it has a charm of its own. I understand the team's mistake, but it's still a mistake.
HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social · 5 pts · 21h
I wonder, what would be examples of games with badly done art that is overlooked because the game itself is good.
And I think stuff like Minecraft doesn't count, because with that style, the uglyness is a choice, not a result of not being able to make things look a certain way.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 16h
"Sentinels of the Multiverse" is a fairly popular board game (within those circles) and it looks pretty rough. Pokemon S/V got rightfully dunked on for looking like shit but it still made a bunch of money. "The Case of the Golden Idol" is highly regarded. Runescape.
ltxrtquq@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 3h
I think pokemon was so heavily criticized partly because it's developed by a veteran studio that really should be able to do better. And the way it looked bad wasn't so much the art style, but how it was loaded into the game.
You had a lot of pop-ins, things not being animated in the distance, and every npc using the exact same animation at the exact same time, as well as some truly uninspired textures out in the wild.
Gamefreak is clearly capable of better when you look at Beast of Reincarnation or Little Town Hero, they just don't seem to care about pokemon anymore.
Verat@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 14h
Most obvious example I can think of is Cruelty Squad, the art style is intentionally eye-searing there though.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 13h
Five Nights at Freddy's is popular if nothing else, but the art in the early games isn't bad on purpose.
Zexks@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1h
No you wouldnt. 4 decades of whining and bitching by gamers have proved that. There is no winning with this lot.
MolochHorridus@piefed.social · 15 pts · 22h
Why not hire people or another firm to do the cutscenes then. You know, professionals who have learned and perfected their craft. Professionals you don’t have.
Backslash shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 23h
It's bullshit, they experienced zero agony, they skipped from trying it themselves straight to AI without bothering to just pay real artists because they're cheap.
Eggyhead@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 16h
Still seems like a cop-out.
If they had intended to do it manually in the first place, I don’t see why they couldn’t just use AI to help generate a number of rough outlines to help conceptualize a solid template that satisfied their needs before investing their time into it.
willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 13h
AI could maybe help stress test the game before the final release. If AI were used like that, the game itself would likely not be considered slopified.
The dirty data centers, the RAM chip grab, the widening divide between the haves and the have nots being exacerbated by the billionaire AI ownership, these problems have to be addressed before I can even consider the other issues. AI as tech is usable, but as a socioeconomic phenomenon it is hugely problematic.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world · -10 pts · 16h
The anti ai crowed is so rabid even that would cause immense backlash.
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org · 5 pts · 1d
It's almost as if neither "ai can do everything for me" nor the ai witch hunting are healthy approaches, but, as always, people keep polarizing themselves to hate on the opposite tribe.
I'm so fucking tired of this bullshit...
Fawkes@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 1d
Yyyyyyyyup. Even attempts at honest discussion get polarized. "If you use AI(LLMs) you're an unethical AI-Bro!"
Oh... I didn't realize that my self-hosted open source small model trained on Wikipedia and Stack Exchange was unethical. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 1d
Yes, you are acting unethical. Your self-hosted model is neither open nor was it trained with consent. Using them is just as unethical as using the models from OpenAI.
Kissaki@feddit.org · 6 pts · 21h
CC BY-SA gives freedom of use. Why do you think additional consent would be necessary? Or do you mean that because the restricting conditions are not met, additional consent would be necessary?
Given the form of transformation, Share-Alike is certainly difficult to meet, if not impossible. Is that what you referred to with "is not open"? Or do you mean something else?
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · -2 pts · 21h
A license may allow something but that doesn't make it ethical to do. At the time these licenses where written the wholesale pillaging of the commons by AI companies wasn't a thing. For that reason I don't think it matters what license anything was published under. Unless you where given permission by the author its not OK to train your model on it.
I consider Open Weights models only open in name, the training data is almost never released. As such it is just an attempt at open washing. Its like releasing some executable files and calling that Open Binaries.
Fawkes@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 17h
Are you aware of "Implied lack of privacy?" It means places where you cannot reasonably assume privacy, like a public beach or supermarket. Public forums and public wikis are about as implied lack of privacy as it gets. If you post a guide on stack exchange on how to solve a programming issue, you revoke your rights in how that information is used. This includes using it to create new software. If you decide you don't like a program I created using your guides, well... That's too bad for you.
And no, this is not victim blaming, because I'm not defending actual theft or telling people to protect themselves more. I'm stating you cannot steal something that has been freely offered to the entire world.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 9h
I don't know why you are talking about privacy. Expectation of privacy is unrelated to copyright. Anyway the point I am making is that a license allowing something doesn't make it moral. Sure, the law allows someone to train their slop generator on my code but I can still think they are an unethical piece of shit for doing so. The same goes for the people who then use such a model. Which is also why I don't feel bad about techbros crying about how they are bullied online for using AI.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 23h
Some models do use open datasets and largely reproducible training, with the Nvidia Nemotron series being the highest profile example. You are right that many are opaque about training data, though, and this is not okay.
And I vehemently disagree with this.
OpenAI is a different order of magnitude of moral depravity. Thats like saying using Lemmy is just as bad as using Facebook or Palantir.
Fawkes@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 17h
Lol, tell me you don't understand anything about the technology without telling me you don't understand anything about the technology. Nobody here is defending scraping artists libraries or using copy written material. Go find a different strawman to cry at.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 9h
"You just don't understand it" was also what the crypto people always told me when I called their obvious ponzi scheme a ponzi scheme.
Fawkes@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 8h
Good for you. Keep wielding that shield of ignorance indescriminantly. Do you also think cryptography itself is harmful, or are you focusing on the specific use and harm caused? Guess what, the technology that made the crypto stupidity possible was used for far more than just gambling on imaginary coins. Once again, you're conflating the worst implementation of a technology with its use as a general rule. Would you defend a small set of positive and ethical uses of LLMs? Or do you condemn the entire tech, on the assumption that it is inherently bad? Do you know precisely where and how the tech developed for crypto is helpful to you, and improves your privacy and safety?
Peanutbjelly@sopuli.xyz · -8 pts · 1d
You're even being downvoted for an entirely sensible opinion. I feel like the type of people to downvote this opinion are the type who don't comprehend that boardrooms were creating slop using real artists that they control through economic suppression. The bigger issue is that most consumers don't have the media literacy to tell what is slop with a lot of money put into it verses the quality that independent artists are able to put out when they can't afford a team of economic slaves to polish their work, and the lack of media literacy drowns them under the salience and market dominance of Disney and Warner types.
But if an indie dev uses a local AI to accomplish the same polish that is currently only available to big corpos, they could actually make their real artwork look more competitive with corpo slop,
But people don't have the literacy on 'why' AI bad, the same way people don't seem to have literacy around opportunistic oligarchs buying the whole political landscape giving you a choice between mask off corpo leaches promising things antithetical to their actions, and mask on corpo leaches pretending to combat it. The solution weirdly isn't "burn the technology." much like the phones in our pockets, there is zero reason for them to be useless bricks outside of the proprietary data collection and gambling pipeline that has been deemed the "only safe option" as if a Linux equivalent is more dangerous than the corpo data collection and limiting of our own autonomy over our own devices.
Similarly the cloud, which is literally just "let us organize all of your local data for you on our computers. Keeping your data with us is just easier or something." rather than just enabling people in their own local networks.
So the landscape being built for us is the problem, but we can't get there when most people can't spend more time absorbing a topic before taking the strong socialized beliefs that are given high emotional salience, because they socially feel that it is bad, not because of the decades of encroaching systemic oppressing that we have to crawl out of.
It's not the indie artist using a tool that's the problem, and that tool is stealing nothing from anyone, rather than using systemic exploitation as righteous artistic accomplishment like pretty much anyone with actual money for "labour."
username@piefed.zip · 4 pts · 1d
The pendulum has only just started to swing. Homeostasis will take time.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
Unfortunately it may be politicized beyond recovery, at least in the US with the trajectory of things.
Its going to be associated with the corporations doing awful things with it, and thats going to blot out the sun.
username@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 1d
wedge@multiverse.soulism.net · -11 pts · 1d
I would much rather have content made with vision by a small AI augmented team than no content because of a lack of funding or ability. I’m great at programming, but I’m no fucking artist. AI makes it possible for people on either side to deliver a unified end-to-end vision. This hate of anything AI is misdirected. Hate the shitty companies, not the technology. Idiots sound like the anti-calculator folks.
username@piefed.zip · 10 pts · 1d
The problem is that there is no way of knowing (at first sight) if there was an earnest attempt. AI has a certain look to it, and that look has been associated with slop and shortcuts because of unbridled use of an imperfect technology. It makes sense that it would illicit a sense of revulsion. Also, people who lack the skills or time necessary to create a certain type of art are more likely to lack the ability or patience to properly judge the quality of that art. "Good enough" is rarely good enough.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I think this is a dangerous misconception.
I could feed locally run Minimax H3 a set of reference art, like the painted stills from this game, and it would exactly match the style. I could use start/end frames, motion masks, pose control, character sheets, voice and music samples, reference videos; I can get it to do whatever I want with extreme precision, and as long as I checked the output it would be indistinguishable from CGI.
The point I'm making is that a lot of people percieve diffusion as mashing a Stable Diffusion keyword prompt into a text box, and getting a sloppy result. Maybe thats still how shit corporate services like ChatGPT work.
But a LOT has changed over two years.
Theres no way people can definitively detect generative output anymore. We can IF its done lazily, but its quite possibly indistinguishable now, too.
TheRealKuni@piefed.social · 5 pts · 1d
Even two years ago, I remember someone telling me they saw a YouTube video that said you could always tell an AI generated image because their noise map would be the same in R, G, and B. And I tried to explain to this person that that depends entirely on how the image was generated, on what platform, by what model and method, what post-processing was done, etc.
And I was told I was ignoring their evidence. 🙄
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Also... you could just add grain via post processing?
Its actually a reasonable technique, as it softens diffusion blocking artifacts the same way it softens video codec blocking artifacts.
The YouTuber sorta kinda has a point, depending on the context. Spammers tend to use the absolute laziest lowest common denomenator, so its quite possible theyre largely using the same model, with the same artifacts, and not bothering to edit output. So maybe they did have a common noise pattern? Though the way thats presented still sounds fishy to me.
TheRealKuni@piefed.social · 3 pts · 1d
I think the idea was that within an image the noise in red would match the noise in green and the noise in blue, because whatever system they were looking at picked a single noise map per image? Something like that. And yeah, it was reasonable because it was absolutely true of the laziest stuff out there (which is most AI stuff, which is why we use the word “slop”). But my counter-argument wasn’t that the method couldn’t work, it was that it couldn’t always work. Because image generation is done in thousands of different ways and post-processing exists.
The thing that I wish was better understood is that “slop” = “low effort.” Artists can make some pretty amazing stuff when AI is merely a part of their toolset and they still put effort into their work. But that means that not all AI is slop, and thus if you really want to detect AI, you can’t rely on it always being slop.
wedge@multiverse.soulism.net · -1 pts · 15h
You’re asking them to learn and understand rather than parrot… god speed.
Fawkes@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 8h
But you see, it's okay when they gatekeep because they're defenders of truth and humanity! Gatekeeping is a good thing when used on people you don't like! What's that about equal accessibility and ableism? Shut up! AI bad!
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 17h
even then, you use the AI output as inspiration, not as the end product..
qarbone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3h
I was thinking the same but I have so many questions (that I don't care enough to research).
How big is their team? Could they not find any competent artists? Could they not afford any competent artists? Could they not afford to upskill any of their current team, like getting them lessons in whatever was relevant?
It seems like they were just shallow and wanted a "classically" pretty product right now. And that doesn't engender much sympathy.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3h
If a few paragraphs of reading into the article we're supposed to be discussing is too much, I'm not sure why you're here trying to discuss it.
qarbone@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2h
I'm not here to "discuss" anything about the article. As I said, I don't care enough about a game studio sinking their project with genAI to do research.
When I don't care about the topic, I skim the comments to see if there is any hidden merit to reading. While doing so, the comment resonated my initial feeling of pity, and I shared my perspective on specifically the quote and comment I just read.
Satisfied? Have I engaged with content in a way you'll allow now?
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 22h
Lesson learned
DupaCycki@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1h
Interesting context, but that statement sounds so fucking stupid.
"Welp, we tried so hard, but just couldn't portray our art in the best possible way. So naturally, we turned to the soulless machine that fails at generating anything resembling art even if you tell it to do a 1:1 copy of a real art piece."
lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world · -12 pts · 16h
The hate on this game is where anti-AI becomes Butlerian Jihadism. I hate that AI is being shoehorned into where it shouldn't be and shoved down our throats like bloatware to hurry up and justify the trillions of dollars mindlessly invested in it. But to deny indie and solo devs this tool is cruel.
Also, I find this mindless anti-AI hate ironic when there's a big heading in the side panel here listing Approved Bots. Forums prior to Reddit didn't allow bots. For a reason. Maybe look into that first?
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 3 pts · 7h
Tell me you don't know Dune without telling me:
You haven't the slightest clue what the BJ was about if you equate it with non-violent expression of opinions, denying indie devs a tool and call it mindless hate.
To catch you up, the premise as outlined by the Reverend Mother:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
The people using thinking machines that were targeted by the Butlerians weren't indie devs, nor solo devs, nor other "small people". It also wasn't a harmless creative tool.
They were technocrats using it to enslave people.
I think it's quite understandable that people would resent enslavement. That's not mindless hate, that's a quite natural desire to be free. You wouldn't call abolitionists "mindless whip-haters" either, would you?
And the result wasn't a few people speaking out against these users of thinking machines, but a century of bloody revolt until they had destroyed not just the AI, but also all other machines with even simple logical components.
The vast difference in both scale and nature between this criticism of a particular kind of thinking machine we don't like (GenAI) being used in making programs for a thinking machine we do like (computers) and a slave revolt turned all-out war of annihilation against calculators makes this comparison just plain bizarre.
lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2h
Tell me you know Watsonian Dune but don’t know Doylist Dune without telling me. To catch you up:
I was being satirical. And so was Frank Herbert. The Butlerian Jihad and resulting mentats and navigators, groomed from childhood by what are essentially cults and turned into things either barely resembling humans or not resembling humans at all, using endless amounts of drugs like spice and sapho juice along with other ghastly techniques because it was now morally wrong to use computers is a critique of overzealous revolutionary movements that turn into religions.
The Dune universe is a grotesque dystopian future. And the Butlerian Jihad forced humanity to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire. I see the same thing happening today with the current jihad against the machines bubbling up.
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
Separate comment because separate point:
First off, there's a significant difference between anti-GenAI and anti-Bot. The term AI has been thoroughly diluted, to the point that we need to infer from context just which kind of AI is the subject. In this case, it's GenAI, which isn't the same as deterministic bot logic "AI". As for the bots in question:
So I'm not sure what your point is. None of these are GenAI, and all of them have long stopped operation. Sentiment shifts over time, and I guess it shifted against them at some point. The section is thus clearly a legacy holdover from a time when the topic wasn't as present in people's mind.
If you want to hold the fact that we used to think differently about one thing than we now think about another thing against us, that's just a non-starter of an argument.
Clutter, spam. If your threads are paginated and linear, bot spam makes it even harder to follow conversations, particularly if it's spamming ads, which was rather unpopular at the time.
In a tree-structured format where you can collapse comments and branches you don't care for, novelty bots are less disruptive.
Additionally, utility bots have been a thing on some forums too. It was never about "computer bad". We just didn't want to deal with bad computers. We also didn't want bad humans.
djdarren@piefed.social · 30 pts · 1d
Is this the gaming equivalent of increasingly niche music genres?
Feyd@programming.dev · 56 pts · 1d
It just means they liked hollow Knight
Rawrosaurus@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 1d
One of the things that drew me into Dark Souls to begin with was that it had some of that metroidvania feel. A soulslike metroidvania just sounds kind of redundant as a genre.
NebulaNymph@programming.dev · 5 pts · 21h
I believe the defining feature of the metroidvania genre is that it's essentially an open world, but certain paths are barred by the need of a specific item/movement mechanic. Like "you need to learn double jump to reach the high platform that lets you access this new area".
Where as Dark Souls immediately lets you wander into the graveyard or spooky ghost area and get your ass handed to you repeatedly until you wonder, oh maybe this wasn't the best path!
Cyv_@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 13h
At the same time, most of the endgame zones are gated behind the lordvessel. And that is gated behind sens and the bells. Four lords behind the ring from sif. That's gated behind the crest from andre. So there are certainly some walls.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 4h
I haven't played souls games, but perhaps the difference is how central that is to progression? In a metroidvania the world is typically littered by both paths you can't go through and secrets for you to find, both of which require abilities you'll be gathering consistently as the main method of progression. As you wander the same paths, the abilities make it easier and faster while letting you find those secrets and now-usable paths to progress further.
Cethin@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 21h
I was about to say the same thing. Any Souls-like that actually understands the format is already a Metroidvania. Some think it has something to do with combat, or bonfires, but really it's the exploration that makes it soul-like.
Honestly, it's really just a new trendier way to call a game a Metroidvania. I can't think of any functional differences between the genres. Arguably, RPG mechanics, but many games using the Souls-like description don't have this, and Sekiro doesn't, so I think they're just two terms for the same genre. Metroidvania often has a 2D connotation, and Souls a 3D one, but they're both used for either.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 16h
Maybe ideally but mostly it means "hard combat against bosses with predictable attacks you learn to dodge around".
Cethin@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 15h
Yeah, that's the bad understanding I'm talking about. It's a purely surface level view of them, and it's not what makes them interesting or popular. There are plenty of games with that that suck, so it can't be the foundation of what Souls-likes are.
It's also a mechanic that Metroidvanias classically have too, so yeah...
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 4h
I'm sure there are also plenty of games with exploration that suck, I don't think that really makes it a valid point. I can't speak to what soulslikes are, since I haven't played the original games, but a game can implement one element well and still fail at being an interesting game, which doesn't invalidate that element in any way.
Realistically, can't both combat and exploration be foundational elements of soulslike? I got the impression a big part is the way the combat works, usually involving a lot of commitment into your combat moves, with animations on attacks, dodges, heals, and multiple ways to be punished (and punish enemies), including plain damage, wasting items, wasting stamina.
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 3h
Being good or not isn't what qualifies something to fall into a particular genre, though
jaygray91@piefed.zip · 7 pts · 1d
Dilution of buzzwords like roguelike and roguelite. I'm waiting for soulslite to pop up soon.
Although metroidvania I somehow have no qualms with, since pretty much any that I've seen is pretty faithful.
bss03@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 1d
My new game is a roguevania, souls like, gothic horror version of Metroid. /s
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 1 pts · 12h
Roguelike = like Rogue, no meta progression
Roguelite = usually just means like Rogue with meta progression
I had to go look these up to know there was a difference and I like these games.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 4h
Roguelike is more complex, there's no governing body to decide on a proper definition, but I think the consensus that was reached long ago includes elements like turn-based, grid-based, non-modal, playable in an ASCII terminal. I think the last one is outdated, but the rest are significant components of what makes roguelikes... roguelikes.
Modality in games is a particularly interesting aspect when you start looking at various other games, and something that matches up with things I dislike in games. One fun example is movement in FPS games, which can be built either on universal mechanics or a predefined moveset - some games will allow you to perform a vault move when next to a low obstacle, other games might let you crouch, jump, and crouch while jumping to get over low obstacles.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 11h
Souls is already kind of like a Metroidvania. Like some areas are much easier with certain things, if not downright required.
UnityDevice@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 4h
In my experience if a metroidvania game is described as soulslike it means it will have time wasting mechanics like corpse runs, and the spawn points will be placed in awkward locations. Mostly inspired by hollow knight.
esc@piefed.social · 24 pts · 22h
Slop skeptics, lol.
iocase@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 21h
Hmmm... Yeah, I'm not sure about all of this slop yet 🤔
paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 17 pts · 8h
And then after the backlash, the project director came out thinking the only issue was that the AI didn't look good enough. Yeah bro that was the issue glad you're in charge here to figure it all out.
I don't get it how do artists get captured by the Shortcut Machine like this? Genuinely what worm is entering these people's brains where suddenly they don't know or care what art is and just want to ask grok to "make it look cool with dinosaurs and lightning and an erupting volcano." Brother if you can't do what you planned to, change the fucking plans. Those constraints are how we get cool and interesting new works and themed and art directions. People love the ps1-era graphics look and it's not because Square Enix asked chatgpt to generate a Tomb Raider cutscene in the style of Monet or whatever.
crypt0cler1c@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 5h
His response is shockingly tone deaf and approaching genuine hilarity.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 4h
AI boosters are controlling the narrative around AI, and what constitutes as extreme positions on it. They made the general population believe, refusing to use AI, refusing to engage with genAI output, especially if paired with mean online comments, is extremism. Meanwhile they claim the "golden middle road" is using it as a tool, such as an already established artist using it to brainstorm ideas, use it for reference material, or use their preexisting capabilities to fix up the AI generated output. Similarly, pro-AI extremism is being downplayed to "slop posting", especially if it is paired with severe AI psychosis.
Reality:
nullspace@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 17h
Soulslop, if you will.
bold_atlas@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 4h
Look this is simple: There is no legitimate need to use AI to do anything, let alone anything you take seriously and/or you'd want to charge money for.
So if you're not just being a paid shill then why kill your reputation by attaching your name and company to ANY amount of sloppy shit?
Just don't do it.
apudgypanda@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 1h
at the very least don't use it for the the most visibly apparent components of a game. Having it stub out scaffolding for underlying systems in the code is one thing, using it for visual assets is just dumb
nycvin@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Pear shaped?
PlantJam@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 1d
Basically means "not good", but the etymology expands on it more.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30948/the-meaning-and-the-origins-of-everythings-gone-pear-shaped#30949
cheese_greater@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Lovely word, cant believe ive never seen it before
Obituarykidney@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
I see it used mostly for manually painted 3D scenes - where the artist has textured the objects with brush strokes, or a procedural shader setup that makes it look like they've been painted.
Random example from the internet:
chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
You're one of today's lucky 10,000
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Bummer. Looks like a cool idea art-wise judging by the gameplay trailer.
Too bad these fuckers are too lazy and untalented to do the work themselves.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1h
Can you really call a studio that relies on AI independent?
Kissaki@feddit.org · 1 pts · 21h
The title is in Early Access, and apparently they already removed the AI cutscenes.
On the Steam store page, the second trailer still shows an AI trailer. I assume it was in this style.
Currently, it sits at 70 Steam reviews; Mixed.
Half of the 70 is certainly not a huge backlash. Given they removed it now, and it's still in early access, maybe they can recover.
cheese_greater@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 1d
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1d
Quality control, for one.
Artifacts like this would be unnaceptable if they were from CGI or whatever, but somehow generative models get a pass? That makes no sense to me, yet it happens all the time; heavily distorted output somehow meets the bar for publishing.
Honestly it has nothing to do with "AI." It would be worth calling out however it was made. But for some reason generative diffusion models always seem to lower the standards of output for user.
If it was indistinguishable from CGI and fit the rest of the hand-painted style, the argument would be very different, IMO.
cheese_greater@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Well it is actually complicated. It appears the tiny studio ran out of time/budget trying to get usable CGI, so they did some diffusion real-quick as an act of desperation, and got slop as a result.
Not everyone is exactly up to speed on diffusion, either. I bet they Googled and used the first video diffusion service they found, and hence got bad results, but its also fair to criticize them for publishing them. They either didnt bother to proof the output, or they did and knowingly published anyway.
Im not sure anyone is the villain here. But I dont like people leaning into outrage culture, and trying to paint it as black-and-white.
cheese_greater@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I mean, the customers are the ones with the purchasing power here, and most of the shame was put on the studio.
athatet@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 23h
The line is: did you put a prompt into a slop machine?
frank@sopuli.xyz · -1 pts · 1d
For me, anytime creative thinking is outsourced.
Could you make a straw man argument of "well by not manually touching every pixel the special effects is outsourcing creativity" and to that i say "nyyyaaaaah"
username_1@discuss.tchncs.de · -62 pts · 1d
People deserve slop. They don't want a nice game with some AI art, they prefer shitty corporate slop with manually drawn textures. Such stupidity is punishable by even more corporate slop! Congratulations!
Dojan@pawb.social · 38 pts · 1d
Companies face backlash for slop, and you’re here all “it’s what the people want!” Get real.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net · 28 pts · 1d
There is a third way, and that's where my money's going. Solidarity with all game devs, including artists
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
You put this incredibly abrasively, but there is a grain of truth there. Gamers, in aggregate, repeatedly preorder or buy hyped garbage, so perhaps we dont have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to boycotts.
username_1@discuss.tchncs.de · -2 pts · 1d
I did. What else can I do except for spitting "in the general direction" of gamers who are enemies to themselves? They are the majority and most of them are dumb as a brick and think in slogans. "Abrasiveness" is all I still have...
brucethemoose@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 23h
I dont think any spitting is necessary, nor is it productive.
username_1@discuss.tchncs.de · -1 pts · 23h
It is. Not in the way you might think or wish, though. It just calms down my nerves. That's nice and useful. For me.