As much as I hate AI and I will actively want to punch you in the ballsacks for using it, no matter what I'm about to say next and there's no changing that fact . . . the main theme coming at me out of left field was a pleasant surprise and added more to this game's production-value! (even if something made with AI cannot be counted as production, for obvious reasons). This game's music is good, the title theme as well as the theme(s, mutiple variations apparently which increases the game's quality even more) in-between stages is nice and catchy with coherent lyrics for AI. The game looks nice, even if (if I understood the credits correctly) all of the assets in this game are premade
It really pains me to say this, and it speaks to the quality of everything else I've witnessed in this Jam so far, but this might be the best, most stable experience I've played here so far
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I appreciate your honesty, and the follow.
To be clear, the AI did not write the lyrics. I did. And in fact the main theme is the 8th version of the song that Suno created after much tweaking of the prompts until I got the song I wanted. I spent even more time on the one where Skele-Tom is humming to himself even though it's a cover of the original. That's not to refute any of your points, just to make sure you know that AI isn't that good. If you look at my response to @Crevlorne's post about 4 posts down from yours, I went into a lot of detail about my thoughts on AI-generated content and how I share some of your sentiments on it. (I spent like 40 minutes writing that post so I don't want to belabor my point here.)
Yes, the assets of my game are premade free assets. Except for some of the sound effects that I made using sound effect makers. But well, you had 5 people working on your game and I had one, and my computer caught on fire during the jam. (Which I talked about in the Skele-Tom Post Mortem DevLog.)
As of this writing, I've played and rated 126 games in the jam. I will say there are a few more stable games out there, especially 1-bit games that were smaller in scope. To your main point though, I think my ethical admission of using AI to create music is going to damage me in the overall results.
Again, I appreciate your honesty And I'm glad you seemed to have liked the game against your will. :)
"To be clear, the AI did not write the lyrics. I did" Well, that explains it. Kudos to you! The lyrics are really catchy
"just to make sure you know that AI isn't that good" As I had suspected, I just wasn't sure
"If you look at my response to @Crevlorne's post about 4 posts down from yours, I went into a lot of detail about my thoughts on AI-generated content and how I share some of your sentiments on it. (I spent like 40 minutes writing that post so I don't want to belabor my point here.)" 'Tis good that you were upfront about it, which is objectively the correct thing to do. It shows your spine. For the sake of us being in a Jam, you're correct, it matters very little what's done for hobby-projects and Jams. They don't carry any greater gravitas than that. But generative AI in general is pure evil, and it is a Pandora's Box that can no longer be closed, once it has been opened up. AI doesn't make things out of nowhere, somebody else's information and data has been used to train what generative AI does. When used for silly, insignificant things, it isn't that deep. The whole concept of AI just icks me, especially since "AI" as we currently know it isn't really even AI at all since it cannot generate anything on its own, and the ramifications of it using other people's work is creatively bankrupt at best and dangerous at worst
I am not here to preach at you. I'm just a preachy feller in general. But I hope you're smart enough to understand all of this already, and still make your own decisions, judgement and call despite all of that, so my preaching is not necessary. You seem to have a good head between your shoulders, even if I'm unable to trust people in general. But I have no reason to believe you're not
"Yes, the assets of my game are premade free assets" If you're a solodev, that is a bit more understandable. And especially since this Jam did provide them and encouraged using them, if those are what you used. I just personally favour unique, handmade assets whenever possible because of how much life they breathe into the creations, and makes them special. I fought with my programmer before the Jam started about whether we should use premade assets or not, considering that we hadn't found a sufficient amount of artists yet
4.5: "But well, you had 5 people working on your game and I had one, and my computer caught on fire during the jam" You are correct. In fact we did have six, the game was originally supposed to have music made specifically for this game. But due to a few altercations with our fifth member (our second programmer, who I had to take in because our original second programmer never contributed anything to the game's code and I only found out on day 7 of the Jam's runtime, and the new second programmer [not Tespy, feel free to draw your own conclusions there ~ I won't name any names. But Tespy was a part of the team ever since day 1, and he programmed most of Hauntlings all by himself. So if we really want to be dogmatic there were only four of us in the end and for the most of the devtime]), our composer left as a result and barred us from using his music. Your PC catching on fire is quite unfortunate and unlucky, and you're a trooper for having been able to pull through despite all of it! I can relate because I was afraid that Hauntlings would never be finished, because it was constantly on fire :'D Well, maybe not as much as your situation but it had little embers lingering around it constantly
"Except for some of the sound effects that I made using sound effect makers" Respectable
"As of this writing, I've played and rated 126 games in the jam. I will say there are a few more stable games out there, especially 1-bit games that were smaller in scope" That's to say more to what catches my fancy and what kind of games and genres intrigue me personally. I'm of course speaking based on my own personal bias, and that comment doesn't necessarily have anything to do with anything ~
"Again, I appreciate your honesty" I'm a professional, and I'm used to critiquing different pieces
"And I'm glad you seemed to have liked the game against your will. :)" The game is so good, and the presentation so well-made, that it made me like it. That is what I wanted to convey
I wanted the chorus of lyrics to sound like a nursery rhyme, like something that could be sung in sing-song voices during a double-dutch jump rope competition. "How many pieces did he steal? One! Two! Three! ... etc. That's why in the version where he sings to himself the main parts he remembers is the chorus.