itch.io

Oh I agree with your comment, you know how people are now about AI? Well I was the same about the easy mode game editing systems such as Unity / Unreal and so on. That said, that did not ruin the app stores, greed and stupidity ruined the app stores. When the only way to compete was to make your game free and then attempt to screw money out of people with in app purchases and ads. The whole thing has been a race to the bottom benefiting only those with large amounts of cash that can push the games into visibility. Those are the ones that the likes of Apple and Google will bend over backwards to help. AI is just an additional layer of mess on top of an already massively broken system. That there is where I give up, I no longer care about how a game is made, my craft has been demolished and made easier and easier for millions of laymen already, so what's wrong with a few million more?
The issue with AI is that it has been unfairly demonised, we di not demonise any of the previous tools that allowed the app stores to be filled with junk. Don't get me wrong, it will destroy my trade but the powers that be want it so they WILL have it. It will demolish my sector and many associated sectors. But there is a short time window right now (and maybe for next 5 years) where you can utilise AI to make something of your ideas. Why would I with insane amounts of knowledge waste my time working at my typing speed when I can get an AI to analyse my code base, adopt my style and do what I would have done but in 1/10th the time? (very heavily directed by myself of course). AI is not able to just take a comment such as "recreate me Minecraft" and actually do that, maybe in 5 years but not now. For those of using AI correctly, its not SLOP, its enhanced our existing skillset. Sure some people will create slop but most of us professional developers will not use it that way.
Working on games for years makes zero difference by the way (if you don't see it as a hobby then stop doing it), you either have to be very lucky and find a nice niche such as Stardew (these are disappearing daily) or you need big publisher backing which means giving a lot of your money to someone else. There is no other way anymore. Those days of Flappy Bird are gone and never to return.
I will add that I am coming at this more from a professional development point of view where this is my livelihood, if a pro dev does not use AI now he / she will fall to the bottom and lose jobs quicker than the rest as AI pushes people out. AI allows me to do the job of 5 coders, why would someone hire someone who would not use that efficiency boost? I'm hoping governments restrict AI use but they won't, too much money to be made and at the end of the day they care far more for money than they do people.

Huge numbers of developers are now using AI to generate code, help debug, fix issues, run tests and so on, so this category will quickly become the largest. That is if coders are truly honest (I suspect many will not be because of the stigma you are attaching to their games, maybe one of the reasons itchio is dying?). Even after coding for 30+ years in at least 6 different languages, having worked on hundreds of games / engines across many consoles / devices, many large scale commercial products I am now using Codex. I have no choice if I am to compete, because my peers sure as hell are using it so why would one handicap themselves? If you want to compete in the "world of work" then you will be left with no choice but to use AI at some point. Its a sad state of affairs but we do what we can with what we have.

Thanks for these great suggestions. I did actually update the game to remove the quest pop ups and a small notification is shown instead, is this not showing for you? The quest complete popups are still there however, maybe I can apply the same kind of system but with a small text summary showing what the rewards are. A list of recently completed quests would also be a good addition. I have added these to the top of my to do list.

The mini games will become harder and take longer as the player progresses, at the moment they are not balanced. The idea is that you need to keep upgrading levels and various features and research to progress so there will be blockers at some point. More mini games will also be added with more interesting and more complicated mechanics.

Thanks for giving it a whirl,  its still only around 20% complete in terms of quests. Not much  play balancing has taken place yet, this is all yet to come. Spells have not yet been introduced into quests, these will come in boss fights later on.

Yep, the software has changed some different images are being generated for the same input seed and parameters, something I wasn't aware of which kind of ticks me off, it was so difficult to get these images generated in the first place.

You raise some very good comparisons and I agree with them. I am unfortunately a lousy musician and conductor, seeing as it took me longer to generate the content than coding it

My preference is pixel art, I love pixel art but I am no good at it and getting AI to generate pixel it is a complete none starter for me. 

I agree, AI models are trained on images created by humans so they are in effect imitating thousands of different artists which is why you can end up with images with two ears, actually I think its meant to be some kind of elf ear but just doesn't look good. This is another thing, I regenerated that image yesterday using the same parameters and its changed, the original has a normal human ear. I think its because the software itself has changed over the last few months.

I think there will be jobs for humans that are specifically involved in generating AI content because its so difficult to use, especially if you are anyone artists trying to generate art content.

AI is dangerous and scammy? Not sure what any of that means

I wouldn't say its convenient, getting an AI to produce what you see in your head, its a difficult task, far harder than coding. I suppose after years of using AI and you've become used to its quirks, it could then be classes as convenient, but right now, its frustrating and difficult. I can see jobs appearing which involve just getting AI to produce content that is reasonable.

I would prefer  human art simply down to the fact that a human can understand what I'm asking for, but humans cost a lot of money which I don't have. So its AI or nothing until that lottery win comes along.

Your games need a hook, something to pull users in. You also need to present them visually more aesthetically,. People are in general a tad shallow so something that looks pretty will get far more eyes than something that may be technically good but looks drab. Ever thought to turning to AI image generators to aid development?  My art skills are shocking and asset stores are saturated with the same old junk so I have turned to AI image generation. I wrote a dev log on it here if you want to take a look https://mrmop44.itch.io/aria/devlog/651117/ai-assisted-development. I'm a game dev with 30+ years experience, worked on all sorts from Doom to Need for Speed but I can't draw anything, I'm a coder and in general people do not like coder art.

I remember the days as an indie dev where I had to crack open my trusty art package and draw something awful and often unrecognisable to represent a character in my games.  Then one day along came asset stores, we could now all use the same assets and create  prototypes that all looked alike.  Then AI content generators came along and with it seems more freedom for one man bands. I recently started my very first game that is driven by AI generated content I've found the experience rather painful but rewarding. I am not well off, never have been or ever will be, I cannot afford to pay people to make me content and I don't want people to work on content for me with the promise of something that will never happen so to me AI seems like something that I can get along with. Anyone else trying AI assist in development? If not what stops you? If you have have you had any success?

I've used AI to generate art content, ideas, quest text and lists of things in a game I am working.  This is an example character from my game:

There is no way on this Earth that I can create content like that.

Thanks for this great feedback, I've been trying to figure out how to reduce the amount of pop up, I think there may also be too many quests, especially as each upgrade of each area has an associated quest. I've modified the game to no longer show quest pop ups, instead a new quest icon pops up to let the user know that a new quest has arrived so they can go to the quest at their leisure. Quest complete pop ups are still there though, not sure what to do about those yet. I'm a big WoW fan so I'm personally used to big walls of text but I understand that its not to everyone's taste,. With that I'm looking to reduce the amount of text in the longer quests.

Casual mode is basically a very minimal quest version of the game. Its meant for people that just want to click and upgrade and don't really want a story line or loads of quests to do.  Will be a while before casual mode is ready.

If you click the top bar you can switch between 4 different save slots

When you say text boxes, do you mean the quest dialogs that pop up?

Good game, second part needs some kind of map I reckon

Good game, interesting concept