itch.io

Today we don’t see musicians complaining about that

Are you joking? Musicians are getting crushed under the weight of streaming services, which pay them a few cents unless they reach huge numbers of streams, and give customers a convenient "access-everything" platform which incentivizes NOT purchasing albums (even though they probably spend the same amount on subscription and in turn never own a single piece of music - Spotify shuts down, all your music is gone forever). Regular gigging musicians complain about streaming all the time.

Pirating MP3s is, and was, illegal. People got arrested for it. Musicians complained about it (ever heard of Metallica?). At the end of the day, it became something you just have to accept in a lot of cases because it's impossible to catch everyone, but it was never LEGAL. Also, there were some instances of people downloading music and then going out to buy the album for various reasons (didn't have the money at first, weren't sure if they would like it so tried it out before buying, wanted to support the artist, etc). Not everyone, obviously, but at least there was some recuperation of lost revenue. And there was always the legal barrier (depending on your location) and the general sense that you were in fact stealing. AND, to top it all off, the end product was still the work of a specific artist.

You can't compare that to genAI, which is like legalized stealing, but then recombining the stolen goods into something unrecognizable which now has no direct connection to the people whose work it was based on. Even streaming, which overall kinda sucks, is still putting your name and album art on the page at the very least, and throwing you your scraps. GenAI does no such thing.

thanks!

hi

Arka

It seems like you are thinking that when AI animates your image, it is doing so through programming alone. As in some sort of algorithm that takes your image and produces animations without any source material. But, this is not true - AI does it by prediction, and the way it builds the "knowledge" is by consuming vast amounts of other animated media. People don't have a problem with the program itself, they have a problem with the database it is using, which was constructed by scraping the entire internet for source material.

Your example would only be true if you "trained" your AI at home using exclusively your own source material. In other words, you would have had to make some hundreds or thousands of hours of animations first, then piped all of that into the AI model so that it could then play guess-the-next-frame with your images. Then you could say you are only using your own work.

On the other hand, whatever model you are using is almost certainly working off the backs of humans. That's the stealing part. It isn't a program that just uses math or procedural generation or anything "strictly code" to generate the animation. It uses a massive database of other people's work, most of which was never intended to be used for this purpose.

Please know that I'm not saying this to be accusatory toward you specifically, I just feel the need to correct the misconception that only your source image is going into the process. To be fair, it makes sense that people wouldn't necessarily understand this part of it, because the tools don't have a big banner that says "Hey, just remember that we can only do this because of the data we ripped from other artists." The stolen data is conveniently hidden behind the curtain. You'll never actually see it unless you specifically ask for a result that looks like someone's work. The results you normally get are an average of everyone's style. It doesn't matter if the end product looks similar to anything - the source material was taken without consent (and in huge quantities)

To you it might seem trivial to use AI to make your picture into a video, but that video is literally a slap in the face to everyone who has worked to be able to animate, film, and edit videos themselves. The AI can only do it by consuming vast amounts of similar content, all of which was made with human work-hours, and wasn't published with the intention of being put through a pattern recognition meatgrinder just for your convenience.

It isn't illegal for you to use generative AI, you're welcome to post it on your own website or on platforms that allow it. But I think it is deeply ironic that you would complain about the places that do allow AI turning into slop-fests. What did you expect to happen? How would you create an "in between"? Tell people that they can just use it a little bit? That is unrealistic, there's just no practical way to enforce it. If AI is allowed, it is likely to be fully allowed, and then you will experience the race-to-the-bottom economy it creates. In that world, there is a direct incentive to let the AI produce as much as possible, because that makes it fast fast fast, and volume is what matters most. Choosing to generate only 50% of your work just means you are 50% behind. 

Here, AI content is allowed but is supposed to be flagged, and the majority of people who come here are serious about supporting humans, not machines, and thus are going to be very cautious and discerning on the whole. So, from my perspective, AI hate is the only thing keeping this space sane.

Ok I tried the download version, I don't know why it beeps and boops during startup, also there's no way to change brush size?

I was about to say that 151mb is way too much for a toy. But today its changed to 75mb, lol. Still seems like a lot for just 1300 lines program? (not trying to be rude, I use Gdevelop which makes huge exports for desktop due to electron wrapper)

supposed to be working right now but:

You mean this?

https://itch.io/docs/wharf/file-formats/patches.html

Haha, yeah, our map editor is still in progress... it has a very sketchy Undo that frequently crashes, lol. But it has been a really cool experience for me, since I signed on primarily as a level designer, I get to pester the programmer for more features :)

Hey, thanks for playing! Yes, we will definitely add mouse sensitivity options. There is a melee attack which defaults to Q, but you wouldn't know that without going into the options ^.^

We had previously thought about making the knife a separate weapon slot, and when running out of ammo you would automatically switch down until ultimately arriving at the knife if there's nothing else. Another option we considered is just to use the knife attack whenever you hit fire on an empty weapon. In any case its clear that we need to make it more obvious so thanks for pointing that out!

The programmer did make a couple of videos about the coding process if you're interested:

Raycaster Engine Series Intro
Raycaster Engine Drawing Walls
Raycaster Engine Map File Format

The second and third vids are pretty long so get comfy! I do think a written piece is a cool idea and would be a more digestible format for some people, though I'm not sure if or when that would happen. 

We've rebalanced the game a bit, as multiple people felt it was too hard out of the gate. Here's what has changed (copied from devlog):

• All enemies now have higher "pain" chance, meaning their attack will be interrupted when they take damage.
• Pistol and knife enemies have slower attack animation. This combined with the above change makes stun-locking more reliable
• Fireball damage has been reduced
• Player knife attack has increased range

Difficulty settings will still be a thing down the road but I think this makes the core flow better. Let us know if you agree :)

Looks amazing. Bookmarking this for future project :P

Thanks for your feedback! I am not too surprised to hear that... we are planning on implementing difficulty settings at some point, so I think there will be an "easy" setting where you will take less damage. Also these two levels are supposed to be around the middle of the game so its a bit of a hot start. A better weapon earlier on might be warranted... anyway thanks for playing and commenting, its much appreciated!

Ah, sorry, Windows only at the moment!

It was not made on an existing engine, everything was coded from scratch! 

Moloch

Hey everyone, I'm working with ClogSoft on an oldschool first person shooter. We've just released a two-level demo and would really appreciate some feedback on it. We are most interested in how people feel about the core gameplay, is it understandable, is it fun, that sort of thing. But of course feel free to comment on whatever else comes to mind!

It is a little different from your usual "modern boomer shooter", or at least we think it is, so if you are into true 90s vibes then please check it out. Or, if you aren't normally into those vibes, please still check it out and let us know what you think!

https://clogsoft.itch.io/moloch

I'm not sure I understand your suspicion that "everyone uses it." The people who dislike AI aren't going to use it. I use GDevelop, they added AI features and I turned it off immediately (by that I mean, clicked the option to hide the "ask AI" button). Now you might find a rare case of someone pretending to hate it but then using it in secret, but that is very unlikely. People who want to use it secretly will usually just not say anything.

There can be reasons not to use "everything available" - those of us who don't want to use it often cite ethical reasons around data scraping and real world resource consumption. Making the best possible game isn't worth it if I'm causing harm to others.

Ah, I figured that. I also managed to get an error at one point but I can't reproduce it. Something about null value when trying to read "name" I think. Should've taken a screenshot 

The first response literally gave examples of jams where AI is allowed. They also gave a concrete and logical reason why it might not be allowed, which has to do with the inherent nature of restriction-based jams. Working within restrictions is consensual gatekeeping. If you don't like the restrictions, don't participate in the jam.

It says game over, did I won?

Cute idea and the graphics are nice. Although, I feel like the faceless people doesn't really fit with the rest of the theme?

LOL. You started out complaining about personal attacks...

I am sure you won't.  Nobody attacked you personally, this thread is about user's ability to filter out AI content. But of course you felt the need to come in and give a speech about the merits of AI. Which includes objectively false statements (if something already exists we can't question it <- utterly false)

If you love AI so much, you shouldn't be afraid of transparency. I can only think of one reason to argue against this, and that is if you wanted to trick people into thinking that your generated content was actually made by you. People should be able to filter based on their preferences. Not having a way to filter out AI content isn't going to make people who prefer not to consume it suddenly change their minds and decide they love AI. Instead, they will just have to take extra steps to filter it on their own, and lose trust in developers who aren't transparent about it. Trying to discourage transparency is only going to seed MORE paranoia.

"The question is not whether it should exist — it already does."

That perfectly sums up AI sloppers and their outrageously stupid platitudes. Yes, of course, if it exists then we must not question it. Everyone knows that!

Weird... there is no option for "receive updates" when downloading something so I'm not sure what that's all about.  There are user settings including "never send any email to me" but I doubt 24 people all had that option checked while downloading your project :)

It does look like you may have to actually sell something before you can use this feature, according to https://itch.io/docs/creators/interact:

Sending emails

If you have a page for sale, you can send an email to all your buyers via itch.io. Do so via the Interact tab, in the email section. You can include the buyer’s purchase URL at the bottom of any email you send to make sure they can easily access any files you may have updated.

There are a couple things to keep in mind:

• Every email has an easy access unsubscribe link, avoid spamming your fans or you might lose access to them.
• You can only send at most one email per day, so make sure to proof-read before sending one out.
• You won’t be able to write an email before you make your first sale.

I get updates in my email from following people, I'm not really sure what will happen if you just download something and don't follow the author. Probably nothing?

You can send an email to everyone who downloaded your game through the dashboard. Just go to the project and click on "Interact"

It shows in the feed:

"The Ruins of Calaworm

A downloadable game.

Updated minimum price to $7.99. Updated page content."

hey thanks!

Thanks for the kind words!

Sorry to hear that :( I can definitely think of some 'tubers that I would be sad about passing away... though I can't say there are any that I have such a deep attachment to.

I did recently lose an IRL friend to depression/addiction/guilt. She thought she was a burden, but I didn't think so. I wanted to listen, and to help. I hope you have someone you can talk to, and that you can allow yourself to be helped... for those of us on the other end, we do it by choice, and it makes our own lives better. And if not, well then it would be our responsibility to say that we aren't prepared to handle it (hopefully in a respectful way)

Making games is a great outlet, and it's damn hard so it will certainly keep you busy for a long time :)

You don't just have to make games though, in the "traditional" sense. Many people create and consume other types of digital medium for the benefit of their mental health, such as visual novels, zines, bitsy stories, and so on. These don't have such high requirements in terms of mechanical skills like coding so could be a good choice if you are looking for a way to express your thoughts.

did I won yet

thanks!

Arka

I've never been so amused by a frustrating interface, lol

Ha, I understand... I also have a tendency to shut myself in my cave and not talk to anyone, and really have only managed to break out of that in the last few years...

One strategy you could use, is to try focusing on the other aspects of your game for now, and just use placeholders and/or crappy animations... then you can share it as a demo or prototype and see if any artists want to jump on board. It is easier to find collaborators when you actually have a foundation that they can work on. It can be tough though as you'll be staring at your junky placeholders imagining how pretty they could be while forcing yourself to work on the rest of it ^.^

Well, here's one solution... don't animate! If you hate animation and don't really want to learn it, maybe you should look for ways to create a game without having to animate a character. If you really do want to learn it, well, you're gonna have to spend years practicing just like every other good pixel artist. You've reminded me of this very nice video from Indie Game Clinic (specifically the first few minutes):

They are looking for a programmer, not an artist. It doesn't reflect well on you to copy and paste the same boring advertisement everywhere, especially in places where it isn't relevant.