I will preface this with it’s only been a couple of days but good lord, I have jumped in productivity by who knows how much.

“computer… make me a uhh…”

When the words “I use chat gpt for gamedev” leave my fingertips I feel like there’s a weird image in my head where people might think you tell the chatbot to write you up a whole game but even with the most specific prompt, there is still a ton of work to be done my friend. I just remember when I started learning digital art and people would kind of feel that way about it. Just click on the make game/make art button right?

So the way I use it, is by asking the chatbot to write me up a script for the hypothetical gameobject, what its job is and any variables I might want to edit or be able to view in the inspector. Honestly, its like sending an email to a friend on discord for a script with a small cashapp tip (if you’re a reasonable person). Or if you’re really weird like me, it’s like writing word problems for standardized tests.

But yes. write the prompt, get the script in a couple seconds, implement and debug (most of the time it works but sometimes, you gotta work with the spaghetti), and then stop and think how much time you just saved cause what you asked for is like 30 lines of code max.

modular scripting

in the way the chatbot works, i don’t really find it too workflow-y, (even if you could) to input your code and ask for improvements and such. Instead, the way I’m finding a lot of success in being able to implement the code as quickly as possible is by asking for modular code that takes care of one job instead of having a monster script that takes care of all the things in one part of the game.

One quick example is, instead of having a character gameobject with one script that takes care of jumping/attacking/interacting/getting hit/managing health, having a script for each one or will save you the headache of changing things up when you start play testing and such.

It’s also just a lot easier having to ask the chatbot to write up a script that handles one thing instead of trying to write a novel-like prompt or giving it additional changes over and over. But idk, I’m just here taping stuff together with near magic-like tools.

a personal tutor

I just want to point out that I had no idea how to use coroutines in unity before, I was kind of just going to use animations and what have you to get around stuff like that. Now that I’ve asked for a couple of scripts that are timing sensitive and seeing the code written for that specific context though…. it just hits my American education system just right because if there’s anything I’ve been taught how to do well is finding the third variable with the help of two other ones.

Now, I can read “well-written” code and learn what all everything goes into what I asked for. I’m learning.

being specific about what you want is really important

this is a given right, but it really dawns on me how important it is to read and having a verbose vernacular because in the end those words are what communicate ideas and even then it’s a little dubious on what it is exactly you’re asking for. This idea has some amazing implications for me, like scale this large enough and should we go down this tech-tree, we’ll need to convey human ideas and concepts to ai if it’s in places of power. And I fear my lexicon ain’t that great., but I digress.

The example I have is that I was asking for a script that was to give an enemy gameobject a forward jumping behavior every x amount of time. The way I remember wording it is that “make the enemy jump forward in a random direction” and the end result was that the gameobject more like ‘blinked’, or specifically, the gameobject’s transform vector was just changed to a location just ahead of it. And this brings me to my next subject….

the situational awareness capabilities of language model ai… is unreal

I admit if I read the lines of code that the ai gave me, I would have known immediately that that’s what would have happened but it was the honeymoon phase (still is I argue) and so far everything has just been working and I was feeling a bit… lazy.

Instead of scrapping the entire chat to start anew with a whole ‘nother prompt I continued the chat and simply elaborated, “hey buddy, I see you did it this way but I was thinking more of a physics kind of jump where the enemy is pushed forward a set amount and upwards a set amount.” After a couple of seconds cooking, the ai is able to edit the previously made script to accommodate my new requests.

Just goes to show the extent of what my expectations of current tech is. I really did not think the ai would be able to do that. Maybe because every chatbot I’ve played with before can’t do that, at least not as well. So keep that in mind if you haven’t already internalized it; if you’re a perfectionist, don’t worry, you can work with it.

in conclusion

in conclusion, it may or may not disrupt everything about the job market (betting on former), but this tool is something I have wished for my entire life. It’s what visual programming is striving to be. If Clippy was this in those microsoft office days or yore, productivity would have been so much so that we’d be living in a post-solarpunk distopia instead of this one.

I’ve always been writing notes on how I would design mechanics and game objects because that’s what I could do on my downtime at the day job, just notes. But now I can take those notes and almost word for word input them into the chatbot to get working scripts to quickly implement my ideas.

Now, more than ever, it’s up to creators to design stuff instead of just building. Like with the onslaught of (insert easy to use game engine) shovelware games, I imagine this will be bringing tons of new low-effort games to the world but that’s just more the reason that it’s going to take a well designed idea/story to stand out.

When anyone can make large scale MMOs in an afternoon what will everyone be playing?

Anybut that’s it for this post, I haven’t been posting lately because the day job has been exceedingly demanding for me mentally. I mean, try being in these backroom yellow walls 8+ hours a day where a couple of the lights are always flickering and there’s 6-10 people max in here. Like there’s a reason the yellow backrooms have been the symbol of current-era trauma. But see you next post!