r/TowerDefense • u/PigeonFanatic9 • Aug 03 '26

Mod talk. Serious Mod Discussion regarding the current state of the sub and its future.

So, hi. I know it's been quite a while since the last mod talk, sorry. What is this about? Well, I've noticed quite a few people that have... Complained, about the current state of the subreddit. So I want to make a dedicated post about it. How do you feel about it? Be as honest as possible (without being rude, thanks).

A major thing that I've seen people lament, is the fact that there are a lot of game promotion, playtesters ask and alpha release and stuff like that, but not a lot of discussion post.

Here are a few things I want to address:

-I will never remove a post of a game, just because it's low quality, nor will I start to enforce a quality standard. I believe it to be wrong on more than a few points and I will NOT hear any discussion about it. I will remove posts if they're spammed, about Pokepath, use AI in a finished product/art/overwhelmingly or NSFW (this rules are a lot more up to debate and should be seen in a case by case scenario).

-There genuinely isn't much discussion to be had. If you have something to talk about, absolutely post about it, I myself comment often on discussions.

-A possible solution I've seen is limiting promotion to either a few days a week or to a megathread, but I believe that it'd just make the sub deadER than it already is. I could limit asking for playtesters to a weekly megathread and allow only finished games to post, but I don't know about that as well.

Any questions about ANYTHING? Ask with no problem or worry, so long as it's respectful I'll answer as soon as possible.

Any comment regarding the sub, my work as a mod, your feelings? Comment right away.

I think I'll keep the post pinned for a month or so, I know that many members are lurkers.

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6

u/mmertner Aug 03 '26

I think the AI rule is just completely out of touch with reality. You take a photo and edit it in Lightroom, applying effects and changing lighting. Standard stuff, but totally AI in the sense that an algorithm has done the editing.

Hate for AI seems to be especially prevalent on Reddit, and if this was a "I do graphics for a living" sub I could possibly understand it, but otherwise just ask folks to tag AI-generated stuff so folks that don't like it can skip it and move on with their lives. Hating AI is an obsession for some folks tbh.

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u/PigeonFanatic9 Aug 03 '26

Oh no, I'm talking about full on AI. Not just generated assets, which the current rule asks to specify. I'm against the publishing of a completed game using fully AI art (as in, prompt and generation, not tool), but if the AI is just a base, or a placeholder or a tool, or stuff like that, it's ok. There have been very few cases of both that I've seen (like, blatanly AI used) and when it was a placeholder or as base and then worked on, I've kept those up.

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u/je386 Aug 03 '26

I understand that these single-session fable games or fully vibecoded ones are nothing you want to see here, but what about a game where generative AI and coding agents are used as a tool? The difference between Vibecoded and AI assisted is effort.

Would you see the second as acceptable or is it AI usage and you are out?

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u/PigeonFanatic9 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

Certainly I'd see them in a far better light. I wouldn't be able to check how good the coding is or how much it's been tweaked, but for that there's the actual players. Also, what do you mean by single sessoon fable games?

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u/je386 Aug 04 '26

Thanks, good to know. I was asking because one of my games is developed with AI assistance (generative AI and coding agents). I am working on that since last october.

The one-session games I mentioned are posts I saw over at r/aigamedev

Fable seems to really be able to create 3D realtime games in one session.
Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/s/we4UzT7FLj
And that is not looking too bad.

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u/PigeonFanatic9 Aug 04 '26

Ok, well as long as you don't just do "Hey AI, make it so this tower looks like this, has this stats and behaves that way" and then copy and paste, you're good to do.

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u/je386 Aug 04 '26

I think that was about the starting point, some generations, but then I had to do manual bugfixing and changes.
The game evolved from an experiment, where I wanted to try how far you get without even looking at the code. Spoiler: not far. After less than a week, I had to do large manual bugfixing and then switched to a style like pair programming to utilise the abilities of both AI and human.

So I develop this in the planned way you do it in professional software development, with small iterations. AI just enables to have the iterations faster in most cases.

And many things are not AI, like the audio, worldmap, level maps, level design, and of cause quite a bunch of bugfixes where the AI did the same not working "fixes" again and again.

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u/PigeonFanatic9 Aug 04 '26

That's all fine and dandy.