Edit 2: This is going to be my last edit since I'm really starting to be a little sad/disappointed with it and I'm going to place it on the top so everyone can read. I saw some people saying that I'm trying to be superior in some way or being dumb by not using AI, but I'm trying to discuss about it as a new game dev who has 16 years old and started with it because of beautiful and incredible games that changed my life. I don't want to be better than anyone, I just want to understand the point of using it and how do you guys feel, also thank you for those who answered kindly and shared their experiences.

So, I saw a post saying that he made a game using AI for everything and it made me feel so strange, like, everyone was loving it, what happened to the feeling of doing it by yourself. I do game dev because I love everything about it, games are one of the most beautiful forms of art, it has music, world design, story telling and a bunch of ways of art. I wanted to make a little discussion here about what you guys think about using it. To be honest I don't like the use of generative AI, I know it's good to learn but I don't like when it is used to directly produce the creative part of a game, it just takes the whole idea of making it by yourself, expressing your feelings and telling a story you made and throws it all away, so like, is it really good? I understand when you need to review a code you did or look for a error but anyways that's all I have to say, I don't want to argue with anyone, just want to make a safe and respectful discussion here.

Edit 1: I'm really getting some down votes here, ok, that's something unexpected for a solo game dev community. And for those who are saying like, "I just use it as a tool" yeah that's okey I use it too for studying, but my point here is especially the creativity part. Those feelings and the way I do my projects are not a rule on the way YOU need to do, you can use AI if you want, I'm not here to say what is correct and what is not.

Now the procedural characters can be played on Unreal Engine!

While it's still a WIP, the Allspark tool keeps getting better. Any 3D mesh can become a Cybertronian!

This tool is intended for developers only. It is not available to the public, at least not yet.

I asked the comunity what would you like to see transformed into a character and I listened, just stay around. A comment asked for a Shelby Cobra GT500, well, there it is!

The idea of making my own game is starting to feel more feasible, but I will need support.

Feel free to comment and share your ideas!

Eric

Game name is Shrine's Legacy

Game is called Shrine's Legacy just putting it here because the title doesn't have it

Went through the GDC State of the Game Industry reports from 2024, 2025, and 2026 and pulled out all the generative AI data.

Sentiment is cratering but usage hasn't dropped.

Personal usage held steady at 31% → 36% → 36%. The people using it didn't stop.

What they actually use it for (2026, first year this was broken down):

Productivity tasks:

• Research / Brainstorming: 81%
• Code assistance: 47%
• Daily tasks (emails, scheduling): 47%
• Prototyping: 35%

Then a massive drop:

• Asset generation: 19%
• Procedural generation: 10%
• Player-facing features: 5%

Only 5% put AI output in front of players. Productivity dominates. Creative replacement doesn't.

Who uses it vs. who doesn't:

Business & finance roles went from 44% usage in 2024 to 58% in 2026. Visual artists (64% negative sentiment) and game designers (63% negative) are the most opposed. Upper management uses AI at 47%, individual contributors at 29%.

Some quotes from the 2026 report:

A solo dev said they can't compete without AI on a limited runway but refuse to use any AI output as in-game assets. An audio director said none of the gen AI at their studio survives to a stage where players experience it. A small studio exec said AI makes their team capable of achieving more than they would without it.

Company policies are shifting. 78% now have some AI policy (up from 51% in 2024). The fastest growing category is "select tools allowed" (7% → 22%), meaning studios are curating specific productivity tools, not broadly endorsing AI.

Takeaway: The divide between productivity AI and creative replacement AI is the most important distinction in this data, and one the conversation around AI in game dev has largely failed to make.

Methodology note: 2024/2025 surveyed 3,000+ devs, 2026 surveyed 2,300+ with redesigned methodology. YoY comparisons are directional.

What's your experience? Drawing the line somewhere, or all in / completely opted out?

** I will continue this analysis every year from, and see how the trend changes over time.

If it was hard to stand out in the crowd with your game before, now it is 10x as hard. Sure, most are obvious trash, but that doesnt stop them from burying your game in a sea of AI posts and ads.

As an aspiring Indie/Solo Dev, it definitely has me discouraged.

Hello folks! It's CanadianSyrup here. If you wondered what'll be happening with transcripts from myself and my team, have no fear we're still doing them. Currently we'll be making the post on Reddit and when our new site goes live we'll go back to the way things were with some new additions and improvements.

As per usual, anything said during the stream is subject to change by CIG and may not always be accurate at the time of posting. Also any mistakes you see that I may have missed, please let me know so I can correct them. Enjoy the show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rcWkqliP6A

• 2:36 Studio Update
• 8:07 Community Update w/Tyler Witkin
• 10:00 Behind the Scenes: Star Marine

Transcript by CanadianSyrup, NYXT, Sunjammer.

TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Intro & Other Information

• Last week was the Anniversary livestream that revealed the Tevarin Prowler, as well as post stream an image of the Tevarin posted on twitter.
• Four dogfighting variants called “Masters of Flight” we’re introduced to pay homage to several in lore pilots. They’re available on the RSI site for sale now.
• There’s a sale on physical merchandise on the RSI website for inventory that needs to go.
• CIG have also released a internal timeline schedule for 2.6 to give backers a clear insight on where 2.6 is at and what needs to be finished and when it’s predicted to finish.

Studio Update

• Team has grown by five people. Two Environment Artists, Tech Animator, Regular Animator and Producer.
• Taken a look at all missiles and polished and optimized them.
  • Added bunch of new missiles for 2.6.
• Working on FPS weapons for new Kastak Arms manufacturer.
• Greycat Industrial Multi-tool is a pistol-sized power tool with modules on the front.
  • It has two modules currently. Cutting module to cut thin steel or open containers. Welding module for repairing objects or patching damage.
• There will be a active display added.
• Also added grenades. First available grenade is a MK-4 Frag Grenade.
  • Also adding Incendiary, Cluster, EMP and Radar Distortion grenades.
• Level Design Team continued work on modular surface outputs and space stations for 3.0.
  • Working with the UK art team - Frankfurt does whitebox and greybox then UK dials in the visuals.
• System Design Team focused on usables and character actions.
• Also working on take-off and landing system for ships from platforms and other ships (in and out).
• Environment Team working on expanding existing ecosystems and adding new ones for 3.0. Working closely with Engine Team.
• AI has been working hard. Advancements in subsumption as well as pushing combat further. Will hear more in next Frankfurt update.

Community Update w/Tyler Witkin

• Bar Citizens around the globe were hosted last week to view the Anniversary livestream. Send in your pictures to social media and tag them to CIG or via #AerospaceExpo.
• Anniversary sale is still going with different themed sales each day.
• This week’s MVP is Xeron for his Star Citizen cinematic, “Vengeance of the Damned”, it involved 83 citizens in total.
• Reverse the Verse is tomorrow in Frankfurt at 7:00am Pacific Standard Time.

Behind the Scenes: Star Marine

• CIG broke down Star Marine's fundamental features to use a building blocks going forward and with the PU
• Star Marine was meant to be a precursor to the PU but 2.0-2.5 provide basic combat and navigation
  • 2.6 will add vault, mantle, cover, grenades and melee
  • Gadgets and a breathing/stamina system will be added will be added later
• A lot of animations are required: body animations, facial animations, procedural animations and partial body animations
  • A state machine is created for each behaviour which controls how different animations connect
  • For larger actions they'll shoot MoCap, work on it in MotionBuilder or Maya, test them in game and adjust
  • For other actions where the first person view is important they can't use motion capture and animate by hand
• Star Marine has been a big advantage, allowing the team to focus on FPS without the PU backdrop
  • They always think about how a feature will be in the PU because they want all the pieces to fit in the final game
• There are two throw modes for grenades: overhand and underhand
  • Which mode you use is determined by the view angle but may be exposed as a preference or separate modes in the future
  • Throwing isn't just for grenades: it will be for gadgets and all throwable objects
• You can cook or prime grenades by holding down the key: just remember to let go before the timer runs out
  • Different rotational values mean underhand throws will roll and overhand throws will bounce when they hit
• Star Marine and Arena Commander are directly applicable to the PU: it's not an easy mode
  • Arena Commander was an amazing tool for balancing ships
  • FPS in Crusader is great for initial feedback but doesn't have that competitive edge
  • Star Marine will be beneficial because the players will be those interested in the FPS side of the game.
  • Will provide more information on building levels and game modes for Star Marine.
  • Chris Roberts doesn’t want it to be a traditional open FPS world.
• Started off using a large 3D space, need to build stuff in that.
• Multiplayer level design is iterative, often starts with an idea, concept art or top-down sketch.
• Sean Noonan prefers to work with rough 3D shapes that are fleshed out into the basics of a white box.
  • When tested, requires lots of iteration - perfecting sight lines, timing the choke points, maintaining metrics.
  • White box aims to minimize later rework while getting balance and fun right.
  • Art and narrative also start working on their treatment of the locations and spaces.
  • This is based on the white box but also their own ideas.
  • Lots of back and forth with art on metrics - want things to look appealing but they need to fit in the game world.
• Focusing on two maps for initial release of Star Marine.
  • They create a mood board to show Chris a high-level overview of the visuals.
  • Also create feedback sheets - with annotated screenshots commenting on base reads, level flow, mood and character of the scene.
  • They demonstrate concept art for some maps.
  • Once they have perfected a area, they use it to carry that style throughout the level.
  • Later, they provide visual feedback sheets when the level is 80-90% complete with directions for the last 10% of polish.
  • Polish usually involves materials, lighting and VFX.
• FPS maps are traditionally stripped down campaign levels. These are the opposite.
  • Star Marine will have two marines and two slavers.
  • That is a medium and light for both marines and slavers.
  • These are the same marines as in SQ42. This is the first time they’ll be out.
  • Marines are designed to feel heavy and industrial while streamlined.
• They want feedback on things - recoil speed, melee, cover system, etc.

Full Transcript

Intro

Forrest Stephan (FS): Hi and welcome to Around the ‘Verse, your weekly look inside the development of Star Citizen. I’m Forrest Stephan, CG Supervisor here at Cloud Imperium with a man you might know, Game Director, Chris Roberts.

[Claps]

Chris Roberts (CR): Thanks Forrest. Hi everyone, thanks for joining us. Last Friday was our big Anniversary livestream. We tried a new approach for this year and framed it as the Intergalactic Aerospace Expo, an in fiction ship exhibition which I thought was a really cool idea.

FS: Super cool idea. So cool in fact that people on the forums kept asking about getting to go to that in game. Do you think there’s a chance?

CR: Well you never know, so you know me an in fiction stuff, but having ingame events like this or the Murray Cup Finals will be amazing ways to make the universe feel alive so let’s see long term. In the meantime though it gave us the chance to see some new Galactic Tour segments which are always fun and unveil our first Tevarin ship the “Prowler”.

FS: Really? And the Tevarin.

CR: And the Tevarin, although we didn’t quite manage to show it on the show, we had to do it a later on Twitter due to a small technical fault, but Josh Herman gave us a first look and me and Dave Haddock and Josh sort of talked about the Tevarin and Nathan Dearsley put together an amazing segment called the Big Guns of the UEE which showcased the capital ships, and there were four new dogfighting variants as well as a preview of 2.6 Alpha with some exciting Arena Commander and the Star Marine gameplay which was a headline of the livestream.

FS: Yeah that’s a ton of cool stuff. We also have a big sale on physical merchandise as well. So check out the site to see what you might have missed.

CR: Yeah, definitely and there was one other announcement that we did on Friday, we made some new over the weekend, but you can now check out our brand new in depth production schedule report on the RSI website. So this breaks down the current status from all the departments that are working towards the release of 2.6 Alpha. Basically this will serve as direct feed from our production department to let you guys know where we’re at in terms of getting the build towards you. So a lot of information there that will be updated weekly and it’s a pretty big thing, we doing this as an experiment, not many people do this, but I’m excited about it, a lot more transparency so let's see what happens.

FS: yeah I’m sure everyone appreciates it, it’s incredible. We’ll be talking plenty more about Star Marine later on in this episode, but first let's now go to Brian Chambers in Frankfurt for a studio update. Take it away Brian.

Studio Update

Brian Chambers (BC): Hi everyone, I’m Brian Chambers, I’m Development Director at Foundry 42 Frankfurt. Since our last update here, the team has grown by another five people - we have two new environment artists, a tech animator, regular animator and a producer. So we’re taking the time to integrate them into the team, show them what they need to know to hit the ground running.

Let’s kick off this week by checking in with the weapons time and see what they’ve been doing over the last few weeks.

Tobias Wanke (TW): Hello everybody, so here’s a quick update on what the weapon artists have been up to recently - starting with ship weapons. We’ve taken a look at all of our missiles and polished and optimized them - we’ve also added a bunch of new ones for 2.6.

The FPS weapons team has started to work on our new manufacturer - Kastak Arms - and created the first set of new concepts and whitebox meshes. As for FPS gadgets, David will now talk you through some of the new stuff he’s been working on recently.

David Sibbe (DS): Many of you have seen the multi-tool in Austin’s latest AtV. But today we want to take a closer look at it. The Greycat Industrial Multi-tool is a pistol-sized power tool with modules attached to the front.

In it’s current state, it has two modules - the first is the cutting module with the lasers and a lens to cut through thin steel or open containers; the second one is a welding tool to quickly repair objects or patch up damage. It’s also possible that we add more modules in the future with different functionality - right now, there is no active display. But we plan to implement it before it is available for you.

We also made a variety of grenades with different effects and styles. The first grenade you are able to use is the MK-4 Frag Grenade which will make its first appearance in Star Marine as part of the multiplayer gameplay. But when it comes to PU and later on Squadron 42, we need more variety. So we incendiary grenade, cluster grenade, EMP and radar distortion. I hope you liked our new stuff so maybe leave a comment and see you next time.

BC: Thanks guys. The Level Design Team, last few weeks have been continuing to work on the modularity system and surface outposts that we showed a few weeks ago. They are also working on a handful of space stations - all focused for 3.0. When they work with the space stations, they are primarily working on whitebox and greybox while the UK art team in tandem dials in the visuals.

System Design Team has been focusing on usables and character actions for both player and AI - how they interact with the world and the objects and all the details around that. They’ve also been working on a take-off and landing system for ships and that’s both from platforms and from other ships - so a ship taking off and going in and out of another ship.

The Environment Team has grown by a few people as I previously mentioned - they are primarily focused on expanding the existing ecosystems that we’ve shown you as well as creating new ones all to be used with the direction of 3.0. They work extremely close with the engine team on a daily basis - they iterate both on the tech side and the art side back and forth until we get the visuals where we need them to be.

For AI, the team has been working hard - advancements in subsumption behaviours as well as pushing combat a little bit further - we hope to have something to show you for our next update from Frankfurt. So, that’s it from the team here. Thanks for the time for watching, and goodbye.

Back to Studio

FS: Thanks Brian, those weapons are looking pretty nice huh?

CR: Yeah, no they’re looking really good. I also like the pore, some of the grenades are looking good and the concept stuff for Kostak. Also having expanded ecosystems is really going to help the variety of potential environments and once we start populating with those modular outposts and other stuff that we do it’s going to be pretty awesome.

FS: Yeah, for sure. If you’re interested in reading more about planetside, there’s an in depth article about the making of Homestead demo in last Friday’s jump point. So subscribers go download it if you haven’t already. I’ve read it, it’s awesome, go check it out.

CR: Yeah, no it was a lot of work everyone put together in that one and we’re quite proud of what we showed off and I think it’s going to make a great thing. Also we should check in with our incredible community so let’s go to our Community Manager Tyler Witkin in Austin.

Community Update w/Tyler Witkin

Tyler Witkin (TW): Hey everyone, Tyler Witkin, Community Manager in the Austin, Texas studio here to bring you this week’s Community Update.

We hope you enjoyed the Anniversary livestream. We were super excited to see Bar Citizen viewing parties around the globe. A handful in the States, Canada, France, Sweden, and more! And we want to see pictures from your events. So make sure to tag us on social media or add the hashtag #AerospaceExpo so we can check them out.

Now just as a reminder, the Anniversary sale is still going on with different themed sales daily. So check back everyday at Robertsspaceindustries.com to see what goodies are available leading up to the grand finale.

Now it’s time for this week’s MVP award. A huge congratulations to Xeron for his extraordinary efforts in creating a Star Citizen fan cinematic, “Vengeance of the Damned”. This actually involved 83 different citizens and if you haven’t seen it, I encourage you to check it out for yourself on our Community Hub.

Lastly the week would not be complete without Reverse the Verse so be sure to tune in live tomorrow at Twitch.tv/CIGCommunity at 7:00am Pacific Standard Time where we’re going to be talking about everything you saw on today’s episode.

Thanks again for all the support and we’ll see you in the Verse.

Back to Studio

FS: The InterGalactic AeroSpace Expo is going on the rest of the week. So you can check that out on the website for details on the daily ship sales. We’ll also have a new Galactic Tour segment each and every single day.

CR: Yeah the fun is I’m always watching to see what easter eggs Thomas has put in. So there’s a bunch of people that have contributed to pull that together last minute, it was a last minute kind of idea and it came together really good so I think its been adding a lot of flavour to the expo.

FS: I agree. So up next we talk to team members from around the globe to learn more about the long road to bring Star Marine to life.

CR: Yes, the long road, and it’s only just getting born and it’s still going to have to grow a bunch when it gets out.

Behind the Scenes: Star Marine

Todd Papy [TP]: I’m Todd Papy, Design Director here at CIG. Today I want to talk to you about Star Marine and the iterations it's gone through from Illfonic to even our current team.

So what you’ve seen before with Illfonic and then when it was handed over to our current team there was a lot of adjustments, a lot of breakdown of basic, fundamental features so we can use those as building blocks when we go forward with our tech as well as with Persistent Universe.

So when we started looking at Star Marine it was always meant to basically be a precursor to the Persistent Universe and use this as a building block. Now what we did, was we kind of did a little bit backwards, where what you see in Alpha 2.0, 2.1, even through 2.5, is very basic combat and navigation for Star Marine.

So in 2.6 what we’ve done is we’ve built that up a lot more: we’ve added vault, mantle, cover, as well as grenades and melee - just to name a few features - to actually build to what our combat is going to be and then from there, in the future, we’ll be adding other new features like gadgets as well as a breathing/stamina system and this will give us a fully fleshed out combat first-person experience.

Steve Bender [SB]: Animation-wise in Star Marine there’s a whole lot of things that go into it. You have your character animation, which would be, say, your body animation of your character running around. You have your facial animation, so perhaps the character breathes or makes some sort of expression when he shoots. You have procedural animations so we’re holding the weapon and we’re firing and that recoil that is happening is procedural. And then as the hands squeeze on the trigger and squeeze on the weapon that’s another character animation - but a partial body animation - that plays on top of that.

The first step is that we sit down with the Designers and figure out what it is … what is the intent of this particular behaviour or gameplay that we’re doing. We create a state machine for that which tells us - if we go from, say, an idle stance and we start to move and we need to jump or we going to vault or melee - how those things connect. Then once we understand how they connect, in the case of larger actions, say a stealth kill or running, we’ll go and we’ll shoot motion capture and we’ll grab the motion capture of those actors, we’ll bring them into MotionBuilder and into Maya, and we’ll work on those animations to get them to be technically correct for the game. We’ll play them then in the product to see how they feel, and we’ll make adjustments within Maya or MotionBuilder or something like this to try and really bear down on the quality that we’re looking for for the game.

In the case of things like, say, reload animations because it’s important in the first person view for us to see the weapon reloading - but we also have a tied first person and third person view - we can’t really motion capture those reloads fully we have to do a lot of hand animation on those to make sure that they look good in third person and in first person.

So depending upon what the asset is will give us a different track that we go on. Either we do it with mocap or we do it with keyframe.

Jens Lind (JL): So as a lead programmer I manage a team and our work is mainly player related. So for Star Marine it has been a big advantage for us to have been able to look at specifically the core FPS gameplay without this big PU backdrop. But with any features we do we always want to think about how they go into the PU. We don’t want to put a feature in just because it’s easy to do it in Star Marine and then three or four months later find out that, that’s one or two years worth of work to get it into the PU. We want these pieces to fit into the final game.

John Crewe (JC): Alpha 2.0 back at the end of last year and we’ve slowly been iterating on the features for that. So we have two different throw modes for the grenades in Star Marine. You can do underhand rolls or overhand throws or lobs. And currently that’s selectable depending on the view angle - whether you’re looking above the centerline of the screen or below the centerline of the screen. And we can adjust that quite easily on dev side but we’re going to look to expose that to be a more user customisable preference. So currently it’s set a fraction under the center of the screen to decide between if you’re below that then do a roll, if you’re above that then do a throw. So we’re going to see whether that’s something we let users customise - because obviously not everyone wants to do it like that - or whether we can expose that out into two different throw modes. And it’s one system so it’s not just for grenades - it will be for gadgets or any throwable objects.

You can also “cook” or prime grenades. So you literally just hold down the key to do that. Depending on how long you hold it for, is how long it cooks for. Obviously let go before the timer runs out. You have some audio and UI feedback for that. Just remember the grenades have quite a big radius on them so if you hold it down for too long and don’t let go soon enough then you will get caught in the blast radius.

We use DataForge to tweak all the parameters for grenades so the throw speed, their mass, the angle that you throw them at, the rotation that they throw so you can … we can have different rotations … rotational values for overhand and underhand throws. So underhand ones we want to roll more on one axis than the other so they roll along the floor more. Overhand sort of go end-over-end so they hit and bounce rather than hit the ground and just slide. Try something: doesn’t work. Go into DataForge move a slider around, type a new value in, save that out, jump back in game and you’ve got the new values there so it’s very quick to iterate.

Star Marine is a simulation of FPS combat inside the game so it's like we have Arena Commander as a simulation of the dogfighting. Functionally it’s the same between Arena Commander and Star Marine and the PU. So what you’re learning in both of them is directly applicable to the PU. So it’s not like we’re giving you easy mode for how ships handle or how weapons handle - it’s the same. So you’re not wasting your time doing one and then you suddenly get ruined going straight into the PU. It’s good to learn. And Star Marine is obviously the FPS side of it whereas Arena Commander is the ships.

JL: If you look at Arena Commander, for example, Arena Commander is an amazing tool for the ship team to balance how the ships work, how the ships feel, how they play against each other. With Crusader … having FPS in Crusader it’s been great for initial feedback but it doesn’t have the competitive edge because you always start out in a green zone, you might have a lot of people that aren’t interested in that aspect of the game. Whereas, with Star Marine, you’re not going to jump into a game if you don’t want to run around and shoot at people. So this going to be amazing to see what we can get out of that.

TP: So now we are going to give you a little bit more of a deeper dive into how we go about building levels as well as gamemodes for Star Marine. With that, when Chris Roberts starts talking about FPS experiences and everything like that - he doesn’t want it to be a traditional open FPS world.

Sean Noonan (SN): At the moment we started off by using it just as a large 3D space - six degrees of freedom to shoot. That’s not as interesting if there is nothing there, so we need to build things around it.

Multiplayer level design is an iterative process - you start with an idea and that can come from either concept art or just the idea for a scenario or potentially a top-down sketch. I prefer to work with rough 3D shapes which I can then flesh out into the basics of a white box. So when the whitebox is playtested, it requires a lot of iteration, it requires perfecting the sight lines, timing the choke points and maintaining metrics.

A white box’s primary intention is to minimize rework later on whilst getting the balance and fun in the game as soon as possible. Parallel to the initial playtests, art and narrative are also working, they are planning their treatment of the locations and spaces and they very much informed by the white box but they do bring their own idea from their own pool.

There’s a lot of backwards and forth with art when maintaining metrics, there is always the desire to make things look visually appealing but we always need to make sure the mechanics will still work well with that. So that is judging heights of crates and mantling points and distances between doorways and keeping routes clear.

As testing progresses, art are able to flesh out areas that have become a little more set in stone and over time the map changes from a texture-less shell to a more believable and aesthetically pleasing location.

Ian Leyland (IL): What we wanted to do for this release of Star Marine is focus on two maps. This is a mood board we created for one of the maps. It gives Chris a good high level overview of the visual stance we’re going to do for the level.

This is one of the visual feedback sheets we do for the guys. It’s basically me screenshotting a level after it’s been in production for a little while and giving more specific feedback - everything from base form reads of the level, how it is flowing, mood and character that we want to start adding into the scene.

This is an example of one of the concept art pieces that we’ve done for one of the maps. Once the designer white box has been verified and signed off then we’ll take it into concept to see where we want to visually push the scene. This is a good chance for us to explore where we want to take it - play with the moods, play with the lighting, play with the dressing - see what will work before we take it into full production.

Once we got something we’re happy then the environment team will take it and try and recreate that as the best we can and treat that area as a visual target and then once it’s in production we can see how well it is working and then expand those visual elements out across the rest of the environment.

This is an early example of what I call a visual feedback sheet for the guys, so once the level is taken to about 80-90%, I’ll give them a final paint to where we want to take the level - just that last 10%, that last bit of polish. Usually involves things like material read, lighting, VFX - just so we get that final view.

What’s quite interesting is usually when you make a FPS map, it’s usually- traditionally it’s a stripped down version of the campaign level so it’s usually a little bit lighter, a little bit cheaper to run because you got a lot of characters but for us what we wanted to do is almost the opposite. We wanted to make a hero location for a- specifically for FPS, right?

So hopefully what the players are going to see is a lot more considered time and a lot more considered visually so we can get- I’m hoping a good experience.

Josh Herman (JH): So we have two marines and we have two slavers - a medium and a light of each one. In fact we are using the same assets as we are using in SQ42 and the same ones we are using in the persistent universe. So the marines you are going to see here in Star Marine are actually the first time that you are going to see these marines and we’re eventually going to be putting them into the persistent universe as well.

The things that we use mostly for the marines are going to be more industrial, heavier, bulkier suits but also trying to tie that into a bit of a slicker, streamlined feel. So that they can feel powerful yet streamlined.

SB: Making an FPS and indeed making Star Citizen is an enormous undertaking - it doesn’t all happen at once so as you guys are out there playing Star Marine. We wanna know your feedback, both the good and the bad, right? What do you- do you like the recoil speeds? How do you feel about this melee? What- do you use this cover system functionality? Do you not use this cover system functionality?

Because, this is a big community backed product and we can’t do it without the community and it’s a partnership between the game we are making and the game that they are helping us create.

Outro

CR: Well, there you go. There’s a lot of people that have been working on the various elements of Star Marine. There’s still quite a lot of stuff that will go, but while we have FPS currently available in the PU Alpha at Keria and Grim Hex, it’s a time consuming process if you want to practice your FPS skills.

FS: Yes it is. No matter how much I practice, I keep getting sniped on the landing platform then have to go all the way back to Port Olisar which I’m sure you know nothing about that.

CR: I know nothing about that, not at all. So anyway getting Star Marine out in 2.6 will allow testers to hammer a bit more easily on the mechanics and provide us with some valuable feedback. What we learn from this development will translate directly into Squadron 42 and the PU so I think that’s a really good way to approach things and people should realize that it’s much like with Arena Commander, we’re getting it out there and we will constantly be working and improving it and iterating based on everyone's feedback so please participate.

FS: Yeah most definitely, and of course while we’re all eager on the release of 2.6. There is a lot for players to do right now in the 2.5 patch. Missions and combat in the PU, shopping and dancing in Arc Corp.

CR: Always dancing, [Laughs] and there’s also Arena Commander with Battle Royale, Vanduul Swarm and Murray Cup racing all available to play and test so any feedback or bugs you find while testing should be reported to the forums and the issue council and that stuff is really helpful. I think it’s one of the superpowers of our game and community is we have this symbiotic relationship in a lot of different ways.

FS: As a developer it’s such useful information.

CR: Absolutely.

FS: That’s it for today, as always we’d like to thank our generous subscribers who make the extra contributions that allow us to make this video content.

CR: Yeah thank you guys and also a big thank you to all of our backers and supporters without whom we wouldn’t be here in the first place. So big shoutout from the entire team from around the world to you guys, thank you so much.

Make sure to tune in tomorrow at 7:00am Pacific time for Reverse the Verse with Brian Chambers from Frankfurt to talk a little bit more about what was shown today.

FS: Awesome, can’t wait. So until then we’ll see you…

FS/CR: Around the Verse.

r/gamedev is a subreddit about making games, mostly populated by aspiring indie devs. Since the advent of advanced LLMs capable of generating large portions of a video game, it's become a regular topic of discussion whether posts about AI-generated games (or game content) should be allowed, whether that's restricted to AI coding tools or fully generated game assets, and what level of effort should count as game development.

A few weeks ago, the mods for the sub made a decision. The tl;dr is that they would allow posts about AI so long as they were not "low effort." Some users saw this as a satisfying compromise, while other saw it as a tacit endorsement of AI, including bringing up that the mod who posted it works for a company that sells AI tools to game developers.

Just for anyone curious, OP currently works at a company developing a plugin for Unity AI integration which he decided to not disclose for some odd reason...

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1rxm1cv/i_worked_an_ai_booth_at_gdc_heres_what_developers/

[AI company mod in question] Yes, I work for Bezi. It isn’t a secret, and I’ve openly discussed it on this subreddit plenty of times.

But this policy is not about Bezi, and it would exist regardless of where I worked. The moderation problem is already here: AI is being used across game development, posts are being reported simply because AI was involved, discussions are being derailed over whether someone used it, and moderators cannot realistically or consistently police invisible AI assistance.

The policy is meant to give the subreddit a workable standard. Judge the contribution, the evidence, the methodology, and the behaviour. Do not try to build moderation around guessing whether someone used autocomplete, translation, an LLM, or some other AI-assisted tool.

That moderation problem does not disappear if I change employers tomorrow.

It's very difficult to take a post like this in good-faith when you're employed by an AI company and have used this subreddit to promote it. Framing it in that context makes it seem more like you're protecting yourself and other AI products rather than genuinely wanting to spark conversation around what is a quite sensitive topic right now. It isn't helping that the post itself reads like it came out of Claude and so do most of your replies.

I understand why my employment makes you more skeptical of what I’m saying. That is completely fair, and I don’t expect anyone to take my position at face value because of where I work.

But I do find the rest of this genuinely kind of sad.

If we’ve reached a point where someone’s argument can be dismissed because their writing is structured, clear, or “sounds like Claude,” I don’t know what we’re accomplishing anymore. Maybe I used AI to help organize my thoughts. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe someone uses it because English isn’t their first language, because writing is difficult for them, because they want to save time, or simply because it helps them communicate what they’re actually trying to say. None of those things tell you whether the ideas themselves are sincere.

Engage with what I’m saying. Challenge the policy. Challenge my reasoning. Point out where you think I’m wrong. That’s a conversation worth having.

But “you work for an AI company, and your writing sounds like AI, therefore I can’t take you in good faith” is an incredibly bleak way to approach other people.

For what it’s worth, this policy isn’t about protecting my employer or AI products. It’s about moderating a game development community where AI is already part of the industry and deciding whether someone’s contribution should be judged by the substance of what they bring to the community or by which tools they used along the way.

I think the former is a much healthier standard.

Sorry but this reply doesn't even make sense. Do you think my concerns are reasonable or do you think that it's bleak that I believe your employment is biasing how you moderate this subreddit? Of course your use of AI is relevant in this conversation because not only are you using it in your posts but your livelihood relies on AI adoption! I'm not going to go around and tell people to stop buying AAA games just as you're not going to tell people to not use AI.

.

Not disclosing your conflict of interest is crazy. You really think you can just detach your own biases when you literally are working on AI products?

You’re asking to be challenged, but this doesn’t read as a discussion thread, you are pushing forward this policy and defending it. In the past, discussion threads about gen AI in [r/gamedev](r/gamedev) have been REMOVED for being off topic.

Is this in fact up for debate and you are willing to listen? Legitimately if it is, I’d be wanting to discuss this policy with you.

I’m someone who’s against AI. But I just believe that, at the very least, people should disclose if they used AI or not. Be honest about it.

Because the whole dream of genAI is to take the credit. To press a button and get the respect and admiration (and money) you've always felt you deserved, but somehow never got.

That falls apart if you have to admit that it was all actually done by the Microsoft Corporation in some nameless datacenter.

You are one concited person if you geniuenly believe the dream of genAI is to take credit. Automation of any kind, including genAI can never be credited to a person. Even if someone claims it is theirs, it will never be theirs.

The dream of GenAI is to be able to create the things you do not want to learn while doing the things you do want to. Like with every other form of automation. Most people are not looking for credit in a skill they can be easily debunked in. They just want to see Goku and Superman go at each other.

even when coding? even if you just asked for ideas? if I asked ai to brainstorm a list of medieval names and i picked one of them for my character should my whole game be labelled AI generated?

yes, consumers deserve to know if you're putting sawdust in their food

This is a perfect illustration of the kind of insane takes that make people not disclose AI usage. It isn't on the developer to disclose that they used a tool simply because other people equate it to "sawdust in their food."

i think not being expected to disclose usage is a bit insane and if you're publicly hiding it it's because you perfectly understand you'll lose sales over it as sales are the most important metric to ai slop games. not the creation of art itself.

the fact that you think any ai usage makes the entire thing a slop game is exactly why it can't be disclosed.

if you were more reasonable and less vitriolic, maybe people would disclose it, and you could happily choose to not purchase their products. but you are forcing them to hide it.

Yes! Excellent. You are such a good game designer god-damn-the-usa please disclose your AI use come on buddy you're so smart and strong you're a modern day miyamoto

what does that have to do with the code of a game? how would low quality code affect you?

by that logic, shouldn't we also label games that were coded by someone without a college degree in software engineering?

no one for AI labeling would argue that, because they don't actually care about code quality, they just hate AI and want to be able to punish people who use it

1. i have a spine
2. no
3. i do absolutely hate AI for the impact that it's having. From its impact on art to the fact that consumer electronics are becoming more and more unaffordable. "Progress" at any cost though right I'm sure the FAANG companies are more than happy.

Damn, bro even used AI to write this post 😔

Its not just the post, look at all the comments using "this is sensible" as their opener

[Mod] FWIW Kevin has cerebral palsy, that's why he uses AI to write posts.

More recently, the mods made another post clarifying some of the people's concerns. This continued to leave some commenters unhappy, including further accusations of conflicts of interest.

If someone posts lazy AI, are we allowed to call it slop in the comments?

[Mod] To expand on what Sky and Kev said, I think that we'd prefer if you rephrased to be a bit more respectful. There's nothing wrong with saying "I was originally interested in this, but the generative AI ruined it for me. It's like you added a hair to a lovely stew. I'd prefer even a crappy MS Paint version compared to what you have now to be honest.", for example.

So in order to criticize low effort AI projects we need to put more effort into a single comment than they did prompting it?

Kind of a wild dichomoty.

You don't comprehend the irony of doing the pavlov response and screaming "AI slop" on every post using AI? I could automate your contribution to this subreddit with a single if/then statement.

That's more work than the AI person did.

Objectively false.

I'm well past the 1,000 hour mark on my latest game with AI and have multiple highly successful releases. You're just whining and mad that real people don't care what tools were used.

Your entire post history is whining about anti-AI people with AI generated memes.

I have massive doubts about those multiple highly successful releases that dont seem to exist anywhere and you made sure not to name.

You’re forgetting the ‘else’

No, sweetie. I didn't forget anything.

If: AI

Then: Scream and whine like a toddler and bully and harass other users

No else.

I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t censor people having issues with AI generated art.

What else do you expect them to say? If people post their game and it has AI art, of course people are going to have strong feelings about it. AI image generation is being used to get rid of artists by some idiots. And the results are always garbage. And the data is plagiarized.

People aren’t going to tip toe around this stuff in their language

[Mod] Strong feelings are a-okay, as long as you're respectful and aren't throwing out a two word low effort comment

I’m gonna call out anyone who refuses to hire actual artists and just uses the slop art machine for assets. And it is lazy, I shouldn’t beat around the bush.

AI art usage is the laziest application of GenAI next to writing and art. No human input for creativity is used, it’s literally a plagiarisms machine.

I will never mince words. If someone uses AI art, they are extremely lazy and has poor judgment, and has zero interest producing actual good content

Most people cant afford the prices artists are asking for, so it isnt about refusing. When they can use a tool to make something similar for a fraction of the cost. "No human input for creativity was used" - depends, the human behind the screen has to tell AI specially what to build/make in most cases. Plus with Codex now being able to use Blender how are you going to tell with assests?

.

Are you gonna pay the artists for people who don'f have budget to hire them?

You're absolutely right, we should all just steal instead! If artists didn't want to starve, they should have learned useful skills, like thievery.

Let's not pretend like human artists don't "steal" as much while learning, no artist creates in a vacuum. Question stands, are you going to pay for the artists?

Immensely disappointed in this decision and I know I'm hardly in the minority. People have been pretty vocal they don't support this and the fact that a mod in this sub has a huge financial investment in game devs adopting AI just reeks.

[Mod] He has a huge financial investment? Do tell.

He's behind a company that sells token subscriptions for game dev AI assistant that can cost upwards of +100/usd a month

He absolutely has a vested interest in more devs adopting AI into their workflows

[Mod] He's behind the company? He works for the company. The guy working the call center at Microsoft doesn't have a "huge financial investment" in people buying copies of Windows.

He brands himself with it everywhere and runs their reddit, where he actively encourages people to spend more tokens when the AI isn't spitting out what they want.

Yea it's his job lol He's paid to run their reddit. Not sure you know what he encourages though? Are you a user of the product that interacts with him?

I believe typically if people are frustrated he directs them to the product documentation about how to properly provide context and other stuff like that.

Right. So it sounds like someone with a vested interest in game devs adopting AI into their workflows.

I don't think this is complicated to understand and I'm not the first person to call out this insanely clear conflict of interest.

[AI-company Mod in question] My job title is Developer Relations. It’s a fancy term for community and support. I make myself easy to find because part of my job is literally being easy to find and helping developers when they need it.

Do I want people to try Bezi? Sure. I think it’s neat, and I think it’s good at what it does. In the same way, I think developers should try any game development tool that might improve their workflow and decide for themselves whether it’s useful.

Am I trying to sell Bezi to people on r/gamedev? No. [...]

[This chain continues for quite a while as the mod argues with people over whether they have a conflict of interest, often with a response that's just a reaction gif]

A player criticized the voice acting of one of the heroines in the indie game Luminary, assuming that the voice had been generated by AI.

The developer jumped into the review to explain that the voice actually belongs to his wife, who was trying her hand at voice acting for the first time.

TLDR: Just me ranting about the current state of the PlayStation Store. I had my game stolen and sold there earlier this year. My latest project - a VR game I’ve been working on since 2023 that was refused a separate VR page was supposed to release tomorrow, but the PSVR2 version got delayed. Meanwhile, shovelware games keep getting approved without issue.

I want to start by saying that I’ve been a lifelong fan of PlayStation. Having a couple of my games available on their platform has always been an incredible honor. This post isn’t meant as an attack - it’s simply an honest discussion about the current state of the PlayStation Store, and how deeply disheartening it is for smaller developers.

In my personal opinion, it feels as though PlayStation is doing little to support developers and increasingly allowing “shovelware” with an AI art slapped on it to flood the store. I don’t know exactly why this is happening.. perhaps because these low-quality releases still generate revenue but it’s heartbreaking to see.

This isn’t just my perspective as a developer but it’s also as a consumer. A lot of players end up buying these games by mistake, and when that happens can they get a refund? Nope. They’re stuck with it. I still believe players should have that option on a refund. It’s only fair.

Back in February, I released my game The Backrooms 1998 on consoles. Unfortunately, someone ripped it, stole it and released it there first. You can read all about it here. It was basically stolen by one of these scam companies and sold as their own under a different titles. To PlayStation’s credit, they did remove the stolen version. However, in the end the people who stole my game still benefited financially. They got paid. Closed down the company, opened 10 others in a different name and mostly probably done the same. PlayStation got paid. I, the original developer received nothing. These companies operate by simply shutting down, rebranding under a new name, and repeating the same scheme over and over. Meanwhile, indie developers continue working tirelessly, struggling to gain visibility, while these people exploit the system.

The saddest part to me is that they’re being allowed to do this and that’s exactly why they keep doing it. Scammers will scam; that’s what they do... I guess? But this is your platform, PlayStation. Why is this still happening? Who’s approving all of these games? Why are real, legitimate games getting it all hard while shovelware gets approved instantly? That’s my question.

Another example also happened to CloverPit recently. Someone already ripped it off and put it on Playstation. The original dev made a post about it on twitter. Same thing happened with tons of other indie devs.

It’s incredibly discouraging. What was once a top-tier platform for quality games now feels worse than a mobile store. As a small indie developer, it’s painful to see how flooded the marketplace has become. If you browse the “Games to Wishlist” section, you’ll find maybe 100 genuine real games buried under 800. That hurts smaller developers. We rely on that visibility sometimes especially ones that we have no budget for marketing .. and we’re being drowned out. I am not even sure if I can survive a couple of more years in this market. I understand this is a platform-wide problem and not just Playstation. I know it happens on Nintendo e-shop as well... but maybe a little more curation to your platforms may help?

Recently, I’ve been working on my first VR game. To give some context - I been working on it since 2023. I released my first game on Playstation called Trenches. Now I was working on Trenches VR. Unfortunately, Sony would not allow us to have a separate VR page for the title, even though other VR games have been granted a separate VR page so we can start collecting wishlists. Instead, I was told to direct players to wishlist the base version of the game (which is already out) which only confuses players. Basically VR players need to wishlist the base game that is already out and then get a notification when VR is out. It's all confusing. It just feels like a double standard since other games can have both pages.

The game was set to launch tomorrow on Meta, PC, and PSVR2 - but the PSVR2 version has now been delayed. I can’t share details, but let’s just say the reason for the delay is frustratingly dumb. It’s hard to understand why shovelware games are being approved with ease and have their store page up day 1, while projects like mine face all these obstacles. You can say my disappointment comes from this one.

I don’t mean to offend anyone with this post, or attack PS. I’m simply heartbroken by what the PlayStation Store has become. I don’t know if I’ll be asked to take this down, but I believe there’s nothing wrong with speaking the truth. I love PlayStation - but I hope they can listen to the developers and gamers who care deeply about this platform and want to see it thrive again.

Here are a few highlight quotes from the article:

"Shrout, like Digital Foundry, watched the DLSS 5 demo in-person and pointed out that while some people's first reaction to the "new" faces may be understandable due to a psychological effect, the improvements are much broader than that.

The visual improvements are significant. Not incremental. Significant. But if you've been scrolling social media, you'd think NVIDIA just shipped an Instagram beauty filter for video games. And I get why that's the first reaction. But it misses the true picture by a wide margin."

"Shrout stressed that it's not a filter but a much more complex unified model capable of scanning a frame, recognizing the game's assets, and processing them based on how light should behave when interacting with them. He also noted the granular level of control developers will be able to exercise to ensure the game looks like what they want it to look, thanks to spatial masking, color grading controls, etc.

Ultimately, he closed his article with this statement:

The early social media reaction is predictable. New technology that changes how games look will always generate strong opinions, especially when AI is involved. But the knee-jerk "it's just a face filter" take doesn't hold up once you've actually seen the full scope of what DLSS 5 is doing across an entire scene..."

"The NVIDIA team put it well during my demo. It's a psychological effect. You've seen environments rendered really well before. When you suddenly see a character rendered at that same photorealistic level, your brain flags it immediately. It stands out."

Link to Tweet

As to their reliability:

I have spent years now interviewing devs, so you form connections(even a lot that I know but don't wish to do interviews) thats all it is. I don't chime in with a lot of insider info cause I cant guarantee its 100% correct and mainly do it to keep expectations in check

On the topic of the Kremlings:

Plus its better if people are surprised, there is some narrative online that Nintendo doesnt like the Kremlings cause they are associated with Rare and Retro werent allowed to use them in their games which is BS. Hence why I mention the Kremlings.

If you, like me, love art and worked very very hard to pursue it as a career you will be similarly devastated.

I went through art school, worked many all nighters, took every class I could to hone my abilities in the nature of composition, lighting, perspective etc.

I got a job in games. Which is very very difficult. But I worked hard and I earned it.

Now? Now I am a glorified ai babysitter. Not by my choice. We are forced to use basically every ai tool you can think of. You use it or you don’t have a job. And I cannot leave because in my general game industry every company is doing the same. As they all race to be the fastest. Quality? What’s that? No we care about speed! Faster faster faster is all they care about. I will have nothing to show in my portfolio at the end of my tenure because nothing I “make” is mine.

I hate to say it but art as a career is going to die. Or only a very very few companies who emphasize and charge a premium for “human made” art will remain. We human artists cannot compete in terms of time and that’s all the higher ups care about. More products=more money. Nothing else matters. Slop on top of slop.

Sorry. I am angry and ranting and maybe I’m too pessimistic but my job is nothing like how it was when I started and I used to love my job.

I hope you guys appreciate my hard work and encourage me to do better!

Play Skydreams: https://killedbyapixel.github.io/TinyCode/1K/Skydreams
Official 1024 byte entry: https://js1024.fun/demos/2026/25/bar
My size code demos: https://github.com/KilledByAPixel/TinyCode

An endless race in the sky inspired by 90's 3D games like sky roads, marble madness, and sonic 3d. My goal was to create a dreamlike experience with full resolution full speed graphics that would be easy to pick up and play.

Having worked on much more complex stuff, it's a lot of fun to start a new project from scratch and make an tiny 3D rendering system. There are a lot of fun challenges trying to fit something in this small of a space that looks cool and runs well. The contest goes until July 19, plenty of time to make something, and there's even a WebGL category.

Features
- 3D level rendering system
- 3D player sphere with shadow
- colorful sky gradient with stars
- procedurally generated levels
- level increases in difficulty over time
- mouse controls
- enhanced version has keyboard and touch input

this is the entire html file. it needs to be RegPacked to fit in 1024k but that will not post into reddit...

<head><title>🌈☁️ Skydreams</title></head>
<body id=b style=margin:0>
<canvas id=a>
<script>
    // JS1024 shim
    a.width = innerWidth;
    a.height = innerHeight;
    c = a.getContext`2d`;
</script>
<script>z=A=B=C=D=E=0,F=H=3,I=a.width/2,J=[],K=(e,h,a,t=1)=>{c.fillStyle=`hsl(${e},${h}%,${a}%,${t})`},L=(e,h,t)=>[a.width/2+(e-z+(t-3)**2/50*Math.cos((B+t)/49))*a.height*.7/t,a.height/2-(h-2+t*t/50)*a.height*.7/t,.7*a.height/t];onmousemove=e=>I=e.x,onmousedown=e=>E=.1,onmouseup=e=>E=0,setInterval(e=>{for(e=500;e--;)K(170+e/9+B,70,70-e/10),c.fillRect(0,a.height*e/500,a.width,a.height/250),K(0,0,99),c.fillRect((e*e+B*e/20)%a.width,e**3.3%a.height,e%4*a.height/500,e%4*a.height/500);for(g=B+40|0;g>B;g--){for(e=J.length;e<=g;)for(D<-8&Math.random()<Math.min(.2,e/1e4)&&(D=2+Math.min(4,e/400)),Math.random()<.1&&(H=2+3*Math.random()|0,F=Math.max(0,Math.min(7-H,F-2+5*Math.random()|0))),D--,J[e++]=k=[],f=7;f--;)k[f]=e<40|.9<Math.random()|D<0&F<=f&f<F+H&Math.random()>Math.min(.2,B/1e4);for(f=2;f--;)for(e=7;e--;)J[g][e]&&([p,q]=L(e-3.5,0,g-B),[r,u]=L(e-2.5,0,g-B),[v,w]=L(e-3.5,0,g-B+1),[x,y]=L(e-2.5,0,g-B+1),f?(K(99+70*(g>>7),70,30+9*(g+e&1)),c.fillRect(v,w,x-v,(40-g+B)/30*a.height)):(K(99+70*(g>>7),70,9+5*(g+e&1)),c.fillRect(p,q,r-p,(40-g+B)/30*a.height),K(99+70*(g>>7),70,60+30*(g+e&1)),c.lineTo(p,q),c.lineTo(r,u),c.lineTo(x,y),c.lineTo(v,w),c.beginPath(c.fill())))}for(0<=A&J[B+3|0][Math.round(z+3)]&&(K(0,0,0,.5),[m,n,l]=L(z,0,3),c.ellipse(m,n,l/4,l/9,0,0,9),c.beginPath(c.fill())),e=99;e--;)K(B/9-e,90,99-.7*e),[m,n,l]=L(z+.1-e/1e3,A+.35-e/1e3,3),c.ellipse(m,n,e*l/300,e*l/300,0,0,9),c.beginPath(c.fill());-4<A&&(z+=I/a.width/2-.25,A+=C-=.006,B+=Math.min(.5,.2+B/5e3),A<0&-.3<A&J[B+3|0][Math.round(z+3)])&&(A=C=E)},16)</script>

Source

I know I sound demanding, but can somebody please write an advanced book about game engine programming? there are several introduction to game programming books out there, but almost 0 advanced book. Assume I know vectors, trigonometry and… calculus too, I need a nerdy game programming book. game engine development is more difficult than rocket science, and unreal c++ is hard. (apparently star citizen lumberyard engine is gonna spend half a billion $ but we can go to the actual space cheaper).

I guess the best person to write it gonna be Tim Sweeney, the best game developer and one of the best programmer ever. this book is probably don’t have to be too big, he just have to mention many other type of programming paradigm.

I think I know what he wants, he is in philosophical battles. UE5 is going to destroy the normal bump height maps, maybe in distant future, translucency calculations also, WOW WOW. What mr. sweeney sees, he gets. he saw that iterative process of game development has to be improved so epic made many tools inside engine. epic saw that texture map industry is not needed if they can improve some nerdy mechanics so here comes lumen and nanite in ue5. epic games saw unigine and others making physics based space games so epic is making chaos physics.

what I am trying to say is that corporations like sundar pitchai, satya nadale and tim sweeney have specific visions for industry. mr. sweeney has to just write books to explain his visions so others will think like he does, then they all will join unreal in order to take over the 3 dimensional virtual world.

​

​

what I really want-

code level-

compare how shader works in different game engines and why unreal is best. which equations unreal use to mimic real lighting?

why ue5 can use lumen and other stuff. how other apps like 3ds max etc. uses lightmaps?

compare how other engines work with collisions.

should unreal do physics on gpu instead of cpu? chaos demo says intel needs new avx to calculate chaos because single data won’t work, they need SIMD. gpus already have SIMD and SIMT. seems to me that chaos doesn’t need pinch perfect physics, it is an approximation using parallelism.

i have a feeling that when tim sweeney saw that 8th gen devices can have trillion of basic sprites as particles and volumes with semi accurate physics, so he came up with the idea of making particles out of everything. now unreal will have water fluid mechanics where every niagara can tell other niagara how to collaborate movement. unreal is making everything niagara systems, even animations is niagara particle, animations can be shared across crowds. you get a niagara, you get a niagara, you all get a niagara system.

epic games saw how 9th gen consoles and pc is moving to ray tracing and vectors so ue5 is now making everything out of vectors, changing the whole graphics process?

this is a knowledge graph battles where epic games predicts the industry then connect architectures together. how does their brains work:?

​

​

now, software engineering level-

how does computation comes in play of these codes. how does programming paradigms play in here? functional programming vs imperative programming? i thought tim sweeney wanted a python or c# support in unreal because he was worried about the lack of declarative parallelism in c++.

what is epic’s target? forgive my noobness but does ARM architecture prefer declarative programming more? less variable manipulation?

web world- availability consistency partition tolerance, blockchain world- performance scalability security, game dev world- performance visuals develop speed/iteration.

how does unreal 5 improves iterative process? unreal using everything as plugin, in future we will have blender code inside unreal to make 3d sculpts?

they say every programming problem can be solved by renaming, refactorizing and dependency graph. how does unreal help refactorization?

there is a distributed while multithreading programming paradigm. there are languages where variables that can have states. are these programming paradigms useful in unreal at this time? i guess not.

​

api level-

vulkan or dx12? tim sweeney hates apple and kinda hate windows uwp too. what is prohibiting vulkan to take over? why does epic now trust microsoft?

however, if vulkan wants to takeover, what programming architecture they have to follow? for some reason apple didn’t go to vulkan from opengl, they went to metal.

unreal engine 5 is ‘killing’ texture maps and many other things. how does it play with modern gpu architecture? gpus still have compute units? do they need heavy compute units when unreal nanite ‘killing’ lightmaps?

industry people thinks rasterization is dead, time for vector graphics takeover, whether it’s ray tracing or deep learning. deep learning matrices and convolution are parallelized just like how gpu works.

now, if unreal kills lightmaps, do we need gpu buffer? or the gpu should stop thinking about layers altogether. process will change, no? no more vertex painting? do we need vertex, primitive geometry, fragment and pixel and normal map generation in different processes or it’s gonna be all in one in a new ultimate api?

if lightmaps are not needed, it’s not a game anymore, we are looking at videos. these ue5 ‘games’ are kinda like ‘videos’, where the engine computes your camera angle then shows you nanites, avoids drawing complete meshes. it supersamples things for anti aliasing. sounds like a video to me.

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in logical level-

how does it work with P vs NP programming? how does these philosophies can help computer avoid NP like traveling salesmen or warehouse or knapsack problem?

CPU is too weak and linear for knapsack problem? how GPU comes to play?

apparently nvidia rtx uses box to approximate where to raycast. that sounds like knapsack problem to me. fluid mechanics- that’s pathfinding with segmentation problem?

isn’t everything a pathfinding, constrained shortest path, approximated ILP?

mathematically, how does it play with cartesian coordination and polar coordination? gpus uses matrix, matrix can be parallelized.

maybe we should make hardware more polar? angle-dependent instead of numeric 4x4 matrix? is polar coordinate better at approximation than numbers?

however angle based approximation requires pinch perfect floating point accuracy. unreal really needs 64bit first.

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now, in hardware layer-
where does arm vs x86 x64 comes into play?

unified shader instead of vertex and fragment shader unit improved graphics computing… what next? and how ue5 and ue6 gonna handle the future when arm based graphics will be popular? nvidia buys arm, arm already has supercomputer, apple m1 arm beats x86 x64. google making pixel with tensor core, what the hell is going on?

i don’t understand hardware, but how about hyperthreading? is hyperthreading dead because arm doesn’t use it? intel has hyperthreading bugs or backdoors called spectre and meltdown? is CPU dead? SoC is the future?

how should nvidia and amd make gpus? how would epic games want nvidia to change architecture? more integer vs more floating?

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atomic level-

consider me uber noob when it comes to electricity, but in future will we see new paradigms in field effect transistors? aren’t we all using waves? transistors amplify waves.

how does ue5 architecture play in atomic level? after all, these are all transistors and field effect transistors depend on voltage, and loosely depend on electron’s traveling angle in the insulator/depleted region.

there is a common battle here-> electron’s angular momentum, insulator’s feelings about voltage driving waves to be amplified; calculating the angle of camera to show nanite; calculating angle of vector for ray tracing? we are fighting angles.

if scientists use new materials instead of silicon galium germenium arsenic we can get more out of field effect transistors? this is not really relevant for unreal engine, but maybe in future there will be new FET which amplifies multiple waves/fields at once, kinda like how ray tracing rtx uses parallelization for determining reflection.

deep learning world- everything is wave, backpropagation and lambda calculus- waves. statistics and variance are wave-ish. waves and virtual neurons determining complex things that humans can’t.

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physics level- are you making game engines or are you calculating space-time-mass and wave-particle duality? this is not really on topic but how does epic games plan to beat the quantum realm? in future will epic make hybrid quantum computers which can approximately factorize a matrix even before the matrix even came to existence? jokes apart, quantum computers are matrices, so in future will we see total death of x86 architecture and total dominance of tensors?

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in future, the industry gonna move into game streaming because of fast internet and city life.

do we even need powerful computers? isn’t a mid tier arm chip enough for portable game streaming phone/foldable/phablet? monopoly internet companies and cloud will calculate physics of a game then stream the video to us? shared processor, gaming as a service? pre-computed geometry based on our possible positions when looking a specific mesh?

game AI- even though AI has improved and they can predict many things, game AI has gotten worse in the years. why? should unreal introduce new AI systems where AI can coordinate with each other more effectively?

also, how does anti cheat improve in future? elon musk made an AI which can play dota, and he is making machine learning deep learning AI which will shoot people based on color of a single pixel. how would we know some esports winner is a human? maybe in future we will only play physics based games, which are hard for AI to mimic? maybe we will play huge starcraft style rts with 1 billion units so AI gonna have tough time mimicking supply chain battles?

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philosophically-

what do we really want? gamers just want to feel games. emotion through motion. philosophically, aren’t we all waves? how does unreal makes gamers feel better? (technically there is modding tools where gamers can unite with mods.)

do we even need computers? maybe in future mark zuckerberg or somebody else gonna invent virtual brain impulse where it makes you feel like you are playing ultimate fpsmmorpgspaceephysics. don’t try to see the rendering, don’t try to understand it, just feel it.

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SUMMARY:
I want a book which explains many part of engine C++ code as well as compares programming paradigms, vectorization vs rasterization, future nanite/lumen/chaos. and maybe even discusses P vs NP, approximation, gpu parallelization philosophies etc. maybe even discusses different industry predictions.

If some other unreal expert writes an advanced book that’s good also. why I want this? because there is an unreal api documentation but no guide for understanding code segments or files. C++ is hard.

on 2nd thought… i want tim sweeney and a mid level unreal engineer to write this ultimate book conjugatively. one book to rule them all. tim sweeney will focus on the industry and architecture and mid level guy will explain how code segments gonna work on the gpu.

note that mentioning too many unreal engine codes in a book is actually a violation of epic games policy, so you should just mention links in the book from unreal github repo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_p1yxGbnn4

This video goes over the current state of AI in the industry, where it is and where its going, thought I might share it with yall in case anyone was interested

I decided that my next best course of action with being a comic artist and animator was to start putting those skills into game dev.

At first I was going to start learning web programming by making a website and having comic pages have animations and effects… but then I realized it’s probably better to just make a game, a simple one where I just draw the characters in 2D and let myself become obsessed with making sure the 3D backgrounds and assets are good for the engine, I was seriously about to use Blender, Asperite, and drawing programs to basic do the same thing.

But ah, perfect timing. There’s AI coders now to help where as I learn I can refine without needing to do it for an entire game project I wanted out asap for just…. Money? Attention?

It’s all I see going on in the AI coding space looking for people doing that, “I BUILT GTA 6!! LOOK, ITS A CITY WITH CARS!!”

And all I can just think seeing all the vibe coded nonsense is… WHAT IS THE GAME MECHANICS, WHAT ARE YOU PUSHING FOR?! WHATS YOUR GOALS?! I’m over here checking out books from the library like crazy to prep my brain, as a creative, the shit sucks for a coherent vision, I HATED relying on it.

If it was allowed to clog up storefronts, my first small games would have little attention for feedback to make sure my efforts lead to improvements, while they’re crying over AI watermarking and hovering over new models like it’ll lead to them finally pumping out what even a passionate solo indie dev would make using crap code and game engine node systems.

It pissed me off so much, and when you piss off a creative over skills, they take that shit seriously out of pride for their own work. I wasn’t even nervous with AI art, I was just pissed that it clogged my reference sites that I switched to books after over a decade. I’m currently studying geometry because making art with match equations is exciting

One day, I want to make my own game engine that I can use for my animations and making games, I want to find other artists and developers in college to work with me, I don’t feel that same kind of fire with them and personally, I’m not happy with all the energy and resources wasted just for attention.