I mean, you might be right, but again it’s like being the most popular amongst the seven nerds who go to chess club instead of playing sports. If you want adoration, surely there are easier and more lucrative ways of doing it (even just using AI)?
Can’t say. People will be people, I guess.
I know how the admins of that site feel. I’ve been trying to keep up with announcing as many of the ‘new’ games on CPC Game Reviews as I can, but it’s increasingly a losing battle and I feel I can’t cope with it any more. 
It’s also distracting me from the main purpose of the site, namely reviewing the games that are being released (good or bad)!
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The hilarious and at the same time annoying thing that is being pointed out is that, we are talking about games that their ‘creators’ most likely haven’t played to the end themselves.
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Glad you posted here, I’d not seen your site but will bookmark it now!
But maybe the answer is just don’t “announce” every single “release”. The mags back in the 80s didn’t review every game. Pick the ones worth mentioning (either because they’re great or so spectacularly awful they need calling out).
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Back then I feel that the magazines didn’t review all the games was because they weren’t sent them, whereas now someone like @Nich or Indie Retro News has to give them all a try to see if they’re worth including in an update. Which is definitely more time consuming!
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Well, not necessarily if they are properly flagged. Half-baked, untested v1.0 AI ports don’t need any attention. Finished games only. A reviewer shouldn’t have to work harder than the developer.
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Rally X is one of those games (see also: Zippy Race, Bosconian) where the playfield is split vertically which makes hardware scrolling basically unachievable on Amstrad hardware. The Sega Master System has a special graphics mode specifically for games like this.
Yeah, it’s a shame the Plus hardware didn’t include a vertical split capability, especially since there were variants of the CRTC that had gained that sort of functionality. That and the ability to disable sprites/change mode when a split occurs are the two most glaring oversights in the design, IMO.
Maybe you could do the status area with sprites to some degree, but you’d need some hardcore multiplexing.
I see It hasn’t ocurred to me, in one hand is the map with the car and the race and in the other the part of radar and the CPC draw lines in the screen horizontally. So the only way to do that is simulate the radar part with the hardware sprites with zoom in front of the race part.
Those are nice rules except for this one; as I’ve said elsewhere, AI allows people with communication issues to actually communicate for the first time. So that’s a hard no from me.
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But “v1.0” would indicate to me that the game is in a finished state - or did you mean to write “v0.1”?
I guess so. I mean the first version of what the AI produces, being treated like it’s done.
Professional coders understand the code though. They understand it’s a tool. Like when spreadsheets came along and helped accountants. You still need to have an understanding of the numbers otherwise you’ll end up in a right mess.
As I said much earlier in this thread, AI to help develop a CPC game isn’t a bad thing. Got some tedious bit of code around managing your level layout? AI can probably help.
The problem comes when people use these tools as a substitute for actual talent. Bloated code they don’t understand.
I’ve been talking about this on Bluesky this morning. A guy developing Android ‘apps’ and sending them to his mates. Doesn’t understand the first line of code. How does he know what’s in there? Will it burn through battery life or could something more damaging in there. He’s reliant on good luck and the AI provider being on the ball.
But what if some bad actor could influence the AI and the coder doesn’t understand the code? You could end up with a piece of malware that you are distributing with no idea.
Some people don’t have the faintest idea of how a car engine works and have a professional deal with it. Some are competent mechanics. Some, like me, have some idea and are happy doing certain tasks in there. For example, I’ve just replaced my fuel vapour purge valve. I know what it does, I know how do the job. But I’m not going to suddenly start stripping the engine and taking out the intake manifold! The problem is that AI lets people who know nothing do just that and rely on the AI having the correct information. They’ll never have an understanding of what is in the engine bay until they actually learn. And they won’t because that is effort.
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but, but, you could always ask Claude 
The thing is, once you follow Claude’s advice and you break everything, who get’s the blame? You? Claude? The company behind Claude? Your internet provider for allowing to use Claude? The state for failing to see the problem with being able to use Claude for things you have no idea about? Or perhaps just the people who see what you did with Claude and go ‘well, that’s not supposed to be this way’?
And they’ll be different methods as well. For my car there is the official VW method which involves some engine disassembly. Or there’s the method the people on the VW forums use which is to cut the existing pipework and create a join that saves half hour of labour and a whole load of hassle.
VW would like you to use the official method as it creates extra work for the dealers. I don’t want to and followed the advice on the forums and did the job in under half the time.
Which version does Claude use? The official ‘better’ one or the more efficient and cheaper one?
Or does it hallucinate some entirely different method that results in your engine falling out halfway down the road.
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professional coders don’t necessarily understand all the code. There are specialisms based on particular aspects (e.g. physics, character ai) of an app or code, and one coder from one specialism may not understand the code from another.
For some code such as a third party library (boost, mysql etc) you don’t necessarily need to understand the implementation to be able to use it, but you need to know what it will do.
Some of this code might be bloated, especially with some modern development where a library includes another library and so on.
a lot of modern software I would say is bloated.
But yes professional coders do realise that the AI is a tool and have experienced what it can and can’t do and do get a feeling for good and bad code.
AI doesn’t allow somebody to be a professional coder. AI is more like a very knowledgeable enthusiastic starter programmer. One who has read every book but hasn’t actually implemented anything and will go and make mistakes.
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