Even primitive tools like hammers and knives wear down over time. By contrast open source AI models can be downloaded and run locally and will perform the same forever. They won’t be as good as the ever evolving frontier models, but the idea that somehow you have to be tied to some kind of subscription is simply false.
We’re also learning that AI is quite good at MAKING tools. Does it matter if AI made the level editor that the level designer uses?
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Oh boi, I didn’t even know about this new forum, I was busy and didn’t check regurarly cpcwiki, then I realized I was occasionally looking at the old archived forum and only now I joined here. And I see some huge discussion on AI I would need days reading or throwing my 5 cents.
I also noticed not long ago the influx of CPC games suddenly and I was like, wow is everyone so productive now, then many of them claiming full vibe coded. So I was curious to see what the CPC scene things about. But this and even outside on CPC on every creative community possible, personally made me depressed like some nights I was wondering why am I doing what I am doing. Like what’s the point? But I recovered a bit and I see people have different reasons to like or dislike AI and it depends on the personality of each coder and other things. People don’t like the same things for the same reason, although it puzzles me because I thought we struggle on the CPC instead of coding for modern PCs because of that challenge and we don’t want to offload things to LLMs. Yet sometimes even good devs from the past prefer the prompting way.
Also to point out, I am ok with a bit of AI assistance (although it can be a slippery slope, I know from my job where we use it), using it for creating python scripts for tools and data conversion, occasional code review/discussion of algorithms (if it’s not generating your code but just things you would search in google or stack overflow anyway, nothing wrong with it). I can understand the full vibe-code is attractive to artists who don’t have the coding knowledge, although it feels icky to see things that if I didn’t know they were fully vibe code, they would pass as ok despite little glitches and bugs. I would see someone’s work being mediocre but if I knew it was by a human I would still give the thumbs up. And then realize it was vibe coded. I don’t know what to trust in that sense.
Finally, how I personally use it? 0% code written by AI for hobby projects as I want full control and understanding, a lot of code it produces is alien to my style, it takes away from the flow prompting and waiting instead of being hyperfocused on the code (and that focus can be brilliant for discovering ideas or patterns for optimize), there are many other minor and major reasons I don’t find personal meaning in using it for hobby coding. Only occasionally code review or discussing ideas, as in these cases you don’t generate anything, if it does by accident I just revert the changes.
But I realize that the existence of it is like we opened the real pandora’s box. Promising gifts for creators but taking away a lot of things and making everyone angry. A lot of creatives have felt the depression, it is scary that for example I see even some advanced looking stuff vibe coded, while previously I thought it would affect only web/app dev, from idea guys who claim 0% code written all Claude. In an evening where these things would take me days or a month to write manually. The level is lowered so much that it takes away meaning of creating things.
My white pill? There are enough creatives who appreciate human made stuff. New communities forming. We can continue doing what we please and ignore. But we did truly open pandora’s box. This is no assembly VS compilers, software rendering VS GPUs, native dev VS crossdev. All of these required effort. We made engines like Unity/Unreal so that idea guys can be helped, and they were still like “Uhhh,. that still requires effort, sorry bro”. Only with AI they finally are like “please make cool game/demo for me, no mistakes”. And also it’s not affecting a part of creation. It can applied to EVERYTHING. They say “Now I can be an orchestrator” and someone else says “AI will be able to do this soon”. Now I can do A, but A can be done, then B, B can be done.
A big pandora’s box, the first ever in human history that affects so hard the creative process imho.
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Welcome, and thanks for your nice post 
@Out_Bush : I’ve cleared all your reactions on the forum, and I will do it again (pretty easy). Cut it.
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Why would anybody prefer Home Runner over some AI generated game? Why does it matter if the cat, the dog, the AI or the AI’s lover’s other husband made it - if it is a good game that’s good enough.
What I don’t get, is why human slop is ok but AI slop isn’t? Are some of those people who don’t like AI slop but like human slop braindead?
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I can sort of see the logic when it’s extremely low quality. Someone spending a few months making their first crappy BASIC game by hand should probably get more plaudits than someone the just typed “Make a BASIC game for me” into an AI.
The problem is that actually making anything even vaguely above that level requires at least some degree of skill regardless of whether you use AI or not. Some people are definitely too quick to dismiss any AI generated code as if the individual behind it do nothing at all, which is not necessarily a fair assessment.
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Who said it is?
What are some examples of “human slop”?
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Bridge-It? 
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Why? If you have the money you can tell your employees to make a game for you? Now you can do it with less money - is there a difference?
The main problem currently is the quantity. Maybe there were some rich people in the past who could hire other people to create something questionable for them within weeks and then put it into the market.
Today almost everybody can do something similar with the help of AI agents within hours - and I got the impression that at least every second one does so. There is an enormous flood of mediocre or even bad games, even in our small niche.
This means: In the past you could just accept the problem, it was small and manageable (e.g. we used the tag “Speccy port”). But I’m afraid that at the moment we only see the beginning. This flood will rise much higher, not only here, but in all aspects of our lives.
We need to find a way how to handle this, here and in other scopes.
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So you see no difference between human creativity and AI.
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This is where I feel the argument diverges, because I think they’re both different versions of human creativity. Much like writing a song on an acoustic guitar Vs composing an entire symphony for an orchestra. Maybe the guy with his acoustic guitar doesn’t even know how to read, let alone write music! 
You can make these arguments for one thing being “easier” and thus “lesser”, but it’s all very subjective. And suggesting that the human element is completely nonexistent in AI creation is not really true either.
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Are you sure? Can you find a better basic compiler yet? Maybe there is but how many are better?
Are you going to play games created with unity? If so… isn’t that hypocrisy given unity has ai integration?
What has himan to do with anything? Do you eat food cooked by a machine?
I 'd rather not read ‘universal’ arguments about AI; but keep it within the context of developing around vintage technology. Else, making arguments is easy: you don’t need to bother people in dating forums if you are happy and settled with your AI relationship(s).
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What vintage technology? my NEW Amstrad clone? or a chip that was designed decades ago that is STILL in production? resisters? wires?
Consider those people I’m not going to eat that rice cooked by that fuzzy logic rice cooker. It’s about the way the rice is cooked naturally in a basket by boiling water underneath.
“Vintage technology” as in, people have a hobby around a computer(s) designed in the mid-80s and some of them enjoy developing things for/on it. Among those latter ones, there are people who don’t view AI’s involvement (or rather, the way AI is ultimately being used within this “vintage technology” fetish of theirs) as a positive thing. Right now there’s somewhat of an uncertainty about how to handle things; we are on newfound grounds.
So, to make things easier it would be best to not broaden the discussion beyond what this fetish is about. I haven’t seen anyone blanket-blaming AI for everything and I understand how AI may be beneficial in many fields, however I don’t care to see robots playing football.
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