Space Debris & AI for demomaking - Your thoughts?

Demos
1

It was going to happen sooner or later and I guess the following experiment is a point to start the conversation. Space Debris

Your thoughts?

Edit: Just discovered the play in browser thingy; is it as easy as dropping the file in here? Let’s see… Hm, no, it seems it doesnt! Oh!? YES IT DOES! Silly me :smiley:

space_debris.dsk (190.3 KB)

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WOW! First-class! (I know the demo of the same name from the Amiga.)

The CPC version is brilliantly done. With some of the effects, I have absolutely no clue how I would pull that off. Huge compliments. Great job! Thanks for sharing.

Best,
S.D.

3

One good. Many bad. A few very bad.
TSDR: funny experiment but kinda pointless.

(And that Space-Debris cover is still sooo much better than the original! :slight_smile:

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How many pennies for your thoughts, then? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Just for you then :slight_smile:

The good one:

  • It’s actually not completely bad. With expertise and well crafted prompts… hmm.

The bad ones:

  • It’s actually not completely bad. And without expertise, no well crafted prompts… doh!
  • It’s just a continuation of what programmers with no design or pixel-art skills used to do: throw a bunch of random pictures into some random image-conversion tool and… voilà! A slideshow! Now the average Joe can do the same with an LLM to “produce” basically anything. Pointless slop.
  • This was just an experiment. But others might get excited by the idea of finally making a CPC demo this way. The reception in demoscene circles won’t be too kind atm. Much boring dramas incoming.
  • All the “Is it AI?” witch-hunting will choke out the more interesting “Is it good or bad? Why?” discussions.

The few very bad:

  • With slop fatigue setting in, I know I’ll become brutally honest rather than supportive with these things. So I might just choose to completely ignore them and say nothing at all. Which is sad.
  • Photoshop didn’t turn programmers into pixel artists, but it never made them believe it could.
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6

Certainly interesting, fun to watch, love the tune, but at the end of the day I don’t think I’ll be loading it a second time.

Even if, yes @rexbeng , it’s so easy to do that :smiley:

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Hey, it was my first time and I’m happy to say the experience was passionate yet tender :stuck_out_tongue:

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8

Thanks. I have pretty much the same thoughts.

Judging from the experience with the games’ development branch of the scene, I am wondering if the current volume of mediocre things popping all over the place will eventually lead to the peculiar situation of more people calling every slop as slop, regardless it being AI or human made.

But, hey, we’ve been arguing in the scene since forever about graphics, so…! Oh well, good times! :smiley:

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I’d like to see a demo from the famous old-school PC demogroup: Future Crew :thinking: on a CPC Plus.

10

I must say I have mixed feelings about this. Siko gave me a preview a while ago and my verdict of the demo itself was pretty much what @Grimmy wrote. Getting some new exposure on a (cover) track I made long ago and which I still hold dearly is nice, but the circumstances are a bit meh. That’s the 2nd layer of mixed feelings.

And yes, slop fatigue is a thing (which I also experience, but didn’t have a name for it yet) and I am sure most people will become painfully honest, then indifferent over time. It reminds me of the times when demo-makers were popular. Tbh I can’t be arsed to look at most of the AI made games that keep popping up here. The ones I looked at (Galaga for example) had too many flaws to be taken seriously and given how much I love the original game, its almost an insult that it exists.

4 Likes
11

“An insult to the Galaga remake!” Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a bit? I’m putting a lot of time into this to try and create something functional. You’re entitled not to like the AI, but being rude is another matter.

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I had assumed he was talking about the Revive8bit version which couldn’t even be called Galaga really…

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13

I’m pretty sure he means the initial ‘Better Than Most Real Coders Could Have Made’ (BTMRCCHM) Galaga that started the whole AI debate.

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I like that acronym, it gives NWOBHM vibes.

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EXACTLY what it drew inspiration from :laughing: :laughing:

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Except NWOBHM was good (IMO).

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17

Can anyone tell me why the “play in browser” option often just gives a “disk missing” error for me?

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Either the drive belt needs replacing, or CAT runs before the DSK has finished loading? :slight_smile:

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19

Well, it has flaws, quite some actually and I am sure you could have seen them yourselves if you had taken a look at the original games with your own eyes. That’s the least I’d expect from someone claiming to work on a port of the game to the CPC, especially with AI involved since it adds so much noise. And you quoted me wrongly: “An insult to the Galaga remake!” - I never wrote that. Almost an insult stops short of saying it IS one. But I think you get the gist. As said, I loved the game as a child, hence my expectations of a remake are quite high. Well, at least I expect the remake to do justice to the original.

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It’s not bad at all, but being 100% AI, it can definitely be improved even further with good advice from an AI whisperer.