Using AI To Build A Game From Scratch (NO Experience)

Here's a breakdown of how I used AI to make a video game.

#AIGame #gamedev #gpt4

[vectoralphaSec]

Game development is hard and extremely time consuming. So the fact you were even able to do all this in such a short amount of time is incredibly impressive.

[JoshFlorii]

"It took a lot longer than I thought it would" ... ah yes, welcome to being a developer

[TruthWalker]

Wow! As a programmer, I was slightly hoping Matt would not succeed but was excited when he did! By the way, 4 hours or even days is NOTHING compared to the years I have spent learning code from tutorials and tons of trial and error. He took what most people with no coding experience would probably take weeks to months to do and instead with GPT-4 was able to do it in a fraction of the time. We live in interesting times!

[Baekstrom]

When the code grows, ask ChatGPT to split it into smaller javascript files, so that for example the code for animating and controlling the player character is in its own file. That should allow the code that you are working on to fit within the character limit.

[Zadius]

What's funny to me is that the process you went through here is very similar to how a beginner programmer experiences things when they are learning on their own. I used to take other people's code and tinker around with it - what happens when I change this number, what happens when I delete this line, and you figure out what the parts do and what the functions mean. Then it's always the feet moving (sprite animation) or some other small detail that creates hours of frustration until you're about to throw the computer out the window. 🤣 But in the end, you learned quite a bit: creating a coordinate system, collision detection, spite animation, data types, function calls, user controls (keyboard inputs and mouse click inputs), and so on - things that I had to look up and learn from examples, then learn how to combine them together. You might not have learned all the meaning of the code, but you learned the structure of a program like this and what goes into creating it. That's a main difference between software development and coding. You learned more about the higher-level structure and design of a program, without need to know how to do the coding. Like the difference between an architect and a construction worker. Awesome stuff! But, I guess soon the AI will make the entire program in one shot.

[ObjectiveObserver]

Watching these videos, I feel that whenever you find yourself saying: "I want to create this, but I don't know how, " the "don't know how" part is hardly an issue anymore. And that's why I love AI so much. It empowers us to create literally *anything*, or at least gives us the detailed steps to do so. Thanks for the inspiration, Matt! ❤

[IvoryOasis]

This was my experience also. I don't know to code... so I had to do the troubleshooting a LOT to try and get it to write a script for me. But as I was going I found myself learning as I was going. It was actually pretty interesting....

I could see this sort of AI assisted learning being a GREAT thing for students. Especially if you back it up with some proper lessons between working with the AI. I really wish I could go back in time and have this when I was younger.

[AizaakThurston]

Been into indie development since I was 14. Started with html/js like this but had to learn from massive textbooks on programming that were often outdated. This is just mind blowingly amazing to me. I can't imagine how many years I would have saved if I had this as a kid.

[qmerk]

finally someone that titles their video "using AI to build a game from scratch (NO EXPERIENCE)" and they weren't pulling any bullshit. well done man! loved the video!

[sayhiben]

As a software engineer with 20+ yrs of experience, I am excited to watch GPT lower the barrier to entry with programming. The implications are wild. I'm so here for it

[tralfazy]

Matt, hopefully in the future you will learn about modular coding. Once you do you will find coding a lot more fun and enjoyable. This current style of coding that you are doing is what I call 'Spaghetti Code' where it's all thrown into one big long jumble. It's so hard to troubleshoot when it's done that way. If you have your code modularized into sections like controls, collision detection, scoring, sounds, explosions etc then when something doesn't work you only work on that one section. After I learned to modularize my code, that's when coding became fun for me. When it's modular, when working with ChatGPT you can give it just your collision code or just your sound code or whatever instead of having to send all the thousands of lines of 'Spaghetti Code' to it. Modularity gets a lot more important the bigger your program gets too.

[bobhawkey]

I've been using GPT4 to generate c# code for Unity projects and so far it's been flawless. Simple stuff like flickering a light for a candle or having an object follow a path of waypoints but it just works and is easy to ask for modifications. A game changer for me.

[lexscarlet]

"it took a lot longer than I expected."

But not years of schooling and tens of thousands of dollars.

Amazing work man. And context and nuance definitely matter for troubleshooting the code for chatGPT to give you better update snippets. Think of it like a differential diagnosis. "Something isn't working" doesn't give the model as much as "something isn't work in this specific context."

Great great work!

[jameshughes]

that's pretty darned amazing. as a coder, i wasn't sure this was possible for someone that is new to coding. great job

[PierreChe]

That is awesome. Actually doing the work and showing the process for us mortals (non-programmers). I imagine tutoring a kid/teenager into building their own little game like that. What an incredible way to spark creativity! The future is gonna be wild.

[InedibleMattman]

This is so amazing. We really are in the early days of a whole new age of content creation! I'm so excited to see this industry grown and what is capable in the next month, six months, and in a year from now.

[archvaldor]

IMO This is the most important video Matt's made and the main actual use of AI as it exists currently. You can program literally anything because you can just keep asking chat-gpt to break everything down to simple steps.

[sachigame]

This AI currently is like an extreme evolution of the calculator, allowing people to complete tasks they don't know how to do, while allowing people who do know how to do those tasks to do them even faster.

Yesterday I was experimenting with ChatGPT and Game Maker Studio 2. It has a full grasp on even proprietary languages like GML that GMS2 uses, and it's been a couple years since I touched that development software so I'm pretty rusty with it. With ChatGPT I was able to refresh myself and jump back into it at a rate that blew my mind.

[deano]

Yeah, I had to see you do this to believe it was possible. I'm an old man approaching 60 at an alarming rate of speed, and starting 6 years ago I decided to learn how to make video games. I used to program in Basic back in the 80s on an old Commodore 64, and a little bit of old C++ back in the 90s when I used it to mod my WWIV BBSs. (If you know, you know). Then life took over. So I was basically learning from scratch 6 years ago. Using Unity and C# it has taken me until 2 weeks ago to finally launch the first game that I am proud of.

I say all that to say this: I can appreciate the frustration of staring at code for hours, trying to make it work, bend it to your will, questioning your recent life choices, all to find out that you didn't capitalize that T in your variable declaration, or that line of code is on the wrong side of that curly bracket. In my new game, there were still a couple of occasionally recurring bugs that I didn't like happening, that I couldn't quite figure out. I fed it into Chad (which is what I call Chat GPT ... easier) and within a couple of hours Chad and I were able to track down the bugs and eliminate the problems. Much faster than if I had tried to do it myself.

Chad still has its hangups, but it's a passable assistant to bounce your ideas off of and get inspiration from, and it won't drink your last Dr. Pepper while you're busy loading data in your Scriptable Objects.

It's a great time to be alive. Glad I'm here to see it.

[justinrogers]

I get excited when I see a new one of your videos on YouTube. You find great stuff and you show it in an easy way just like I would look at it. Good stuff man, keep it going!