I found myself with some time to devote to geek projects on Monday, and while I intended to knock out something worthwhile in progressing People of Adventure (aka POA...my take on 3.75" action figure skirmish gaming), of course I ended up getting distracted by Pokémon. In this case, it was because I had seen an article where a guy talked about using AI to code a simple video game (even though he had no coding experience), and so I wanted to take a quick look at what that process was like, and the next thing I knew, I'd been on my phone going back and forth with ChatGPT for a few hours trying to make it understand the direction I wanted it to take the game's programming (and to keep it from "deciding" on changes I didn't request at all).
I'm honestly not completely sure how I feel about the use of generative AI in creative pursuits (and my thinking gets even muddier when it comes to its use in the technical realization of human-generated ideas)...BUT I thought it'd be worth mentioning on here how crazy it is that a very averagely-technologically-savvy old dude like me can put together a functional "app" as quickly and easily as I did. I know it really doesn't look like much, and it's just a simple HTML document, but man does this get my brain bouncing around among possible future projects to start and never finish. Maybe I should work on this piece by piece and turn it into the fully realized version of Underground Elemental Beastfighting...? Maybe I should use AI to finally get Ring Doctors into a completely playable form...? Or maybe I should try to keep my focus on just one project at a time...but attempt to harness this newly tapped resource into improving it...?
Yeah...I dunno.
But...I'd be delighted if you wanted to take a moment to check out the direction I'm going with UEB. You can click here if you'd like to see its humble opening scene. You'll be asked to choose an element for your Beast...
...then given a randomly generated monster (with d20-ish stats) and the option to send them into the Beastfighting pits to find glory, misery, death, or some combination of the three.
There's not much more to the story at this point, but I can't really exaggerate how amazed I am that this thing works at all. And now that I have a skeleton to build from, who knows...maybe it'll actually lead to me learning a thing or two about coding...?
Whoa whoa whoa...guess I don't want to get ahead of myself.
Anyway...if you have any ideas on this, please send 'em my way!
