Someone created a video game with nothing but AI tools ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Midjourney

[Cal Jeffrey]

What just happened? In case you missed it (we did), a knock-off version of Angry Birds called Angry Pumpkins launched on Halloween. It plays just like the classic game from 2010, except it has you shooting pumpkins at boxes, wooden planks, stone pillars, bones, skulls, and ghoulies.

Angry Pumpkins is not as advanced as its inspiration. It only has one level with seemingly no win condition, but it does have a crude editor allowing you to create custom layouts, sort of, maybe, if you are very, very patient. Okay, okay. The game sucks and is not very fun. You can judge for yourself on the developer's website.

But that's not the point.

What makes Angry Pumpkins newsworthy is that it was created entirely with natural language using ChatGPT to write its 600 lines of code, Midjourney to draw the objects and background, and Dall-E to generate the title screen. No manual coding was required, and little to no programming knowledge was needed to build the playable game.

Angry Pumpkins creator Javi Lopez has been tinkering with these AI tools for some time and has developed a keen sense of how to get the most out of them with English prompts. He even has tutorials on how to work with AI agents. Despite his better-than-average knowledge, he is still amazed he could create a playable game using only AI.

Midjourney, DALL*E 3 and GPT-4 have opened a world of endless possibilities.

I just coded "Angry Pumpkins ðÂÂÂ" (any resemblance is purely coincidental ðÂÂÂ) using GPT-4 for all the coding and Midjourney / DALLE for the graphics.

Here are the prompts and the process I followed: pic.twitter.com/st3OEhVVtK

– Javi Lopez â©ï¸Â (@javilopen) October 31, 2023

"I have to admit, I'm genuinely blown away," Lopez said on X. "Honestly, I never thought this would be possible. I truly believe we're living in a historic moment that we've only seen in sci-fi movies up until now."

A few of us at TechSpot have experimented with ChatGPT to code tasks in various programming languages. While it rarely produces completely functional error-free code on the first try, we've gotten it to self-correct and generate workable snippets for simple tasks. However, creating an interactive game is on a whole other level, even as crude as Angry Pumpkins is.

That said, designing the game was not as easy as pie. Lopez said that creating the graphics was the simplest part. He has been generating AI images for over a year and a half, and getting Dall-E or Midjourney to spit out what he wants was simply a matter of asking for it in the way the AI best understands. However, coding was a bear.

"Although the game is just 600 lines, of which I haven't written ANY, this was the most challenging part," Lopez said.

Getting ChatGPT-4 to produce workable code took patience and many, many iterations. He started with a simple prompt.

"Can we now create a simple game using matter.js and p5.js in the style of 'Angry Birds?' Just launch a ball with angle and force using the mouse and hit some stacked boxes with 2D physics."

Through a long back-and-forth process of testing and re-prompting, Lopez eventually got to a working, error-free game/demo. Never did he correct the code himself. If he got an error, he told ChatGPT what it was and commanded it to fix it. Sometimes, his prompts were humorously critical of the AI.

"Now, make the monsters circular, and be very careful: apply the same technique that already exists for the rectangular ones regarding scaling and collision area, and don't mess it up like before."

Despite the game's shortcomings, Angry Pumpkins is a great early example of how independent producers and even mainstream studios could leverage AI to save development costs. It also opens the door for virtually anybody with imagination and patience to create a game without any knowledge or experience in game development.

However, it's also a little scary as AI implementation in studios will most assuredly lead publishers to cut human staff, replacing them with AI. We aren't there yet, but the writing is on the wall.

"These new work processes, where we can create anything using just natural language, are going to change the world as we know it," Lopez opined. "It's such a massive tidal wave that those who don't see it coming will be hit hard. So... let's start riding the wave!"

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/100718-someone-created-video-game-nothing-but-ai-tools.html

 

[FaTaL]

Its over for the little guy

 

[RudyBob]

That's what it might be good for...making stuff up

 

[bondflavor]

Yay, we're one step closer to my dream of saying "Make it not do that" when I encounter a bug in a game I'm making!

No, actually, I'm very much not a fan of generative AI. I don't see this as a positive in any way, whatsoever, as a very small-time game developer.

It also opens the door for virtually anybody with imagination and patience to create a game without any knowledge or experience in game development.

This is not a good thing.

If this became a reality, the barrier to entry to game development would be basically demolished, opening the floodgates to a deluge of crappy shovelware AI games far bigger than the flood of crappy games we already put up with, completely burying small developers who actually make quality products and making it impossible for them to be seen.

That said, this guy likely spent more time trying to coax the AI model to create working code than it would have taken him to actually code by hand. So I think we're a ways off from that disastrous future as of yet.

 

[ferrellsl]

How is this game groundbreaking or fresh? It's simply a rip-off of Angry Birds with Halloween-themed assets. Making one-off games using AI to assist is still copyright infringement/plagiarism.

 

[bondflavor]

How is this game groundbreaking or fresh?

I don't see where in the article the game is stated to be groundbreaking or fresh. I do see this, though:

Okay, okay. The game sucks and is not very fun.

Making one-off games using AI to assist is still copyright infringement/plagiarism.

This isn't copyright infringement at all. I wouldn't call it plagiarism either, as game ideas can be freely copied by others. The entire video game industry is built on what came before. Imagine if Super Mario 64 had "copyrighted" a free-rotating camera, or Zelda had "copyrighted" Z-targeting.

 

[ferrellsl]

I don't see where in the article the game is stated to be groundbreaking or fresh. I do see this, though:



This isn't copyright infringement at all. I wouldn't call it plagiarism either, as game ideas can be freely copied by others. The entire video game industry is built on what came before. Imagine if Super Mario 64 had "copyrighted" a free-rotating camera, or Zelda had "copyrighted" Z-targeting.

I think a jury as well as the company that owns the IP for Angry Birds would disagree. This ripoff is not just an "idea", it's an actual game where the game-play is identical to Angry Birds. And the only graphical difference is the asset swap I mentioned earlier. Not a simple rotating camera or z-targeting.

 

[bondflavor]

I think a jury as well as the company that owns the IP for Angry Birds would disagree. This ripoff is not just an "idea", it's an actual game where the game-play is identical to Angry Birds. And the only graphical difference is the asset swap I mentioned earlier. Not a simple rotating camera or z-targeting.

If this clone somehow became wildly successful I doubt Rovio Entertainment would be happy, but I don't think they would have a case. There are countless examples of video game clones out there. Some modern examples, off the top of my head:
Mighty No. 9 was a (failed) attempt at making a (legally distinct) Mega Man game.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising is Breath of the Wild but with Greek Mythology. And given how litigious Nintendo is, I think they would have sued if they had a case.
There are about a billion Minecraft clones.

 

[m4a4]

I think a jury as well as the company that owns the IP for Angry Birds would disagree. This ripoff is not just an "idea", it's an actual game where the game-play is identical to Angry Birds. And the only graphical difference is the asset swap I mentioned earlier. Not a simple rotating camera or z-targeting.

Lol, no. If they called it Angered Birds or something that would be trademarked they could. But they cannot copyright a game mechanic or anything of the sort.

 

[Kam7r]

How is this game groundbreaking or fresh? It's simply a rip-off of Angry Birds with Halloween-themed assets. Making one-off games using AI to assist is still copyright infringement/plagiarism.

it's another proof of "AI" ( sill not real AI but only algos) create nothing but only rip off what have already been made by humans

 

[MasterAce]

Having used copilot I can say the bugs it makes are absolutely sinister. The code will always look valid… but some parameter or overload is off and figuring that out with a human brain is unnecessary hard

 

[VaRmeNsI]

While AI can speed up development you still need a good idea to begin with and the people that have those won't be hurt by AI anyways.

 

[Dr Roboto]

ChatGPT-4 has been a game changer for coding for me. I have created numerous complete coding projects using just ChatGPT with only minimal manual typing.

Prompting is a bit of trial and error. Talking down to it when it is being frustrating kind of happens naturally, because as amazing as it is, sometimes it can't even do simple things right. What is weird, is that sometimes I find myself being polite to when it is working well. I catch my self using "please" and then I am like WTF, it is a computer program why am I using my manners.

It is not perfect, but it can often get you 80-95% of the way there. Fixing errors can sometimes be quicker by hand, but it's interesting to note how ChatGPT often apologizes when it messes up. There's definitely some extra polish to how OpenAI has designed its interactions, more than just the raw LLM at work.

 

[Dysnomia]

Yay, we're one step closer to my dream of saying "Make it not do that" when I encounter a bug in a game I'm making!

No, actually, I'm very much not a fan of generative AI. I don't see this as a positive in any way, whatsoever, as a very small-time game developer.



This is not a good thing.

If this became a reality, the barrier to entry to game development would be basically demolished, opening the floodgates to a deluge of crappy shovelware AI games far bigger than the flood of crappy games we already put up with, completely burying small developers who actually make quality products and making it impossible for them to be seen.

That said, this guy likely spent more time trying to coax the AI model to create working code than it would have taken him to actually code by hand. So I think we're a ways off from that disastrous future as of yet.

Home recording brought thousands of bad recordings from bands no-one will ever hear of when recording became cheap enough for everyone, even free. That didn't change the music industry- you will still only hear the hits unless you go lookin for the smaller guys just happy to be playing music.

I think videogames will survive just fine.

 

[bondflavor]

I catch my self using "please" and then I am like WTF, it is a computer program why am I using my manners.

No, no, this is good. You want our future AI overlords to be able to see you have a history of being polite with their primitive ancestors.

Home recording brought thousands of bad recordings from bands no-one will ever hear of when recording became cheap enough for everyone, even free. That didn't change the music industry- you will still only hear the hits unless you go lookin for the smaller guys just happy to be playing music.

I think videogames will survive just fine.

I think a more relevant comparison would be the advent of accessible DAWs and digital music creation, making it so that you don't even need to have performing skills to create music, significantly lowering the barrier to entry and thus increasing small-time music output.

Of course the AAA games aren't going to be threatened by Joe Schmoe with his weaponized AI shovelware maker. It's the indie scene that would suffer from the deluge of crap.

Independent book publishing is already suffering this fate, I'm pretty sure. It used to be really hard to have your novel noticed among the hundreds of thousands of self-published writings on something like Amazon. Now that ChatGPT can churn out sub-par novels at absurd rates, it'll be basically impossible to establish a foothold.

I'll still make video games, of course, even if AI-vomit games become a reality.

 

[havok585]

I think a jury as well as the company that owns the IP for Angry Birds would disagree. This ripoff is not just an "idea", it's an actual game where the game-play is identical to Angry Birds. And the only graphical difference is the asset swap I mentioned earlier. Not a simple rotating camera or z-targeting.

dude, sit down, you are waay over your head.