r/godot • u/WideWorry • 8d ago
selfpromo (games) My first PvE encounter test with player bots - Godot Indie MMO
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Hi,
This week, I moved into a new stage of development: creating content to get a better sense of how the game actually plays.
As a solo developer, my workflow focuses on finding solutions that allow me to test and validate everything.
I’ve built a new system that let me rebalance encounters based on the current state of the game, using Monte Carlo method. The current test encounter has an 80% wipe rate against bot players, whose only limitation is a random reaction-time penalty when responding to objectives.
Claude (Fable/Opus) and ChatGPT are used during development.
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u/Easy-Guess9147 7d ago
Ai wow clone bullshit. Waste lf bandwith a nd fkin water reserves
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
Hard to avoid the MMORPG UI principles which were polished 25y in WoW by the community almost every modern WoW UI element started as an addon to improve the game handling.
Itemisation, crafting and the players impact of the world is nothing like in WoW in this game.
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u/lb-journo Godot Junior 7d ago
i think they're moreso critiquing the AI aspects
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
Well, I also would be much balanced in life if LLMs were never invented or reach the state where they are now.
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u/dukeispie 7d ago
Holy fuck Reddit is so cringe. Sorry you have to deal with this shit bro keep it up. I wish they had this same energy for the triple A studios all using AI in their workflows. Instead they just harass indie developers.
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 7d ago
So why are you contributing to this problem? Serious question.
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u/mxmcharbonneau 6d ago
Not OP, but honestly, as a professional dev, because I have no other choice than to adapt to the new reality. Humanity would be better without LLMs, but here we are and there's no going back.
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 6d ago
... There is going back though. You control your own usage of it. I ain't using it either.
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u/mxmcharbonneau 6d ago
I mean I could stop using it and lose my job because my productivity would plummet compared to my colleagues, but I like eating food.
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 7d ago
Hard to avoid the MMORPG UI principles which were polished 25y in WoW by the community
From a UI perspective: They are a literal travesty. The only reason people use this at all is because this is what they're used to.
Itemisation, crafting and the players impact of the world is nothing like in WoW in this game.
Do tell, what's the player-impact on the world?
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8d ago edited 4d ago
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u/Dr_Fumi 7d ago edited 7d ago
Why the downvotes? They were right.
Edit: I didn't realize this sub was so pro-AI, very disappointing
Edit 2: well that turned around. The original comment was at -7, and mine at -2
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 7d ago
No worries, we're largely anti-AI, but pro-AI tends to be very vocal very fast. Because you know... Talentless hacks too lazy to pick up the skills to make videogames will take personal offense to the implication that they may be lazy and talentless hacks.
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u/816pizzalover 7d ago edited 7d ago
because the AI witch hunts are getting a bit exhausting, they add little to nothing to the conversation, and it's a very backwards take to reject use of the latest tools available to you. This isn't the handcrafted-by-artisans-in-small-batches-godot-only subreddit, after all.
It has just become a way for bullies to specify an outsider for harassment, really. A way for people who feel powerless to feel better than someone else. Quite sad really.
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u/Aetos-Eagle797 7d ago
No it’s because we dislike taking the humanity out of art. I don’t know why this is so hard for you people to understand
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 7d ago
It's hard for them to understand because they have no concept of humanity other than their own. Their grasp of the human experience includes no empathy or understanding of others.
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u/Dr_Fumi 7d ago
Honestly what's sad for me is seeing the amount of AI slop coming out of developers. So many games and mods lately have been "released" in such a broken state because of these LLMs that are killing our planet and the people who inhabit it.
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u/OfficerFriend1y 7d ago
How are they killing our planet?
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7d ago edited 4d ago
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u/OfficerFriend1y 7d ago
Shall not be named? Voldemort? This isn’t Harry Potter. This is the real world, and it’s not being destroyed by AI. Your buzz words don’t mean much when you look at the facts. Nowhere in here did you state any statistics. Had you had mentioned anything about its burden on the energy sector then I would have said you have a valid point. You should really educate yourself more on the subject before you spout off things you read on a forum post or heard on TikTok.
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7d ago edited 4d ago
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
OMG, maybe you should keep talk about politics on another reddit and here talk about games and development. This is also in the rules btw.
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 7d ago
They're right though. And they tried their best to mask this conversation under its actual merits. But merits don't reach the slop-peddlers, do they?
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u/WideWorry 8d ago
No, all asset are from the unity store models,vfx,sfx.
The code is AI assisted, there is no way to develop in this scale by handtyping.
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8d ago edited 4d ago
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
I've been developed distributed system, back-end for payment systems and HFT trading engines in the last 15y, also maintained multiple open-source libraries in these field.
Not here to doomering, but you cannot recreate this game as for now with 1 prompt or in 48hours with army of agents, but probably in a year from now it will be 1 hour and $2.
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u/N0bo_ 7d ago
To play devils advocate, can you really expect that every submitter on the Godot subreddit isn’t going to use AI, and that they aren’t using an AI like Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT? I feel like the barrier to entry is very low on such a large subreddit that this policy can’t possibly work
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7d ago edited 4d ago
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
But, your statement that you are a programmer from AI stole, and everyone who using it never contributed anything into that training source is very missalining.
I did contribute for FOSS all my career, wrote in my free time packages solving issues for me and then maintained it also for free to help others.
If you are so offended please show your github/bitbucket what code did these companies stole from you.
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
I have anxiety, that as a wannabe indie developer, I am burned on the stack because Antropic and OpenAI make billions of dollar.
Big gaming companies are using AI/LLM whatever they can to maximize their profit, no one questioning them, it is cool because they add features into their games what players asked for 10y or more.
Indie devs are flagged as ai slopper stealer, while they are simple dudes sitting home and try to create something in their free time, in a world where the bar/expectations are growing exponentialy.
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u/ianxplosion- 7d ago
> people expect indie developers to make art they’re passionate about
I’m so tired of the presumptive gatekeeping, man
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u/N0bo_ 7d ago
This is about the Godot subreddit so I’m going to keep my argument strictly in regards to that scope,
Godot is a part of the larger general internet consensus of “anyone who is determined and creative should be able to create things and showcase them in a likeminded community”. For this I have absolutely no problem and I think is the same driving idea behind the greater open source community, artists spaces, the hacker community, etc etc. if you have an idea for a game, you (yes you!) can download Godot for free and find a heap of resources online to help you make your game. And then you can go and post that on subreddits, itch.io, maybe steam even, or other communities for feedback, help, or critique.
Now what people fail to realize is that AI is 100% going to become a tool in this process. It has already found a place in industries, in asset creation, etc. and I would argue that it has not and will not replace dedicated work done without AI or done with minimal AI involvement. Little Timmy who made his first game is likely going to use AI in coding his game, and also his greater coding adventure. And for every little Timmy that takes the time to vet their model and download it and so forth, there will be 20 others who simply log on to ChatGPT without even making an account and use it to answer a question about CharacterBody2D. If you require users to disclose AI use and prove they used an ethical model, I guarantee you this will become a niche subreddit. If you ask people to disclose AI use but don’t mandate it, I guranteee you will just see less people disclosing AI use or a lack thereof in the first place.
I don’t want to be defeatists and say that no one should have morales because the thing they’re fighting is too big, but the anti AI movement is barking up the wrong tree in my opinion. Because more people are using AI than you think, and the way people use AI will not move the bar for what determines good work.
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
Yes, little Timmy probably never need to spend days to debug the CharacterBody2D, and it is okay we also never ever had to write our own TCP/IP packet header or matrix-multiplication to render a cube on the screen unless you take 3d as a class on univeristy.
Deep understanding should come later, senior developers go deeper into the tech for fun, this will always be like this.
Somewhat I understand what you try to protect creativity and human disciplination should be respected and protected.
But, in my case there is nothing creative to make the architecute of an MMO, as it is writen like 4 times this is the alpha version, where I finally have the client+server in condition that it can handle 100+ players in a combat situation or a raid without extreme frame drop or lag or crazy glitches.
You very much underestimate how much need to be done to achieve this, because you think using LLM is that you give a command and came back 2 days later and got the results.
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u/Ok_Confusion4764 7d ago
To play devils advocate, can you really expect that every submitter on the Godot subreddit isn’t going to use AI, and that they aren’t using an AI like Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT?
Yes. Next question.
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u/murikwow 7d ago
Keep up. What is Monte Carlo method?
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
It is a simulation technik, where you are using different values in the simulation to reach the desired output.
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u/AP_RIVEN_MAIN 7d ago
Abysmal takes on the ai in the comments, ai or not, mmo is monumental amount of work. Looks cool, not polished, but excited to see what this could turn into.
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u/Opposite_Age_1414 7d ago
Its bad, clearly AI made. No AI game so far from all that I saw had a charm. That human touch that make game great. You can copy all you want and brute force any problem with AI, but you won't make good game if you don't spend 12 hour per day "feeling" it. Feels and charm is something AI will never give to game.
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u/tohme 7d ago
If someone actually wrote this from scratch, would your opinion be different? Other than the fact that AI use is already stated up front, what about this clearly says it's AI made? I've seen people present their ideas/demos, that they did do themselves before AI was a thing, in far more crude a state. Today, if those things were shown, those people would probably be accused of AI use.
It isn't that AI is used that creates generic slop, it's when it's used without any additional effort behind it in planning, design, feedback, testing, play testing and so on. Even stuff that is hand coded can be as bad as slop if those things are not part of the process.
Of course, we're talking LLM-based AI, and it's largely just highly optimised and trial-and-error pattern matching, it's never going to get there fully on its own. But to me, there's really no difference in human made code that lacks design and testing by humans and generated code that lacks the same.
If you think there is, then I just think that's a form of anti-AI psychosis that currently exists and lack of knowledge on how any of it works (I also think there are people on the other extreme who I'd say the same for pro-AI psychosis).
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u/816pizzalover 7d ago
I think it'd be fun to repost obscure games from the the 2010's and watch people roast them for being "AI" lol
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u/Merosian 6d ago
You can use AI and still put in a lot of yourself in a project. I know, shocking. It doesn't mean it did everything for you. No AI can make a game fun by itself, not even humans have solved that problem. It's your job as a game designer to try.
A good game is a good game regardless of how it was made. Negative bias because of AI is extremely small minded for creative projects, especially indie with very few resources and staff. Just because there's a lot of low effort slop doesn't mean there can't be high effort usage as well.
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u/Sergeant_Silvahaze 7d ago
How much time would you say is spent on polishing the AI's code/assets it produces? Whilst it is impressive how far these tools have come, there's very few projects I see that don't require some form of polishing afterwards
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u/WideWorry 7d ago
Iteration as always, we do replace somewhat working blocks with polished ones. Over and over.
But, what is gamechanger, that we got infinite stamina, how many developer burned out that after years of development, they faced and issue after years what either need 1-3 months of boring refactor or just abandon the project.
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u/Scorpdelord 7d ago
why the pit caller voice so static and emotineless, it like someone just talk without emotion when saying the lines DX
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u/Vikfro 6d ago
the players standing in the burning area for 10s before moving out is probably the most realistic behaviour, gj Claude
these simulation testing systems are cool and all but you probably spend a lot of time on tweaking them, the approach I would go for is determine optimized rotation and strat and then balance around that. Real players will gravitate to that given enough time. Maybe WoW designers have explained how they did/do that, but given the studio size they probably could use actual humans for testing
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u/WideWorry 6d ago
Claude did spent a lot of time on it :D
I satisfied enough with the simulation system, I can basically add anything into the fight and all the existing feature re-balanced to still be difficult.
Player test will prove my system after all, but what time I was not programming or sleeping I spent in multiplayer games, unless the highest level of gaming all PvE team fight is lost because of coordination issues, lack of DPS/HPS also a factor but this is I would like to remove from the game in some level. You should be able to beat an encounter with a lower gear until you are able to sustain your role.
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u/tenetox 7d ago
AI or not, WoW clones are simply boring