As someone who considers Daggerfall one of her favorite games, I tried this. It's fine, but the problems are all in the changes, tbh. The GUI is an absolute mess compared to Daggerfall Unity - it...
As someone who considers Daggerfall one of her favorite games, I tried this. It's fine, but the problems are all in the changes, tbh. The GUI is an absolute mess compared to Daggerfall Unity - it looks all fancy and smooth, but everything is in weird places. They try to update the experience by adding rare drop tables and a hotbar and a thirst meter and stuff and I'm not really into it. Etc.
I guess I wanted to be able to play actual Daggerfall alongside people who I could chat with and bring along on dungeon runs. This isn't that, it's a whole different thing.
With projects like this, is the goal to be playing Daggerfall? Or are people looking for a new MMO to enjoy? I suppose I'm trying to understand the appeal because the video said the game is pretty...
With projects like this, is the goal to be playing Daggerfall? Or are people looking for a new MMO to enjoy? I suppose I'm trying to understand the appeal because the video said the game is pretty old and there are lots of other new MMOs (one of my fave streamers has been playing Monsters & Memories recently and my friends have been hyping AION 2 to me). M&M has retro graphics too but Idk if they're emulating a different MMO style that makes it irrelevant to the conversation and obviously A2 is more akin to Lost Ark but it's still very popular.
M&M is basically a copy of EverQuest as it existed in 1999. It has significantly better controls, but that's about the only QoL that was added, otherwise it's a pretty close replication.
M&M is basically a copy of EverQuest as it existed in 1999. It has significantly better controls, but that's about the only QoL that was added, otherwise it's a pretty close replication.
I can't wait for the 'enormous vibe-coded definitely-clean-room-code decompilation of your favourite game/application' trend to die out. There have been dozens of projects popping up over the last...
I can't wait for the 'enormous vibe-coded definitely-clean-room-code decompilation of your favourite game/application' trend to die out. There have been dozens of projects popping up over the last few weeks promising 'cleanroom recreation of GTA 5 or the entire Adobe software suite' and every single one of them is a barely functional mess of AI slop directed by one or two people who couldn't possibly hope to maintain the project for any length of time because they themselves have no idea what it's doing. They're all flash-in-the-pan hype projects that'll collapse in on themselves eventually, if the C&D's don't get to them first.
The project maintainer has put out 10 standalone releases of this project in the past 12 hours, each appearing to be approximately 1 Claude prompt apiece. There are 474 releases for this (less than) 2-month old project as I write this. I mean, that's absurd, right? There is zero chance of this project having even the slightest amount of forward planning being applied to it. It's just months of vibe coded trash piled atop more vibe coded trash.
Like, am I just a luddite buzzkill? I'm not 100% against AI-generated code (though I am very much against the Big AI industry), nor am I an ardent supporter of proprietary software, but this trend just sucks. This project sucks. There are so many good projects out there, projects made by people who even just more-or-less know what they're doing, AI use or not, that are more worth our time. We can choose what code we run, what media we enjoy, and I feel like there is never a good reason to pick something like this over something with actual effort put into it besides the vacuous consumerist mindset of just wanting Content.
What about people that want to play Daggerfall with their friends? Point me to a better option and I will check it out. If you set aside AI purity testing, some of these projects are actually a...
I feel like there is never a good reason to pick something like this over something with actual effort put into it
What about people that want to play Daggerfall with their friends? Point me to a better option and I will check it out.
If you set aside AI purity testing, some of these projects are actually a lot of fun. Personally, I don't really care if they are 'slop' or flashes in the pan or not well planned if I'm having fun. I think a lot of them are just people sharing their personal projects they are having fun with.
For an example, I had an old abandoned project from many years ago I gave up on when the task was too daunting -- creating a Magic: The Gathering card parser I could plug into a rules engine. I was finally able to create this with AI, and now I'm having a ton of fun creating AIs that I can play magic and draft with. Is it slop? 100%. Is it well-planned? Nope. Am I getting enjoyment out of it? Most definitely!
Like I said, vacuous consumerist mindset of just wanting Content. I'm sure you don't care that it was shit out by a plagiarism machine that's threatening the livelihoods of millions of artists...
Like I said, vacuous consumerist mindset of just wanting Content. I'm sure you don't care that it was shit out by a plagiarism machine that's threatening the livelihoods of millions of artists across the world while the companies in charge have made it their stated mission of monopolising art and intelligence (Sam Altman has literally said he wants intelligence to be a metered utility like gas and electricity).
We have the ability to choose what sources of entertainment we consume, and I think there is such an abundance of real entertainment out there that we could keep ourselves occupied our entire lives without ever having to dip into the ethically dubious world of AI slop, where we outsource our thinking to the technofascists in exchange for Product. Choosing an AI's product over a human's creation is picking a side. No, you're not literally out there stealing money from the artistic community (already an oversaturated field before AI anything came out), but it has an impact. This isn't the same as the classic 'you have issues with society and yet you participate in it, hmm, curious' argument that's floated around for years. We have the choice to not engage, same as we always had. Nobody ever needs to engage with AI slop for entertainment, and choosing to do so is simply showing that, well, you don't care. But there is always a cost for convenience. Remember that.
EDIT: Toned my comment down since it ended up being fairly abrasive and rude. It's been a long day, sorry.
I’m not sure how to respond to this other than to point out that calling the most individually empowering tools for hacking on video games ever created ‘consumerist’ is an absurd take.
I’m not sure how to respond to this other than to point out that calling the most individually empowering tools for hacking on video games ever created ‘consumerist’ is an absurd take.
I'm just going to reply to this to say that this whole conversation so far (including @Grenno) feels very un-Tildes to me. I come to this website for for interesting discussions where people can...
Exemplary
I'm just going to reply to this to say that this whole conversation so far (including @Grenno) feels very un-Tildes to me. I come to this website for for interesting discussions where people can have a discussion on nuanced topics without resorting to personal attacks.
As for the take itself, I believe it can be both. Generative AI is both individually empowering and a tool being used to fuel mass consumption of vapid Content™. A knife is used to cut onions and to stab people. A rock is used to sharpen other rocks to make primitive tools and to bludgeon. To say AI is just one thing is to ignore the the way the disgustingly rich are treating other human beings through this tool. To say it's the other is to ignore the sudden ability that people have to create software that was infeasible before, clones or not. To say it's either of these and not something else is to ignore the impact it is having on knowledge work industries in general, and I'm sure a 4th person could come in with a different perspective too. The discussion is nuanced, and worth more than insulting others' opinions.
You're right, thank you for reminding me of what makes this site good. I wasn't intending for my comment to be a personal attack but it took a single reread to realise that's just what it was....
You're right, thank you for reminding me of what makes this site good. I wasn't intending for my comment to be a personal attack but it took a single reread to realise that's just what it was. Apologies to @streblo, I've tried editing my comment to be less rude and more of an actual response to your issues. I really wasn't trying to insult, I just find it hard to accept when people's response to all the issues that AI has brought into the space is 'well I like it so I don't care that it's AI'. I feel that is, on some objective level, a consumerist stance. I have elaborated more on that in the previous comment's edit.
For my part, I just ignore AI-generated content in my own life as much as I can, particularly for entertainment. I think the degree to which one can be entertained is a relative one, and a large-scale MMO (AI slop or otherwise) isn't necessarily more or less entertaining than, say, a book or a walk in nature. So I just do the things that I find to be the least ethically questionable. We could go on and on ad infinitum about whether AI use is really an issue but ultimately I choose to just avoid it altogether and be happy.
I should just say that I am an artist who cares very strongly about this whole AI argument, and I know myself well enough to know that 1. I'll not be the person to solve the debate once and for all on a random Tildes thread, and 2. I'm too emotionally invested in the topic, so I'm probably going to dip from the conversation here. Life's too short for heated internet arguments.
No worries, we've all had those days. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, that's fine. I find it a little sad that instead of discussing the Elder Scrolls or the project we're instead...
No worries, we've all had those days.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, that's fine. I find it a little sad that instead of discussing the Elder Scrolls or the project we're instead discussing AI in this thread, but I'm not surprised either.
It's fine if you want to have a line in the sand for AI for ethical reasons. It's also fine to shout it from the rooftops in a way that other people can participate with. I think it's less fine to pick someone else's unrelated topic to soapbox about AI. Especially if you're going to just dump all over anyone who might have enjoyed it. Since we're here though, I will address your points.
I disagree that enjoying AI projects makes you some kind of consumerist. People hacking on old decompiled rebooted/ported/altered games and sharing them for free with their friends and communities is just not in any way consumerist. It's basically an anti-consumerists dream scenario. And you can't just use a blanket statement to apply to any AI project. AI is not just limited to the big AI company offerings, it's very possible to 'ethically consume' AI via hosting your own AI or using a hosted open source AI model. And even among the big AI companies there is alot of daylight between them. I would argue Anthropic is a lot better than OpenAI which in turn is infinitely better than Grok. There are a lot of worrying qualities about AI, about what the future will look like, about the outsourcing of human thought and creativity, etc. I don't disagree. But that should not stop people from being excited about cool applications of the technology. Those things are not tightly coupled. People hacking on games using AI is not what is allowing AI to take over the world. It's OK to let people enjoy things.
When you start a conversation being an AI scold, you drive people away. And maybe you (proverbial you) think that's OK, we don't want those people here anyways. But what's actually happening is this is actually quite a popular phenomena and all of the people excited to use AI for this or for that are actively driven into questionable communities like Omarchy and Twitter and oh-no-all-of-the-sudden we have created the next alt right pipeline. And of course I’m not trying to lay that at your feet or anything, but collectively I think that’s what a hardline anti-AI stance is slowly accomplishing.
Also in case it’s not obvious I’m not threatening to take my ball home and create a Twitter account. Unfortunately y’all are stuck with me and my Twitter account will remain deleted. But over time the chilling effect is real and people should think about 2nd order effects.
I agree the other commenter wasn’t very charitable, but you did basically call me a vacuous consumerist who was getting cheap thrills and I should think hard on my decision or something. Not sure...
I agree the other commenter wasn’t very charitable, but you did basically call me a vacuous consumerist who was getting cheap thrills and I should think hard on my decision or something. Not sure what I said that was uncharitable?
I think you misunderstood what I wrote, but perhaps that's because I wasn't clear in what I was actually trying to say. To be clear, I am not calling you vacuous. I think the delivery of your...
I think you misunderstood what I wrote, but perhaps that's because I wasn't clear in what I was actually trying to say. To be clear, I am not calling you vacuous. I think the delivery of your message was uncharitable, and there was maybe a different way of approaching the discussion that didn't lead to two people being defensive.
Generative AI exists, the same way any tool exists. We can't close this metaphorical Pandora's Box, not anymore. When we look at how past tools have been used by humans we see the line of acceptable uses of said tools be drawn somewhere around causing harm to other humans. As society has developed, and continues to do so, the definition of harms changes, and thus so does the line of what uses of tools are consided acceptable. Because we are individuals, we all place that line somewhere else. Sometimes the line is straight, sometimes it's wiggly. There is interesting, balanced, nuanced discussion to have in that space where people can learn from one another. Insulting opinions blocks those conversations, which to me feels against the spirit of this site.
To bring it back to the topic at hand, someone adding MMO features to Daggerfall, we do see the speed at which people build upon previous work to make a new experience. We see people attempting software projects that were seen as insurmountable before. We see people mixing and remixing ideas. We also see the unpolished nature, the fact it's raw output from the most sophisticated statistical engine we've made so far. We see the priorities of the people making these projects, and isn't there something interesting in that too?
These are different uses of the same tool. What do we, as a community of pseudonomous strangers on the internet, see as being acceptable, and what do we not? How does the use of Generative AI to make software affect the makers themselves? What stories are being told about these projects, and how does the way they're being told fit into the wider discussion around Generative AI? These are the things I would find much more interesting to see, beyond the inevitable "slop or not" comments.
Honestly, what harm is it causing? Other than experiencing mild annoyance at clickbait titles like this video's, we can simply ignore these projects if we're not interested. For those that are...
I can't wait for the 'enormous vibe-coded definitely-clean-room-code decompilation of your favourite game/application' trend to die out.
Honestly, what harm is it causing? Other than experiencing mild annoyance at clickbait titles like this video's, we can simply ignore these projects if we're not interested. For those that are interested though, this seems like a great outcome. How many Daggerfall-lovers have longed for a project like this? Even if it's jank as heck, I'm sure it'll still allow a good time.
I think it's really interesting to see people experimenting with programming in ways they never could before. These new tools have enabled so many neat VR experiments, emulation/translation layers, retro decompilations, cross-game engine modding, and other silly stuff. Ideas that were always technically possible, but would've taken years of work just to determine if they were even viable.
As for the number of releases, it's likely just auto-building whenever a commit is pushed. It's a little unusual for published software, but not uncommon for alpha projects.
As someone who considers Daggerfall one of her favorite games, I tried this. It's fine, but the problems are all in the changes, tbh. The GUI is an absolute mess compared to Daggerfall Unity - it looks all fancy and smooth, but everything is in weird places. They try to update the experience by adding rare drop tables and a hotbar and a thirst meter and stuff and I'm not really into it. Etc.
I guess I wanted to be able to play actual Daggerfall alongside people who I could chat with and bring along on dungeon runs. This isn't that, it's a whole different thing.
The graphics are a bit too old school for me, but its great that it exists!
With projects like this, is the goal to be playing Daggerfall? Or are people looking for a new MMO to enjoy? I suppose I'm trying to understand the appeal because the video said the game is pretty old and there are lots of other new MMOs (one of my fave streamers has been playing Monsters & Memories recently and my friends have been hyping AION 2 to me). M&M has retro graphics too but Idk if they're emulating a different MMO style that makes it irrelevant to the conversation and obviously A2 is more akin to Lost Ark but it's still very popular.
M&M is basically a copy of EverQuest as it existed in 1999. It has significantly better controls, but that's about the only QoL that was added, otherwise it's a pretty close replication.
I can't wait for the 'enormous vibe-coded definitely-clean-room-code decompilation of your favourite game/application' trend to die out. There have been dozens of projects popping up over the last few weeks promising 'cleanroom recreation of GTA 5 or the entire Adobe software suite' and every single one of them is a barely functional mess of AI slop directed by one or two people who couldn't possibly hope to maintain the project for any length of time because they themselves have no idea what it's doing. They're all flash-in-the-pan hype projects that'll collapse in on themselves eventually, if the C&D's don't get to them first.
The project maintainer has put out 10 standalone releases of this project in the past 12 hours, each appearing to be approximately 1 Claude prompt apiece. There are 474 releases for this (less than) 2-month old project as I write this. I mean, that's absurd, right? There is zero chance of this project having even the slightest amount of forward planning being applied to it. It's just months of vibe coded trash piled atop more vibe coded trash.
Like, am I just a luddite buzzkill? I'm not 100% against AI-generated code (though I am very much against the Big AI industry), nor am I an ardent supporter of proprietary software, but this trend just sucks. This project sucks. There are so many good projects out there, projects made by people who even just more-or-less know what they're doing, AI use or not, that are more worth our time. We can choose what code we run, what media we enjoy, and I feel like there is never a good reason to pick something like this over something with actual effort put into it besides the vacuous consumerist mindset of just wanting Content.
What about people that want to play Daggerfall with their friends? Point me to a better option and I will check it out.
If you set aside AI purity testing, some of these projects are actually a lot of fun. Personally, I don't really care if they are 'slop' or flashes in the pan or not well planned if I'm having fun. I think a lot of them are just people sharing their personal projects they are having fun with.
For an example, I had an old abandoned project from many years ago I gave up on when the task was too daunting -- creating a Magic: The Gathering card parser I could plug into a rules engine. I was finally able to create this with AI, and now I'm having a ton of fun creating AIs that I can play magic and draft with. Is it slop? 100%. Is it well-planned? Nope. Am I getting enjoyment out of it? Most definitely!
Like I said, vacuous consumerist mindset of just wanting Content. I'm sure you don't care that it was shit out by a plagiarism machine that's threatening the livelihoods of millions of artists across the world while the companies in charge have made it their stated mission of monopolising art and intelligence (Sam Altman has literally said he wants intelligence to be a metered utility like gas and electricity).
We have the ability to choose what sources of entertainment we consume, and I think there is such an abundance of real entertainment out there that we could keep ourselves occupied our entire lives without ever having to dip into the ethically dubious world of AI slop, where we outsource our thinking to the technofascists in exchange for Product. Choosing an AI's product over a human's creation is picking a side. No, you're not literally out there stealing money from the artistic community (already an oversaturated field before AI anything came out), but it has an impact. This isn't the same as the classic 'you have issues with society and yet you participate in it, hmm, curious' argument that's floated around for years. We have the choice to not engage, same as we always had. Nobody ever needs to engage with AI slop for entertainment, and choosing to do so is simply showing that, well, you don't care. But there is always a cost for convenience. Remember that.
EDIT: Toned my comment down since it ended up being fairly abrasive and rude. It's been a long day, sorry.
I’m not sure how to respond to this other than to point out that calling the most individually empowering tools for hacking on video games ever created ‘consumerist’ is an absurd take.
I'm just going to reply to this to say that this whole conversation so far (including @Grenno) feels very un-Tildes to me. I come to this website for for interesting discussions where people can have a discussion on nuanced topics without resorting to personal attacks.
As for the take itself, I believe it can be both. Generative AI is both individually empowering and a tool being used to fuel mass consumption of vapid Content™. A knife is used to cut onions and to stab people. A rock is used to sharpen other rocks to make primitive tools and to bludgeon. To say AI is just one thing is to ignore the the way the disgustingly rich are treating other human beings through this tool. To say it's the other is to ignore the sudden ability that people have to create software that was infeasible before, clones or not. To say it's either of these and not something else is to ignore the impact it is having on knowledge work industries in general, and I'm sure a 4th person could come in with a different perspective too. The discussion is nuanced, and worth more than insulting others' opinions.
You're right, thank you for reminding me of what makes this site good. I wasn't intending for my comment to be a personal attack but it took a single reread to realise that's just what it was. Apologies to @streblo, I've tried editing my comment to be less rude and more of an actual response to your issues. I really wasn't trying to insult, I just find it hard to accept when people's response to all the issues that AI has brought into the space is 'well I like it so I don't care that it's AI'. I feel that is, on some objective level, a consumerist stance. I have elaborated more on that in the previous comment's edit.
For my part, I just ignore AI-generated content in my own life as much as I can, particularly for entertainment. I think the degree to which one can be entertained is a relative one, and a large-scale MMO (AI slop or otherwise) isn't necessarily more or less entertaining than, say, a book or a walk in nature. So I just do the things that I find to be the least ethically questionable. We could go on and on ad infinitum about whether AI use is really an issue but ultimately I choose to just avoid it altogether and be happy.
I should just say that I am an artist who cares very strongly about this whole AI argument, and I know myself well enough to know that 1. I'll not be the person to solve the debate once and for all on a random Tildes thread, and 2. I'm too emotionally invested in the topic, so I'm probably going to dip from the conversation here. Life's too short for heated internet arguments.
No worries, we've all had those days.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, that's fine. I find it a little sad that instead of discussing the Elder Scrolls or the project we're instead discussing AI in this thread, but I'm not surprised either.
It's fine if you want to have a line in the sand for AI for ethical reasons. It's also fine to shout it from the rooftops in a way that other people can participate with. I think it's less fine to pick someone else's unrelated topic to soapbox about AI. Especially if you're going to just dump all over anyone who might have enjoyed it. Since we're here though, I will address your points.
I disagree that enjoying AI projects makes you some kind of consumerist. People hacking on old decompiled rebooted/ported/altered games and sharing them for free with their friends and communities is just not in any way consumerist. It's basically an anti-consumerists dream scenario. And you can't just use a blanket statement to apply to any AI project. AI is not just limited to the big AI company offerings, it's very possible to 'ethically consume' AI via hosting your own AI or using a hosted open source AI model. And even among the big AI companies there is alot of daylight between them. I would argue Anthropic is a lot better than OpenAI which in turn is infinitely better than Grok. There are a lot of worrying qualities about AI, about what the future will look like, about the outsourcing of human thought and creativity, etc. I don't disagree. But that should not stop people from being excited about cool applications of the technology. Those things are not tightly coupled. People hacking on games using AI is not what is allowing AI to take over the world. It's OK to let people enjoy things.
When you start a conversation being an AI scold, you drive people away. And maybe you (proverbial you) think that's OK, we don't want those people here anyways. But what's actually happening is this is actually quite a popular phenomena and all of the people excited to use AI for this or for that are actively driven into questionable communities like Omarchy and Twitter and oh-no-all-of-the-sudden we have created the next alt right pipeline. And of course I’m not trying to lay that at your feet or anything, but collectively I think that’s what a hardline anti-AI stance is slowly accomplishing.
Also in case it’s not obvious I’m not threatening to take my ball home and create a Twitter account. Unfortunately y’all are stuck with me and my Twitter account will remain deleted. But over time the chilling effect is real and people should think about 2nd order effects.
I agree the other commenter wasn’t very charitable, but you did basically call me a vacuous consumerist who was getting cheap thrills and I should think hard on my decision or something. Not sure what I said that was uncharitable?
I think you misunderstood what I wrote, but perhaps that's because I wasn't clear in what I was actually trying to say. To be clear, I am not calling you vacuous. I think the delivery of your message was uncharitable, and there was maybe a different way of approaching the discussion that didn't lead to two people being defensive.
Generative AI exists, the same way any tool exists. We can't close this metaphorical Pandora's Box, not anymore. When we look at how past tools have been used by humans we see the line of acceptable uses of said tools be drawn somewhere around causing harm to other humans. As society has developed, and continues to do so, the definition of harms changes, and thus so does the line of what uses of tools are consided acceptable. Because we are individuals, we all place that line somewhere else. Sometimes the line is straight, sometimes it's wiggly. There is interesting, balanced, nuanced discussion to have in that space where people can learn from one another. Insulting opinions blocks those conversations, which to me feels against the spirit of this site.
To bring it back to the topic at hand, someone adding MMO features to Daggerfall, we do see the speed at which people build upon previous work to make a new experience. We see people attempting software projects that were seen as insurmountable before. We see people mixing and remixing ideas. We also see the unpolished nature, the fact it's raw output from the most sophisticated statistical engine we've made so far. We see the priorities of the people making these projects, and isn't there something interesting in that too?
These are different uses of the same tool. What do we, as a community of pseudonomous strangers on the internet, see as being acceptable, and what do we not? How does the use of Generative AI to make software affect the makers themselves? What stories are being told about these projects, and how does the way they're being told fit into the wider discussion around Generative AI? These are the things I would find much more interesting to see, beyond the inevitable "slop or not" comments.
I just noticed you are not in fact the person I thought I was replying to. Apologies!
Too many secrets in this thread! :P
Honestly, what harm is it causing? Other than experiencing mild annoyance at clickbait titles like this video's, we can simply ignore these projects if we're not interested. For those that are interested though, this seems like a great outcome. How many Daggerfall-lovers have longed for a project like this? Even if it's jank as heck, I'm sure it'll still allow a good time.
I think it's really interesting to see people experimenting with programming in ways they never could before. These new tools have enabled so many neat VR experiments, emulation/translation layers, retro decompilations, cross-game engine modding, and other silly stuff. Ideas that were always technically possible, but would've taken years of work just to determine if they were even viable.
As for the number of releases, it's likely just auto-building whenever a commit is pushed. It's a little unusual for published software, but not uncommon for alpha projects.