Bad AI isn't good

Created 7 Nov 2024 3:12 PM

Enter the Oasis

Hey, look, I love a good bad movie. The Room is a famously awful piece of cinema, full of bizarre choices at every level, a hilarious piece all the funnier for how serious it thinks it's being, and I am here for that. But what we can't do is pretend that, because we can get that enjoyment from how bad it is, that it then is actually good, or is close to being good. It's fun, but it is still bad.

AI is bad.

(And, disclaimer; not all AI etc. There's a big difference between someone setting up a neural network to work on some specific task, and the kind of big tech this-will-solve-all-your-problem "AI" bullshit that's the more well know. I'm talking about the latter.)

But a chief strategy amongst those people tasked with selling it to us is to take the inherent flaws in it, the abject shittiness of it all, and tell us that that's the feature, the fact it can be so wrong is what's so good about it, and it's only going to get even better (meaning, paradoxically, both that it's good and will improve, and that it's bad and will stop being bad.) And that's bullshit.

Let's talk about Oasis.decart.ai.

Oasis is AI-generated Minecraft. You are dumped in a Minecraft world, and can move around, break blocks, manage your inventory etc etc, all functionally an AI-generated video being influenced by your inputs. And, look, on a basic level, it does feel slightly impressive, to be able to do all those Minecrafty things without actually running Minecraft. It just has two tiny, inter-related problems.

1. It's utterly terrible at being Minecraft

Look, all this system is doing is examining a screenshot of Minecraft, checking if the player is looking around or moving or clicking the mouse, and then generating a new screenshot that looks like what might happen if an actual player playing the actual game did that thing. And, sure, like I said, that is slightly impressive, but it means the system doesn't actually have any idea what's going on.

For example; the world is constantly changing around you. Turn around? The world changes. Look too closely at a block? The world changes. Get in an area where the terrain is too indistinct or repetitive? The world changes. The AI doesn't actually have any model of a world it's drawing from, so any time it's tasked with showing you something that wasn't already on screen, it just makes something up. Often, that thing won't even look like anything in Minecraft, at which point the AI will just assume you're seeing something indistinct in the distance (even if it's also clearly right next to you), and slowly morph it into something recognisable as you "move" "closer".

This extends to your inventory. Open the screen, close it, then come back later, and it's likely your items will have completely changed.. along with your character model. This even extends to things that never leave the screen; I notice the items in my toolbar kept slowly morphing, or tools disappearing or reappearing, because the AI doesn't actually know what you have, just that it should look a bit like it looked in the last few frames, and that tends to let it drift.

At one point, I faced a hill, rotated 180 degrees, and walked backwards. The game allowed me to do this, but devoid of any information to work from, it just generated a flat endless plain, extended further and further as I walked back without end. This is the true imagination of AI; non-existant.

Even putting all this aside, what the game does generate is nonsense. The environments are mishmash of weird terrain, with blocks and objects put around completely haphazardly. There's no concessions made to a fun, enjoyable world; it's only goal is to justify what was on screen before.

2. Minecraft exists.

Let's imagined a "fixed" version of this app. They've figured out how to keep the world around you persistent. Your inventory no longer changes when you're not looking it it. It runs faster, as fast as your computer allows, and at a much higher resolution. The world that generates is coherent, fun and wide. Maybe they add multiplayer so you can explore the world with your friends, and save them permanently to return to again and again.

...That's just Minecraft. That already exists.

They're using AI to create a faded shadow of a thing that already exists, with all of the societal, environmental and moral costs that entails.

Oh no, it was a mirage

The eventual promise of this is that we can have entire games that play out without actually making a game; if you can create a screenshot, the AI will figure out how it actually plays. But it's a false promise, like the idea that ChatGPT will suddenly stop making things up if they can just get more funding. This tech is only ever going to let you play vastly worse versions of things that already exist.

In the meantime, they play up the worth of the flaws. The fact this thing is garbage is a feature, actually, look how fun it is to play Minecraft in a world that is constantly shifting around you! Isn't it funny! Please pay us.

Please do not pay them. Not this company, nor anyone else that pushes how humorously bad their "AI" is as an interim stumbling block on the way to the perfection that they're definitely less than a year from, honest. Don't pay OpenAI, don't pay Tesla, don't pay anyone pushing this stuff.

Just go play Minecraft. It's fun. We can play together, if you want.

UFO 50 is rather good

Created 29 Sep 2024 5:08 PM

OK, let's start this off with an up-front recommendation; UFO 50 is an absurdly generous retro-styled game collection, and if you have any love for or even just tolerance to games that look and play like they're on a system kinda like the NES, you're definitely going to find at least one game in here that you're going to just gobble up. Give it a go, and just... just don't give up and refund if Barbuta doesn't take your fancy. They stuck easily the most marmite-y game up front. Maybe start with Warptank, that's a good'un.

UFO 50 has a unique problem; helping you track your progress over... let me just check my notes here... 50 distinct games. Each with their own save system (or lack of), their own progression types, and their own secrets and mysteries. They need to give the player 50 answers to the question "how far through the game am I", as close to at-a-glance as possible, with no prior instruction, with games as distinct as a full-on RPG, a Metroidvania, a saveless exploration adventure, and a 10 minute long scrolling arcade platformer.

Because the UFO 50 devs are just really, exceptionally good games designers, they came up with an elegant and fun solution both to show the player how far they've progressed, and to nudge them forward with each one. Essentially, there are multiple distinct sub-goals, per game, with their own rewards. I call this Dust, Gift, Trophy, Cherry, for reasons that I'm about to explain, in this little list, right here:

1. First, each game cartridge is initially covered in cobwebs and dust. That fits the meta-narrative of the player having found an old console with a bunch of games in an old storage locker. Games you haven't played look this way.
2. The first time you play a game, a little animation plays of the debris being blown off, and from then on, in the menu, the game cart is shown in pristine condition.
3. Each game has a goal (listed in the game's sub-menu) which grants a Gift. This goal is generally something you can, or must, achieve before completing the game proper. The can't see whether you have a gift or not by just looking at the cartridges... But you can see them in the lightly-hidden "house" screen, where a little virtual pet will roam around and interact with the gifts you've unlocked. You can even push a button to bring up a grid of just the gifts, in the same layout as the default view of the carts, and where highlighting any (or the gaps where gifts are missing) shows which game it's tied to.
4. Actually beating a game (whatever that means for that game) grants a "trophy", along with changing the cart into a shiny gold colour. (The first time you do this, the "house" screen will also get a yellow trophy flag waving in the wind, with every game you beat being marked as an extra square displayed on it.)
5. Finally, every game also has an extra level of completeness, which gives you a "cherry". Unlike the Gifts and Trophies you aren't shown this up-front; instead, once you have the Trophy for a game, the goal to get this is added to that page of the game's sub-menu. This is generally something like getting the best ending, finding 100% of optional items, or getting first place in every round, that sort of thing; it's the mark that you haven't just finished the game, but completed it. Getting this turns the game cartridge red, and unlocks a mark on a new "Cherry" flag outside the "house"

I love this.

It's just a neat solution to the whole thing. Looking for something new to play? Pick a dusty cartridge. Wondering what you haven't digged into deeply yet? Checks for gaps in the Gifts. Not sure what you've finished, or what finished games still have secrets to uncover? Check for those Gold and Red carts. Big fan.

Dyna Star, the forgotten Spectrum game

Created 5 May 2024 9:37 PM

The thing about Dyna Star is that it opens with what should be one of the most iconic ZX Spectrum moments ever.

The biggest standard in 2D videogames is that you move right. It's not an absolute... there are top-down games where you can move in any direction, or vertical-scrolling shooters where you only move up, or single-screen games where you don't really move anywhere... but I think it's safe to say that, if you counted up every moment of every 2D game that involved movement off the screen in some way and counted up how much of it was in which direction, right would be the clear winner. So when, after starting Dyna Star and finding that you can walk right off the first screen, and being faced with the option to go down or right again, I think it's safe to say most players would quickly go right. Down could be a death pit, after all; that's the second-biggest standard in 2D videogames.

So you go right, and then right again, and right for just the third time since you started the game, and a chuffing great floating brain with one eye and some tentacles floats right for you. Maybe you get a lucky shot in its eye, pushing it backwards for a moment, but you barely have time to get another shot off before it's back on you. It reaches you in a scant couple of seconds, and you die.

This should be the Spectrum's Mario Bros 1-1, or Mega Man X opening stage. You're 10 seconds into the game, and now your brain is having a full-on conversation with itself.

• OK, that thing is way too strong for me, wtf.
• But my bullets did hit it, I'm clearly meant to fight it. So...
• I'm going to have to get better weapons. This game must have some kind of weapon improvement system.
• I haven't see any upgrades, and clearly can't go right, so I guess I have to go back and down.
• And, hey, if the route splits there, it probably continues to split; this game is going to be about exploration.

You've just started, and the game has already taught you what a big chunk of it is going to be about; exploring the world to get stronger, so you can come back and beat the big bad brain.

If you look the game up online, you won't see screenshots of that brain. They just aren't there; apparently, too few people ever played this to care. (There are exactly 2 vids of this on Youtube, and both are less than 5 minutes long.) What information is online is spread about the internet; actually finding what you need to understand what you're meant to do is it's own scavenger hunt. But that's why I'm here, so, buckle up kiddos, as I put together everything you will ever need to know to play, and maybe even beat, this game.

First, let's talk mechanics. Your avatar can run, jump, shoot, and cycle through an inventory with 4 slots. Objects just have to be in your inventory to be used. You'll very quickly come across some Jet Boots that let you fly, and you will need them. If you ever accidentally put them down and then fall somewhere you can't reach them (like, for example, the second screen of the game), don't worry; press J and B together to summon them to you.

Your grand aim in this game is to assemble 4 colour-coded molecules (each in 4 parts), and take them to their related Destruction Units. Feed all the molecules for a given Destruction Unit into it, and it gets activated. Activate all 4 and return to your ship to win.

That's not going to be what you start off doing, though, because there are locked doors of various types all over the place. To use a given door, you need to carry the related key item, and any space taken up carrying a key is one less for carrying molecules.

One of the items you can pick up on the way not only lets you open doors, but its also necessary to activate the Destruction Units, and to use the Matter Transformation Unit back at base, both critical late-game actions.

On top of that, one of the molecule pieces is lying behind the big brain... And, sure enough, getting past it means finding the various weapon upgrades strewn around the map, as (at least as far as I know) only the final weapon can actually hurt it (and still requires several precise blasts to the eye). That weapon can also blast away a few barricades (looking rather like oversized bullets) that are otherwise deadly to the touch.

You're going to want to keep moving fast in this game, for a few reasons. First, enemies keep spawning constantly, are basically impossible to reliably avoid, and you only have limited health, lives, and ammo to deal with them; it's generally best to try and rush through the screens before things can even spawn. Second, stay too long in one place, and an invincible grim-reaper type enemy spawns in and flies right for you. (Annoyingly, if one does spawn on a given screen, it'll stay there for quite some time, ready to get you when you come back to that room.)

Putting all that together, the best early strategy is to ignore the molecules entirely; remember where they are, but otherwise, focus on finding the key items and unlocking all the doors in the world. Once everything is opened, you no longer need the keys (apart from that one that last one I mentioned), freeing up your inventory for getting the molecule parts where they need to be. By the time you've reached that part, you should also have all the weapon upgrades necessary to take down the doom brain.

All you really need now is a map. And hey, if you go to World Of Spectrum, it does have a nice map made of screenshots. The problem is, it's laid out presumably as it's stored in the game, and so formatted into a rectangular grid... Which is pretty bad for actually navigating this world, with all it's wrap-around geometry. Never fear though, because I've solved that as well:

It turns out that, for all the twistiness of the map, there's actually only one place in the whole game where you can leave the central shaft on one side, and work your way across to re-enter it from the other: That's the "A" mark on the map. Everything else is functionally it's own little walled-off area.

I hope this is enough to let someone out there finally play, and win, this game. It is hard as nails, frankly unfairly difficult, but at least the internet now actually contains some record of what you're supposed to do. And, look; if you happen to nip over to World Of Spectrum and find their Pokes file, well, we can keep that between you and me.

Oh, and, if you do beat it, for the love of god, send me a screenshot or video or whatever of the ending; for some reason, my version just gives a glitchy screen and a Game Over, but it's pretty clear that it's meant to show something else, and I would love to see what.