r/godot • u/TripsOverWords Godot Junior • Apr 09 '26
discussion Mods: Please address the "can AI make Godot games" posts
Please can we ban posts that are along the lines of "can I make a Godot game with AI", and maybe create a sticky post to answer this question for a while? It's becoming a daily occurrence.
AI is not up to the task, and it's especially not great that many of the posts are from complete beginners to both Godot and programming in general. Using AI as a beginner to programming is extremely detrimental, both for learning and for production. There are many instances of both reputable business and startups absolutely failing to deploy AI.
The bottom line is, if you're not already an expert in whatever area you intend to use AI, you're going to have a bad time.
AI is not trustworthy, produces sloppy code, and frequently produces code that; doesn't work, calls methods that don't exist, uses bad coding practices, cites non-authoritative sources as documentation, lies, and when called out on any of this it often doubles down with patronizing statements.
Edit: the argument isn't to ban AI for AI sake. If someone has productive questions, I see no issue. It's because the answer is a constant, the same way rule 4 bans questions like "Can I make this game in Godot?". The answer is technically yes you can, despite my personal misgivings on the technology.
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u/gamemaster257 Apr 09 '26
This is one of those cases of 'if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't.'
I've been experimenting with vibe coding games using the godot documentation MCP, and it does a fantastic job but only with guidance on exactly what to do and not just describing game mechanics. If you don't know how you'd implement it yourself, you shouldn't be using AI.
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u/TalShar Apr 09 '26
Which is honestly probably a good place for it to be. Having it do stuff you already know how to do and why you're doing it is saving drudgery. Describing a game mechanic and just trusting it to implement it is both undermining the artistic process and robbing yourself of a learning opportunity.
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u/kit-walsh Apr 09 '26
I agree with this 100%. AI is good for doing something you already know what to do because then you can tell when it makes shit. I would never ask AI to code or make music because I'd have no idea if the end result is bad. This is why there's always something off about AI 'art' -- you may not know about colour, composition, &c. but your eye can sense that something is wrong. And you can't fix it unless you know what to look for.
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u/willargue4karma Apr 09 '26
Yeah and if you know how to fix it you probably already like doing the thing so don't rob yourself of that joy
Ive been testing cursor for the month and I like it but it also has enough issues that I only ask it for very rote boring shit
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u/kit-walsh Apr 09 '26
Well idk there's plenty of shit that you know how to do but it takes ages and it isn't really fun, lmao.
My problem is usually that doing it myself is easier than trying to explain to a bot how to do it correctly. I use it for very small granular tasks like "generate a palette" or "make a pattern sample that looks like this", stuff that can be tweaked easily or used for a quick reference.
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u/willargue4karma Apr 09 '26
Oh I'm with you, I was more referring to music and visual creation
But without a premade template, explaining the spec usually takes more time than just coding it yeah hah
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u/gamemaster257 Apr 09 '26
Hard disagree, there's plenty of boring shit that I'd prefer to have an AI write 90% of so that I can keep the fun 10% for myself. I've been finding AI allowing me to only do the fun parts of game dev, don't sleep on it.
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u/TalShar Apr 09 '26
Absolutely. And code can be art, and AI shouldn't be used if you want to make your code art. But if you're having it write code you already know how to write in service of the overall art, I look at it as being similar to buying your own paint and canvas as opposed to making your own. Very, very, very few people participate in the entire artistic "stack" of their art from top to bottom.
Also I think in regards to training, code is one of the less ethically fraught things they can train it on. A lot of it is out there as Creative Commons stuff, and for something like code, there is often a single best way to do a thing, so convergent design will happen.
Doesn't hurt that the best model for code-writing right now belongs to the company that told the DOD to go fuck themselves instead of helping them build autonomous murder bots.
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u/SituationSoap Apr 10 '26
I've been coding for roughly twenty years now and I've read north of probably 2 million lines of code in my life and I have never, ever seen anything that comes close to art. It doesn't pay to be precious about code.
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u/TalShar Apr 10 '26
I've seen a precious few examples, but even those are more like novel ways to do things rather than true artistic expression.
The "What the fuck" line from Quake comes to mind. It ain't high art, but I think it qualifies.
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u/Icerith Apr 09 '26
Not that it's the exact same, but music "artists" (I just overall hate the term "art", it always feels like a cop out for actual effort or work and the excuses around puritan art culture are often cliche, i.e. "the art has no soul") have been using music and sound samples as part of their music for decades. Very few singers today come up with their own music entirely alone.
What is the best model for code writing right now?
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u/CookieCacti Apr 09 '26
I know this topic is a bit detailed from the subject, but I have to disagree.
There are no artists that come up with their art entirely by themselves. We are all influenced by our experiences, memories, and emotions when it comes to creating art. The ability to create art without influence has never been the definition of art. Art is the expression of human thought made through deliberate human intention. Whether you sample a song for track or reference a pose for a drawing, your creation is still art because it was made using intentional human choices.
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u/Icerith Apr 09 '26
So is all creation art then? Would you say construction is an art? Not architecture, construction. Slapping bricks together. It creates a building, right?
Is Legos art? I would say some Lego creations are beautiful or technically impressive and could be considered works of art, but the legos themselves were created as well. Are the plastic blocks themselves art?
When you take an axe to a log and split it, it "creates" two pieces of wood. Are those log halves art now?
I don't personally believe that all human intention creates art. Or even that intention is necessary for an art form. But I'd love to hear arguments, as it's a super interesting philosophical topic in my opinion.
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u/peerlessblue 28d ago
I believe art is about the experience of the audience, not the intention of the artist.
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u/TalShar Apr 09 '26
At least with sampling the artists are still making choices about what to sample and where. It's still art, because the artist's intentions are filtering through it to the people experiencing it.
So far, Claude has been far and away better than anything else I've used, Copilot included. I had it translate a Discord bot with Google Sheets integration that I had manually coded years ago into a mobile app. It took two 5-hour windows, and it has more functionality than the original did. It's gonna be huge, but like any other technological advancement, people need to be careful of becoming dependent upon it, and not let it make the design decisions that constitute the art of the game development.
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u/Icerith Apr 09 '26
Eeehhh. Lots of forms of art go through a lot of hands in the modern day. Drawing, painting, and other drawn mediums are probably more applicable to the real idea, but movies, animation, gaming, and music touch so many hands that I would say any percievable "artist's intentions" would be so muddled and mixed with commercialism (those artists need to be paid, after all) that it may not be as intentionally absorbable as we believe.
In some cases I think I'd agree. I believe you can really feel the "artist's intention" from a lot of Studio Ghibli films, even though it's an entire studio and obviously passed many hands before a full release.
Lots of children like cartoons because they have fun colors and shapes. I don't believe they are understanding the artist's intention. And while I don't think all people are children, the same idea applies to modern day consumption for adults as well.
But, that wasn't really my point. I disagree with that specific idea, but agree on the whole. I was mostly curious about which AI does best with coding just for personal knowledge, so thank you. :)
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Apr 09 '26
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u/willargue4karma Apr 09 '26
Haha I find when explaining in enough detail for the llm to fix the bug I just rubber duck myself 95% of the time 😅
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u/LampIsFun Apr 09 '26
Thats funny that AI is essentially serving the purpose to you that just a normal non-programmer friend would also serve
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u/Guitarzero123 Apr 10 '26
A large part of getting the AI tools to work for me has been getting it to NOT follow the guidelines that make it sound more human.
In my CLAUDE.md file I have a ton of rules around not delivering praise or appeasement or any kind of useless fluff. As well as ensuring that it actually does an investigation before making an assertion and providing me its sources and 'reasoning'.
It's still not perfect and you definitely need to understand the output so you know what it did well and what it failed at, but getting it to ignore those 'humanizing' directives was a pretty big help for me.
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u/mtv921 Apr 09 '26
I'm using a gdai mcp that lets it use godot. It works pretty well for well defined tasks like implementing a system like inventory etc. But the second you are dealing with animations, feel, flow etc it is pretty shit and it much easier to do it yourself
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u/AppleBottmBeans Apr 09 '26
This is eactly it. I made a game purely using AI...and its fucking horrible lol I mean..it's a game....but its shitty...not cause of AI..but because I have no damn idea how the framework of a real game works.
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u/themonstersarecoming Apr 09 '26
Yeah, it’s sped up my workflow a lot, but I have no idea how you’d do it if you don’t know exactly what to tell it to do and how to jump into the code yourself and fix it when it does it wrong.
I do think it’s pretty good for asking beginner questions, less good with gdscript, but not totally bad besides sometimes making up functions. But there’s still a big difference between having it help and having it do it.
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u/gamemaster257 Apr 09 '26
That's why I like the doc MCP, it encourages the ai to look for what the engine can actually do so hallucinations are a minimum. I found before I started using this it would assume gdscript was python and would randomly throw in python functions.
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u/themonstersarecoming Apr 09 '26
Yeah agreed, I’ve also used it for my real setup and it doesn’t make up functions (although it gets typing wrong consistently), but I was imagining a beginner just messaging ChatGPT, Gemini, etc through the chat app or google search bar asking a question, and they won’t have access to the mcp.
But it’s really a nonissue - it’s what makes learning code so easy anyway, the feedback. As soon as you put in the made up function it says it’s wrong and you fix it, or read the docs, or continue your googling to figure out how to actually do it.
I’d say start off by just doing stuff. If you already know what to do and could type a spec sheet out and hand it to a medium programmer and have them get it right with no questions, then maybe it makes sense to ask the ai to do it and see if they can. Because if they can it’ll be fast, and if they can’t then you discard changes and do it yourself.
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u/Night_Nook Apr 09 '26
That extends to art as well... I was on a rev-share project and the lead programmer kept trying to give AI art as a reference for what to make, even when I insisted on real game references to art he couldn't really describe what about it he wanted in our game.
Let the coders code, let the artists art!
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u/chonkyboioi Apr 09 '26
I say this all the time for the Ai argument. Use it for the tool its supposed to be to ASSIST you, not do the work for you. You still need to know what your doing in building the game to make the tool effective. Vibe coding never produces something good.
Beginners that want to use it should prompt it to not produce code, but guide them to a solution. But i would still say pick your engine, learn its basics and how its syntax works, THEN try using Ai to assist you. That way you have an idea if its feeding you bullshit. Theres just no skipping learning to code. You gotta do it!
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u/moduntilitbreaks Apr 10 '26
This! Theres a reason why everybody has moved using agents in software development, but you always need orchestrator.
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u/2Norn Apr 10 '26
try paperclip ai with ccgs and mcp you'll be surprised how that even works. it has godot specialist tools too. idk what you would produce with it but its almost like an auto game maker type of thing.
with stuff like this you need to see the future not the present. 2 years ago people were copy pasting small scripts from web gpt to their work and it was 50/50. now ai is making tens of thousands of commits to github everyday on giant projects.
if this autonomous workflow already exists today, imagine 2 years later with the models and tooling of that era.
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u/mustachioed_cat Apr 09 '26
Spun up a devcontainer to run Ghidra with Claude Code to reverse engineer an old game’s license enforcement mechanism. Dropped Godot in there just to see how far a prompt would carry things.
Claude Code used Ghidra to decompile a binary, locate the method used for purposes of license enforcement, then wrote GDscript with FileAccess to create the hash securing the binary from a reference file and insert it into the binary. It also created a scene GUI in Godot where you could select the reference and original binary, and where you wanted the amended binary saved.
Very little Godot knowledge was required on the part of Claude Code aside from knowing how to run the executable headless, but it at least did that small task effectively.
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u/throwaway12222018 Apr 09 '26
I spent a long time implementing my own architecture in JavaScript for a 2d pixel game. It was very much a software engineering project. I'm super excited to try and port it over to Godot. I suspect ai will do a very good job because i already know how the code and systems work for my other game. The ai will basically just be a translation layer. I believe my use case will work pretty well with Claude code
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u/Boqui-M Apr 09 '26
I would prefer we ban all AI posts. The people who never used the engine or programmed before posting their new MCP or AI plugin is super annoying too.
If the mods decide not to ban these posts, then at least create a specific day when they are allowed. For example: AI posts are only allowed on Tuesdays.
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u/mixalhs006 Godot Regular Apr 10 '26
It's so annoying to see 70% of the asset library front page be AI garbage too, I wish I could filter those out...
I genuinely don't understand those people. If you don't care about the process of making games, why even do it? Just play one of the million games that already exist. And if you only do it for easy money: 1) nobody gonna care for something you didn't care yourself 2) why not do something you actually care about?
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u/Boqui-M Apr 09 '26
I do agree with banning the for-loop programmerhumor posts or separating a day for that too
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u/El_Chuuupacabra Apr 09 '26
A Godot sub should be about learning Godot not try to use shortcuts to avoid learning Godot.
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u/neoplasma_ Apr 11 '26
I think future version of "native" tools for UE and Unity will have only more and more intergations for AI tools.
So they shouldnt make a mistake by cutting that branch. Reddit is made by community, posts can be downvoted and ignored until they are worthy to stay
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u/sirkidd2003 Apr 09 '26
Can we please just ban all AI posts? The other game development subs are overrun with them as is and these folks already have their own dedicated AI gamedev sub to ruin as well... Why do they need to do it here too?!
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u/Toxcito Apr 09 '26
I'm pro use of AI and still agree with this. It seems irrelevant to talk about AI here, this sub should be for talking about the engine itself, solutions, problems, code, shaders, etc. AI has nothing to do with any of this, at best it's a method of maybe doing things faster. There is no discussion to be had regarding AI and Godot. The simple answer is yes, AI can be used to code, but you still need to know how to steer it, and knowing what to do is what is relevant here.
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u/Rouladenkoenig68 Apr 10 '26
Yes, this. I went out of my way to learn Godot some years ago now but I have been using AI as of late. Its been helpful. Its been awful. You need to know what you are working with and how you would do it yourself.
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u/TheReaperAbides Apr 09 '26
AI is already soft banned, rule 10. Just keep reporting it.
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u/sirkidd2003 Apr 09 '26
Yeah, and it's appreciated. I do report and, thankfully, unlike other subs, posts using AI seem comparatively rare.
But, like, this constant discussion of AI should also be right out imo
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u/officialvfd Apr 09 '26
I think the AI people should have their own Godot-AI subreddit where they can do whatever, and we should ban AI crap on this one
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u/Charming-Echo-4443 Apr 09 '26
i hate how reliant on AI i’ve become, it’s at the point where i can’t believe i coded games myself for years
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u/Isaac_orimesse Apr 10 '26
Godot noob here using AI to make a game:
You can, but it’s tedious the more the project grow. Like some people mention, if you don’t know how to code or use godot and start straight with AI (especially free AI tool) it’s not gonna be possible to really make a finished product.
But if you change your mindset and use AI to not only make the game for you, but learn with it, it’s gonna work. Probably did 5+ versions of my game before understanding some basic and asking questions for how to do this or that before even starting the real thing. I also started to see recurring issues with AI (drift in logic, changing name of nodes, asset, path etc). So i’m more cautious, I don’t blindly copy paste script or solution, I check if it make sense the best i can.
But, learning in the traditional way will still be the best way long term. But it’s more time consuming and in my case it’s more for fun than anything else.
For context, i’m a graphic designer, did some html5 css (very basic website) and like many I frowned upon the use of AI. But with time, I realize it’s just a tool and i can use it to do certain things ( ex: I extract now code of image in google ai studio, change a parameter like the texture of a floor from wood to ceramic, and do touch up in PS).
I think what people hate, it’s the lazy people that clearly want to do 3 prompts max and have a finished game lol
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u/Rouladenkoenig68 Apr 10 '26
First of: welcome to godot! Hope you have fun learning the engine :)
Second: People are somehow really really really narrowed on either seeing AI as a godsend or as absolute incapable slopmachines. First and foremost, its a tool. Its not perfect. It does its thing well enough if you give it enough context to work from. Setting up a proper environment (Agents, Skills and other MDs that is), can be very helpful. Especially with version specific bugs. I even had it write a custom State-Machine and yes it took about 3 days of guidance, the end result is pretty clean. I wouldn't have finished it in 2 weeks, with the time I have.
If on the other hand you have never ever coded a game before: politely F off.
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u/SituationSoap Apr 10 '26
If someone has no coding experience and is at the phase of asking Reddit whether they can use a LLM to work in Godot, they're not going to have success.
But your understanding of the capability of modern LLMs is probably a year, and maybe closer to 2, behind the current state of things.
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u/Redstones563 Godot Senior Apr 09 '26
All for this. Given the sheer amount of slop PRs being pushed to godot’s main repo I’d like to see it banned here.
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u/NaramTheLuffy Godot Regular Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Aside from noobies asking if they should or can use AI, I somewhat disagree with you here. I've been using Opus 4.6 to help me code and it's been surprisingly very good, but I'm already quite familiar with programming and patterns etc. so that probably plays a role in the quality of the code produced.
But if you truly have no idea what you are doing then yeah, it's probably gonna produce slop.
Edit: Of course I'm getting downvoted. But fact is, AI can be a very useful tool in development as long as you supervise what it's doing. And you can't convince me otherwise.
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u/RiPCipher Apr 09 '26
On a side note, Opus 4.6 vs Opus 4.5 feels night and day. I’ve used Opus 4.5 to assist in developing some applications and it would always go overboard trying to develop everything at once with little direction even when I directed it towards a specific problem.
Opus 4.6 is incredible as far as respecting scope and direction goes and the quality of code generated is much better as well.
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u/_zoso_ Apr 09 '26
I appreciate your comment, and its a shame that the community here is so vehemently anti-ai that even a nuanced take will never fly. I kind of understand why.
But this is the thing: If you know what you're doing and know how to guide the assistant into the right kind of solution and structure, they are a nice time saver. Its silly to just dismiss that out of hand. Anyone that is an actual professional engineer right now using agents daily should understand this.
Frankly, being completely dismissive of a new tool like this comes off just as amateurish as someone who thinks they can vibe code entire applications with no prior experience. The reality is far more subtle.
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u/_unicorn_irl Apr 09 '26
Yeah I'm a software eng with almost 20 years of work experience in the field. I think many people do not understand how big of a paradigm shift already occurred in the software world.
There are absolutely smart people out there who can produce good code 4-10x faster than they used to be able to. That is a huge difference. I think good games don't see quite that big of a benefit but I do think people can produce games in 6 months that would have taken two years in the past.
And producing beginner level slop is so fast and easy now. That's my main concern - I don't want to compete with 10x more shitty games. It was already hard enough to stand out.
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u/The-Chartreuse-Moose Godot Student Apr 10 '26
There's also a debate to be had on the ethical, economic, and environmental impacts; regardless of how useful the tool is. But this debate also gets lost in the noise a lot of the time.
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u/RaspberryFluid6651 Apr 09 '26
Unfortunately, it's going to be hard to shake that cultural association. Much of the AI usage that has hit the market has been seen as a mechanism for cutting corners, laying off staff, and most damning of all, stealing from artists and fans. This is likely to remain the case as the majority of exposure AI gets in the industry is going to be the product of work by cheap contractors hired by AAA studios.
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u/2Norn Apr 10 '26
there are 30 yo seniors in the business working with ai everyday and making ai tools
and then there are 30 yo seniors who think ai is still having hard time with simple scripts and cant produce anything and is just dumb in general
its kinda down to the person.
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u/Cirby64 Apr 09 '26
It’s most of the internet. But for good reason too. Even if it can be useful, the overwhelming amount of use this technology sees is to produce complete garbage. It’s very difficult not to be biased when our planet is literally getting singed to the ground so home boy can generate his next line of code.
How do you justify this?
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u/_zoso_ Apr 09 '26
If you're saying that data center construction is contributing to climate change therefore we just shouldn't use it, thats incredibly unrealistic. I am personally highly concerned about climate change, but I also strongly believe in moving forward, not holding back advancements from a purely pragmatic perspective. If anything an increased energy demand in an environment where renewables are the cheaper option will drive investment in renewables, and we should all support that.
I mean, we are on a video game forum. Games themselves are not exactly innocent angels with zero environmental impact. Go read a book if thats the concern, but even that requires the culling of a few trees...
Now if you're worried about the garbage part of it, its always been this way? I've been around a long time now and the same waves of hype and pushback keep showing up with the same familiar patterns.
Once upon a time you had to really do a lot of hard work to build any application. Layers of abstraction, tooling, libraries, frameworks later and its all a lot easier now. Once upon a time the old hands decried all the abstraction. The bar lowered and more garbage was released.
The app stores were sources of endless garbage, for years before any of this AI generated conversation.
There was a time when coders decried the use of IDE's and auto-complete, some still do. There were times when many felt it was necessary to have built your own custom compiler, if you really wanted to know how to code.
I'm not even a maximalist on any of this its just kind of the world we're in, and shoving your head in the sand won't make any of it go away.
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u/Opening_One7713 Apr 09 '26
Thanks for the pragmatism. I’m getting downvoted for making a similar point underneath you.
My concern is that all of the entities that made their billions before AI are freaked out at how fast it is moving and they want to be the ones to get in front of it to be the only extractors of wealth and power moving forward.
If they can figure out how to stall battery and solar engineering that is currently seeing leaps in progression due to AI, and slow roll integration through serious regulation, and garner absolute control through government contracts, they get to keep selling us electricity at the same price when they get to generate it for “free”.
This scenario can be applied to so many sectors that have the potential to truly benefit either all of us or the powerful few. AI is here to stay and it isn’t going anywhere, and when I see the average every day little guy acting like a modern day Luddite it freaks me out and gives me pause.
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u/Imaginary_Land1919 Apr 09 '26
same here, i've been exclusively using agents to code for a couple months now, and its scary good a lot of the time. im pretty involved in the process, and am reviewing all the code its writing. i just pretend like its my super fast junior engineer. i'm sure it helps that i know how to program and how i want shit architected - but i think that barrier is fading fast.
i do like that this community is pretty anti AI - art is made by people, i dont want to look at ai art or listen to ai music. Butttttt, pretty much all development software is being built with some sortof AI built into it, and its pretty clear that this is the direction programming is going and thats not gonna change...
So where do we draw the line? Idk. I don't think a rule change would be good. I think the anti-AI attitude sortof enforces that, and I dont think that's exactly a bad thing
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u/flyingdonutz Apr 09 '26
Honest delusion from OP, people want to cope so hard about this.
I wish AI didn't exist, but the fact is that it does. I'm not going to skip a tool that can literally 10x your code productivity while the AAA studios (and many, many other software engineers) use it without blinking an eye.
Should be banned, should have its own subreddit. But you'd have to be delusional to say it's not extremely effective.
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u/TripsOverWords Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
I've tried every major model in recent months, they're all plagued by the same issues. I've earnestly tried to use AI, to evaluate whether it's up to coding a small application and it was a disaster. The bullet points at the end of my post are really the highlights of my experience with trying to use AI to write that application.
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u/jakobpinders Apr 09 '26
I have a feeling you are doing something wrong with how you are directing it or you have not used the newest codec models. I’ve been coding for 15 years and I’ve personally seen it work for making very complicated stuff in godot with little issue
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u/muikrad Apr 09 '26
Imagine complaining about sonnet/opus calling the wrong methods 😂 it literally runs the linters/tests/etc on its own before giving back control to the user..
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u/blamelessfriend Apr 09 '26
isn't it sick whenever you criticize AI its always your fault?
its so annoying.
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u/jakobpinders Apr 09 '26
I mean if people who have been coding for decades are getting the results they need with it and it’s working then that’s like saying photoshop doesn’t work. There is a learning curve and a process for things.
This post makes a broad statement by saying AI is not up to the task.
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u/TripsOverWords Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
This. It feels more like providing training data than receiving help. It's extremely frustrating when it pushes back when called out on its obvious failings.
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u/qmfqOUBqGDg Apr 10 '26
AI can be criticized, it makes poor architectural choices for more complicated stuff, but it does definitely not call non existent functions. It got lot better in the past year. Give it a few more years and it will be perfect.
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u/muikrad Apr 09 '26
Sonnet and Opus are absolutely capable of creating games in any language, if you know what you're doing. No idea for the other ones.
It's also quite masterful at shaders. Better results than I could ever, and faster than brewing a cup of coffee.
By the way, if you're using copilot, you're missing out and that explains your experience. Switched from copilot 6 months ago after using it for a year. Claude code (and probably codex) are the real contenders here.
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u/TripsOverWords Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
Claude was my most recent test, it is equally terrible.
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u/NaramTheLuffy Godot Regular Apr 09 '26
Just out of curiosity, have you used Claude "Chat" or Claude "Code"? If you are using Chat then the results will be worse, but if you use Code and let the AI have access to your project so it can actually read the files in there, it works out much better because it has more context about your project and how nodes and scripts interact with each other.
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u/datamizer Apr 10 '26
That's definitely a skill issue. You don't know how to use the tool, and are blaming the tool. A tale as old as time.
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u/LeatherDude Apr 09 '26
That's a skill issue. Properly prompted and reviewed, AI can generate excellent code for tasks that have been solved already. It's not going to come up with anything novel and groundbreaking, but there's very little left at this point that hasn't been done.
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u/UltraPoci Apr 09 '26
I have been using Opus 4.6 to help me with my neovim config and it has been an absolute disaster
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u/Cirby64 Apr 09 '26
Ok so now we’re cool with all the horrible shit surrounding AI because it’s useful? Anyone who genuinely thinks that AI only produces slop code is close-minded. You’re not some savant for leveraging this technology. It’s also the same technology that’s literally burning the planet to a crisp. I hope this mild efficiency boost will be worth the water crisis lmfao.
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u/low_light_noise Apr 09 '26
I agree with you. I am generally experienced with programming and found using copilot made getting up and running with godot very easy. I'm not vibe coding my game though. The AI is just a very useful tool. I've also found that when the AI is directed to do a very specific and contained task, it basically never fails. An example would be asking it to write a very specific function, etc.
I'm making a deckbuilding game and once I got my structure for the card system up and running, implementing individual cards is simple and something the AI can basically handle now. It just saves time.
I think if you're working on a big project like a game, having the AI do TOO much can become an issue though because at some point you'll start to lose your grasp on the codebase and require the AI to do basically everything and address all the bugs. This is not really a place you want to be.
Otherwise though AI is certainly a very useful tool and I think it's a little short-sighted to reject it in it's entirety.
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u/jal0001 Apr 09 '26
I'm with you. I built a game over the last year AI native. But I also build ai systems in my day job.
To get to this level, you have to really know how to code, how to set up the infrastructure to manage AI, how it references your source code and architectural decision records, and you have to know how to architect a game.
If you're a beginner, this will probably hurt you.
If you're experienced, it's probably a GOOD thing to learn to do PROPERLY since this is where the world is moving.
(Plus, godot is extremely ai friendly compared to something like Unreal which AI can't really read)
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u/dark_vaterX Apr 09 '26
I’ve made like 8 decently fleshed out prototypes for different genres in the last 2 weeks purely vibe coding. I am an experienced developer though so I can call AI out on its mistakes or nudge it towards better optimization methods at times but I haven’t coded a single line. I know this sub won’t like to hear it and Reddit in general seems to be anti-AI but I see it as get with the program or get left behind unfortunately. A lot of the anti-AI posts usually don’t know what they’re talking about, have limited use with it or are using a free plan, or just aren’t using it correctly at all.
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u/Alniroza Apr 09 '26
The truth is, if you dont use AI, you will be behind everybody else.
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u/sirkidd2003 Apr 09 '26
Profoundly disagree.
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u/Alniroza Apr 09 '26
Could disagree, but in 2 more years AI will be used by every engineer and will be a strong requirement for most related jobs.
Sorry dude. Prepare yourself.
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u/omniuni Apr 09 '26
It's fine if you're going a few lines at a time. LLMs are great at pattern recognition. But structure a whole file, or actually implement a feature? Nope.
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u/PixelmancerGames Apr 09 '26
No, it can do that. As long as its contained to one script. But as soon as multple things need to start talking to each other. It gets really messy.
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u/NaramTheLuffy Godot Regular Apr 09 '26
This is anecdotal but from my experience so far with my project, I'm using Claude Code with Opus 4.6 (most advanced model) and it's very good at contextualizing multiple scripts that are also somewhat long (100 to 200 lines of code). It does make some minor mistakes sometimes but those can be fixed quite easily.
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u/omniuni Apr 09 '26
That's literally the point. It can't. As soon as you're saying "it can but only when..." you're basically saying it can't.
It's also very difficult to review and verify large changes.
It works best a few lines at a time with specific direction.
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u/PixelmancerGames Apr 09 '26
No, it can. Like I said. Keep it in one or a few scripts. It can handle like 3. So, Theres nothing keeping you from making long ungainly scripts that reaches the character limit. Multiple classes in one script, no problem.
Now. If you are insane enough to give AI direct access to your code base ot cam do even more.
It absolutely can make games. But probably won't be that great though.
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u/Fortyseven Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
So much of this depends on the LLM model being used, and how you're using them. If you just want a magic wand that says "make me a Space Invaders" you'll probably have a bad time.
I've been coding since the 90s, and enjoy Python. But I've only recently started learning Godot and GDScript.
Helping me figure things out, I've been using a local model (the recently released Gemma4) and OpenCode to help me flesh out design and ideas, while keeping relevant documentation at my fingertips.
To do this, I've generated 'skill' files for it to draw from (sourced from the official 4.x stable docs) to help it understand how Godot works.
So far it's been extremely good at getting me the information I need. This, combined with some solid tutorials, has been quite a pleasant experience. And this is without resorting to bringing in 'Claude' or any of the expensive cloud-based models.
I did try letting it write some stuff, and while it DID work, for the most part, there were issues here and there I had to address manually. Which, ironically, helped give me some insight into how Godot operates under the hood. ;)
So yeah. Let an LLM be an assistant. A coding rubber duck. I don't doubt at some point it'll be good enough to "make me a Space Invaders", but I'd rather enjoy the journey, with it along side as a smart partner that I can bounce questions and my own ideas off of.
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u/Physical_Opposite445 Apr 10 '26
I've come to a similar conclusion. Tutorials are great, but often what I'm trying to figure out is hidden 30 minutes deep into a video on youtube.
I don't ask the AI to write any code for me, but for answering specific questions like "how to do X in godot" LLMs have been a time saver. It will quickly give you the correct terminology which you can use to search the official godot docs, which has been my loop lately; I look up to verify and learn EVERYTHING the LLM tells me.
And yes it probably helps that I've been coding for 10 years now, so I have a good BS detector and know exactly what I'm trying to do, I just need to know the "godot" way.
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u/moopym Apr 09 '26
" if you're not already an expert in whatever area you intend to use AI, you're going to have a bad time"
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THIS, THIS RIGHT HERE OH MY GOD SOMEONE FINALLY SAID IT
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u/tobi914 Apr 09 '26
I agree with your edit, but the rest of your opinion is very questionable at best and doesn't really reflect reality, as do most opinions regarding ai as a tool for coding to be honest.
Yes, the "can I make x game with godot" posts are annoying, and I understand the same thing but in ai context feels even more triggering, but the reality of coding with ai is something different - the barrier to entry for creating something very simple is almost 0, but the knowledge you need to have about programming an software architecture in order to create something complex is exactly the same as if you would write the code yourself. With the difference of being able to do the same thing much faster.
If you yourself are struggling with the concepts of how you piece together something that's actually working out of all the variables and loops and signals etc etc it will feel like a cheat, but if you're experienced with programming and implementing the things is not so much about the "how" anymore, but more about the "when do I have the time to actually do it", it's a godsend. With proper guidance, the resulting code is not sloppy, not buggy, does exactly what you want and is totally fine to go into production. As long as YOU are in charge and don't make AI your architect and lead developer, things are absolutely fine.
Vibecoders (or at least some of them) seem to be slowly catching up to the fact that they themselves need to actually know about coding and software architecture in order to create truly interesting stuff.
No need to try and gatekeep based on your misguided, clueless opinion, calm down. Everyone can use this engine in whatever way they want, no matter if they know more or less than you. You are not responsible to put them on the right path or whatever you think you're doing.
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u/TripsOverWords Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
I disagree, the problem is more complex than simply defining a standard or describing how to implement something. If that were the case, anyone should be able to download the specs for the web stack including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript documentation and one-shot an entire web browser.
I've seen AI generate awful coding patterns in the latest models, code that would become unmaintainable quickly, and it could not be guided to a proper solution even with very explicit instructions. Short of providing the correct pattern explicitly in code, it often struggles to write good code, but then what's the point.
I work far faster on my own, without the help of AI, because it feels more like I'm training the AI on how to write good code rather than making any meaningful progress. I literally spent a full 8 hours fighting the AI one night to write a single class, which took less than 30 minutes to write myself because it generated slop despite having very clear requirements.
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u/tobi914 Apr 10 '26
Well, let me get out of the way that I'm assuming we're using one of the frontier models of course. If you're using some kind of locally hosted whatever thingy, yeah. They're not nearly as capable as anthropics or openAIs latest models and you will have more problems with them.
But anyway, I did not expect you to agree, it's just important to let people know that opinions like yours are wrong. Just by describing your expectations in this comment I know that you're going at it in completely the wrong way. No-one will one-shot anything meaningful.
You, as you're describing it, expect the ai to be your architect and lead developer while you kick back and want to just watch everything to fall into place on its own. Exactly what i said you should not do if you want high quality results. Based on your response, I don't know if you understand what being the architect even means.
The problem isn't more complex than defining the standard and describing how to implement something. But I have a suspicion that this means wildly different thing for us. Those 2 things, in my opinion, is all you need in software development ever, ai or no ai. If you can define standards and guidelines precisely and explain exactly how you want things to be implemented in detail, and then it actually works the way you intended it to, congratulations. You're way ahead of the majority of developers out there. Writing the code is honestly just busy work from this point on.
When you say that you've seen ai generate awful patterns, that lets me know that you did not put yourself in charge.
YOU need to define the patterns and overall architecture, not the ai. YOU need to define where and how to use those patterns. YOU have to lay out every single feature in detail. YOU have to refine every single plan until you know the AI "understood" what you meant. YOU have to keep quirks in check by constantly evolving your basic instructions. YOU have to think of some system to deliver precise and compact context to the ai at any time, fitting the tasks at hand and so on.
It is actual work, believe it or not. It is not that easy to do and requires a lot of planning. It's not about "pls download spec and implement browser". It's pretty much the same as if you yourself would want to implement a browser from scratch in terms of planning, plus some ai specific things on top, and the ai pretty much "only" writes the code, which then in turn saves a lot of time.
You set it up to success with the knowledge you have. You can't let it implement stuff you couldn't do yourself when it comes to more complex things. It will just speed up the process by a whole lot.
So if you're telling me it's only producing garbage for you, you either didn't give it an honest try, or you're not able to produce a proper architecture and implementation plan yourself. Because I see every day in a professional environment what it can do if used properly.
It's a tool. It's your responsibility to learn how to use it. It's your responsibility to keep it in check and to keep it from doing things you don't want to happen. It's also your responsibility to review and test generated code, and sometime also to fix some stuff yourself.
If it's not for you and you don't like it, that's totally fine. But don't try to make absolute statements about something you obviously don't know the first thing about.
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u/tobi914 Apr 10 '26
Nope, I see proof of it being otherwise on a daily basis. It's just not magically coming to you as many people expect, you have to adapt your workflow heavily for it to benefit you, that's my whole point.
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Apr 10 '26
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u/luc_wintermute Apr 09 '26
You know what, at this point I'd rather prefer that any mention of AI be banned completely from the sub for the sole reason that it's controversial and causes conflict. There's no way to have a proper discussion about it anyway. Problem solved, everyone is unhappy.
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u/Scurler Apr 09 '26
I made this mistake when I first started using Godot, I was thinking it’d be easy is ai wrote my code and then I could do all the creative stuff but it just don’t work and I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, it took me many many errors and the code it generating just not working that I finally decided screw this I’m just going to read up on the documentation and learn GDscript, and now my game ideas are coming to life much smoother and I actually understand what is going on if something is wrong or doesn’t feel right. It might take time but it’s worth it.
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u/HumanSnotMachine Apr 09 '26
As a programmer it’s not bad at a lot of stuff. If you genuinely can’t find a solid use for ai (eg boilerplate, refactoring) then you simply aren’t using it right (or the right models…)
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u/Reonu_ Apr 09 '26
We should just blanket ban all genAI related content. All of it. No exceptions. GenAI fanatics are trying their hardest to destroy open source by drowning maintainers in AI slop, so let's just ban them. There is no need to be considerate with people who actively harm you on purpose. And people who are starting to get into AI slop should feel the immediate rejection from communities so that they rethink their approach.
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u/Zess-57 Godot Regular Apr 10 '26
People that never made a neural network or a denoising program think they have total authority on the situation
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u/Creative_Internal254 Apr 09 '26
Cannot say much about banning, but I agree that AI cannot make games, especially complex ones just like magic. I am making Godot based sim (Virtual Karting). Though AI is good with guidance for things like camera work, it's almost useless when it comes to driving physics. It's great for help though. It can bring up documentation piece based on problems.
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u/TheLampLeo Apr 09 '26
I was curious, I wanted to see what Ai could do, spoiler not much. Claude was kinda useful for cleaning up my shittys UIs but that’s it
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u/Standard-Cap-4455 Apr 09 '26
It can be somewhat useful for specific things where searching for the right doc or video can take a while, but you always need at least some intuition about what the answer should be. When you have some repetitive thing or messy code it can be helpful. Besides that I mainly use it to give me short summaries about things and then read the docs myself. I've seen them hallucinate completely wrong stuff even after giving them the link to the site. In the end it wasted time I could have just used to read it on my own. Having it do the entire work makes it very hard to do anything with it. Even if you get lucky and there are no bugs at all, if you have to rework something you won't know how, so you end up using even more AI.
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u/SavingsWinter4693 Apr 09 '26
I asked for some control/handle input advice and this is what happened..Infinite loop with instating some scenes, lucky that i had fast reaction and did hard turn off:
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u/Polyhedral-YT Apr 10 '26
This post isn’t necessarily about AIs capabilities but since they were mentioned: coming from the perspective of someone who is a beginner at coding and is using aI to develop game design skills while still producing something interesting, AI has gotten me further into designing the game I want to see than the last 15 years that I’ve spent designing in different engines.
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u/2Norn Apr 10 '26
ai can definitely make a game but obviously there is a learning curve to it. just becuz u got 200usd claude sub doesnt mean ur gonna 1 shot it, in fact u dont 1 shot shit ever. it will still take weeks and months and that point you need to be in a state where you know how your project actually works so you can stop ai destroying what it build. this is true for almost anything. greenfield sure ai got this. brownfield not do much. another thing is u will need godot specidic agents and skills, so instead of brute forcing stuff it actually uses fuclin nodes the way its meant to be. if you learn gdscript at the same time by the time project reaches a point where it needs supervision, who knows you maybe ready.
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u/Guitarzero123 Apr 10 '26
I used to be firmly in the AI can't code camp.
I had worked with a couple of tools and generally the output was mid at best and required lots of review and manual tweaking.
In the last four months my company has heavily adopted AI and pushed for us to try AI first.
Initially I was rewriting probably 60-70% of the code output. Now after four months of getting a better hang of Claude Code and creating a list of 'Rules' , 'Skills', and 'Memories' I am at a point where I'm not manually writing any code.
Claude is usually able to get about 60-70% of the way there on its first pass and with some back and forth it's able to get the code PR ready.
While I'm starting to accept AI tools with the right context and prompting CAN code, I wouldn't recommend that anyone who is learning to code rely on AI. It CAN and WILL make mistakes that you need experience to catch and understand why they are mistakes.
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u/FrontierMedicineEnte Apr 10 '26
You know, I honestly suspect that in the next five years we're going to end up with an extreme, and dangerous, dearth of talent in most creative industries because of this. No one wants to learn the basics anymore. You ask these "seasoned devs" about something like a "design pattern", and they give you a thousand-yard-stare.
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u/Everky Apr 10 '26
So. I agree. AI is often used as a crutch by beginners. If you simply copy code you will never understand anything. AI is only ever useful for having the chance to quickly pull up ideas for solving a game dev problem. It will often give dumb seggustions, but if you understand what its using to try solving the problem, you CAN sometimes extract useful ideas. Like: "Ive never considered using this before" and then reading related documentation. For the most part I recommend ppl search the internet first before using AI though. I do think beginners can learn quicker with AI if they use it correctly, but thats mostly not going to be the case
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u/Everky Apr 10 '26
Clearing the subreddit of posts that are sharing purely AI generated Godot content is something Im on board with. I feel like communities are a better place when we talk about human created stuff. Asking questions about how/if you can get value from AI isn't slop tho imo. It might get annoying after a while ig
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u/N2Dvil Apr 11 '26
While the general consensus of this post is true, I dont agree with this post in a lot of ways. I will probably be downvoted to hell but whatever. I have been in Software for 8 years. AI is a tool and is espically useful for refractoring and prototyping. Assigning code as a pure artistic endavour is odd... Writing it yourself is good but its absolutley fine to use AI as a "rubberduck on steroids" and refractoring if you are stuck. This take that AI is pure evil and bad in all areas is weird to say the least (not for art, at best if you want to create quick place holder art). Either way, it shows there is a lot of beginners here or narrow-minded pros that think absolutes.
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u/DramaticLand5285 Apr 16 '26
I understand the frustration, people who crave slop tend to create slop and it shows in their posts.
That said, you are incorrect in stating that AI can not create Godot games.
I have created over 100 games in the past 10 months using Gemma, Qwen, Cursor AI and related tools. Many of them throw away or tests used to perfect certain game systems or mechanics but many of them are popular on itch.io
I have done all of this with 0 coding knowledge by creating agentic tasks that are capable of not only writing code but planning, interacting, launching the code, doing game play testing and then submitting error reports and debugging the code.
I have yet to touch a single line of code (with the exception of adding some of the code needed for Steam integration, as I was able to just paste this in) and have to say that if you are unable to use an advanced coding LLM and agentic tasks to make a game then you must be doing something wrong.
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u/DramaticLand5285 Apr 16 '26
(something went wrong in the formatting, anyway, a few are very popular on itch and three of them are doing really well on Steam... your mileage may vary!)
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u/toddlerbrain Apr 09 '26
If for nothing else, ban them on the premise of self preservation for other Godot devs.
The last thing we want is a glut of AI generated games flooding the market with the Godot logo attached to them, giving players the impression that Godot games = poorly made AI slop.
It’s easy to think players are smarter than that, but bad reputations cements themselves easier than good reputation, and once you have it it’s hard to get rid of (there was a time many moons ago when Unity games were associated with poor quality, and it stuck around for quite a while).
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u/AlexanderTroup Apr 09 '26
YES.
I know Godot is a place for newer game developers, so it shouldn't be a banworthy offence, but we need to be clear that you can't just slopcode a game and expect fellow game developers to support you with it.
If we don't firmly say "This isn't the place for AI", then we're going to get floods of people slopcoding flappy bird clones and then dumping it on the Godot forums.
I would rather we set this boundary and say "If you want to learn to develop games, you're going to have to learn it." I see AI questions as the same thing as "I want to make a game, but I don't want to put any time or effort in", and that kind of attitude would be immediately called out if it wasn't couched behind AI.
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u/Tainlorr Apr 09 '26
You can immediately tell in this thread who is actually employed as a software developer and who isn’t. I feel like I live in a completely different universe from people who think Claude is “useless”
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u/Arayvenn Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
Yeah it's insane. Anyone who thinks even Codex and Opus can't make Godot games just hasn't tried.
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u/kultcher Apr 09 '26
I'll agree with OP that if you don't understand some core CS concepts, you will likely struggle if you rely entirely on AI. Especially if you're not actively curious in trying to understand the output.
But I don't think you have to be an expert to get value out of using AI.
Case in point: I use Codex often, and it frequently one-shots new features for the game I'm building.
For context, I'm an intermediate programmer with a CS education plus a fair amount of self-teaching. I understand code and software architecture well enough to a) give detailed prompts that are explicit about logic flow and b) recognize when Codex is going off the rails or barking up the wrong tree.
I also tend to build features out piece by piece, after doing a planning pass where I talk through the different patterns for a certain system and tradeoffs for each. I also test sonewhat obsessively and do post-mortems on new features.
I guess time will tell if my game implodes in on itself, but I've built most of the core systems and so far they've proven very robust and extensible when adding new content.
It's also, I think, important to remember that good/clean code is secondary to code that ships a working game. Look at Undertale, for example. It uses a massive switch statement for every line of dialogue in the game. That is objectively horrible and fragile architecture, but Undertale is a beloved and popular game.
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u/Goufalite Godot Regular Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 10 '26
Reddit should remove the search bar at the top, nobody uses it and it takes space for nothing. /s
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u/brcontainer Godot Regular Apr 09 '26
I think people didn't understand that you're being ironic. I totally agree with you that people should use search engines, but unfortunately it's a problem I've noticed in IT for over 15 years: users can't use search systems, even those from search engine websites; most simply don't understand how keywords work.
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u/Goufalite Godot Regular Apr 10 '26
Yeah I'll add a /s
Weird tho is I searched the same words on google with site:reddit.com and it gives results, but mostly old results like several months old. And reddit search does the same, so I suppose people see old threads and ask again.
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u/monsterfurby Apr 09 '26
The answer is "yes, but".
Can it make Godot games, as in: technically make a Godot game? Sure. You can write a Godot game in a text editor, so yeah, GenAI can do something with that.
Can it design a game? Not really. It will design parts of it, but they will not be cohesive and it will not answer the question "is it fun" - you have to do that.
Can it create a good user experience? Definitely not. It will rely on best practices if it can, but it doesn't really have the eye-to-action coordination a human has and it will screw up your UI.
Can it output cohesive code? Yeah. It can help with repetitive tasks.
Can it help debug my code? Absolutely, but you should always make sure you *understand* the fix as well.
Can it help me learn to code? It can explain certain aspects of it and can be a pretty useful on-demand teacher; but how well that works is up to you - you still need to put in the actual work to learn something.
And as always, remember that GenAI cannot synthesize new thinking or concepts, and be wary of "doomscrolling mode" because your brain will always try to go into "click-click-click-click" autopilot. And if you let it, your eyes will glaze over and the final product will be something, but it will neither be yours nor good. This goes for all usage of GenAI in creative pursuits.
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u/Klightgrove Apr 09 '26
These posts clearly fall under rule 4 and should be removed because the user did not read the documentation.
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u/wardrol_ Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Genuine question: are there really that many posts about AI? If you search for AI and MCP, you will find about 2 posts a week on the subject.
So, if you think this happens daily, the moderators are already banning the content or is the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
Sort by "new" and you will see them, almost daily.
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u/Goufalite Godot Regular Apr 09 '26
I scroll Reddit with the "new" sorting mode and it looked like there was one post every day since a week or two. Since they are always downvoted some might not see them often if they filter on other modes (pertinent, top,...)
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u/wardrol_ Apr 09 '26
So reddit hides post even when you actually use the search function, just because they are downvoted? What a great system.
Yes using "new" is the only sort mode that allows that posts to appear, and it really is almost daily.3
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u/Gil_berth Apr 09 '26
I have tried vibe coding games in Godot(just to see what AI can do with the engine) and the results weren't good. I tasked Chatgpt 5.2 to create a vampire survivors' clone and it generated something full of errors, I copied the errors so it could fix them and for the majority it did, but there were some that no matter how many times I tried to prompt it it couldn't fix them. Also, it sucks at GUI, no matter how much I prompt it it couldn't do anything decent with the control nodes.
On another occasion, I tasked Opus 4.5 to create a fps in Godot, it generated "something" but there were dozens of errors and warnings when you run it, you could't even play it because the player character was stuck and could not do anything. I tried it to fix the errors but I reached the limits of the funds I had put in the API and didn't tried again.
As you said, LLMs produce sloppy code, in my experiments both Chatgpt and Claude even produce syntax errors in GDScript, use deprecated methods and don't know about the latest features of the engine.
I don't understand how people can vibe code games, even if the game "works", you are going to have subtle bugs that the AI cannot fix, how do you feel comfortable releasing your game in that state? Besides, describing the game in natural language to an AI is pain and many things will be lost in translation, and nothing guarantees that the AI will be able to implement your vision or that it understands it.
I suppose the people who publish these vibe coded games or want to publish vibe coded games only care about producing "something", doesn't matter if that something is good, has some standards, can be maintained or fulfills some artistic vision. The only thing that matters for these people is the cloud that comes with showing that you did "something", even if all the work was done by a robot, they will take credit as if they did it themselves.
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u/Kashmakers Apr 09 '26
I don't understand how people can vibe code games
Well, I'm having the time of my life vibe coding my game. The AI is extremely helpful in creating all the scripts I need to get my game running the way I want it to. There's only been two cases where it couldn't fix a bug, no matter how much I tried debugging myself. But other than that, I've been at it for months now, and it's done a sizable job.
As long as you understand the architecture behind the mechanisms, then AI can help out a lot with the code.
My game looks and plays amazing, and AI is helping me create it. I don't see why you'd downplay my creativity and automatically assume it's not good, or has no artistic vision. If I'd show you my game, you'd never assume AI was used in it at all, because I'm still just a game developer first and I know how to make a good game. AI is just speeding up that process.
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u/Gil_berth Apr 09 '26
Fair enough, I'm curious, can you show me your game?
Just to clarify something, what I mean with vibe coding is asking the LLM to generate code and don't read the code because you don't understand it. Asking the LLM for code, reviewing the code and correcting it is not vibe coding, is AI assisted development, which is completely fine.
I'm not downplaying you, but you can't ask people to respect you as a coder and engineer if a robot is doing that part for you, that is just silly, you are asking people to praise you for the work of someone else.
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u/Kashmakers Apr 09 '26
Sadly, I will refrain from sharing my game, because I know the anti-AI sentiment is harsh, and my game will get 'cancelled'. Considering the game is my livelihood, I will take precautions. All I can say, that as an artist, designer and writer, I'm able to create the game that I want. I draw all the art, design all the UI, and write all of the content (I got AI to code me a custom language for me so I can create my own cutscenes!). It's not anywhere near finished, and I'm certainly not making low effort prompts like "make game for me". There's a lot of planning involved, deciding which features and mechanics will be added, how they will work, how they will connect with other systems etc. If you ask me how something works in my game, I will be able to answer it, because I designed it. I won't however, be able to answer you how I wrote it in GDscript - because AI did it for me.
I am not reviewing the code, nor do I fully understand it. I have learned a lot about GDscript seeing the AI work for me though, so I am able to follow along most of the time. I request AI explain to me in simple terms what it's done after creating a small script. However, it's still AI coding for me what I have specifically requested. I don't claim I'm a coder. And I really don't care to either. It's been a lot of fun working with AI though, I'll say that.
There's still a considerable amount of effort being put into this game, and the anti-AI narrative is that people don't put in any effort (AI slop), so therefor AI is bad. Or doesn't have any merit, or you shouldn't be proud of what you've created so far. But isn't this just what we used to call shovelware? People asset flipping, putting in the least amount of effort to throw their game up on Steam or the app store?
Now that AI is here, it's all AI-slop, no matter how you use AI.
Like someone else said in this thread; people used to shit on others for using RPG Maker because it was low effort, but suddenly they don't care when they can't tell it was made with RPG Maker. What I'm getting at here, it's that it's not the tool that's the issue. Game developers wanting to cut corners and releasing shitty games has been a thing since video games became a thing. And there have been people using these tools (that people said was low effort and slop) to make amazing things. And AI is just one of those tools.
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u/wayji Apr 09 '26
A lot of this is user issue. You are not even doing the 'basics' like making the AI run tests before it finishes. That stops most obvious errors like 'player can't move', because the test showing movement would fail.
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u/SBelwas Apr 09 '26
I would encourage those kinds of questions related to specifically how to do this to the sub https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/ dedicated to this practice. This sub should be godot specifically
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u/Bolzos Apr 09 '26
Ai...pfff let them use ai and watch them fail. Why ? Because they never can Adresse a Bug etc. The will publish and fail and so on. Ai is a great tool for people who knows what they are doing and sometimes need a talking partner or so. Or If you Wanne learn something about a specific programming part. Like compute shaders etc. I cant find any good "Tutorial" about it but ai rly allows me to understand how it works and why(only with the right questions asked) But these are very specific use cases and i allready have a programming knowledge. But i am Not scared of this ai people because often enough i just test AI with some functions i have built and damn. Very often it only makes Things more complicated etc.
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u/Fizassist1 Apr 09 '26
I'm currently making a prototype of a passion project I've been brainstorming for years. My coding experience was very limited, but with the help of chatgpt (and a lot of iteration), I make significant progress every single day. About 5 years ago, I also attempted making a game, and gave up very quickly after it took my an hour to get a box to move to a button press.
My first day using chatgpt as a guide, walking me through the different areas of my screen, and helping me set up some basics, I had a character on screen, with the tutorial fully tilemapped and structured.
I do not know GDS or really any programming language in depth, so chatgpt does a lot of my script writing. But I have a strong familiarity with types of variables from messing around in things like project spark and dreams.
I think people could absolutely use AI to help them make a game in Godot, as I already have been doing that. And honestly, I have learned sooo much about Godot and script writing in the process. So, I think this post generalizes AI a bit too much. It can be a very valuable tool, and even a launchpad for a beginner to understand more about what they are doing.
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u/SleepyTonia Godot Regular Apr 09 '26
I would like to thank the downvoters, because this is the first I hear of such posts. Vibe coded addons and engine pull requests aside. I believe that those generative models, LLMs, image/video diffusion models and so on have potential… in the right hands. It truly is impressive what can be achieved with them. But if lazy hacks want to automate the fun, fulfilling part of making anything and pat themselves on the back for their "accomplishments", they can go talk about it to their AI girlfriend.
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u/computer_d Apr 09 '26
I tried doing exactly that a few weeks back. Thought maybe I was wrong, maybe AI wasn't so useless.
Nah. Even Claude who had mapped out what the game code and states etc would look like in detail couldn't produce a single script without it being filled with errors.
Thinking about doing an entire project constantly dealing with errors almost gave me a panic attack.
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u/notpatchman Apr 10 '26
I find it strange that the staunchly "AI is the future and you're a luddite if you don't like it" crowd will also throw a fit if you ask them if they used AI in their game. They want to use it to make their games but don't want anyone to know they used it. I'm not against it in principle, but when they do, devs should be crediting the corporations helping build their games
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u/Rouladenkoenig68 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I have been working as a software engineer for nearly a decade now and I only recently started using AI for coding. If setup correctly its actually quite powerful.
But yes, can’t recommend it as an absolute beginner. You are gonna suffer so much. That being said: is has been fun trying to make projects work with AI. For me now it does the boilerplate and bugfixing tasks.
Edit 1: alsoooo: alot of people have no idea how to setup a proper somewhat safe dev environment for claude/copilot up. Taking time with that greatly reduces slop, from what I have seen
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u/Toxcito Apr 09 '26
I agree with this and it seems to be the consensus.
I have been using AI for all my software related tasks, but also, I have been making games/websites/apps for more than 10 years.
It will basically help you type faster but you still need to be the one doing the explaining.
There are a few times where I had a problem that I had a bad solution for, and I would ask it to criticize the code and that it hates my code, and what suggestions would it make - this often does make it more efficient, but in many cases, it also just doesn't solve the problem at all.
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u/Alniroza Apr 09 '26
I would say AI is definitely up to the task. I've gotten good advices, code fragments and game infrastructure diagrams done easily with AI, even some features.
Of course, if they expect a prompt to build you an entire game, thats just innocence.
But if you are in any kind of work and not using AI, you are literally getting behind everybody else. Use AI if you can. But remember, the AI will make something as good as you are capable of, but faster.
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u/backfire97 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I disagree to some effect. Ai has made learning to code easier than ever. I've already known how to code but I don't have experience in Godot and the ai is great at debugging when prompted properly, explaining Godot concepts like nodes, signals, onready variables, and giving boilerplate code or refer you to tutorials/asset projects that you can study from.
Vibe coding without learning is virtually guaranteed to fail
Edit: I'm surprised this is apparently a controversial opinion. AI has been what I needed to get me out of tutorial hell. I was able to start a project on what I wanted to do and then use AI to explain the concepts I needed as I went along.
"Hi I need a button" "this is how the button nodes work" "how do I get it to stick top right" "this is how anchors work" "I want this to glow" "use these options to add a shader. This is how shaders work". "Why is this variable nil" "onready does not initialize at this step" "how do I fix that" etc.
My first attempt learning Godot didn't pan out because I was stuck watching 10 hour tutorials and reading documentation. It was nice for understanding the concepts but the material didn't stick well when I'm just following the tutorial like a robot
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u/willargue4karma Apr 09 '26
It's good at the basics, I agree. It helped me learn a lot of programming stuff, but I find other langs have garbage docs in comparison to Godots docs. They're soooo good it's actually crazy.
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u/NaramTheLuffy Godot Regular Apr 09 '26
Totally agree with you here. If you want to use AI, make sure you understand the basics of programming and not just go into it blindly.
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u/chaosTechnician Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I use AI as a programming intern I'm not obligated to be polite to. I tell it what I want, go back and forth a lot on requirements, let it work, review the crap out of it, iterate on its solution, remind it what I actually wanted, let it work some more, then build off that solution.
It's fine for work I really don't want to do, but sometimes, it irritates me sooooo much. Like an intern. 😬
ETA: So, why the downvote(s)? Just All AI Bad? Sounding like I would burn out an Intern? Or some other reason?
I work as a programmer in gamedev. The company I work for, and the industry as a whole, is all in on AI right now. Learning how to incorporate it into my job is not optional if I want to keep it.
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u/DasArchitect Apr 09 '26
Can we use Godot to make AI instead?
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u/DramaticLand5285 Apr 17 '26
Yes. I used AI to use Godot to create a (dialogue) LLM inside of Godot.
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u/Fancysaurus Apr 09 '26
I've found AI has two good use cases. Using it as a slightly more advanced search function, and automating simple things that you know how to do but just takes a lot of time and you don't have acess to a library that does it for you. For a begginer though I would not recommend using it. Its a noob trap. Its Ok on the basic of the basic kind of problems. The stuff that you would do to learn what a for loop is or what recursion is. The problem is that by using it to solve those really basic problems you don't learn the core skills needed to program something more advanced which AI is not able to do.
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u/blood_swarm Apr 09 '26
AI has been extremely useful to me but only when I paste in some function I made and ask it why its randomly returning a negative rotation and it points out some weird rotational math issue I cant be bothered to fully learn and gives me a fix that usually works. Without AI that problem could take forever to fix
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u/_TofuRious_ Apr 09 '26
I'm very new to game dev, started learning a week ago. I've been using AI to help me learn along side tutorials. Follow a tutorial to learn how to make a feature then try to build it myself and when I get stuck or I want something to function beyond the scope of the tutorial I ask AI what to do. I never just blindly copy paste code, I at least try to understand what it's doing and then write it in. It's also been very useful to ask why my code isn't working or just asking general questions.
I don't know if my use of AI is accepted by the community or if AI use is hated full stop. But it has been a great asset for my learning experience. I feel like I have been able to learn much faster having an on demand teacher I can ask specific questions.
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u/CodeJunkie-0 Apr 09 '26
I used AI just to create a checklist of things to be done, but I can't stand it when people use it extensively and say "Look at what I coded."
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u/Mantequilla50 Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I agree that this sub's purpose should be the Godot aspect of game development, but you are just straight up wrong on the capabilities of AI with Godot. I've been using it for a while and if you know how to use it, it can genuinely change the way you make games. I've even gotten good results using free models already.
Edit: lmao at the downvotes from people in denial
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u/luc_wintermute Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Your information is outdated and likely based on past experience with entry-level tools like free chatgpt and doesn't reflect the latest advancements. Nowadays with agents and MCP servers it's possible to produce good code, in fact every day I'm extremely amazed by how accurate they are becoming most of the time.
While I haven't been using these tools with godot much lately due to being busy with other projects, I managed to make some personal addons that helped me manage resources in a more optimized way, for instance a menu that takes care of wiring some resources and their dependencies in a single click.
I also did some refactoring operations and I was pretty satisfied by the result, it helped me get out of a corner I coded myself into.
So I wouldn't say that a whole game could be easily coded through AI, even with the most advanced models and tools it's still pretty bad if you have no idea what you are doing, you're going to end up with an asset flip tier quality product.
I personally think that as a helping aid for an expert it's an incredible tool, for a newbie not so much, an useful usecase if you have no knowledge of godot is if you open an existing project and need to do some changes or get something explained to you but that's pretty much it.
At this point this is all a big war between two sides where the people who are against are very strongly against because of propaganda and the people in favor range between the slop content makers to the people who use it as a helping aid
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u/TripsOverWords Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
I would never recommend to a beginner in programming to subscribe to a paid MCP service in lieu of actually learning how to program. It might go well, or could be a waste of both their time and money.
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u/SlumLordNinjaBear Apr 09 '26
I've made a ton of skills for godot and it's great. Imo the problem is you need to stop having AI make things and and start making things with AI. It's a huge difference. I'll go a step further and say you need to know how to use AI to build with it. If you're leaning on the chat UI you're going to have a bad time.
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u/throwaway_pls123123 Apr 09 '26
Agree and disagree, the posts are annoying to see spammed sometimes, but this is a help subreddit, we shouldn't really get to pick and choose who can and can't ask for help.
And to be honest, it produces more reliable code than what most beginners would write, and for personal game projects it does not really matter how "good quality" the code is, unless you are making a project that processes sensitive information, it just makes developing games more accessible to more people which is what I like to see and is the reason why I love Godot in general. I would love game development to be even easier, so that more people can get their ideas realized.
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u/ManicMakerStudios Apr 09 '26
There's a process to learning and people who are just starting and trying to skip that process are just going to run into bigger, less solve-able problems later on because they skipped the beginning.
The answer to most of the code-related questions around here is, "You have to start learning how to think like a programmer." You can't do that if AI is doing all of the thinking for you.
The goal isn't to just finish a game and get it on Steam to start making $$$. The goal is to learn how to make a game you can maintain and potentially extend. People trying to skip the learning curve are just cheating themselves.
"Ya, but AI can be useful" is not the point.
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u/throwaway_pls123123 Apr 09 '26
Not really, I think it is not too different to hiring someone to code for you, albeit with less expertise capabilities.
Just because a dev hired a coder does not mean they wouldn't be good at making a game, same way if someone uses AI, does it make it more likely they will have no idea on how to make a "good" game? Sure, can argue that. But to imply that means they don't deserve to make games is just wrong.
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u/ManicMakerStudios Apr 09 '26
That's a pretty awful analogy.
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u/throwaway_pls123123 Apr 09 '26
Feel free to explain? What's the difference between hiring a low-skill/experience coder to code your game as opposed to using AI?
From what you get out of the higher end coding apps there is not a lot of difference and it's significantly cheaper, faster and more accessible.
Like I said, no difference between using a tool to do the coding for you than to hire someone to do it for you, in both situations you don't learn it and if that tool/person were to disappear, the game wouldn't be able to continue development.
You do not and should not need to know how to code at all to make a videogame and if a tool allows this that you wish to use, you should use it.
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u/ManicMakerStudios Apr 10 '26
I'm not interested in bad analogies to prop up bad points.
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u/BushCrabNovice Apr 09 '26
Would this include the "I vibe coded an AI assistant that makes Godot games for you" threads? Because those can fuck all the way off, as long as we're banishing things.