EDITOR’S NOTE 7.22.23 – Made a few adjustments to a couple headers and a few sentences in relation to Adobe Firefly. While I do think Firefly is interesting, I’m not currently planning on using it or any AI generations – more can be read in this blog post HERE and HERE.
(Mostly) End of the Boss Fights and Re-approaching AI Art in Games
Hello all! Long time no speak! Apologies for the long delay in blog posts but my last month has been nuts between going on vacation to Florida, getting COVID, throwing my back out and getting another cold on top of that – as well as filming a movie in a week – it’s been nuts!
But here I am – so this time I want to talk about a new boss fight I finished up (the last one for a while) and also get more into how I’m using AI Art in the game – specifically, the fact that I’m removing the AI art I currently have in the game, however I may start using AI art for backgrounds via new Adobe features in the future.
Dragon Boss
So this boss fight is a short mandatory boss fight I’m having the player do at the end of the 3rd area in the game. I want this section to be brief and intense, so I’m trying to not to make the boss fights too complicated for it.
The basic layout for this fight is that there is a dragon who flies high above the players head and starts shooting different projectiles. Some of the projectiles can be deflected into a force field that is encasing a bouncy spring. When enough projectiles have been hit into the force field it shatters. This then opens up an opportunity for the player to bounce on the spring and jump up high onto the back of the Dragon. The player can then run up to the dragon head and start attacking. When enough damage has been done, sections of the dragon’s body will explode and the player will drop down to the floor. You then rinse and repeat the process until all the body parts of the dragon are gone and the player wins the fight.
And there’s the fight! I’ve been working on the boss fights for the game for the better part of a year at this point and I’ve come to the point where I’m going to stop. There is one more semi-boss fight I want to do, but overall I’m happy where things stand. 14 boss fights in total – with a mix of both mandatory and optional boss fights the player has to find. Ho-boy. That was a lot.
Removing AI Art from the Game
Now the next thing I wanted to touch on was my oh-so-favorite topic of AI art. As I wrote in previous blog posts, I originally started playing around with AI art for a few of the boss fights (robot boss, bat boss and giant boss). However, I stopped after the protests began as I was in alignment with concern over the data sourcing of Dalle-2 and other at-the-time available AI text to art generators.
Even though I had stopped, I did still leave the three boss fights I had used the AI art in live. However, after thinking more on things – I’ve decided to redo the art on these boss fights as well. The more I’ve been digging into the data sourcing issue the more uncomfortable it was making me. So I’ve been taking the last few weeks (in between being sick) and I’ve recreated all the art assets that I was previously using AI art for with either original video clips I’ve recorded or new collage art animations I’ve created from a large variety of Unsplash images I was able to find.
It’s been a pain in the butt to do this – but I do feel a bit better about things now that I’ve gone through the process.
AI Art Potential in the Future?
Now this all being stated – there have been some new developments in the space of AI art that have recently come out that I’m finding interesting.
Recently Adobe (who’s software I use A LOT for the game) has announced Adobe Firefly – which is their own version of a text to image AI generator. It also does things like seamlessly adding effects and color correction to images as well.
From my understanding the difference in the data sourcing between Firefly and other AI is that Firefly was trained on Adobe’s own (very large) collection of stock images that they have in their database as well as public domain images. Adobe is also currently stating that they are coming up with some kind of a compensation scheme for stock images used in the training – though they haven’t given any details yet (as the software is still in Beta).
Overall – this all sounds great to me. I can’t say whether I will or will not be using it for future assets (particularly when using generations to help make the background for the levels – which is what I’d like to use it for), but I’m definitely going to be watching Firefly closely to see what potential there is and if Adobe holds up their end of the equation.
Now What? – Writing!
So the long road of boss fights has finally come to an end (mostly). Wowza. So now what? Well the next step in the game development process is actually something I’m really scared about – writing! Now I am going to be moving into the phase where I lay out the story for the game and start coming up with the general level design for the levels of the game (and hopefully try and make it all cohesive).
I would say this is one of the most important parts of game design and I’m anxious to get started!
More to come!
As always, you can see clips of the dragon boss fight on my social media accounts (in the footer).
Until next time!
-Charles