Looks awesome, though a little muddy sometimes, but maybe that is an engine limitation. Any chance of adding actual voices or redoing any of the take off and landing animations? I'm sure you could get some volunteers.
 
Suddenly it's not so cool.

You might say, I'm trying to do the same thing with Privateer under Godot, and since (even though I'm a developer by profession) I know nothing about Godot, Gemini is a huge help.
 
You can play it and find out for yourself. It's up on itch. And 'genuine'? In what respect? Howard made the project files public. If he didn't want someone taking them and running with the project, then he shouldn't have done that. As far as vibe coding? Who cares. All I care about at the end of the day is if I can play it, and is it good. From what I've played so far, it's an excellent start. Still feels a little off here and there, but on the whole? I approve.

And as far as privateer goes, just play rebel galaxy outlaw. You have to download a couple of new ships to round out the game, but it's much more fun than Privateer was. Too bad we never got the full modding tools, or it would've been pretty simple to to a privateer TC. There's almost certainly a private project that already exists doing this very thing.
 
“ And 'genuine'? In what respect? ”

Sorry I should explain this better: the way written language works is that the sentences typically go in linear order, so you can often find more information relating to the one you read in the words that follow it!
 
Oceankhayne said:
And as far as privateer goes, just play rebel galaxy outlaw. You have to download a couple of new ships to round out the game, but it's much more fun than Privateer was. Too bad we never got the full modding tools, or it would've been pretty simple to to a privateer TC. There's almost certainly a private project that already exists doing this very thing.
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Rebel Galaxy Outlaw could've had so much potential, but the developers simply quit before releasing the modding tools.
Reverse engineering the ship weapon layout was a PITA, with the help of AI it would probably be much easier now. Maybe it would even be possible to create a complete ship editor now just with vibe coding.

Which as far as I'm concerned is a good thing as long as it benefits the community.

The same with Wing Commander Reloaded. I'm in favor of it, and I flew a couple of missions, but eventually decided to return to the original WC1 with the WCAT mod, because there were still too many things not working correctly yet (collisions with ships and asteroids are quite deadly and they impair your vision too much, fuel runs out too quickly, no nav map, no game pause functionality, no story cut scenes).
 
Yeah, we shouldn't have some blanket ban on AI. There is absolutely valuable work being done on it... we're just in a very particular time right now where there's also a lot of useless work and outright scamming being done, too. Those parts will fade away, but we've got to be vigiliant for now.

The way I see it, there are three levels of this and we should be okay with the first two here. These aren't specific to here but are happening all over retro gaming spaces right now.

1) Actual experts that are using AI to help them with work they understand. This is the one that benefits everyone and it's things like ODVS' upscales and the recent Amiga Secret Misssions recreation. I think HCl might be doing something with Wing Commander Academy and AI right now. These are all cases where the person is a passionate, well meaning devleoper who understands what they're doing and they're using AI tools to make it easier/better.

2) Fans who WANT to do something great but don't really know what they're doing. I think this is the bulk of AI stuff we're seeing right now and it's ultimately useless but it's also not something you want to kick anyone down for. It's very easy for someone to see the tech and have wide eyes and decide oh this is the time to make my MMO version of Privateer where you can also catch Pokemon that I've always dreamed of! And they don't have any knowledge or experience to actually do that and the project won't ever turn actually out... but it's important that they try because it keeps everyone moving forward and they care about this stuff and they're part of the community. For every Standoff or Saga you need twenty other fan projects that seemed like a good idea but just couldn't be made. And you shouldn't ever fault someone for passion, even if it's misdirected and you know it.

3) People that are using the 'wow!' factor of AI stuff to launder their own reputations. We've seen this a couple times where they're edgelords who have decided it's a friendly community with resources and a familiar-but-not-litigious IP they can use to pump out these little kinda-works-but-not-really I-pressed-a-button demos. They have no technical ability and no particular interest in the work beyond that it helps them build YouTube channels or itch.io followings or whatever literal metric they want. And they also tend to be anti-social weirdos who are trying to weasel their horrible views into a community. They're a danger to both the communities and to the people that believe in AI, because they make both look awful.
 
MY question remains: is this CryptoMax's project that he is/was undertaking with Howard's blessing, or is it another modder using the same resources? If it is CryptoMax, was there a falling out with the community prior to these releases?
 
Knight26-77 said:
MY question remains: is this CryptoMax's project that he is/was undertaking with Howard's blessing, or is it another modder using the same resources? If it is CryptoMax, was there a falling out with the community prior to these releases?
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Blessing would be overselling it. In the wingleader channels Howie has stated that he’s not a fan of the ethics of using AI but that he made the art public and won’t stop anyone. Not sure what changed exactly, maybe Howie wasn't clear on it being fully AI before? I think using his art and certainly Klavs in this way is dubious because suddenly things people put out publicly are being used in a way that was never intended. I certainly won’t be open sourcing anything in future because that’s not what I had intended. There are ways to create your own art with AI, if you’re going fully AI then be open about it and go fully AI with assets you’ve prompted.

At some point now I will soon have time to come back to the WC4 Remake I need to address how we will and won’t be using it in a post. When I last had free time it was irrelevant, trying to use it cost more time than it gained.

Ethics aside though these things work with context of limited size and will break one thing to fix another if you don’t guide them in detail. Maybe wing commander 1 is a small enough project to brute force through. The latest models are incredibly good at dumping out code, but struggle with iteration. The 2s and the 3s of LOAFs list are unlikely to get you a polished product.
 
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Knight26-77 said:
MY question remains: is this CryptoMax's project that he is/was undertaking with Howard's blessing, or is it another modder using the same resources? If it is CryptoMax, was there a falling out with the community prior to these releases?
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To answer your questions directly, yes to both. Both him and the guy working on that vibe-coded Privateer project went nuts in the Discord and from what I understand personally attacked our members while also spewing hateful sentiments that violated our community standards. Simple as that really, they went over the line and got spaced. 🤷‍♂️

As for the blessing? There was a repost in that same thread from Howard Day:
... Thanks for the heads up. All I know is that he's basically refused to collaborate with me on the project, and just wants more art. I was willing to do so, as I was going to anyway. It'll be available for the community as well, obvs, so there's not a reasonable way to stop him too.
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So I wouldn't say it's exactly endorsed at this point, beyond just the fact that it's open to all.

I could write another wall of text on LLMs, but it's pointless. They have uses and things they're good at. But be it art, music, code, writing or whatever else, I find the process as much of a reward as the end product. In many cases far more so, especially in a hobby context, so I won't be giving that up personally, regardless of how "good" these things get. And I think people seeing the end result of anything non-trivial will always be able to tell the difference, even if they can't tell you what the difference is.
 
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Pedro said:
In the wingleader channels Howie has stated that he’s not a fan of the ethics of using AI but that he made the art public and won’t stop anyone. Not sure what changed exactly, maybe Howie wasn't clear on it being fully AI before? I think using his art and certainly Klavs in this way is dubious because suddenly things people put out publicly are being used in a way that was never intended. I certainly won’t be open sourcing anything in future because that’s not what I had intended.
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It would be helpful if there were a license that explicitly forbid AI training, but then right now the largest source repository openly says that it will do that and that there's nothing you can do about it. The law doesn't matter because AI companies are violating it by using the data of millions of copyrighted books with no attribution and no consequences.

I am a fan of open source because it has helped me understand programming better and I hate the situation that has developed here. What worries me is that this may lead to a fortress mentality where people and communities will wall themselves off and lead to knowledge and information being lost. This might be the only option available now, but it can't become a permanent state because I can't see how society can function like that.
 
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