17 DEC 2022:
- Added a Scrap Collected counter that displays for a little while and then goes away when not needed.
- Created more background scrap.
- Finally learned how to make a decent asteroid in Blender! (shown above)
- Started reading "Procedural Generation in Game Design" by Tanya Short and Tarn Adams (one of the creators of Dwarf Fortress). I'm only about 20 pages in, but already this book has been well worth it, as it make some very good points about when and how to use procedural generation in games.
- I checked out ChatGPT this week and was pretty impressed with its results. What is ChatGPT? Imagine a Google that answers your question by creating its own response instead of pointing you to a bunch of websites. Here's an example of what ChatGPT can do:
But what's even more cool is that you can literally copy and paste code into ChatGPT and sometimes it will point out your mistakes and explain them. I even asked ChatGPT to write me an outline for a Pong clone in QB64 (a modern version of QBasic) and it did just that.
ChatGPT does have limitations. It won't entirely write your code for you. Also some of its responses can be very generic (or even wrong). And it pretty frequently rejects input because so many people are trying to use it.
Nevertheless, I think it's a good tool to have in your game developer toolbox. If you don't have time for StackOverflow or a specialized forum to answer your question, there's a chance that ChatGPT might be able to answer your question right away and point you in the right direction.
But . . . I can also see ChatGPT becoming a crutch for a lot of people instead of doing their own research and work. Ideally, people should have at least a basic understanding of how to do things (math, programming, etc) without having to rely on software to execute or explain it.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought." -- Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!