MZ - Techno Detective

SYNOPSIS

SCREENSHOTS

DOWNLOAD HERE (Google Drive)
PLAY ONLINE HERE

AI Art? No ta.

Update 2.1.2 (Definitive Edition)

• The illustration of the opening scene has been slightly improved
• Minor technical improvement

How was that illustration made, outta interest?

2.1.3 (Definitive Edition)

• Fixed a bug in the puzzle with wires.
• Fixed typo in the dialog.

Unfortunately, not all of us are capable of hand creating masterpieces like the art in your game.

Personally, I find the use of AI art to fit quite thematically in a game that is technology oriented and futuristic.

I also appreciate the honesty, and the puzzle games look interesting. The use of Mac sprites also is neat. I much prefer the style to the more Chibi look of later Maker iterations.

Thank you for releasing your game for free as well. You might find some interested players in the open source community.

Lol my art isn't great, but I made it myself and am happy with it. The fact is that ai art is based on stolen datasets.

Inability to produce your own art doesn't give you the right to steal, use stolen art, or unethical tools.

I'd recommend picking up a mouse and learning instead! It's a lot more fun, you get a new skill, and you can make your game without stealing. It's nothing but wins, all the way down!

Who said you have to make masterpieces here?
Come on, you can do better than that, take a pen or a mouse and draw something. Anyone can learn how to draw, I learned at 30y old! So it's never too late.

I rather play a game with a stickman in rather simplistic pixel art than one with soulless uncanny beings made with AI.

I assume that you haven't played this game and your reasoning is abstract.
This project is not a collection of pictures. A total of 6 illustrations are used, 5 of which are generated by AI. And this is 1% of the game's content.

Maybe someday I'll learn how to draw. Thanks for this suggestion, it has already been repeated several times in this thread, I get it.

It's a pity that out of 6 comments, only 1 is about the game, and the rest are about one of the tools for creating it.

Gilgameshed, thank you for your support. I will take into account the experience of this project in the next games, and try to publish better content.

When people know a diamond is a blood diamond, that kind of becomes the defining thing about the stone. Its luster and brilliance don't matter any more, and rational people will only really care about that one facet, because the others have become irrelevant.

This is a controversial statement)

Ooh, nice, I didn't realize this was an option.

Since my game is blood themed, I think it would be cool to paint some art for it in human blood.
But don't worry, I won't like, take it from a living person, I'll ethically steal it from a blood bank.

Wow. I understand the issues with AI art, and I wish the OP had disclosed it more plainly without trying to hide it in fancy wording.

But I feel bad for the dude's game thread getting so derailed. Like, cool, the opinion has been expressed...anyone who cares about that can see from the existing posts that it exists in this game. It's been said.

Someone who feels comfortable including AI art in their game is not going to have their opinion changed by people on the forum, even if you browbeat them.

I think it's pretty rational to be more interested in whether or not a blood diamond is a blood diamond than how pretty a rock is, but that's just me :LZSlol:

Anyway, yeah - sorry for (as Turan rightly points out) derailing your thread. I just hope it's given you pause for thought, pal!

Thank you, Turan. I think it’s reasonable to express why one does not feel compelled to play the game (I’m in the same boat). But, we need to avoid turning every instance of AI into a fully fledged derail. OP disclosed it, and while I’m no fan of AI art, this type of disclosure allows informed decision making. Let’s stay on topic.

Hopefully my response is still on topic, but I feel I should reply none the less as I was quoted and I want to make my stance clear.

I don't think it is appropriate to publicly try and humiliate someone because they think differently than you do, and especially because they think differently than the majority. I think it is even more abhorrent to trash someone who worked hard to create something, and then decided to release their work for free.

All of us could be equally tarnished for whatever reason by whatever person in whatever groups for whatever shortcoming, line of thought or wrongthink.

And for what it matters, I do make my own art. I spent a year straight making the sprites for my game by hand. Something I haven't done in over 20 years. And yes I enjoyed it and I am proud of the results. And fortunately I have the war chest to be able to hire artists to make the work I am unable to.

But not everyone is in the same situation. Some have physical disabilities. Others are constrained by a life-work schedule and do not have the freedom of one who is retired or lives as a NEET. Some live in war torn countries where having the free time and ability to work on a computer is a rare blessing, rather than an everyday option. Others simply want to make a game and share their ideas, and are willing to use what tools are available to do so. It may be before many of the current userbase's time here, but there was a period in the history of RPGMaker communities where nothing was produced commercially, and everything was ripped from commercial games. People made projects for each other, and what mattered was the effort and heart put into the game. Not where the assets were sourced from.

Anyways that is my rant and response, and I want to say again @Phileas , thank you for releasing and making a game, especially for free for anyone to enjoy. If you do not mind, I may check out the inside of your project to see how your puzzles work. This is something I feel gives a game a lot of character, and good puzzles seem to have been a rarity since the days of Lufia 2 on the SNES. A really classic and underrated gem. To think I almost passed this one up in my youth because of the frontview battle system. I would say it taught me a valuable lesson. First not to judge a book too much by its cover, and second, that an RPG doesn't necesarrily need the best combat to carry it. Little things like this it seems can make all the difference.

Gilgameshed, thank you again)

I don't mind at all if you study the game from the inside. All data is not encrypted, and I did not obfuscate the code.

The puzzle code is in plugins Phileas_Wires, Phileas_Wordle and Phileas_BattleConfig. They are used in common events.

However, I wrote the code primarily for myself, so it can be difficult to figure it out. Do not hesitate to contact me for help if you want to implement mechanics into your game and difficulties arise.

For what it's worth. I think it looks interesting. I'm not big into sci-fi compared to like high fantasy.
But it's funny, the discourse is what is making me want to play it more than anything.

I think I'm more in line with what Gilg is saying. At the end of the day, it's a tool, not everyone has the same constraints/freedoms as others. Let my brother make his game.

I definitely understand the ethical component behind it. But tbh, I've got much bigger fish to fry in life than to worry about someone who used AI in their game.

Cool release, I'll check it out :)

I'm really sorry, because I know I'll probably be blue texted for this, but TBH I don't really care.

This is such a dumb statement. Okay, this is an extreme example, but if a crazed murderer thinks he's saving humanity by killing random citizens, I'm going to stop him.

There are plenty of things that I disagree with people about. Even stuff I find immoral. Smoking for example. I think it's bad and people shouldn't do it. Both my co-workers smoke, and I've never said anything. That's their choice. However, if they tried to tell me that smoking was good or safe, I would argue that point.

If I was doing something unethical, I would want people to tell me what I was doing wrong. I've been wrong before, and I'm sure I'll be wrong again.

I understand this. I'm not a huge fan of the "pick up the pencil" trend. Not everyone has to draw. That's okay. The issue is when you use an unethical tool instead. There are tons of stock photos and resource packs available. Trust me, I've made a whole game with no RTP that didn't cost me penny, and another that I used a character creator I had purchased.
Okay, great, so because people used to do something, that makes it okay. Nice. It's also funny that you mention heart and effort, both of which AI lacks entirely.


TL;DR
AI sucks, but you're free to use it if you want, just don't try to tell me it's ethical or whatever.


This whole thing is so dumb, because as Mr Phileas pointed out, the pics in question only make up a small part of the game. I can't imagine they would be that hard to replace.

And for the benefit of the mods, this is my last post here.

Good luck with your project.