Video game development is a task that requires long hours of work . Even for simple games, we must have extensive knowledge of programming languages, design, and more . However, chatGPT can help us create a game from scratch without in-depth knowledge in this field. We’ll cover that today: how to create a game using chatGPT without knowing how to program.
The use of artificial intelligence can bring us many advantages. Many users have seen their performance in any specialized field increase because AI can make certain tasks easier for us . These powerful tools cannot replace humans , but they can help us develop a project with our assistance.
ChatGPT
It’s impressive how advanced artificial intelligence has become and how it can perform such complicated tasks. Lately, we’ve seen several uses for this tool and how well it performs them. We’ve seen how it can compose songs, solve math problems, write articles, generate images , and many other things. It’s true that we must be alert to potential errors , although for the most part, it performs extremely well.
ChatGPT is one of the most widely used tools by users. The artificial intelligence created by Open AI has been one of the most popular and most accurate in its responses. This AI was launched in November 2022, and at that time, we could only enjoy the paid version . Today, Microsoft has included this useful tool in its browser for free.
This artificial intelligence is a chatbot application tuned with supervised and reinforcement learning techniques . GPT-3 was the first version released by Open AI, capable of providing very detailed explanations, although factually inaccurate. In March 2023, GPT-4 was released, significantly improving the previous version. Currently, more than 6 million people worldwide use chatGPT .
What should we keep in mind before creating a video game?
Like any request we make to the chatbot, we must be very precise about what we want to get the best results . To create a video game, we must also specify what we are asking for and review what this tool generates . It is not necessary to know any programming language to assist it, although it would be an advantage in case of errors .
The first thing we need to be clear about is what game we want to create. Considering we have no experience in game development, we can start with a simple 2D video game . Once we have conceived the game idea, we must select a development suite to implement it. Let’s look at some of the game engines we can use for our game.
Game Maker Studio
Game Maker Studio is primarily used for 2D video game development . It has its own C-based programming language, GML . This can be a drawback for inexperienced users, although it offers the ability to create simple games without a single line of code . It offers the ability to create various types of games, such as top-down racing games, role-playing games, classic platformers , and more.
Unity
Unity is a cross-platform game engine that allows you to create both 2D and 3D games . These games are compatible with Android, PC, iPhone, web browsers, and other platforms . This engine was created with the intention of democratizing video game development, which is why it is widely used by independent developers . Its programming language is C# (C# Sharp) , one of the most widely used in video game development.
There are other game engines that can be used, but if you don’t have any knowledge of game development, it’s better to use one of these. We don’t necessarily need to use development suites for creation; we can develop directly using only the programming language . However, any game engine helps us simplify a lot of work.
How to create a game using chatGPT?
It’s time to ask the chatbot to help us create the game we want from scratch . It’s also important to specify all the details we want to the AI and the programming language we’ll use to develop it. Let’s look at an example of a very simple game we can make with the help of chatGPT without needing a game engine.
Snake
Snake is a very simple game . A snake moves around the screen collecting food, so it grows each time it collects food . This time, we’ll use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as our programming languages , since we want to run it in the browser. Just type “I need the code in HTML, CSS, and JS to make the Snake game” and you’ll have a portion of the code.
Yes, part of the code, because little by little we must add the functionalities to complete the game . Initially, we will receive the code to move the snake and we will have the apple , although we will not eat the apple and we will not crash into the wall . ChatGPT will write the code for us separately in HTML (.html), CSS (.css), and JavaScript (.js) .
We’ve already got one part of the game down, now we need to ask it to write the code so that when we eat the apple, the snake grows . It’s important to check if what this artificial intelligence generates is working. If it doesn’t work, it’s a good idea to re-request what isn’t working, or we can have it correct what it already generated .
The final step to finish the game would be to ask chatGPT to generate the code for game over . This time, we must check that the snake dies when it hits a wall or any other part of its body . We can also have it generate code to keep track of the score or change the background color when it eats an apple.
We’ve now got the snake game ready. It’s a fairly simple game, but for someone without any experience in video game development, it can be extremely difficult to make.
Is it necessary to have knowledge of programming languages?
It’s true that chatGPT can do all the hard work for us when developing a game, but it can make mistakes. If our goal is to develop slightly more complex games, it’s best to have basic (or not so basic) knowledge of the programming language we use . You can certainly use this same tool to correct it, but correcting it may increase the errors in the code.
And that’s all for today, let me know in the comments what game you’d like to develop.
