I'm a night owl so picked up the Nt+ first thing this morning i.e. late my last night! I think I was first in line lol. The timing must be fated as well: I just backed a KS for retrogameforge, basically a devkit/engine for NES/SNES games. Same guy who did nesmaker, though I never tried it out.
I'm just glad to have held off on buying from ebay scalpers: screw them and scalpers of any kind.
Now if only 8bitdo would re-release those purple button SN30s!!!
@Reigunn1 I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what pixel art is: the (sometimes self-)imposed size and palette limitations, the intentionality of pixel placement and color, and the overall creative process of visual/artistic abstraction help define it.
All digital art/media is composed of pixels, it's just that "normal" art is usually of a resolution where individual pixels are indistinguishable. Thus, we've already seen what pixel games have grown into: regular games! Ta-da!
As far as AI pixel art, I guess it's capable at larger sizes. But as a counterpoint, let's say we take a high-resolution picture of an Italian plumber and continually reduce the resolution (ignoring the different compression algorithms). As we do so, we lose more and more information, like kentucky fried memes. It will probably still look recognizable for a bit but if we stop when that plumber's eyes are only a pixel or two, do you think we'd have a good representation of Mario? Again, pixel art at smaller sizes requires a great deal of creative thinking and visual abstraction, human judgment and artistic expression. The compression takes away information; the pixel artist creates/transfers information.
From Derek Yu: "In Super Mario Bros., Mario's eye is just two pixels stacked on top of each other. So's his ear. And his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, explained that the reason why he has a mustache is because they needed it to distinguish his nose from the rest of his face. So one of Mario's most iconic features was not just a character design choice but also a pragmatic one! Proving the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention... and giving us further insight into why pixel art is so interesting."
@AshleyAshes 'I know someone's gonna say "I don't care if it's AI so long as it's good"' Thank you for preempting the AI cheerleaders! This and their other trite "arguments" never fully address the concerns brought up, whether it be creative, social, technical, etc.
There may be cases for AI but right now, it all seems to envelop the worst cases of tech: move fast and break things, an "easy" button, the blockchain/crypto gold rush, commodifying culture and expression under the guise of democratization, etc.
The AI cheerleaders will call me a luddite which is ironic since I have a Computer Engineering degree and worked (unemployed now and you can probably guess why) as a (mainly .NET) developer. I'd say I have a decent understanding of tech from transistors, bare metal and binary to CPU architecture and logic to data structures and OOL. But I've also delved into art and writing, love classic literature, workout, and cook (even professionally for a time). AI can't experience or extract the totality and intersectionality of the human experience and make intuitive or creative leaps. It is a facsimile of people and produces corrupted, incomplete, generalized facsimiles of human output. Addressing the technical output, if people are discouraged from doing things an AI could presumably do, I fear we may lose industrial and organizational knowledge. Working from first principles, familiarity with prior advancements, and making intuitive and creative leaps are fundamental to technological and human progress. A future where we hit a tech bottleneck because we outsourced all our thinking is definitely possible.
For those AI cheerleaders, I ask you, have you ever put components on a breadboard and made an LED blink? Have you made a drawing or sculpted something that you were proud of? Have you ever put any effort into putting something out into the world that was created through study, hard work, time, sweat, blood and tears?
Comments 4
Re: 'I Hope This Wonderful Game Lives On Forever' - Panzer Dragoon Saga Gets PC 'Recomp' from the Dev Behind Yaba Sanshiro
Hey AI chatbot, make me a rom of Panzer Dragoon
Re: Analogue Unveils Super Nt+ & Mega Sg+, Updated Versions of Its FPGA-Powered SNES & Mega Drive Consoles
I'm a night owl so picked up the Nt+ first thing this morning i.e. late my last night! I think I was first in line lol. The timing must be fated as well: I just backed a KS for retrogameforge, basically a devkit/engine for NES/SNES games. Same guy who did nesmaker, though I never tried it out.
I'm just glad to have held off on buying from ebay scalpers: screw them and scalpers of any kind.
Now if only 8bitdo would re-release those purple button SN30s!!!
Re: 'It's Taken 35 Years' - Moonstone Is Getting an AI-Assisted Update for the Amiga 1200
@Reigunn1 I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what pixel art is: the (sometimes self-)imposed size and palette limitations, the intentionality of pixel placement and color, and the overall creative process of visual/artistic abstraction help define it.
All digital art/media is composed of pixels, it's just that "normal" art is usually of a resolution where individual pixels are indistinguishable. Thus, we've already seen what pixel games have grown into: regular games! Ta-da!
As far as AI pixel art, I guess it's capable at larger sizes. But as a counterpoint, let's say we take a high-resolution picture of an Italian plumber and continually reduce the resolution (ignoring the different compression algorithms). As we do so, we lose more and more information, like kentucky fried memes. It will probably still look recognizable for a bit but if we stop when that plumber's eyes are only a pixel or two, do you think we'd have a good representation of Mario? Again, pixel art at smaller sizes requires a great deal of creative thinking and visual abstraction, human judgment and artistic expression. The compression takes away information; the pixel artist creates/transfers information.
From Derek Yu: "In Super Mario Bros., Mario's eye is just two pixels stacked on top of each other. So's his ear. And his creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, explained that the reason why he has a mustache is because they needed it to distinguish his nose from the rest of his face. So one of Mario's most iconic features was not just a character design choice but also a pragmatic one! Proving the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention... and giving us further insight into why pixel art is so interesting."
Re: 'The Community Aspect of Decompilation Has Been Broken' - decomp.dev Closes in the Wake of AI-Based 'Bad Actors'
@AshleyAshes 'I know someone's gonna say "I don't care if it's AI so long as it's good"'
Thank you for preempting the AI cheerleaders! This and their other trite "arguments" never fully address the concerns brought up, whether it be creative, social, technical, etc.
There may be cases for AI but right now, it all seems to envelop the worst cases of tech: move fast and break things, an "easy" button, the blockchain/crypto gold rush, commodifying culture and expression under the guise of democratization, etc.
The AI cheerleaders will call me a luddite which is ironic since I have a Computer Engineering degree and worked (unemployed now and you can probably guess why) as a (mainly .NET) developer. I'd say I have a decent understanding of tech from transistors, bare metal and binary to CPU architecture and logic to data structures and OOL. But I've also delved into art and writing, love classic literature, workout, and cook (even professionally for a time). AI can't experience or extract the totality and intersectionality of the human experience and make intuitive or creative leaps. It is a facsimile of people and produces corrupted, incomplete, generalized facsimiles of human output.
Addressing the technical output, if people are discouraged from doing things an AI could presumably do, I fear we may lose industrial and organizational knowledge. Working from first principles, familiarity with prior advancements, and making intuitive and creative leaps are fundamental to technological and human progress. A future where we hit a tech bottleneck because we outsourced all our thinking is definitely possible.
For those AI cheerleaders, I ask you, have you ever put components on a breadboard and made an LED blink? Have you made a drawing or sculpted something that you were proud of? Have you ever put any effort into putting something out into the world that was created through study, hard work, time, sweat, blood and tears?
Whew! I had a lot to get off my chest!