The Visuals in This Sci-Fi Shooting Game Are Made by AI: Here's How to Play
A Japanese programmer has released a playable video game built from AI-generated art.
The programmer, who goes by the name Nao_u, created the 2D game over a three-day period. The result is a horizontal-scrolling sci-fi shooter called Shoon, which is similar to Nintendo classics such as Darius or R-Type. You can play(Opens in a new window) the short game on a web browser.
But rather than hire a human artist to create the spaceships and vehicles in Shoon, Nao_u tapped an AI program called Midjourney(Opens in a new window) to develop the in-game art, which includes the scrolling background and the title screen.
Similar to the DALL-E 2 program from the OpenAI Institute, Midjourney creates images from a text prompt. For example, if you type in “spooky Victorian haunted house,” Midjourney will attempt to draw an image depicting just that with sometimes stunning results.
Nao_u decided to use Midjourney to create various sci-fi battleships and other art assets for his Shoon game. “It's a matter of luck if you can get the material you want, but if you're good at it, the AI will create an inexhaustible amount of variations,” Nao_u wrote(Opens in a new window) in a Twitter thread documenting the game’s development.
メカ系の素材は「starwars x-wing spacefighter flying from left to right in black space, armored core for answer, high quality」の呪文でガチャをひたすら回してたら偶然出た「背景が真っ黒で横向きのメカ」の絵がすべての祖先になってる (赤丸のやつ)これを運に頼らず安定して再現したいなぁ… pic.twitter.com/xhyqjbZleA(Opens in a new window)
The game demonstrates that it's possible AI algorithms can help video game makers complete some of the art for their projects, according to Nao_u. But Midjourney still has some serious limitations. For example, the program struggles to create images seen from a top-down
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