IF Seal: I used an LLM to make IF and now I feel stressed and conflicted about it!
I used ai for my code and now I don't know what to do. When I started using it I thought it's okay as long it is mostly original but now I'm apparently a diabolical piece of shit who hates the environment. My game is really specific code wise and im really ambitious, so I was constantly stressed trying find help on how to do this and this. I just realized how bad using ai for anything was like two weeks ago. Idk if I should go on with my game and make a blog or just throw it all away. Like I'm 95 percent done. I'm scared if I continue what reaction I'll get, and idek if I deserve to be in the community. Should I just redo the whole thing? At the same time, using the ai wasn't a walk in the park either considering my goals. I'm so confused and stressed, and I have no motivation to continue whatsoever, even though I low-key need the patreon profits. This was supposed to be a project to slowly get my feet off the ground, making money doing what I love, but now my dream was just crushed. The conversation around ai is so confusing, like one second its not bad and the next you're lazy and a horrible person. Idek how to move forward or how to handle a future situation where I'm stuck with complicated code. This was a lot but I just needed to get that off my chest. Ik im not 100 percent innocent, I've just been holding that in for a minute.
Dear Stressed Friend,
In the kindest of ways, you made a mistake.
You tried to shortcut without a solid foundation and are realising the limitations of doing so.You do not mention which IF language you are using, but if you were planning to release a game with Hosted Games, you cannot publish there with genAI material.
LLMs are often wrong and you won't know how to fix the errors they create - it will also be hard to spot if there are errors at all if you don't understand the code you're using. This is one of many reasons why the professional narrative designers and game writers I know do not give LLMs the time of day (to put it mildly).
Whatever coding language your project is, there are plenty of people who are keen to help you understand how the code works. Asking questions and putting effort in to learn will enable you to develop your skills, work independently, and understand what you're doing in order to do your creative work.
With time and work you will reach a point where the creativity of code and writing can work together wonderfully and you'll have the potential to do this with more confidence.
You sound very anxious and so I would recommend not starting a blog: certainly not a Patreon. Instead take some time to evaluate where you're at and work on your coding skills.
It may not be easy at first but we all start somewhere. I wish you well.