The "real-time" version looks awful with constantly shifting colors, inconsistently sized objects, and changing interpretations of the underlying data, resulting in what I would consider an unplayable game vs the original ASCII rendering.
The "better" version renders at a whopping 4 seconds per frame (not frames per second) and still doesn't consistently represent the underlying data, with shifting interpretations of what each color / region represents.
I've been trying to achieve the opposite of this project: render scenes in ASCII/ANSI in the style of old BBS terminal games. I've had terrible success so far. All the AI models I've tried only understand the concept of "pixel art" and not ASCII/ANSI graphics such as what can be seen on https://www.bbsing.com/ , https://16colo.rs , or on Reddit's r/ANSIart/ .
If anyone has any tips for how I could achieve this, I would love to hear your ideas.
We did a similar thing at tldraw with Draw Fast (https://drawfast.tldraw.com/) and it was very fun. Inspired a few knock offs too. We had to shut it down because it was getting popular on Russian Reddit. A related project Lens (https://lens.tldraw.com) also used the same technique, but in a collaborative drawing app.
At the peak, when we were streaming back video from Fal and getting <100ms of lag, the setup produced one of the most original creative experiences I’d ever had. I wish these sorts of ultra-fast image generators received more attention and research because they do open up some crazy UX.
I do not get the point of this at all, why not just generate game assets and run them in an engine? With this format there would be no regularity that the thing you saw before will look the same (and that is not a fixable problem).
Actually figuring out and improving AI approaches for generating consistent and decent quality game assets is actually something that will be useful, this I have no idea the point of past a tech demo (and for some reason all the "ai game" people do this approach).
The power consumption of modern gaming is getting a bit out of hand. This AI stuff is taking it to the next level.
Ray tracing and other forms of real time global illumination are extremely resource intensive approaches to lighting a scene. Every client machine has to figure out how to light everything every single frame. Contrast this with baked global illumination where the cost is incurred exactly once and is amortized across potentially millions of machines.
We need more things like baked GI in gaming. This class of techniques makes the development iterations slower and more deliberate, but it also produces a far more efficient and refined product experience. I'd be very interested in quantifying the carbon impact of realtime vs baked lighting in gaming. It is likely a non-trivial figure at scale. Also bear in mind that baked GI is why games like the batman series still look so good in 2025, even when running on period hardware. You cannot replace your art team by consuming more electricity.
Sci-fi readers who’ve read Ender’s Game will recognize this style of software as similar in concept to the Mind Game Ender Wiggins plays. In the book, the Mind Game renders a game world based on the subject’s mind (conscious, subconscious) in a mechanically similar way to how dreams work for us IRL.
This is awesome! I can definitely see it delivering value, especially over with procedurally generated terrain with 100s or 1000s of different terrain types and combinations—especially if user-defined properties get involved, ie what artists can't predict or prepare for, producing materials via something like https://infinite-craft.gg/
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 53.8 ms ] threadThe "better" version renders at a whopping 4 seconds per frame (not frames per second) and still doesn't consistently represent the underlying data, with shifting interpretations of what each color / region represents.
If anyone has any tips for how I could achieve this, I would love to hear your ideas.
While it might take a bit longer to generate, you're still saving network and authentication latency.
At the peak, when we were streaming back video from Fal and getting <100ms of lag, the setup produced one of the most original creative experiences I’d ever had. I wish these sorts of ultra-fast image generators received more attention and research because they do open up some crazy UX.
Actually figuring out and improving AI approaches for generating consistent and decent quality game assets is actually something that will be useful, this I have no idea the point of past a tech demo (and for some reason all the "ai game" people do this approach).
However, no reason this can't translate to df!
Ray tracing and other forms of real time global illumination are extremely resource intensive approaches to lighting a scene. Every client machine has to figure out how to light everything every single frame. Contrast this with baked global illumination where the cost is incurred exactly once and is amortized across potentially millions of machines.
We need more things like baked GI in gaming. This class of techniques makes the development iterations slower and more deliberate, but it also produces a far more efficient and refined product experience. I'd be very interested in quantifying the carbon impact of realtime vs baked lighting in gaming. It is likely a non-trivial figure at scale. Also bear in mind that baked GI is why games like the batman series still look so good in 2025, even when running on period hardware. You cannot replace your art team by consuming more electricity.
Wait a minute. Where am I?
I’m excited for AI rendered games.