Hey everyone,

Updates: We have officially created Spicy Bread Productions, LLC! We have a real bank account now, with a debit card to boot! It feels a little surreal, to be honest. I think this year of 2024 will be a big year for us, and we have a lot of things planned in the next few months. I'm definitely excited, but I am a bit nervous, as well, thinking about making big steps in directions that I don't have a lot of experience in. I would love to hear about anyone else's experiences in exploring new endeavors with a looming uncertainty on the horizon, because it certainly feels very scary! Overall, we are very excited, and we hope you guys really like what we bring!

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I wanted to use this devlog to talk about some decisions we made early on in the process of developing this game: using AI to generate art. I think the buzz words, Artificial Intelligence, are everywhere right now--and while AI is amazing, it's also very dangerous when used in the wrong hands. I have a background in AI, ironically, as I have been a part of medical imaging AI research (specifically, knee and brain MRIs). I am pretty familiar with a very popular AI model, DALL-E, a text-to-image model made by OpenAI. It's honestly pretty amazing, and it generates some pretty sick art. 

We had an early discussion about the usage of AI art in our game...and the general consensus for us is: that while it's amazing and would save an incredible amount of time and money, it's not cohesive and wouldn't look exactly the way we want. And that's super important to us! I'm not really an art expert of any kind, but I know that Annie is very particular about her vision and how she wants things to look, and I think that's a great thing! Part of our game's charm is the art style, and Annie loves certain types of styles that she really wants to incorporate, like Art Deco, a defining art movement of the 20th century. (She also really likes Art Nouveau, but we had to choose one style for this game. Maybe she'll revisit it again in another game! 👀 )

Finally, we decided to only use DALL-E for placeholders for the actual art as I started coding our visual novel. It's pretty simple for me to eventually replace the placeholders with our artists' work, but it is nice to have something to look at when alpha-testing! I also got to play around with some DALL-E generated art, which was super fun for me! I've included a couple of examples down below. It's really amazing to see what AI can do, regardless!

Most importantly, even as indie game developers with not much money, we want to respect artists for what they do, and how much talent and sweat and tears and time go into producing such marvelous work. We want to properly compensate artists for the incredible work they produce and create, and for that, we will work hard to raise capital and figure out budgets around this rule of ours. It's one of our small company's most important beliefs that we will stick to, no matter what. At the end of the day, we believe that it's not real work if it's not from real people. Although in our small business, we all wear many hats, we respect that we are all trying our best to create something worth it for you guys to play.

 *Of note, all DALL-E generated images have a little trademark in the bottom right corner that is a series of color blocks, and that's how you will know that those images were generated by DALL-E.*

The generated cathedral shown above is honestly gorgeous...and it's really a testament to what AI is capable of. But I also really believe that AI is still just an amalgamation of what limited images it's been trained on and that there's something about human artists and their real emotions and capabilities and experiences that shows something different on the page. Believe me, as someone who believes in AI and what it can do for the human race as a tool, and as someone who has worked in a lot of research pertaining to AI and medical advancements, I understand the limitations and the boundaries of what you can do with AI. And I also understand the ethics of forcing creative arts and media into what is essentially data science, and I realize that there is a reason why art is not a science, per se, and should not be. 

Also, some thoughts about the lore...Annie has always planned to have the color palette of the game be essentially very pastel purple, blue, and grey. Even if the backgrounds won't look too much like these in the end, it will be remembered that everything has to start somewhere, and this is where we able to formulate at least something discrete to look at and exist. We are very thankful to AI and DALL-E to make that possible for us!

See you next time, 

Rat