As a solo game developer, you need skills in many different areas. You have to be able to do much more than just coding, which I would consider my main skill, because it also involves writing texts, crafting dialogues, digital drawing, 3D modeling, and translations. Since I work alone, I unfortunately cannot cover many of these areas as well as I would like to. Nevertheless, I have to manage if I want to deliver a complete game.

It is often expected that you pay artists to handle these tasks. However, since I earn next to nothing from my work as a game developer, the only budget I have comes from my main job, and it is correspondingly limited. At the moment, it is not conceivable to outsource all the work to artists with this budget.

With the small budget I do have, I still try to purchase art whenever possible. Therefore, I acquire as much as I can from the Asset Store, from real artists or even studios. I dedicate a lot of time to searching the Asset Store, not only to avoid AI where possible, but also because browsing there often inspires me.

Unfortunately, I don't always find a suitable asset for every situation in the Asset Store, so I have to think about how else I can obtain it. And this is precisely where AI comes into play.

I use it to generate dialogues or in-game texts, to have my own texts proofread, or to translate them. I also generate images, for example, one is included in my game O.M.N.I.S.: Overnight Train, but I try to avoid using a flood of AI-generated images. In the same game, I had characters speak dialogue, so I used AI to generate the various voices. I also use AI for translations. And sometimes I even use AI for programming, though often just to estimate the runtime of individual functions. I taught myself programming and I'm not a professional developer, so this kind of support helps me write more efficient code. I handle most of the programming work myself, precisely because I want to learn more in this area and master it better in the long run.

All in all, by my own reckoning, I use AI consciously and purposefully.