14 October 2026
Content Sources, Tools, and AI usage
I wanted to write a post explaining more about what all I've been using to build the game, and also how AI has been involved.
My background (for context)
- I've been programming and building websites (and small applications) for almost 25 years now (I'm an old gray-haired dude).
- At various points in my life I was a full-time developer. That is not the case right now - I'm in a management position within engineering and design.
- I also have experience with UI/UX; most of my projects are solo developed and I've learned the full stack.
- My primary element is web development. But, I have also been involved in game development for about 10 years, helping a close friend with his games.
- I have also taught adult and college courses on design, programming, and game development (using C#).
- I've also dabbled with Objective-C, Swift, and SpriteKit, but never released anything.
This game's history
- I've been working on it in various capacities for over a decade.
- I only considered it a possibility about 10 years ago when my friend introduced me to game development. Before that the whole area seemed intimidating and I never looked into it.
- I originally built game prototypes with Unity and C#.
- My original assets were usually externally sourced models and Blender recreations.
- Honestly, I would pick it up every now and then when something inspired me, make progress, get disillusioned or distracted, and pause. This was the cycle for a while.
What changed last year
- About a year ago I started using AI to support me at work with web development. It started with helping me with a particularly challenging sorting and organizing algorithm. I hated that AI made it work, and that I could not follow the logic at all and change it.
- I kept "consulting" with AI in web development, and slowly got better at using it in a way that allowed me to maintain control of the project, the user experience, and everything else that matters.
- Today, me and my team do use AI every day. My products are used by thousands - so the quality expectations and the human element have not changed. But, we are shipping faster and using AI to find bugs faster.
- Inspired by this, I took parts of my old code and started cleaning it up. Most of it was refactoring so I preferred to keep control manually so the architecture didn't shift a lot. I also used this as an opportunity to move to Godot and give up on 3D.
- I especially spent many, many nights figuring out an art style I could deliver consistently. I studied a lot of modern games, as well as the historic ones. Age of Empires and Corsair Cove (which I had just played) inspired me to focus on a somewhat more realistic style that was actually easier to control vs. something more artistic and unique.
- I also used AI to generate some landscape style pictures to match my style. Those are used in the game main menu background and the website. I also used AI to recreate a geographical map of how the region probably looked 4000 years ago - that's in the game.
- The code right now is mixed up. Some of it is old. A lot of it is refactored. And just like work I have used AI for helping me with it, following the same standards as what I do for anything I write or deliver at work.
- Same applies to art, though it's a lot more obvious when something is AI generated. I do still use AI when it matches my quality, which is not always the case. But, the AI generated pots look out of place.
- I have also referenced a lot of freely available assets (legally) for animation. Though by now most of the animation is mine with barely any hints remaining of sourced work.
- Music and audio are all sourced from other places. I know some people generate them with AI - I don't. I do have a list of my sources and will be publishing them soon.
Questions and Concerns?
- I do get the concerns that the industry has had. 10 years ago it was about asset farming / asset flipping. Now it's about AI. I respect them. If you would like to discuss them with me, please send an email (the address is at the bottom of this page).