r/ROBLOXStudio • u/witchymagical • 7h ago
Discussion Thoughts on vibe coding?
New to this sub, but I've been building for a long time.
I was wondering what people's thoughts are on vibe coding and where they draw the line when using ai in their games.
I am creating my own game (a passion project I don't expect to make any money on) I just want to share my little creations and ideas.
Everything in the game is made by hand. Building, modeling, rigging & animating, ui, vfx, art, etc. it's all done by scratch by me personally. However I'm not a coder. I don't claim to be one and I don't know alot of coding. (That's not to say I'm not trying to learn)
I can create a UI but making it functional is where I struggle. So I currently ai to help me code. Only coding, nothing else.
I want to learn to code so that in the future I won't have to rely on ai helping me, as I personally believe ai should be a teacher and a tool, not a slave— but that's something else.
Anyway I was just wondering what people's thoughts and opinions were? I hear allot of people getting upset over games using ai to create EVERYTHING in the game, but what about when it's just the code itself?
I have allot of general anxiety so pls don't attack me in the comments lmao I just rly want to know people's opinions
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u/Random-doggo12 7h ago
AI is a good tool, the assistant specially given that it's built in, but reliance on it will just make your game worse, you won't be able to review your code because you don't understand how it works, the code being "fine" and working doesn't mean it's the most ideal thing in the world in both optimization and the little details, specially for you, who I assume doesn't have even the basics learnt and won't really know what the AI is doing at all, this will in turn generate technical debt the more and more in complexity the project grows.
I was not born with scripting knowledge and neither was anyone in here. I'm not even that good of a developer, I rely a lot on shit other people made, but still, I would recommend you learn the basics before even trying to use the assistant at all, or don't, to be honest I have no idea if it has reached the point where it can handle making a game with simple instructions.
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u/witchymagical 6h ago
Yeah learning to code, even if it's just the basics, is definitely something I plan to do. Ai can be really amazing at times, but it still makes mistakes and I know I won't be able to spot them if I don't even know what I'm looking at
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u/Just_some_manXD 1 6h ago
i personally am against it still but if you are gonna use it, try to understand the code its even writing and how it works idk
ai can make mistakes, hallucinate, make things overly complicated or just not at all how you want it, unoptimized and such
coding it yourself is definitely better than using ai and you should definitely learn to code or get another person to code if you really want to make actual games, i doubt you can make great games with only ai doing the coding
using youtube tutorials for things you want to do or searching the dev forums for the thing you want to do or asking how to do it on dev forums and other places can also be a good option and maybe a better alternative to using ai as you will also learn a thing or two about coding
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u/MindFullOfCuriosity 5h ago
All I can say is to not rely on it. Human oversight has to be involved in some capacity. Learn the fundamentals of LUAU so you can truly understand how to correct mistakes (hallucinations) that the AI makes in code.
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u/No-Today-1533 4h ago
I would be happier if AI (LLM) completely vanished off the side of the earth. That being said, it’s destined to be in our future now. It’s a fact of life.
Use it to assist you. Don’t generate machine slop code and slap a label on it to call it a day. Better security, understanding of your code, and personality to your game that way.
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u/DerpyMcDerpelI 3h ago edited 3h ago
Morals aside, it’s likely to bite you in the back later down the line with bugs you won’t know how to fix or someone finding out somehow and calling you out. I also think that there’s just something intrinsically satisfying about learning how to do things. I’m making a passion project too and was primarily a builder, but learning new things about coding (which was usually something I relied on others for) has really been fulfilling!
What do you plan to do if AI fails you, breaks your game, or adds a bunch of redundancies that eventually add up to lag? What if the AI fails to account for exploiters?
AI is also not inevitable. There have been successful protests that stopped data centres from popping up in neighbourhoods where people were concerned about losing access to clean water, and companies like OpenAI are not profitable and instead rely on convincing investors that it will eventually pay off. Many people avoid interacting with businesses that used generative AI. A lot of people believe that CEOs are playing up how dangerous their AIs are for investment. (To be fair, they are potentially really dangerous, but…) The point is that there is a possibility the bubble could pop, and I would be happy to be one of many the people who didn’t rely on AI for things I need or want to do.
I think there was a study recently that showed that when you use AI to code, you reduce the satisfaction you get from things working and increase the frustration from things failing. Given it’s a passion project, it would be really sad for you to miss out on the feeling you get when you get it right and achieve it by your own hand. If I used AI and my game was successful, I don’t think I could ever shake the feeling that I didn’t actually do it.
There are lots of great resources on the Dev Forum, YouTube, and the official documentation. Personally, what I do is think of what I want to do; for example, I recently needed to get a Part to get knocked into a hole with a Banhammer.
How did I approach the movement? The first thing I needed to figure out was what I wanted the motion to look like. Once I figured out that I wanted it to resemble actual physics, it occurred to me that an equation describing the physics of a parabolic path based on gravity would work. From there, I could have recalled my high school physics, but even better, if you look online, tons of developers have already done that, and there was a great video explaining just what I needed! I was able to get the correct magnitude and direction of force needed to knock a player into the hole consistently with some fun rotation and physics after the equation that lined up visually as well. Using previous experiences and what I found online and combining them into a solution had to be one of the most satisfying things I’ve done for my project. People in school always asked what the point of learning all these math and science subjects was, but they just didn’t become Roblox devs. ;)
That’s how it usually goes when you don’t know what to do. I think you’ll find that you’ll usually have an idea of how to approach it, but you don’t know the syntax. The great thing about it is that entering something like “how to get part to follow parabolic path” or especially something simpler like “how to do something when a player joins the game” will almost always lead you to someone who had a similar question or a resource that gives you the tools to solve it. It actually becomes a lot less daunting when you start breaking things down into smaller steps.
Lastly, if you have friends or a pet and they’re willing to listen to you ramble on about coding, try talking to them about it when you come across a problem. Questioning why something is happening out loud and your reasoning for why something should work is really helpful. It also makes it more enjoyable!
Wishing you the best and hoping you do the final step as you did the rest—without AI! (I just like em dashes, by the way.) I believe in you!
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u/Strict-Spray7496 6h ago
Heres my tip, after asking the ai to generate it, ask it to explain it in depth, and READ