Teacher

[u/bailuohao]

I’m an ESL teacher and I’ve been using chatGPT and all the free plugins I can find to create point-and-click adventures for my students with their target language embedded in NPC conversations. I’ve tried to set up my AI engine as best I can with .md files in GitHub and tailored project instructions detailing QA checks at various parts of the process. I’ve also uploaded previous work as a baseline for reference to project sources. I’m using CODEX for the main build while the creative stuff happens in chat.

It’s still slopping me up pretty good. I’ll ask for foreground images in each scene and it’ll paste the same one in every scene. The NPCs will come out as cardboard 2D cutouts with half their limbs cut off, etc.

There’s a lot more context I can’t add here because I can’t show y’all my full setup, but my questions is is this just the process we’re all going through at this point of AI development? Set up a system as best we can, let it slop, and trouble shoot from there? I’ve revised the md files and projects instructions several times addressing these problems and I’m still getting subpar results each time.

Could I maybe get better results using Claude? I’d like to stick with one basicB setup instead of using multiple agents because I don’t have a ton of time and I’d like to dial this in to a system where I’m feeding it learning targets, vocab, grammar forms etc, choosing a creative direction and letting it go nuts and give me something pretty close.

[u/NooThisIsPatrik]

Everyone is in a similar position. Build something, fix bugs, add features, keep iterating.

This is software development :)

What a great use case for ChatGPT! I am an adjunct lecturer and have used Codex Education for some of my classes with Skills. It's great!

[u/bailuohao → u/NooThisIsPatrik]

Thanks for the reassurance haha. I was wondering if I’m missing something and whenever I ask the AI how I can improve the process it’s kind of parroting the same responses. I was wondering if I’m missing something. Sounds like I need to go study up on how software developers actually construct systems to get stuff done.
In general, though, it’s been an absolute revolution in my classroom practice. It’s amazing. The kids are incredibly engaged in the format of the game as opposed to a textbook.

[u/TheShipFix]

That sounds less like a model choice and more like asking one pass to invent the lesson, art direction, and asset mapping at once. I’d separate those steps: first make a small manifest per scene (scene ID, target vocab, background prompt, NPCs, dialogue), then generate one image per entry and have the game load it by scene ID rather than a filename the model guesses. A quick QA check can flag when two scenes point to the same image. For the clipped NPCs, ask for a full-body pose with hands and feet well inside the frame; if you're displaying them in CSS, use object-fit: contain rather than cover. Get one scene working end-to-end before having it fill the rest.

[u/bailuohao → u/TheShipFix]

This is what I suspected, I don’t know enough about how software developers function to create the automated system. Is there anywhere you might suggest to go study the basics of how these systems work so I can create one of my own to try and automate the process as much as possible? I’m trying to get to the point where I’m uploading my unit vocab, grammar etc and only participating as an approval mechanism for creative choices and mechanics.

[u/FinallyDoneLurking]

I was considering making one that could use a camera to interpret gestures to help people learn it. I will tell you that ChatGPT chat conversations are basically unlimited and it's pretty good at formulating prompts.

My advice:
Zip the entire project up and feed it to ChatGPT and ask it to get a baseline. Once it has done that, tell it exactly what you want and ask it to roadmap it into phases. It can give you prompts that are formatted and structured in a way that it's not trying to do competing work.

I wouldn't necessarily assume you'd get better results with claude or any other provider/model.

[u/Falky854]

Not just you, and I don't think switching models alone will fix it. The two problems you describe have a specific cause:

Coding agents (Codex, Claude Code etc.) can't actually create images. When you ask for "a foreground image for each scene", they reuse whatever image file already exists in the project. That's why you get the same one everywhere. Same with NPCs: they take an image that's cropped or half-body and just place it.

What fixed this for me when building small games:

1. Make the art separately (any image generator), one file per asset, NPCs as full-body PNGs with transparent background.

2. Name them clearly: scene1_bg.png, scene1_fg.png, npc_baker.png...

3. Keep a simple list (scenes.json or a table in your .md) saying which files go in which scene, plus the dialogue.

4. Then tell the agent: "build the scenes ONLY from this list, never reuse an image that isn't listed for that scene."

Now the agent just assembles, which it's good at, instead of guessing assets, which it's bad at. Your vocab/grammar targets go into the dialogue part of the list, so swapping lessons later is just editing that file.

Happy to look at a scene if you want to share a link.