Shout-out to the Overtime Podcast for being human

https://www.teamfortress.tv/65830/welcome-to-overtime-podcast

this leads to an obviously larger discussion about slopware outside of tf2 so ill just skip to that point

a lot of this vapid shit is being churned out for people to smugly cross their arms and say "look at what I made!" with the goal of farming twitter likes and getting a pat on the back from a bunch of uncritical people who are optimistic about this tech. some of it is useful (ML chroma key in the vfx industry, for example) but it feels like a drop in the ocean compared to I Created Modern Warfare Two With Master Chief And Linkin Park. now every idea guy from san francisco can engagement farm by prompting just straight bullshit and when you give it criticism a swarm of little rats come out to confront you or tell you to let people enjoy things. im sure plenty of these people believe they are doing some act of nobility but its hard to look past the immediate sense of self importance that ultimately came from typing "claude please make a cool tf2 community website"

hard to get past the feeling that this is a really incredible technology that could make the world a lot better but instead its in the hands of dipshits who just want to get clout/spread misinformation/waste resources on the ratepayers dime and could lead to some very dark times Lole but maybe it wont doe :D

might as well delete the Projects subforum at this point. maybe the counter strike one too while at it lmfao (shoutout to wickedplayer)

The discourse around it is so odd. So for example some guy goes into psychosis in the protfx thread and says he wants to cut Coppers head off with a sword because he used AI. It's puzzling because this isn't even a case of "Oh this only exists because of AI", Copper has been making pug sites long before vibecoding was a thing. So obviously he could be coding it himself entirely, but why? It's a free service to the community and he saved a lot of his own free time. He technically even invested money into it if he used tokens. The implication here is that you absolutely need to suffer long, grueling hours making it completely per hand for the community. Only then we might just consider the project. Take shortcuts and we will fucking murder you

That's the thing. You can just choose to ignore slop projects. If you believe the "creator" is doing it for clout, the best course of action would be to just completely ignore it instead of giving it any form of attention.

softwarebros don't care if what was made is good as long as it's made

every game's modding community is awash by illiterates shitting out claudecode projects that run badly and have severe compatibility issues with every other mod but pointing it out is seen as in poor taste because, like, AI is, like, the hecking future, bro :/

The contempt is crazy

yes. enslavement or death for all programmerSS

appreciated, always want to do more with what I know and what I can reach.

I will say on the matter, I might get flak for this but, I think it depends on who is making it and what is the purpose and how much Vibe coding is put into it, let's take https://tf2esports.com for example made by mitch and a few other devs, we all know it has a bit of AI coding in it but most is man made, it has been in development for 3-4 years before it was officially released and it's for the community to help keep all the regions and matches and news in one place and still updating to have it be convenient for everyone which you definitely need a whole ass team to do if it was fully man made and having them be consistent which let's be real we are not a big enough community to do that or care enough to do that.

I think it's a fine website to have because of the usage of AI to help keep things up to date in matches and other smaller tidbits that is not easy for a human to make consistently like world rankings in both 6s and HL, the news is always covered by people (shoutout to tekszi and mitch for covering a bit of news), API is shown at the bottom of the website, along with partnering with Dribble.tf, logs.tf, demos.tf, and most of the leagues to help the website keep it consistent.

it's huge problem in the foss world, endless slop projects that get abandoned immediately when the meat proxy gets bored and moves on to the next idea that solves no real problems, endless slop pull requests for real maintainers to waste time sifting through, etc etc etc. it's not something to just ignore because the fatigue of constantly seeing it is real

yes, there's plenty of legitimately useful cases even if you put aside how you feel about the World's Largest Theft Of Everything plagiarism machine (you cant use ai for projects like Wine since there's no guarantee 0 microsoft code was trained on, etc), but most people are not linus torvalds carefully debugging the linux kernel with claude's help, it's people who want to smugly feel like they've skipped the learning process straight to the internet glaze because they got claude to shit out software that worked long enough to farm twitter likes on a doomfist in elden ring video

something that has sort of worked in other communities has been to blanket ban project posts with less than x months of github activity to at least filter for projects that demonstrate the author has enough dedication to maintain something

to take this one step further, this conversation dovetails immediately into how ai use effects online communities and even ai use in general.

i believe the following are worthy reads:

https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/no-such-thing-as-just-a-tool

https://blog.fallible.net/it-breaks-a-village/

I’m gonna be honest after reading both articles, I’m taking back on what I said.

Give it a read, it’s actually really good with a lot of experience and emotion shown on the second article

Yeah echoing what Gaz said that the discourse is very strange, like this thread sort of devolved into ai discussion but like labricecat said the vast vast majority of the projects posted recently are obviously ai assisted/ai oneshot if you know what to look for (don't even need to go to github for this, there's a very particular Claude style for front end specifically) and yet many of them have seemingly very positive reception. My guess is because mightyme was upfront about his lack of technical expertise, but you know I sort of also doubt that everybody else posting the other projects were somehow idk React experts or something.

If anything it doesn't really incentivize not using AI, given that many of the projects are well received, but it does incentivize either lying about using it or obfuscating the usage as much as possible lol. which is bad for obvious reasons.

I think it is pretty normal to have a knee-jerk reaction to AI generated/supported content, when most of the stuff you see online are 'one-shots' and barely involved any effort.
It's insane how much content and output is being created the last few months, but I would say the people caring to spend even a bit more effort and treat it as a proper project is less than 1%.

So I get most of the hate but at the same time, why not just ignore it? For those who are not into it - just ignore it and move on.
For those who want to contribute, be very critical and share your thoughts because it helps to improve it.
Over the past few weeks I've had quite a few people (top players even) try out my game and thanks to their feedback I was able to get more ideas and turn them into tangible results.

For me personally it's all about learning new skills and having fun. In my day job I work at a software company but on the sales side, not technical. I am literally training our large CPG clients (Nestle the biggest one for example) how to use our Agentic AI solution to run their business processes better and find more value... so why not try to use my prompting skills and build a whole game?

You can have personal views against AI and personal taste, completely fine, but every single industry is being transformed right now. Finding the right way how to use it in your advantage is going to make a huge difference vs those who are simply resisting it. Video game industry included

I believe that most GenAI supporters are extremely ignorant of what craft is and they despise the idea of responsibility. Like #3 pointed out, they always say "I built this. I wrote that" and then you look at the repo and 99.9% of it is Claude, but whenever something goes wrong it's suddenly not their fault but a hallucination in the model, alignment, not the right harness or some other bullshit excuse (2 weeks away from AGI, remember).

Imagine if any of these projects were two humans instead. One, a domain expert who has incredible technical acumen and is as productive as AI can be, while the second is just an idea guy. Would the idea guy be so brazen to steal all the credit for the first ones work in the same way they do with AI? Would the prompter take the credit for all that's good but blame everything that's wrong on the actual programmer?

First off, how are they being transformed right now, exactly? From my perspective, of a simple consumer of goods, is that everything is being enshittified, just like it used to, but at an increased rate (not to mention the price increases). I don't see any miraculous new software that completely alters the paradigm or makes some kind of task we've been accomplishing before redundant. What I do see is a bunch of abandonware, where self-centered people with no respect for any sort of expertise prompt a model to create something that already exists but ends up inferior in every way, and how that same project ends up abandoned after some time because of lack of tokens or because the sloperator moved to another bad idea of his.

I'm also witnessing complete and utter disrespect of principles and values for what FOSS stands as well as devaluing any and all work made by those who made those tools possible to begin with (by having it scraped, processed and laundered of any licensing or authorship metadata). Not to mention how this statement is just utter FOMO and just another way of saying "Adapt or you'll be left behind".

I think all creative spaces, including this forum, should adopt a blanket ban on all of these vibeslopped projects. Other places like Doomworld (doom modding forum) or Slipseer (quake modding forum) already adopted a policy like that and it's not unenforceable.

I've also got a good read on many issues with generative AI
https://aphyr.com/posts/411-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess

it's literally how it works in real life. Elon Musk is the ultimate example of an idea guy.

every single one of your posts reads like its generated by an llm after you prompted it to own your enemies with facts and logic how are you not embarrassed to be like this

What...? His post is clearly not written by an LLM

I'm not a big fan of AI myself but MightyMe is completely correct in that regard. I believe you are being denialist if you argue his point. Pretty much every industry has adopted the use of AI. It's faster, it's cheaper and the biggest factor is that the average joe doesn't care what kind of vibecoded mess lies under the hood, as long as the product itself works for the intended use. They simply don't. I'm sick and tired of seeing those same chatGPT posters advertising events or restaurant menus. Unfortunately that is the way things are. We can talk about philosophical or psychological aspects all day long but it won't change the general publics sentiment towards AI. This is just cars replacing horses all over again. If your breadwinning is affected by AI you better learn to work with it, it's only gonna get worse. Closing your eyes and singing to yourself won't change the fact that this bullshit is here to stay.

As for the vibecoding projects ban, there should be clear rules to it. I'd disagree to ban every project with AI code outright. I believe projects that serve a clear, useful purpose should stay, as they might've not existed in the first place without AI.
So a good example is this: https://www.teamfortress.tv/66710/tf2-demo-salvage

A good counterexample for something that is lowkey nonsensical but was only made because of AI is this: https://www.teamfortress.tv/66658/im-building-tf2-in-rust-and-javascript-in-the-brow
Nobody would even tackle that project without AI, there is just no reason to.

i agree with u in the same way that i agree we've already invented firearms and there's no putting that back in the box, but there's definitely still a place to discuss whether or not we need to let everyone be allowed to run around shooting off at whatever strikes their fancy

everyone will obviously have to 'adapt' in some form to the existence of new technology, your grandma must learn to use her banking app or whatever, but i think just running with adapt or be left behind is both reductive and avoiding talking about why ai development and rollout could be better for everyone involved. right now we have this hyper fast, fuck you and the laws thing that's happening right now.

an example of technology that's trivial to run around and do great good and harm with is the low cost of money and expertise to using radio frequency. on one hand communications and PNT over RF is great, but it is also absolutely trivial to set up a comm/gps jammer at home or in your car.

while there's plenty of legitimate home use cases by the individual for RF use, whether it is the radio emitters in their router or phone, we've managed to have a mostly sane policy reaction to spectrum use. letting people run around and jam up the frequencies with all their random stupid homebrew hardware projects didn't seem like a good idea then, and i fail to see how AI use should be treated any differently in that aspect. there's also much to be said about the ridiculous pace of ai/ml development and its effect on trying to wrangle effective policy but throwing up your hands and pretending this is all inevitable doesn't sit right with me

Thanks Gaz, appreciate it.

Since this came up, I can explain how I interact with all LLMs, because I don't trust them. I run them on the scientific method as laid out by Bacon and refined by Popper. In this specific project, Valve is the authority, not me and not the AI, and my own guesses are hypotheses like anyone's. Every claim gets tested, more than once, and every ported rule cites the SDK or a binary address. A flaky test is a defect, not noise: code is deterministic, so a test that isn't deterministic means something underneath is wrong, and we chase it until it isn't. I have the AI attack my conclusions as hard as I attack its, and hooks enforce all of it so we can't forget or quietly weaken the rules.

You're right that the project probably wouldn't be done without AI either, because the time it would take me to do by hand would be unrealistic. I know C# decently, I've been hobby coding and self learning for 20+ years, but I don't know Valve's conventions and haven't done much Ghidra or Cheat Engine work, so the time needed to trace variables, functions/methods, and loops in Ghidra, trace the assembly in Cheat Engine, learn Valve's conventions, look up C/C++ syntax, look up the C# syntax I always forget, check Microsoft docs to see if there's an easier or better way of doing it, and write the code, would mean the project would take years and never be done. There is zero possibility I keep my depression and motivation under control for years doing this project by hand, alone. Possible, sure, but not realistic.

Reading this thread reminds me of when I had to read Horkheimer and Adorno for school. Worthwhile read: https://irp.cdn-website.com/e401e78b/files/uploaded/adorno_culture_industry.pdf

1942 btw

Off topic but the restaurant menu shit is legitimately blackpilling like it's so obviously repulsive and yet ppl, who ostensibly should know food no less, just put that shit on the menu?? It's like always the mom and pop shops too I went to one recently and felt a chill down my spine looking at the menu, didn't take a picture but spoiler is similar in spirit (you have been warned).

I just had a look and damn, you're right, all the first three pages of threads in that section are all mine. Whew.

I know you jest in a way, though I would be doing people a bit of a disservice if I didn't say that I'm honestly beginning to question maintaining CS2 service here beyond the end of 2026/early 2027, especially given the mass consolidation of its esports scene into it functionally being tier 1 only, with T2/T3 basically left in absolute shambles (Valve killing off CS:GO Lounge's gambling did quite a number on T2/T3 viewership). I mean, yes, ESEA still exists technically speaking, but in name only, because FACEIT owns it, overshadows it, and all the infrastructure is on FACEIT nowadays. CEVO is gone. T2/T3 largely continues to thrive mainly outside of NA, but in NA, is basically on life support, and even it may not have long for the world. I'll look to provide sufficient advance notice if I do decide to retire TFTV service for CS2, just like I did with Spiral Knights everywhere back in mid-2022 (that game was under my wing mainly because it was one of the few that was blessed with using Steam's inventory service when it was hot and new, but they divorced from it in May 2019, and then entered a long period of inactivity beyond seasonal server-side content switches that Grey Havens is seemingly only starting to thaw out of this year).

I will say though that TF2 service here, despite the game itself obviously being in super-long-term maintenance mode nowadays, is secure for the foreseeable future for as long as I keep on doing the news.

That said, I'm at a bit of a critical juncture overall. My Ivy Bridge system is continuing to run well past its useful service life on more and more layers of figurative duct tape and hopes and dreams. Deadlock's release cadence tends to be largely incompatible with my available time nowadays, never mind attempting to run it or another Source 2 title given that Dota 2 has actually tripped my power supply's OCP on occasion. I've still got an AMD 5950X system to put together which I'll hope to have accomplished before the end of the year...but I said in /r/Dota2 that I hoped to have it all taken care of by Canada Day in 2025. And here we are in 2026 almost in 2027...you know those layers of duct tape and hopes and dreams? Takes quite a while to get that all reconciled. Not to mention other occurrences in the meantime, like xPaw deciding to hand off long-term SteamDB maintenance to Nexus Mods (I can't fault him and am inclined to trust his better judgement despite a lot of people seemingly having very valid reservations about Nexus - for me, it's a wait-and-see sort of affair), reddit slowly but surely enshittifying itself in plenty of ways to the point where the "old" site's days are almost certainly now numbered (and are, if you aren't already using it), and our premier Wab Kinew deciding to put his signature on punting Manitoba to permanent CDT/EST with a grand total of 6 weeks' notice rather than it having functional effect in April 2027. I was already giving some thought to how timing will work going forward, given that I have been eyeing the possibility of some greener pastures in Genshin and/or HSR to avoid collision with the other CST, and the eventuality that I'll definitely need a sovereign toolchain of my own, but man...

I'm tired. :/

Windows 12 AI is coming

You understand how posting obviously LLM-generated text in this thread like this is disrespectful and doesn't help your cause, right? I've never signed up for ChatGPT or Claude in my life, yet I've seen so much nauseating LLM output over the past 4 years simply by virtue of wanting to spend time online (my fault, I guess). If you can't be bothered to flesh out your prompts into coherent paragraphs using your own human mind, how can you expect others to spend their own time reading anything you post? When I see LLM-generated text, my default expectation is that either a) this is a bot reply/some sort of scam, b) this is a non-native speaker naïvely trying to translate their text into English without realizing that LLMs will often distort the original tone of what they were trying to express, or c) the person hasn't really thought deeply about the implications of what they're submitting, as otherwise they would have defended the idea with their own words. Only in the case of b) do I really have any sympathy. Even then, if we're talking about something "serious" like someone submitting a pull request to a project, I'd prefer it if the person posted their original text in their native language (maybe as a collapsed spoiler) alongside whatever their LLM gave them so that we have additional assurance that the submitter isn't yet another person wasting the time of a maintainer.

None of this is a comment on how useful your AI-assisted project may or may not be, how capable frontier models are at this point in time, or whether it's justifiable for people to use AI for writing code if the resulting code yields a product that can benefit others and likely would not otherwise exist. This is primarily lamenting the fact that throughout history, humans have continually come up with new and innovative ways to be rude, annoying, and generally antisocial to each other. We now live in an era where people have to reflexively distrust any text they read, any image they view, or any song they listen to until they've observed enough signals that indicate that what they're looking at is authentic and worth paying attention to. (Maybe this is less of a problem for people who were never paying that much attention in the first place to the things they consume.) Photoshop released over 30 years ago, but generative AI has massively increased the ease with which people can put slop in front of everyone's eyes (e.g., the awful restaurant menus that Gaz and springrolls mentioned) to the point where I feel like the level of trust erosion isn't really in the same realm. You can clearly see why many people view generative AI with justified apprehension and hostility, and it's worth reflecting on how you can better interact with others if you want them to hear you out. Step #1 in that process: don't post AI-generated text without a disclaimer.

I agree with you that clear enforceable rules are important. In a perfect world, we'd have some sort of tagging system where people would tag their projects with an "ai-assisted" tag if they used AI, and those of us who would rather not see those projects could filter them out. Since that probably isn't in the cards, then at minimum, people posting projects should be upfront about the degree to which they used AI so that others can quickly decide if they want to keep reading or spend their time looking at something else. Maybe some of these posters will feel that this is an unfair demand if, in their view, AI is "inevitable" and already everywhere ("why do I need to mention my AI usage if everyone I know is using it or will be using it one day?"), but I really believe that it's a considerate thing to do in a community space and people should want to do so even without a hard rule in place.

As someone who used to play HSR and quit before Castorice but still looks at leaks on occasion, all I can say is godspeed.