These are slop, but it opens up to an interesting idea. Reverse engineering software isn't exactly an easy or quick process. AI could greatly accelerate that work. I'm not thinking for mashing two games for a quick video, but more like for Icewind Dale 2 rebuilds (the original source code is missing so no true enhanced editions exist). Or remastering old titles like Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura or even older games like Menzoberranzan and Stone Prophet.

I'm assuming the biggest hurdle to that would be lack of training against languages like Turbo Pascal and the esoteric game engines used to build the games. Still, if you had someone familiar with them (which helps ensure it doesn't turn into vibe coding slop), that would be impressive.

Minecraft had a similar problem even before AI drove the slop into overdrive. MCreator marketed itself as a code free means to create mods, and soon cookie cutter clickbait flooded the listings. The problems came swiftly as MCreator wasn't optimised and created numerous bugs or incompatibilities that the 'modder' couldn't fix without knowing how to code. They effectively became a liability to pack devs who would be refused support if one of these slop mods were involved.

Now we have AI accelerating the same slop for all games, with even shittier code, in a race to the bottom for the most clickbait garbage imaginable. These so called 'mash-ups' aren't built to play nice with other handcrafted mods, and almost certainly won't be maintained beyond their short-lived hypecycle.

It's all pump & dump mods cashing out before the waning novelty can't outweigh the shitty quality.

Eh. Mashup slop may look impressive on a technical level but ultimately it‘s just made for clips and clicks. There is nothing particularly interesting about these mods so far because the only people prompting them right now are AI bros. They lack creativity and a clear vision that gos beyond „What if Skyrim but you are Steve?“. It‘s painfully unimaginative so far.

My main concern downloading these decomps / mods / etc is malicious software.

AI local or paying for tokens isn’t free. It still takes time to even get AI to “do it for me”. These are just flooding my feeds. What’s the catch?

The first person to make one was interesting and a cool demonstration. But after that the rest are just boring copycats

Vibe coding needs to be shunned across the board. People need to be shamed for this shit.

I honestly hate it too, low effort slop is never very interesting. If anything, I find it to be garbage and a waste of time! Now if some real modders spent time and effort mashing up two games, that would be different...It would be impressive and fucking awesome. The efforts of slop simps are only worth contempt.

I care less about the IP usage. That shits been going on since someone put Mickey Mouse in Doom and Thomas The Tank Engine into Skyrim.

If all the AI companies can shit on IP then so can modders.

Ship of Harkinian, the PC port/decomp of TLoZ:Ocarina of Time runs so much better than any emulator I’ve tried. I am fairly confident LLMs are used in the process but there’s a lot of care put into it. Added features for speed running, changing behavior to act as the n64, GameCube or 3ds versions etc.

I think those are great but ‘Skate 3 in Minecraft in CODMW2’ just seems pointless beyond video ‘content’ 🤢

So bored with the whole debate. Anyone mad can just not play the fucking thing. Everyone is so eager to be a kill joy these days. Grow up.