A wave of AI-decompiled mashup mods has taken over X/Twitter this week.
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.
Way back in the late 1990s, there was Slige, a program that generated Doom maps procedurally. With rather nice results, too. So people started posting these maps and saying they made them by hand. Map download sites had to start banning them.
So yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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.
Agree. It’s interesting to me for a hot 30 second and after that it’s really just nothing special. Kid siblings playing with Ken and Barbie alongside with 40k is much more interesting than this. It’s interesting if people create a story with the mashup, it’s not if it just exists in its current state. It will definitely slowly fizzle out for the next few weeks.
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.
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.
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 catch is that a data center drained half a lake processing it, loses money in the process but the „vibe modder“ gets to make revenue on Youtube with ads for the clips I guess. I bet many of these creativity vultures have a patreon too. If you‘re anything like me you chuckle at a Mario 64 in Elden Ring clip and keep moving on, though. Why would I want to play that when both games separately are much more fun?
The water usage thing was debunked and really needs to stop being used. It just invalidates the argument when used.
Fun fact: The California almond industry uses more water than AI datacenters.
Using the worst widely known misuse of water as a straw man argument is a little pathetic, no? The water usage from AI data centers is still pretty high, especially when you consider many are doing it without a permit, which is the actual issue and reason a lake could just vanish. Besides, global warming isn‘t getting easier with all those gas turbines either, contributing to more droughts.
That would only be a straw man if that is an oversimplification of the issue (not sure how “drained half a lake” is not a distortion/oversimplification, but I’m guessing you read that with blinders on). My following comment in this thread clearly shows that is not the case, so I’ll take what you say as ad hominem.
If you really want to get into fallacies though, sure he’s the others you committed:
-
The phrase “the actual issue and reason a lake could just vanish” implies there is only one real issue and that I’m ignoring it. This frames the debate as a binary: either you care about vanishing lakes or you’re making pathetic arguments. That’s a false dilemma.
-
Phrases like “a lake could just vanish” and “global warming isn’t getting easier” are designed to evoke alarm and urgency without connecting them logically to the original point. That’s appeal to emotion.
-
Your comment pivots from the original topic (water usage comparisons) to a different issue: “permitting… which is the actual issue”. That’s a red herring.
-
Motte and Bailey also as the whole “Well, they still use a lot and many are unpermitted” (that’s a motte: a hard-to-dispute claim). Those shifts are used be people without a point to appear victorious without defending the original position.
You‘re looking way too deep into a comment that incapsulates multiple facets of the issue just fine to diverge from your problematic „but it‘s not as bad as this worst misuse of water you‘ve ever heard of“ comparison. Your claim it‘s hard to verify is laughable as is your first semester social studies level of analyzing an argument. I guess one way of winning a debate is to just bore everyone to death so bravo.
Me: States facts based on USDA published data. Internet Nobody:
I guess one way of winning a debate is to just bore everyone to death so bravo.
Ad hominem means you have no actual point that can stand against what I said. So, yes, I did win lol.
-
Not debunked, misreported
There’s been lots of reports done on the subject. In the end, low estimates put it between 68-75 billion gallons annually, high estimates closer to 230 billion gallons. That seems like a lot, right? The USDA reports total agricultural usage at 26.4 trillion gallons. That means 0.88% of the water used for ag.
This is where the the argument usually breaks down because someone will argue that:
- Water is a scarce resource
- US-Ag provides something of substance
If it is a scarce resource, than why is only 0.88% of that resource important enough to save? That then transitions to providing something useful, but usefulness doesn’t magically remove the scarcity that they just claimed as the main issue. Is destroying the resource for almonds really a valid reason? It’s just counterpointing their own argument.
AI datacenter water consumption does have a footprint (especially when factoring in hydropower used not just cooling), but to say it’s “draining lakes” or destroying the environment while ignoring everything else is just bad faith.
AI datacenter water consumption does have a footprint (especially when factoring in hydropower used not just cooling), but to say it’s “draining lakes” or destroying the environment while ignoring everything else is just bad faith.
Brushing it aside just because other matured industry does worst is not only bad faith, it’s also whataboutism. These AI datacenter only exists for about a few years, and they’re building more. It’s not only water usage, it’s known to produce noise, and also consume a lot of power that caused a price hike. The issue even goes beyond this three, ram shortage, people getting fired because of the hype, the ever bloating AI investment, just to name a few.
Just because wild fire is burning hectares of land every year doesn’t make slash and burn an ok practice.
Or you know, we can say no to both.
I’m highlighting the fact that none of these other points are ever mentioned. Only the debunked one is mentioned. That’s by definition not whataboutism as I don’t have to address the validity of an already debunked claim.
FYI for you, if someone raises a point, that point gets debunked, and they keep raising it anyway as if it’s still valid, then the other person pointing out “that specific claim was already debunked” is not committing whataboutism. That would be:
Rejecting a straw man: refusing to re-litigate a claim that has already been shown to be false.
Holding the line on established facts: insisting the conversation move past a disproven talking point.
Vibe coding needs to be shunned across the board. People need to be shamed for this shit.
I am genuinely amazed there are people left that utterly believe shame works in the information exploitation age. What rocks have you all been living under?
In this day and age, where all the kids rely on instant validation for everything they do- shame would absolutely motivate these kids to stop pretending they have skill and go back to being basement dwelling losers.
Point being, there’s a big difference between:
“Look at my slop!! I had nothing do do with how it turned out!”
“Wow! That’s amazing! You are talented!
and:
“Look at my slop!! I had nothing do do with how it turned out!”
“You’re a giant piece of shit for pretending to have skill and you bring shame to the house you pretend to belong to.”
If people stop validating these clowns. They’d stop doing it.
Yet clowns are in our parliaments destroying our games. I am not validating clownery. It’s just that shaming hasn’t worked for decades now.
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’ 🤢
The Spiderman skate 3 mod looked pretty cool if I’m being completely honest…
The first person to make one was interesting and a cool demonstration. But after that the rest are just boring copycats
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.
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.
Yeah hardware got too expensive to play anything anyway. Just go play in a field. Woops! There‘s a data center now. Lets take a swim in the lake then. Woops! The data center drained it.
These funny mashups and crossovers are fun. I didn’t play any yet, but I have a blast watching those clips and knowing the community goes wild.
