I built a game with ChatGPT, now you can too
2nd November 2023
Welcome to AI Collision.
In today’s collision between AI and our world,
Coding with the only language you’ll ever need to know 🖥️
My new padel addiction 🏓
Elon thinks AI is going to kill humanity 💀
If that’s enough to get your racquet smashing, read on…
AI Collision 💥 here comes an AI “appspolsion” 🚀
Alley Cat is an Atari 8-bit game from 1983. I first played Alley Cat on a MS-DOS based IBM PC in the 80s as a kid, after the game had been ported to IBM.
Yes, that paragraph is peak-nerd, I know. But it’s important to get a bit of computing history under your belt to understand why everything is about to change.
You might be familiar with MS-DOS. The Microsoft “Disk Operating System” was the predominate operating system language that IBM PCs (personal computers) used in the 80s.
You’re probably familiar with it, but if not, this is what the operating screen looked like:
This was how we used to operate a computer – as kids!
So it does go some way to explaining why computing and gaming is ingrained into the very fabric of kids that grew up in the 80s, this is the language you learnt as a kid – how a computer works on its most basic level.
And when you put in the right floppy disk, punched in the right command prompts and prayed the computer didn’t crash, you’d end up with a game interface, like Alley Cat:
The game itself was bundles of fun. To build a game like that back then wouldn’t have been an easy feat. You’d have needed to know how to program and code the game using the appropriate operating system language.
For me, I knew how to speak English, not how to speak computer. Even to this day, there’s no way I could build a game like Alley Cat, even in its rudimentary 8-bit form – I just don’t speak the language.
That is, until ChatGPT’s latest GPT-4 upgrades came along…
Now there’s only one language I need to speak, natural language. For ChatGPT, that’s English. And the only thing I need to worry about is how to best describe what I’m thinking in my head.
If I can do that, I can build an Alley Cat game, an application (an app) and I can literally build anything I can think of – and so can you.
Here’s where the development of public access AI has come to in just one year.
I was able to describe to ChatGPT’s Dall-e 3 the following:
“Photo of a horizontal vibrant home screen for a video game titled 'Alley Cat'. The design is inspired by the Atari 8-bit version from 1983 with the same name, so the game aesthetic is similar but different in that it's made for 2023, not 1983. Fun elements like cheeky, annoying mice, trash cans with fish skeletons, and a new york style alley dominate the background. The game logo is prominently displayed at the center-top, with stylized alley cat characters looking cheeky and mischievous ready for action on either side. A 'Play' button is located at the bottom center, surrounded by bits of trash.”
And here’s what it made for me,
This is the title screen for my imagined Alley Cat 2023 game. Of course, this is just a great picture. We all know that AI is now great for making pictures.
But what else can it do to take what’s in my mind, into a program?
I asked ChatGPT:
“Can we now create a simple game using matter.js and p5.js in the style of "Alley Cat"? To start with a "map" level where you can move the cat using the mouse and jump into an open window in the alley using 2D physics that takes you to that particular level.”
It gave me an answer, and I’ll show you in a moment, but I had to make some tweaks to the output. I made further requests:
“Can you do it so that wherever you click on the screen the cat will walk to rather than dragging the cat with the mouse”
It gave me this:
Now I’ve yet to actually go and run the program. But I can categorically tell you this: I don’t have the time or the compulsion to go and learn JavaScript. There’s no way in hell I’d ever be able to write out this code, unless I stopped interacting with my family, quit my work and went and learnt to code.
That’s not happening.
But what I can do is explain to GPT-4 what I’m thinking, what I want to happen, and then refine it from there. I can build worlds in my mind and then simply explain in natural language to AI what I want to come about.
I can build and code an application without knowing anything except how to ask for it. This unlocks something truly astonishing.
It means that not in the distant future, but right now, anyone has the tools to create an application, a game, to bring an idea to life without the frictions of having to find someone else to do the coding and programming and design.
AI puts creation at our fingertips.
It also means that the most important skills to have in the future might simply be creativity, an ability to relate an idea into language that AI can work with, and being able to use natural language.
AI gone wild 🤪
I just got invited to a padel group.
Yes, that’s right. I’m now officially part of the padel hype-wagon.
Padel, a bit of a mix between tennis and squash, is the fastest growing sport in the world.
It has exploded in popularity in Spain, Argentina and Portugal and is fast encroaching into places like the US (where it’s weirdly called pickleball) and the UK.
I would be surprised if you hadn’t heard about it yet, or perhaps you’re already playing it
I think we’re going to be hearing a lot more about padel. For any company that can corner the padel market, in a similar way to how Fitness First dominated gyms for a while, there’s some big money to be made.
Of course, you wouldn’t want to end up like Fitness First – carved up and sold off.
But corner the padel market and you can corner the world!
The industry that’s springing up around padel is crazy too. For example, I can rent a padel racquet for €5 when I go to play. But I’m not gunna. No way.
I mean business, so I’m going to buy a padel racquet. At a minimum that’s going to set me back €50. There’s the court hire fees, which aren’t much, but eventually I will definitely get proper tennis/padel shoes, maybe some new kit… I might even go full “Pat Cash” with my get-up.
But what’s all this got to do with AI?
It’s these industries that pop up around fitness and lifestyle trends that have the potential to make a lot of money.
When you can capitalise on lifestyle activities people are interested in you can build a successful business. Everything from apparel to devices and performance tools.
A few weeks back I wrote to you about Whoop, the fitness company that had begun integrating AI into its Whoop bands. In a similar approach, AI-enhanced swing analysis company SwingVision is now branching out its product suite to meet the growing demands of padel.
SwingVision allows you to turn your iPhone into a full-blown performance coach. It’d be like having Goran Ivanišević in AI-version watching your game and helping you get better… kind of.
It’s a comprehensive analysis of your performance on court, how you played and areas prime for improvement – all the detail and data you’d want to help level up your game.
Whilst built for tennis, SwingVision has expanded to padel too. It recently raised an additional $6 million to help with that expansion.
Considering some of SwingVision’s investors include former men’s world number 1 Andy Roddick and women’s world number 1 Lindsay Davenport, there’s some pedigree behind what SwingVision is doing.
I won’t lie, I’m pretty tempted to integrate it into my padel game, because if I’m going all out to play, I’m going to want to beat the pants of my opponents too.
AI in sports, performance and data analysis is something you should expect to hear more and more about. And I see a near future where everyone has AI strapped to their wrists either via a band like Whoop or through a smartwatch that has apps like SwingVision installed.
SwingVision is just another to add to the watchlist of fast-growing startups that are raising big chunks of capital for a promising future of AI in sports.
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) up 9.6%
Vicarious Surgical (NASDAQ:RBOT) up 9%
Veritone (NASDAQ:VERI) up 4.6%
Bust 📉
Brainchip Holdings (ASX:BRN) down 13%
Symbiotic (NASDAQ:SYM) down 13%
Datametrix AI (TSXV:DM) down 8%
From the hive mind 🧠
Artificial Pollteligence 🗳️
Weirdest AI image of the day
Bring your pet to work day – r/Weirddalle
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
"Machine learning is the hot topic in today's technology, and it's only going to get hotter. As machines and algorithms get smarter, they will reshape the way we live and work." – Fei-Fei Li (The “Godmother” of AI)
Thanks for reading see you next Tuesday, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
