Nice article. There's another option for pixel art that's recently been coming into vogue as tool usage improves in LLMs which is procedural graphics.

I actually experimented with creating a set of skills around rendering early AGI style EGA graphical scenes, and it worked surprisingly well.

So rather than storing full bitmaps, you instead store sequences of simple drawing instructions designed to recreate some specific scene - like you would an SVG.

As a result you end up sidestepping a lot of the problems with larger generative models, which can have issues with grid alignment, palette choices, and high-frequency noise.

https://github.com/scpedicini/agi-stylist

https://kq-styles.specr.net

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nonethewiser an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect your picscript language is an entirely unnecessary abstraction and the prompt (ie the model) is doing all the work.

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badsectoracula 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

How so? Judging from the examples the model does seem to take advantage of the language (creates and uses reusable elements) and AFAICT the language itself compiles down to "real" Sierra PIC commands so in theory it can be used with a Sierra PIC viewer/engine.

	▲	nonethewiser a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah compiling to Sierra PIC is a unique advantage over asking the model for an image. But the claim im attacking is different. The claim in attacking is that you cant just tell it to produce images like this directly. >As a result you end up sidestepping a lot of the problems with larger generative models, which can have issues with grid alignment, palette choices, and high-frequency noise. All of these can be avoided with simple prompts and don’t require all this ceremony. https://claude.ai/share/78cd63c8-ffdd-4569-8de2-ac8ab5c5cfe0

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armcat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is very cool! I will try your method for background and tile creation in the asset-generation tool I've built [1]. Would your procedural method work for animations as well, like sprites?

[1] https://github.com/acatovic/ai-game-studio

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thijson 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks great. This could be a form of image compression.

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satvikpendem 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly, turn something nondeterministic into something more deterministic and AI does a great job at that.

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westsmith 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Neat! I've followed you on Github. I like the idea of going to the past to see what works and adapting it for the LLM age. Nice work!

	▲	vunderba 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks! Yeah, I started building it because I read an interview with the original creators of King’s Quest, Ken and Roberta Williams where they mentioned in passing that it was too expensive (in the 80s) from a storage perspective to store entire bitmaps for each scene, so instead they'd just store a series of very simple drawing instructions and render on demand. I’m super excited to see more LLM-driven procedural graphics stuff in the future!