r/gaming • u/shadowartist201 • 1d ago

How will Capcom's "RE Engine" evolve? This is the future that new project "REX" strives for (hint - it's AI)

https://gamebiz.jp/news/433531

On October 2nd, Capcom held its own tech conference where programmer Satoshi Ishida presented "The prospects and future of the 'REX' Project, which will further evolve RE Engine for the next generation".

In this presentation, Ishida explains that even though RE Engine has been used to create many high-quality titles, several major challenges have arisen over time.

1) The scale of the games has gotten too large. Because of increasing game sizes, the waiting time to see the results of small adjustments has increased and is slowing down development.

2) There is now an increasing number and diversity of users. Since everyone at Capcom uses this engine (especially overseas devs and those with prior experience with other engines), we now require a system that is easy for everyone to use and supports multiple languages.

3) AI technology is rapidly evolving. Implementing AI into the development process is now a requirement for streamlining future development.

The "REX" project was launched to overcome these obstacles and consists of various systems that will be added to the current RE Engine:

  • RE:Dox - This system will allow high-speed data processing (like for character movement or screen display) using a standardized internal structure.

  • RE:UI - This system will allow smoother use of development tools. Unnecessary UI elements will be removed and streamlined and internal communication has been changed from a two-way system to a one-way system that only triggers as needed.

  • RE:Log - This system will change how errors are logged and displayed. Instead of using plain text descriptions, the errors will now use codes that can be looked up in various languages. Logs will also be stored in the cloud instead of locally.

  • RE:Flows - This system will allow developers to try out coding ideas without the need for complex systems. It employs an easy-to-understand visual interface that converts any actions into C# code that can be used later.

  • RE:Runtime - This system will provide a framework that can convert C# code into a custom version of C++ called "RE:C++" that will allow it to run at ultra-high speeds. It also improves memory management.

Ishida commented that these technological advancements will ultimately lead to the grand goal of "a game engine for the AI era". The "REX" project unifies the entire system with one of the most common programming languages in the world. It has the significant advantage of being easy to use for human developers, while also being easy to read and understand for AI. With the unified base language, AI may eventually be able to understand and automatically create programs itself, or perform QA tests to check for bugs.

Furthermore, Capcom has released some technologies, such as RE:Dox and RE:Log, as open-source to help with AI learning (https://github.com/CAPCOM-TD-Oss).

214 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

132 comments sorted by

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u/IcyPhysics155 1d ago

I know I’m gonna get hated but using AI as a tool to help with grunt work is not a bad thing. Now using to AI to do art and story then that’s an issue

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u/enn-srsbusiness 1d ago

Well maybe. Except I've been at companies that fired 50 juniors with one week notice because they can just use AI. That's 50 people w/o jobs just because. Grunt work for some is hoe you learn. Maybe even they like the 'grunt' work and solving problems. Should 'artists' be the only one's protected?

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u/itobitobi 23h ago

Without “grunt work” aka junior work, we can’t have senior work. Firing juniors is a really bad idea.

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u/Arbejdstilsynet 12h ago

There's no reason to believe that AI won't be able to do the work of seniors in five years time

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u/TheRealGurd 1d ago

The issue is that no one is ever truly "protected" from bad management and stupid decisions, no matter what.

Think about it differently. If a company has 10 people who all do the same thing, and an AI tool comes around that can do 10x the work a single person can. Bad management sees that and thinks they can just get rid of the 10 people and replace them with a single AI tool. But if you give those 10 people the AI tool, you can significantly increase your work output.

No one is immune from the kind of bad management that makes these kinds of decisions, and that's a problem that's entirely independent of any amount of AI, and has been basically since the Industrial Revolution.

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u/RatBot9000 1d ago

I hear this a lot, but I feel like it's rare we hear about these supposed success cases where productivity goes through the roof. Instead it's always "firing a bunch of staff because AI" or "AI speeds up one area but slows down another so ultimately it's barely a gain of productivity."

And it's hard to imagine all these places are doing it wrong. Even Epic games, owner of arguably one of the most successful and popular games of our generation, fired 1000 staff. You would think they would want to ensure they have a lead on Fortnite development and put more staff to work on other games or updating the Epic Games Store, but instead the staff who are left just have to work harder but now with AI.

I think what is more likely is that we are very close to the productivity ceiling. If endless growth were achievable and AI could produce it, no one would be getting fired. That capitalism is rushing to take on AI but then also firing a great many people means they know, deep down, that the technology is at best a way to keep current production in the short term with less people and at worst a scam they can use to justify firing people.

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u/interbingung 1d ago

But if you give those 10 people the Al tool, you can significantly increase your work output.

Not really, sometimes they just don't have the work. So its correct for the management to fire the 10 people, if later they figure out the need for the 10 people people then they can hire again.

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u/Ok-Employment-6946 1d ago

yeah i guess its just about bad management deciding to fire people instead of using the tool

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u/noyoto 1d ago

We needed social protections before AI and we need it now. The problem is not the technology. The problem is our lack of rights. 

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u/Every-Cow-1194 10h ago

Since when do you have a “right” to a specific job if you’re not a contract employee?

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u/noyoto 8h ago

We should have the right to a dignified and safe life, whether we have a job or not. And we should all reap the benefits from progress. I understand that this is not the default, but it's what we should be fighting and voting for.

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u/Zama174 1d ago

this is really "oh man the fields hands lost their work when the john deer was in invented" shit

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u/geezerforhire 1d ago

Except that is unskilled labor.

Replacing entry level coders with AI is all well and good. Until 5 years later when there are no new senior coders.

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u/FoxMeadow7 23h ago

Why not both?

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u/PepegaFromLithuania 1h ago

They will just find another job, there are more vacancies than ever before.

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u/interbingung 1d ago edited 1d ago

No one is entitled for a job, if the 50 juniors service is not needed anymore then yeah they should be fired. What do you expect ? The company should waste their money to keep paying them for nothing ?

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u/Solesaver 1d ago

Junior developers has always been a net expenditure for companies. If companies could only hire senior developers they absolutely would. There's just been a long held understanding that you hire juniors who will one day become seniors. Maybe not for your company, but everybody hires some amount of junior developers and keeps the pool healthy.

You never needed the 50 juniors in the first place. A well run company just recognizes that they exist within a larger context than 'minimize expenditures while maximizing revenue.'

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u/interbingung 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes firing 50 juniors doesn't mean they fire ALL the juniors. They may keep some juniors to keep the pool healthy.

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u/shadowartist201 1d ago edited 1d ago

There's a slide from the presentation that says "AI is not a replacement for humans" in really big text. It also mentions that the time saved by using AI for grunt work will allow humans to focus on "creativity", "feel", and "passion", which are the "true values of a game".

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u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre 1d ago

In my experience, if your company says: “AI will help you focus on more valuable conversations and productive work.” mass layoffs are about to happen and the remaining employees will be expected to pick up the slack with AI tools that absolutely do not make up for the loss of co-workers you relied on and the drop in morale that follows.

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u/AsrielPlay52 1d ago

Yet you decided to clickbait everyone here anyway

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u/notthatguypal6900 1d ago

You will get hated because you it's never just for the grunt work, never.

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u/Memfy 1d ago

Overall most people have similar sentiment, but there's an additional layer of problem where there is no clear agreement on what the grunt work is exactly. Some consider some parts of coding an artistic expression, some consider some background 2D/3D assets (e.g. magazine covers in a convenience store) more of a "whatever" which could likely be put under grunt work.

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u/Solesaver 1d ago

It doesn't really matter what the objective line is actually. From a human centric perspective "grunt work" is work that a human who needs the work done and would otherwise do themselves doesn't want to do. They don't care who does it, just that it gets done. If I'm writing code, and I get to something very boilerplate, so GitHub Copilot makes a suggestion, that's grunt work. If someone else is writing code and he's to the same boilerplate, but they are very particular about how it is structured, then it's not grunt work.

The actual dividing line between 'AI as tool' and 'AI as evil' is how you treat the people involved. If you give an artist access to AI and it allows them to be massively more productive, that's 'AI as tool'. If you fire an artist and have the work they had been doing get done by an AI, that's 'AI as evil'.

If you're using AI as a tool to increase productivity, there's absolutely no reason it should result in downsizing and layoffs. You're literally being more productive. The landscape of the job market could shift as maybe demand for labor guess down, but these massive RiFs don't make any sense from an 'AI as tool' perspective.

That's what people are finding so frustrating. The AI isn't being used as a tool to improve productivity. When MoCap animation really took off nobody thought it was taking jobs from hard-working animators. It allowed animators to make better animations faster. Everybody won.

What's happening with AI is these companies are spending more money to make worse products and firing all their humans to balance the budget. This disaster is only possible because late stage capitalism has all the money and power tied up in a relatively small tech bro hive mind and geriatric WASPs that just want to increase their vault of gold.

If anybody else actually had the capital to compete, and consumers actually had money to vote with the advent of AI wouldn't be this disastrous. People make games. The fact that these mega tech corporations have poisoned the well has effectively removed what could have been a very valuable tool from those people's toolbox.

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u/Memfy 1d ago

To follow your example from the first paragraph, if it is only a matter of the willingness of the person creating it, then when would you object it being used anywhere and consider it a valid objection? How would you distinguish between what the person wanted to do and what they considered a grunt work and didn't want to do it so they delegated it to a machine producing it for them? Wanting to get something done cheaper and faster can also technically be filed under "doesn't want to do it, but would do it if needed" label, especially if you are doing something solo or a in a small team.

I don't think people would particularly be happy in general in a hypothetical scenario where the entire team got everything generated but still kept their jobs, even though that's technically just boosting productivity and would therefore not be under your evil label. But I'd bet many would be unhappy with such a product because it would feel more like a cash grab than a genuinely crafted product.

Plenty of people are trying to use it just for boosting their productivity (especially solo developers that might not be skilled in a specific area and don't have the money to outsource it to a person), but from the vocal audience I've seen only a minority accepts it in visual assets for example.

I agree with you in general about the whole situation in the industry and how negative it impacts the workforce and all. I'm just saying I don't full agree with the first part where you're drawing the line of "good vs bad" usage so to say.

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u/Solesaver 1d ago

I think you're missing the point that I was making. Nobody can make anybody hire somebody to do "grunt work" for them, and it's a questionable claim that someone using AI for "grunt work" would have hired somebody to do it instead if they couldn't use AI. It's not really even a question of "can afford to" vs not. It's just a pure, unsubstantiated hypothetical.

That's what I mean by it doesn't really matter how you define "grunt work". Choosing to use AI as a tool to boost your own productivity is not inherently denying somebody a job. On the other hand, if you had somebody doing a job, and you fire them and try to give their job to AI, it also doesn't really matter if their job was "grunt work" or not. You fired somebody and replaced them with AI. You objectively took away somebody's job and livelihood. There's obviously grey areas where these companies try to skirt around what they're doing, like "oh we're downsizing to balance the budget" when the budget got bloated with AI investments that didn't pay dividends the way they were expected to. That's the more interesting nuance than whether the specific task is "grunt work" or not.

To put it into a different realm, think about "immigrants stealing our jobs". It's always a tenuous argument to claim that an immigrant was hired instead of a local. Sure, maybe they'll work for less, but maybe the business wouldn't be hiring at all if they couldn't get workers for immigrant prices. This is the case whether than immigrant is a fruit picker from Mexico or a software engineer from India.

Now to be clear, there are other very legitimate arguments to be had about many aspects of AI use and immigrant labor. My point is I disagree with the framing of "grunt work" is ok to pawn off onto AI while non-"grunt work" is not. It could be the exact same task, and the ethics of using AI for it would vary greatly. If Alice starts using AI to put funny images in her slide show, and Bob fires the person he used to have putting funny images in his slide show and has an AI do it instead, I would argue that Alice is having the AI do "grunt work" while Bob is not.

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u/Memfy 1d ago

Think I understand your point a bit better now, but I have to add that it seems like your point slightly misses (or ignores) the initially presented point. If you were only adding yours on top, then my bad for misunderstanding your intention. But if not, then I'll just elaborate on what I mean.

While your point on why introducing AI can be detrimental to people working is perfectly valid to make, in this context I think the more prevalent point is just the ability for AI to make art (or maybe better phrased, wanting any art to be done by humans only). As you can see in the first comment in this chain, and it's quite a common opinion, doing any visuals/story is often considered a no-go, while doing code with AI is mostly acceptable. But they also had a caveat of sort, where they are fine with "grunt work" to be done with AI. I just wanted to present that "grunt work" is very loose to define so it seems to me like that approach of "it's OK if it's grunt work" can be legitimately expanded to the point where they probably wouldn't agree anymore that AI is doing the work.

Overall I (probably) understand what they were going for, and I agree to a certain extent, but it's worded in a way that is too open for various interpretations.

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u/Solesaver 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's more that I was agreeing with you a bit and challenging the "grunt work" dichotomy. I think people don't really understand what work is involved in coding or art, and the desire to say "code is fine, but art is not" really underscores this.

My goal was to springboard off of this idea that "grunt work" is okay to have AI do, but give a better understanding of what that could entail. "Grunt work" is the part of the work that the human doesn't want to do. It's not a type of task, it's the way that task fits within the larger operation.

By using the framework I presented here I think we can draw a better line that won't let "It's fine to let AI do grunt work" go beyond what people find to be ethical. If it's someone's job, it's not grunt work, so it's not ok. If it's a part of someone's job that they don't want to do, and getting AI to do it can free up their time to do more important work, it is grunt work, and it's fine to have AI do.

I'm thinking about the drama about Hank Green using AI to assist him with research for his podcast "Ask Hank Anything." There was this massive pushback that "Hank Green can afford to hire an assistant to help him do research! He doesn't need to use AI for it!" And sure, he could do that, but in the context of what he was doing it just wasn't that kind of production. In a different context, sure, it would have made sense to hire a research assistant. In fact, he literally does that for other productions he runs. He's not out here trying to replace human jobs with AI. He was just trying to use AI as a tool, which is good.

Humans are people. AI is a tool. Humans shouldn't be getting used as tools, and AI shouldn't be getting used to replace humans. I think that's the most important principle to hold onto in this whole debate.

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u/Memfy 19h ago

It does feel like a better framework, although there is still a bit of vagueness on when one would consider someone's job vs just something they don't want to do, and possible implications on technology advancing in general. Just because we are paying someone today to do that, does not mean we should necessarily encourage new generations to chase the same positions because we might fully automate them without any loss of the product's soul so to say. But at least it does seem significantly more consistent from a quick consideration.

Thanks for the good discussion.

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u/Good-Two5733 1d ago

i get that, but if AI can make the base code, how much of the "art and story" is left for humans to actually create?

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u/SaltyShawarma 1d ago

If you are using LLMs for basic everyday stuff, then yes, you are an idiot and the LLMs make you complete things faster because you are an idiot.

Coding grunt work and statistical modelling is where it is actually useful.

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 1d ago

Most people get irrationally angry at every mention of the word ai, no matter the context.

It's just a tool that, when you know how to use it, can make things a lot more efficient. This doesn't mean "Hey, chatGPT do my entire homework for me." Or "Create the story for this game based on this description [...]" .

I've used it to look up scientific sources when working on various assignments. Which is faster and better than using any other tool like Google Scholar for example which it's very limited by comparison.

It's also surprisingly accurate at helping you troubleshot technical issues. Neither Ubisoft nor Microsoft could help me with an issue I had with my PC, but ChatGPT was able to identify it in less than 15 minutes.

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u/TemperateStone 1d ago

We've not quite yet begun to understand the possible consequences of reliance on AI, even for simple tasks or research purposes. Though there are hints that it's making people unable to do these tasks without it, forgetting how because they rely on and entirely trust the AI to be accurate and truthful.

There are ways to prevent this overreliance, but AI is a tool to make you think less and make you do become dependant on it.
An argument could be made that there are many things we've developed to make our lives easier that have also made us entirely reliant on those things existing and it'd be true. There is a lot we've forgotten how to live without or things that we believe are good for us but that have actually diminished us, making us more depressed, stressed and anxious.
It took us 20 years or so to realise what social media does to us.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 16h ago

When you get AI-generated description of a task, have to tell AI-using developers how to proceed or watch one AI-powered guy ask an entire interrogation amount of questions to another dev, which start with "I need answers from you or AI you're using", you gotta realize that something is going deeply wrong

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 1d ago

I think efforts should be made towards educating people on the use of ai.

A professor at college told us not to think of ai as the devil but simply as a tool. He compared it to when tractors and other farming equipment first started being used worldwide. Farmers were upset and outraged because they were basically being replaced by machinery. And this has happened in many other fields as well.

But in the end those changes ended up being much more benefic in the long run, and it didn't just take jobs away from people but also created other job opportunities.

I'm not entirely sure about whether ai will end up changing things necessarily for the better. A lot of companies will cut corners because or ai and lots of jobs will be lost because of it.

But that's just because of a lack of education, I would say, and doesn't make ai inherently bad. You can't blame a knife or a gun that's use for malintent.

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u/SilverMedal4Life 1d ago edited 1d ago

I can blame a company that ships a free knife with their product and, when I get rid of the knife, sends me another in the mail with the next software update - while including a boilerplate legalese document that boils down to "we are not responsible for what you do with this free knife but we really want you to have it."

I wouldn't mind half as much if I could just turn it off and have it stay off, instead of every bit of software now having an "AI" button front and center.

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 1d ago

But even so, you are entirely to blame for how you use the knife?

If I hit someone over the head with a baseball bat can I blame it on the my coach for giving it to me? Even though I'm explicitly being told about what it's uses are and that it's my responsibility what I do with it.

People can and use ai for bad purposes, but as I've said, on one side I think it's a lack of education and on the other it can also simply be the user's fault.

If I use ai to cheat on a test, do I blame it on ai for being so convenient and easy to use or on myself?

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u/SilverMedal4Life 1d ago

You can only bend human nature so far.

You ever wonder why America is so fat, now? 80% are overweight or obese. It's not because American culture started permitting overweight people to just not feel bad about themselves; it's because cheap junk calories are everywhere. You are only human, and in the aggregate, people defer to their base instincts and chow down. Morally blaming them or expecting them to fix it themselves is something we've tried for decades now, and has made it worse, not better.

This is the same. If you give people the option to stop thinking or think less, they'll take it. Because that's human nature. You're going to see bad outcomes because people, ultimately, are quite bad at taking care of themselves.

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u/TemperateStone 1d ago

Exactly. I agree with you completely.

We forget how we ourselves function and yet again we are gonna use ourselves to experiment with something we are not evolved to handle.

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 1d ago

This is a bit besides the point, but a few months ago I actually wrote a paper comparing the food laws we have in the EU versus the ones imposed by the FDA and it's wild how different things are.

It even got to a point where FDA approved certain additives and food colorants which were so harmful companies took it upon themselves and stopped using them out of their own volition.

So I agree to some of the points you've made, and especially the last part can be true. But I think it can also be a matter of educating the public, just like in the case of obesity (not saying it's just a matter of education).

Take energy drinks for example. It's wild to me that streamers, the laziest persons that sit around basically 24/7, on a chair doing nothing, promote energy drinks.

Most people will buy energy drinks because of their flavor, that's what's being advertised for most of the top brands like prime and monster, not because they need that energy boost.

And that it's completely unhealthy.

Another thing relating to food and education it's the fact that people do not read the labels on any sort of food products ever (obviously a generalization, some do.).

I don't know if you've ever looked on the label of a fanta bottle? But it clearly states to be kept away from direct sunlight for long periods of time.

Why? Because it continues benzoate ,an additive that under certain dosages isn't inherently harmful but when combined with absorbic acid and sunlight that helps break it down it turns cancerous.

I'm not sure if this is still the case for fanta, but I can't name a single person that ever checked the label and took that into consideration or even remotely cared about the warning.

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u/SilverMedal4Life 1d ago

Right. We should, ideally, build our systems around human nature, not tell people to fight their own nature or else they'll develop cancer because the Coca-Cola company decided to make a soda that gives you cancer if you don't pay attention.

Like, could we just not make a soda that gives you cancer if you don't pay attention? Or, failing that, how about put it in a bottle that blocks direct sunlight? It might cost a bit more to make, but only caring about profits means that you kill people.

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 1d ago

The problem with food additives is that they're a necessary evil.

Are they completely unharmful? No. But under certain quantities they don't pose a treat. And if the products are stored accordingly.

The alternative is products which have a much, much, much shorter shelf life. Would you prefer spending 2x or 3x the price of a product that's more "natural" ?

And I'm not talking about stuff like sodas here, even basic necessities like everyday food has those type of additives.

Certain red meat products can also be harmful for the human body if not properly handled because of the additives that are used.

So the issue isn't as simple as "X company shouldn't use Y ingredient/additive" .

The EU adopts a "lesser/necessary" evil perspective when it comes to stuff like this and it's very harsh on what can and can't be used and under very strict quantities. It's model is that of preventing a problem rather than dealing with it after it happens but even so, it's imposibile to completely remove additives from food products.

Fanta was just a very popular and more easy to explain example.

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u/TemperateStone 1d ago

Absolutely! Safe, good use. You can set them up to not be so sychophantic and so on.

I think that such an analogy is flawed, due to the difference in how this technology functions. Farmer's lives became easier with technology. Our lives are becoming diminished by AI, we are losing our jobs, we are falling into delusions and AI psychosis, children and adults have taken their own lives on the encouragement of AI chatbots.

I don't think a tractor with GPS ever did that to a farmer.

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 21h ago

Our lives are becoming diminished by AI, we are losing our jobs, we are falling into delusions and AI psychosis, children and adults have taken their own lives on the encouragement of AI chatbots. I don't think a tractor with GPS ever did that to a farmer.

As I've said at the end of my comment, that's like blaming a tractor for running over you. They're not made for harming people and that's not its intended use.

That's why education it's so important and I think restrictions should also be implemented since people can't always be trusted to use this tool responsibly.

More jobs have been lost to technological advancement like automated machinery that can do the job of twenty men by itself, and that too has caused suicides.

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u/TemperateStone 10h ago

It really, really isn't.
They are absolutely made to be addictive, sycophantic and only give affirmation as a default. That's why they are damaging.

Yes, restrictions should be severe and education a requirement. Standards need to be upheld. But that would hurt the bottom line, so it won't happen.

You say that as if that somehow justifies any of it because "oh it just happens". Not that automation was actually the sole reason for farmer suicides in the 80's, but the entire economic crisis for the farmers. The reason suicideds happens is because people lost their jobs and couldn't get new ones, because of broader economical problems, globalization, recession, policies, trade and so on.

The reason for suicides now is because AI is telling kids to fucking kill themselves. The tractors or the robotic arm in the factory didn't tell the worker that it's probably right to just off yourself nor did it cause people to fall into delusions and psychosis.

It's not even remotely comparable.

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 10h ago

It really, really isn't. They are absolutely made to be addictive, sycophantic and only give affirmation as a default. That's why they are damaging.

Well, kinda the whole reason I said restrictions should be implemented? It's a relatively new technology and even the people working on it admitted they were surprised by the way ai can act and what it can do.

And resections have been implemented, so I don't get the "bottom line" argument?

The reason for suicides now is because AI is telling kids to fucking kill themselves. The tractors or the robotic arm in the factory didn't tell the worker that it's probably right to just off yourself nor did it cause people to fall into delusions and psychosis. It's not even remotely comparable.

You're choosing to look at the bigger picture when looking at the way automation has impacted out economy while having a very narrow perspective over ai.

This discussion has spiralled towards something else entirely, but my previous point was that people also lost their job because of automation, regardless of the state of the economy at that time those jobs were lost because machines were able to do it better and faster and cheaper.

Ai it's like nothing we have seen before because it's not just a simple tool, it's one that "thinks" and that can be harmful. But I don't think the people who worked on it programmed it to tell kids to "fucking kill themselves" . It's very volatile and that's why it's always changing and restrictions are being implemented periodically.

I recently asked it a question about MGS4 on PC (couldn't find the button prompt on keyboard for something) and it refused to answer because it thought I was asking for help with real firearms. Even when I explained it's a game and it admitted to being wrong, it still refused to answer out of caution.

Besides the more critical problems like self harm, where you have people who are in a very bad way using ai without knowing the harm it can unintentionally cause, there's also people intentionally using ai in ways that are harmful.

Someone that relies on ai to do their entire job or homework or solve their exam, etc. Does so knowingly. There's nothing that ai companies can do in that regard. They've tried to stop people from cheating but there's always a workaround so it still falls on the user in this case to use it responsibly.

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u/Solesaver 1d ago

Though there are hints that it's making people unable to do these tasks without it, forgetting how because they rely on and entirely trust the AI to be accurate and truthful.

This, I think, mis-frames the issue. To be frank, you can't research on the internet like you used to. When I was in middle school we had lessons on how to effectively use Google to find information on the internet. Those lessons literally don't work any more. Just like generations before me learned how to use a physical card catalog which many if not most libraries don't even have any more.

It's not a problem that people "aren't able to do these tasks without [AI]" any more than it is a problem that they can't do these tasks without any other modern technology. Talking about it like that is very shakes fist "back in my day, we had to haul water up from the well in buckets, didn't have these fancy automatic pumps."

The important thing is the latter part, "because they rely on and entirely trust the AI to be accurate and truthful." There is a problem with people using not using AI well. Just like my teachers taught me how to verify whether a source was trustworthy when using Google, people today have to know how to check the AI's information for accuracy.

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u/mantenner 1d ago

I think literally none of these people work in the software dev industry and are just being performative.

I work in software and am a senior engineer, I know many senior engineers and tech leads across the industry here in Australia and literally everyone is using AI heavily for dev work.

It doesnt mean you don't have architecture, product or business knowledge. It doesnt mean you can't spec up a stack or do your own research as to how you want something does.

Not everyone enjoys it, but all corporate arms enjoy it. Its the productivity boon to end all boons.

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u/zomgryanhoude 1d ago

Yeah, it's definitely wild seeing how much the internet hates AI vs how much I use it at work and how much our execs are pushing it. We're a small company relative to big tech, but now my work monitors are basically one has teams/email, whatever I'm working on, and one has codex open. I understand people's concerns but as someone who works with it daily and sees the progress, the latest models are absolutely fantastic and I'm excited to see what the next couple years has in store. (hopefully it doesn't end with me being laid off lmao)

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u/Every-Cow-1194 10h ago

Humorously, most of the AI hate in Reddit is from people who, statistically, aren’t even old enough to have jobs.

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u/mantenner 1d ago

Yep same goes.

Honestly with the way it's going and how mentally draining it is working on so many tickets at once, piloting so many agents and the influx of knowledge that comes from all this, plus speccing out projects at much more detailed levels, reviewing other dev's ridiculous amounts of work too, I think I'll probably burn out and be glad to do a menial job lol.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/AndrewLocksmith PC 1d ago

I, too, was surprised by how efficient it is when troubleshooting PC issues.

A friend of mine almost bricked his PC trying to activate secure boot in order to run an anticheat. No guide online explained that you also have to make sure your driver has a specific partition style or how to change that, otherwise your PC will fail to boot and you'll need to reset BIOS.

It also helped me fix certain games and broken windows files that customer support had no idea how to fix.

Ubisoft always tells me "Go ahead and reinstall windows and see if that fixes it." Which is the last thing you'd want to do.

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u/Belydrith 1d ago

Online discussion of the topic in most spaces has lost any and all nuance. There's always an angry mob around the corner about to condemn any and all things even tangentially related to it. Almost every headline I've seen on this exact news about the REX engine in the past day has been so twisted out of context that it basically classifies as misinformation just to feed the outrage-click machine.

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u/BluKyberCrystal 1d ago

Disagree. The issue is that the very few good uses of AI are used to justify all AI use. We're living in an arms race that has so much money sunk in that they need AI to do everything to justify the investment. Which is why it's being rammed down people's throat.

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u/Belydrith 1d ago

Case in point...

This isnt integrating useless free AI features into something to act as invest investor bait though. From the sounds of it they're simply implementing something like an MPC server into it to allow an LLM to interact with it the programming side of things and then creating a knowledge base to train models to find their way around the engine. 

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u/Scoo_By PC 1d ago edited 18h ago

I don't hate AI. I believe the technology is way too good to completely ignore. It has tremendous impact on things it's actually needed in. Now, shoehorning AI into literally everything, to justify their insane Capex, that I vehemently oppose. And I can understand people if they get angry at the mention of AI.

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u/alanpsk 1d ago

My boss told me to stop using AI to further simplified work tutorial for our own department to read and he bans it because it sounds roboty even thought i verifird all the info to be correct. He seems exactly like one of those ppl you mention that got hate on AI

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/TheNakedBass 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m not seeing how those are the same thing.

I’m not looking to argue, just curious about your reasoning.

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u/SteamZerjack 1d ago

He’s being a bit simplistic. The outputs are similar. The outcomes are not the same. The way they are generated is indeed very close however.

So, long story short, GenAI learns by probability. You train it with Monet paintings and in the training tags you mark those paintings as being beautiful impressionist paintings. If you had millions of Monet paintings the model would learn patters in these, and be able to make sone pretty convincing impressionist paintings. However, notice the word “learn”. The model is literally learning. The same way you and I learned how to draw when we were kids. We saw the world around us and figured out that trees usually come with green at the top and that flowers usually come with bright colors at the end of the stem. At the end of the day, the model is a bunch of probability weights. There’s no actual source data inside. Those weights shift around depending on the prompt. Text models are analogous. The reason code works so well in this case, is because it is way more structured and uniform than a painting. Not to mention there’s massive amounts of it all over the internet.

Now, whether one deserves more protection than the other, I’m really not sure. They are both products of human minds. I would say art, as in the actual expression of the human condition, is precious. But “art”, as in the artistic direction of a product intended to be sold for a profit, is not really that different from code made for the same purpose. They are not expressing anything of our souls. They are accomplishing an objective set by a company’s stakeholders.

That’s why I think real art will never disappear. We need to express ourselves. Of course; being paid for that is another story.

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u/Solesaver 1d ago edited 23h ago

Here is 3 stages of analogy.

Stage 1: For a very long time programmers have had tools like "Intellisense" and "Visual Assist". These basically read your entire codebase and help auto complete symbols like variable and function names. For just as long digital artists have had comparable tools. Magic wand lets you select a region based on color contrast. You can generate noise and texture from certain patterns. Basically, you don't have to manually choose the color of every individual pixel, and instead focus on the bigger picture. No AI involved.

Stage 2: Programming assistants like GitHub Copilot can really help with boilerplate code. An example is I was working on a quad-tree, and wrote my code for handling the "northwest" quadrant, and it automatically suggested the other 3 quadrants with all the sign changes and correct variable names. After a quick review that it didn't mess anything up I was done and on to more important work than copy-pasting the same code 3 more times and fixing up the little bits.

Artists have access to comparable tools. You're doing the art, AI is filling in the details, you're checking it's work, and fixing it up as needed. Just like with the code, it's comparing your existing work to its training data and trying to provide helpful suggestions to fill in details that you don't particularly care about.

Stage 3: Vibe coding. Anyone can prompt an LLM to write them a program that does something, and it will mostly be able to do that. If it doesn't work (aka isn't quite what you asked for) you can ask it to fix it until it successfully makes something that looks like it works and does what you want. You can do the same thing with art. Just keep tuning your prompt and feeding its output back into it until you get something that looks how you want it to.

The thing about stage 3 for both programming and art is that the person "making" the program or art now has no idea what they're doing. That's why it produces "slop". For stage 1 and 2, the person at the wheel has extensive training and experience. They understand why certain things work and why other things don't. You can vibe code a mostly functional program just like you prompt engineer a mostly functional picture. If you don't want slop though, you have to have someone who actually understands the why.

Just like an artist might have studied anatomy and so they can figure it why the AI generated pose looks subtly off, or color theory so they recognize the odd feeling you get is because the AI generated shadow is unreasonably dark. The programmer has studied data structures and understands that your program would actually be better served with a tree here instead of a hashmap, or any number of other subtle bug fixes and improvements. I can't tell you the number of times I've interacted with AI when programming where it has suggested a bug fix for a non-existent bug that actually makes the program subtly worse.

The point isn't that AI can't do art because it can't be creative or that 'actually programming is just as creative as art' as some people will try to claim. The problem is that AI can't reason about its output. It doesn't build expertise. The only reason AI for programming has advanced so much faster than for other "more creative" endeavors is because the iteration time in "does it work" is so much faster. Also a lot more effort has gone into refining that aspect of the models (for some reason...). The more "creative" fields won't be far behind though, and they'll all suffer from the same problems in the end. If the person behind the wheel doesn't know what the fuck they're doing, it's going to produce slop. If they do, they will not. If you're making something for humans, it's a good idea to have humans pretty deeply involved in its creation

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u/MrBlueA 1d ago

They aren't, but it's reddit so they still have to come up with some way of complaining

0

u/DaEnderAssassin 1d ago

I take it you also extend this view to left-pad and never use anything with it included? (I say, knowing full well you do seeing you posted here, to reddit)

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u/ISOpcstuff 1d ago

It is absolutely not the same thing.

I am vehemently against AI in any creative space, but Gen AI can be great as a programming and troubleshooting tool; it is much more efficient to have AI find the bu g in your 200 lines of code rather than trying to find it yourself because it's very easy to gloss over a mistake when you're the one who made it.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/ISOpcstuff 1d ago

Literally shut up lol you know nothing about me to be making such baseless claims

Yes, obviously there is plenty of room for creativity in programming; there are also plenty of people that would prefer to focus there time on more important things than writing a script to pull data from a CSV file.   Troubleshooting your code is not fun, creative, or entertaining.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/ISOpcstuff 1d ago

and I work in IT and maintain a home server as a personal project, glad we're sharing our credentials here.

I enjoy writing scripts for my own projects and to an extent enjoy the puzzle of finding out why they aren't working as intended; I do not enjoy writing a PowerShell script to pull info from our AD environment and I enjoy troubleshooting it even less.

If you enjoy that, good for you, but you do not speak for everyone who does any sort of programming.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/ISOpcstuff 1d ago

Those artists and designers are not representative of artists as a whole, just like you aren't representative of programmers as a whole nor am I.

"Lay people thinking art is special - fundamentally don't know what art is" how gross and condescending, get off of your high horse.

My assertion that it is okay in programming but not art is an opinion, which cannot be wrong nor a misunderstanding. I understand plenty of artists use AI tools to make changes to their work; I do not want content that is 100% AI-generated in the media I consume and that is my choice.

You speak as if you are some higher authority on the subject because of the work you do, but it really just makes you look like an asshole with an ego problem, so thank you for reinforcing the stereotype that programmers have no soft skills.

I'm done replying to this though as you clearly are more concerned with telling me how right you are and how wrong I am, even though it is my opinion.

1

u/morpheousmorty 17h ago

They should be making AI for mixing things up. Imagine games where side quest NPCs and quests were generated. Starting with something that meets the abilities, like maybe a Lovecraftian dialogue heavy game. No one could find hallucinations jarring in that context.

I swear sometimes the entire world buys into hype and can't remember to just use the tools in front of them as they are.

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u/Rometac 8h ago

So uh, people hate radiant quests so much that theres still a meme going about Preston Garvey, why on earth would people enjoy radiant quests but with AI, and because its AI we get a 40% halucination chance where it doesnt work, make sense, or screws your game over.

1

u/MadeByTango 16h ago

Criminal technology. The agentic c-suites all belong in prison. No SEA-SLOP for me, ever.

1

u/Fares26597 10h ago

The line is blurry. All work can be artistic in one way or another. We commoners may not appreciate it like we do typical art, but the enthusiasts of the field can. The more technical fields can be art to people, they can get fulfilment and emotional gratification when they're allowed to do their work the way they want to do it, when automation isn't forced on them. Should we be concerned with them as much as we are with typical artists? Should we be not concerned with typical artists like we aren't concerned with workers in more technical fields? Should companies just allow the use of Ai for both without forcing any employee to use it against their will?

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u/dushyantdk 1d ago

Agreed. AI is the best thing in technical work, but things that require imagination and originality must be done by humans.

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u/ShonenSpice 1d ago

Even then it could be argued programming is its own art, people certainly have a passion for it.

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u/_Spectre0_ 1d ago

Yeah, having Claude code shoved down my throat at work certainly killed my passion for my job. I didn’t choose my career because I wanted to go back and forth with something that confidently lies to my face. I chose it because I like solving puzzles and writing code myself to do the exact thing I want is like that. There are clear precise and easily understood patterns to code that are not present in my experience with LLM-based tools.

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u/ShonenSpice 1d ago edited 1d ago

There seems to be a lack of understanding that aside from jobs producing results - it is something for people to do and realise themselves. Now, if AI is messing with that or taking that away entirely, fine, but let's then all get UBI or something, chill at home and program or paint for fun. But that's not what's happening, so, yeah.

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u/Potential_Topic7094 1d ago

is the passion for programming that makes it art, or the outcome of the code?

0

u/Every-Cow-1194 10h ago

Now using to AI to do art and story then that’s an issue

No it isn’t

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u/Rometac 9h ago

Found the AI bro

-2

u/NuclearVII 1d ago

AI as a tool to help with grunt work is not a bad thing

Yes it is. It is tech built on theft.

-1

u/TemperateStone 1d ago

It hurts because it takes away a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment. It might not seem like removing tedious work would be hurtful, but in a way it does diminish peoples actually work.

-1

u/bananaphonepajamas 1d ago

Grunt work is how people learned though.

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u/orangpelupa 1d ago

RE:Log - This system will change how errors are logged and displayed. Instead of using plain text descriptions, the errors will now use codes that can be looked up in various languages. Logs will also be stored in the cloud instead of locally.

Holy molly... Any theories why they did the log like that? Isn't the standard for ages has been having error code and optionally the texts? 

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u/CanIMakeUpaName 1d ago

I’m pretty sure this just means they are adding json logs to tighten integration with observability tools

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u/orangpelupa 1d ago

Ah, "codes" as in programming codes instead of as in error codes. Tyvm

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u/LelouBil 1d ago

I am sure this means error codes, so you can have a code that is language-independent, and resolve to a sentence translated to the user's language

1

u/morpheousmorty 17h ago

I mean we should be able to determine the current behavior to rule out a lot of possibilities. I wonder if RE hack teams are rejoicing.

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u/ManicMakerStudios 15h ago

Programming codes is bad slang from India. You have water, not waters. You have air, not airs. In programming, you have code, not codes.

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u/orangpelupa 9h ago

Programming codes is bad slang from India. 

source for that? 

1

u/ManicMakerStudios 9h ago

Talking to a lot of people from India who don't realize that the plural of programming code is code, not codes.

1

u/orangpelupa 9h ago

How about any other countries that does not have plurals / singular suffix modifiers? 

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u/ManicMakerStudios 8h ago

Dunno. The folks I've encountered who call it "codes" were all from India.

1

u/Calogyne 10h ago

Who's Json? /s

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u/shadowartist201 1d ago edited 1d ago

No idea. But apparently devs did complain that the large amount of plain text in these errors would "slow down the system" in certain situations. Using short error codes instead should improve performance.

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u/Saint_Nitouche 1d ago

It's probably just legacy code from many years ago that they never had time to fix.

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u/The0ldPete 1d ago

If they call it REX Engine and don't make a Dino Crisis remake with it I'LL BE SO MAD

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u/morpheousmorty 17h ago

Legit that franchise and parasite eve being completely overlooked by the remake craze blows my mind. My guess is those games get too boring with as much story as is crammed into modern games. Just let me get out there and play!

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u/Stavvystav 1d ago

Capcom was doing so well this year too, getting a lot of good favor. I could see people souring on them due to this news - not that it's surprising news.

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u/alfooboboao 1d ago

Reading the translated article, this seems like a lot of good stuff, little to do with AI. I’ve always wondered why leadership in a game dev company doesn’t get all the software engineers together and say “okay so let’s make a list of everything that drives you crazy about our workflow,” and then fix it, which seems to be what they did here

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u/AsrielPlay52 1d ago

You did not read the article

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u/Remote_Elevator_281 21h ago

Gotta let them cook

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u/BudTheChud69001 1d ago

Nah, this is the part where the anti-AI shit really begins to wither in the face of mass adoption. Go on guys, go harass Capcom like they were some little indie dev, see if they cave. lol

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u/Hammerheadshark55 1d ago

Thats how AI is supposed to be used

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u/mistasukatomb 1d ago

the actual headline here is "devs tired of waiting 20 minutes to see if a door opens correctly." half of game dev is staring at a loading bar you made yourself

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u/codykonior 23h ago

Gross. But great for my wallet, I can happily exist on old games pretty much indefinitely and skip this whole trash era.

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u/Remote_Elevator_281 21h ago

Bro, let them cook

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u/Falcon3333 1d ago

That all sounds really reasonable and will probably improve their workflow as a studio substantially

1

u/Noxxro 1d ago

Metal.. Gear? Otacon, I thought we took this thing down.

0

u/SpiritualStrike768 1d ago

This isn’t new; they already mentioned using it for things like mansions and gates in the remake.

1

u/Rehevkor_ 1d ago

Well, Capcom had a good run at least

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u/mapletree23 1d ago

the current golden child vs the blind AI hate train

to be fair though, I think the problem is the whole

"where does it stop" thing once a company starts using AI

people already seem to have forgot when that DLSS5 shit first came out and the RE dev/art teams were "caught off guard" by it's inclusion, the key part probably being that it was the people up top who gave permission

if you let them get a foot in the door and ay "oh it's just for bugs or very tedious stuff, that's fine guys, it wouldn't go beyond that"

does it really stop at that? or when they realise thy can fire/not hire those guys that did that grunt work, does it start to expand?

blizzard fired their QA/CS a ways back and replaced it, they started to use AI for that grunt work too like fitting armor to models

the quality has dropped immensely patch to patch for WoW and the customer support has been a headache for some when the AI agents are dumb as fuck

i mean look at the AI person microsoft hired to right the sip at xbox, and they proceeded to gut the ID guys that were doing great work with their engine

unfortunately i just think the big issue is - it always scales.

you give a company an inch, suddenly they're just using AI for customer service, for grunt work they'd of had to pay people for to do before, then they think "well it's just to help clear up art, it's just to help clear up tedious animation work"

then suddenly everything is "ai assisted" but since it's "easier" that means they don't have to hire a many people since less people can do a lot more, and since there's less people it just conveniently justifies letting the AI try to do more

all the companies want this, this is actual justification to be able to fire a bunch of people to make the line go up

there's 100% going to come a day when the reddit turns into a dumpster fire and people are upset at the company that decides to pull the trigger, just like people were with sony with the digital only thing when every company clearly wants to do it

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u/Rmodsarescum 1d ago

Trash AI slop.

Shame cause they were on a roll recently.

Guess they headed back for dark days.

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u/Lz537 1d ago

I mean yeah? What else did you expect?

Japanese devs are using IA as much if not even more than western devs (for what we know).

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u/Best_Caterpillar5395 1d ago

re engine is already witchcraft optimization-wise, letting ai touch it feels like asking for a monkey's paw wish

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u/ThinGold2115 1d ago

Capcom has such good run... don't ruin it now.

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u/pebrocks 1d ago

Don't ruin it by improving things...?

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u/ThinGold2115 1d ago

AI slop

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u/pebrocks 1d ago

Yes AI can be slop. That doesn't seem to be the case here, yet.

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u/bshahisau 19h ago

Top 1% commenter badge shining

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u/PrizeMarzipan401 20h ago

People need to get used to the fact the eventually AI will be used for basically everything. The difference will be how blatant and shameful the use is

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u/ManicMakerStudios 15h ago

This whole, "all AI is bad" angle some gamers are adopting can find its way to the bin now. What's bad about AI is how some of it was trained, but they're not going to untrain it so it's up to the people whose work has been used to handle it through the courts. And we know that overuse of AI without human oversight is a recipe for disaster. But hating something simply because it mentions AI? That's no good. AI is here to stay. There's always that one segment of the gamer community that finds something to complain about in everything. Don't let them skew your thinking.

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u/Lilbrimu 13h ago

Do anti AI folk write their code on a sheet of paper? Nearly all IDEs have ai assistance.