I recently formatted my entire computer, and I'm starting from the ground up on a new CachyOS install that is holding together far more nicely than my previous CachyOS installation, which was criplled by the crutch that is an LLM. Regardless, part of this new installation was to start fresh, drawing on lessons learned from the prior install, and to build a solid foundation as a game/work PC.
One of the first things I installed was the Godot Game Engine, a great bit of software I haven't touched since 2022. Godot is an awesome engine, and I've been using it since the early 2.0 days, when it was viewed as a great alternative to Unity 2D and a very mediocre 3D engine, so seeing how far it's come in 4.7 is fascinating.
After creating a scene, adding my CharacterBody3D, and using the template and the online camera script I found, I realise that whilst everything is the same, my workflow has long been forgotten, and I have no idea about Godot's best practices.
On top of navigating the Godot Docs, one of the best pieces of documentation I've ever seen, one of the first things I did was go straight to an LLM, both to generate a bit of code and for game design philosophies and input.
LLM Coding actually sucks.
Brushing aside the extremely negative environmental impacts of using LLMs, using LLMs in coding has done great harm to the programming community. For the common folk, it gives power that was previously the result of years of learning and experience, and for programmers, it can make them lazy through over-reliance on the LLM.
My negative experiences with LLMs go back to the beginning of the year, and I've slowly transitioned from "I'll get Claude Code to generate plans for my project" to "I'll just ask Claude web for general advice" to "Fuck any of these LLMs Code assistance agents".
The final nail in the coffin was getting this FPS Godot project off the ground. I asked Claude (web) for some game design input, such as "What would be the best way to record X while factoring Y", and it then gave an answer. It would be followed by "Provide an example template of GDScript that does X", which would give me a script that does that.
The issue is that everything the AI produced looked correct, and in practice, would likely be correct (and would likely be even more correct if Claude Code were being used), but with only 3 scripts and a few resources, it felt like my project was already being tangled because I followed the advice of an LLM without touching myself up on Godot.
There were two options; * Install Claude Code, and don't get lazy enough to have Claude do all of the work, OR; * Stop using AI and restore cognitive brain function by reading the docs.
The last dot point is part hyperbole, but I'm sure people will agree that the use of AI has, at the very least, made humans lazier. In an effort for self-improvement, removing AI is the only option.
Back to Godot
As I said earlier, Godot is a fantastic engine, and without the fog that is an LLM providing resources, a lot of things are beginning to click in a way that is making game development exciting again. The documentation for Godot is also the best documentation I have ever seen for any bit of software, and I found myself writing code that I was unfamiliar with solely because of the excellent documentation providing clear descriptions and examples.
I still have a lot to work on for this project, but I am excited to see where this goes. Hell, I'll be happy if I can just get phase 1 out of the door.