Farcraft is intentionally flirting with first-gen Minecraft players.

If I’m going to do that, then Farcraft has to offer a serious cubing experience — not just “blocks in space,” but a full digging, crushing, growing, shaping, lighting, and survival system.

This screenshot shows one piece of that.

The red box dots are the Crush cursor. It is currently set to 4 meters, which means that if the player acts right now, every cube inside that volume gets crushed, deleted, or destroyed.

This entire room was carved out of solid rock (diorite) using that 4m cursor.

The rough, broken-looking walls and floors are not a bug. That is a feature called CRUMBLE. When the player tunnels with larger 2m or 4m cursors, Farcraft automatically breaks the terrain down into half-meter cubes, giving tunnels and rooms a more natural mined-out shape instead of a perfectly flat bloxel-box look.

If the player wants clean flat walls, they can switch to the green cursor and grow cubes back into the cursor volume.

The blue cursor is used to select the cube kind — or Xube kind — that the green cursor will grow.

A quick terminology note: in Farcraft, a cube is whole and solid. A Xube is occupied space that contains smaller, non-whole cube structure inside it. The red cursor in this screenshot is sitting on a 4m Xube.

The label 2D1N2E is the name of this terrain cell. It means the room is located 2 cells Down, 1 cell North, and 2 cells East from the sandbox Pivot at 0,0,0. Since the default cell size is 64 meters, this room is more than 120 meters below the Pivot.

There are also two glowing Ankhs in the room. They are lit and slowly spinning, which means the player can touch them to gain +1 permanent life/health.

And finally, the lamps are not baked lighting. They are 100% dynamic lights. The player can change their color, adjust their intensity, and move them anywhere.

So the screenshot is not just showing a cave.

It is showing a player-carved underground room, cut from solid terrain, shaped with Farcraft’s cube tools, lit by movable dynamic lamps, and hiding permanent health upgrades deep below the sandbox origin.

That is a huge part of what the Farcraft avatar does: dig, crush, grow, shape, and survive.

You are not just digging blocks. You are carving a world.

It's no secret that Farcraft intends to win a percentage of the Minecraft players.

To do that, Farcraft must provide a cubing experience equal or better than Minecraft - and it does.

This screenshot will give you an idea for what is possible. There is a 4-meter red cursor - the Crush cursor. Acting here would crush/delete/destroy all the cubes inside the cursor.

For a fact, this entire room was carved out of solid rock using the 4m cursor.

The un-flat walls and floors are a feature called CRUMBLE - by default when tunneling with 2m and 4m cursors ... the walls get crumbled as shown with half-meter cubes.

To make them flat the player uses the green cursor and grows the cubes inside that cursor volume.

The blue cursor lets the player select the KIND that is used to grow Xubes.

FYI - A Xube is space with a non-whole non-solid cubes. A cube is a whole solid. The red cursor in this SS is sitting on a 4m Xube.

The Programmer Got the Keys to the Art Room

There is an uncomfortable truth behind much of the current anger over AI-assisted game development:

AI changed the dependency structure.

That does not mean artists are worthless. They are not.

That does not mean composers are obsolete. They are not.

That does not mean every AI-assisted game is good. Many are not.

But it does mean something important has changed, and people can feel it even when they do not want to say it clearly.

For years, a solo programmer who wanted to make a commercially serious game faced a brutal creative bottleneck. The code might be possible. The engine might be possible. The gameplay systems might be possible. But sooner or later, the programmer needed textures, concept art, UI art, music, voice, marketing images, store capsules, lore illustrations, icons, ambience, trailers, and promotional assets.

That meant hiring people, recruiting collaborators, begging friends, buying asset packs, settling for placeholders, or delaying the project indefinitely.

The programmer could build the machine, but the machine still needed a face, a voice, a sound, a texture, a symbol, and a mood.

AI has weakened that bottleneck.

A technically competent solo developer can now generate usable textures, concept art, album covers, UI ideas, voice experiments, music tracks, story panels, marketing copy, and promotional images without waiting on a full creative team. The results still require judgment. They still require selection. They still require rejection, editing, integration, taste, and context. But the minimum viable dependency has changed.

That is the part some people hate.

The programmer got the keys to the art room before the artist got the keys to the engine room.

A solo programmer can now walk into creative territory that used to be gated by budget, team size, and production logistics. He may not be a master painter. He may not be a trained composer. He may not be a professional voice actor. But with enough direction, iteration, curation, and integration, he can now produce a complete sensory layer around a working game.

The opposite has not happened at the same level.

A non-programmer cannot simply ask an LLM to produce a complete commercial game and receive a stable engine, renderer, input system, persistence layer, gameplay loop, build pipeline, platform integration, memory model, save system, networking layer, debugging discipline, optimization strategy, and shippable product.

Games are not asset folders.

Games are executable systems.

This is why the “AI slop” accusation is often so lazy. It treats the presence of generative tools as proof of absent authorship. But authorship does not come from the tool. Authorship comes from direction, judgment, integration, and responsibility.

A camera does not author a film.

A synthesizer does not author a song.

A compiler does not author source code.

A paintbrush does not author a painting.

And an AI tool does not author a game.

The developer does.

The developer chooses the premise. The developer writes the code. The developer builds the systems. The developer decides what belongs and what does not. The developer rejects bad output. The developer integrates good output. The developer creates the context in which the asset has meaning. The developer ships the result and takes responsibility for it.

That is authorship.

This matters especially for a game like FARCRAFT, because the use of AI is not merely a production shortcut. It is part of the premise.

FARCRAFT takes place about 200 years in the future, after the apocalypse, in a post-human world built, managed, corrupted, and mythologized by OXIS AI. Humanity is dead. The player is recruited from the past into a synthetic future full of xistated matter, OXIS propaganda, artificial radio broadcasts, StoryBay mythography, synthetic music, machine-made imagery, and systems that were never meant to feel handcrafted by a village of human artisans.

WKFR Radio is not pretending to be four guys in a garage.

It is an in-universe AI radio station.

The StoryBay images are not pretending to be Renaissance oil paintings.

They are future-machine mythography.

The synthetic tone is not automatically a flaw.

In this setting, it is often the point.

People are free to dislike that. They are free to prefer games with human-composed scores, hand-painted textures, traditional voice acting, and fully human-authored visual pipelines. That is a legitimate preference.

But preference is not analysis.

“LOL AI” is not criticism.

Seeing “AI-assisted” in a Steam disclosure and declaring the entire project hollow without playing it is not a review. It is prejudice wearing a critic’s hat.

The real question is not whether AI touched the work.

The real question is whether the work has direction.

Does it have a world?

Does it have systems?

Does it have a coherent premise?

Does it have a player experience?

Does it use its tools in service of an idea?

Does it become more itself because of the production method?

In FARCRAFT’s case, the answer is yes. The artificiality is not hidden. It is not denied. It is not smuggled in under the floorboards. It is placed directly inside the world.

OXIS made the future.

OXIS made the radio.

OXIS made the propaganda.

OXIS made the synthetic spaces.

OXIS made the machine mythology.

The game is not ashamed of that. The game is built around it.

That does not guarantee success. No tool guarantees success. AI does not make a bad idea good. AI does not make weak design strong. AI does not magically create taste, coherence, discipline, or vision.

But neither does hiring a human artist.

Neither does hiring a composer.

Neither does recording a live orchestra.

Neither does using a traditional pipeline.

A bad game with human assets is still a bad game. A good game with AI-assisted assets is still a good game.

The player will decide.

That is the part that matters.

The anger around this subject is understandable, but much of it is misdirected. Some creatives are not merely defending craft. They are reacting to a shift in leverage. They are reacting to the fact that a programmer can now build more of the total product alone. They are reacting to the fact that the old dependency structure has weakened.

Again, that does not make artists worthless.

It means the market changed.

It means the pipeline changed.

It means the solo developer’s reach expanded.

And that is not going away.

The correct response is not denial. The correct response is adaptation. Human artists, composers, writers, and voice actors still have enormous value, especially when they bring taste, originality, consistency, emotional memory, and deep collaboration. The best human creatives are not threatened because a generator can produce a thousand mediocre outputs. The best human creatives understand direction, identity, and meaning.

But the days when a solo programmer had to stop at the art-room door and wait for permission are over.

AI gave programmers access to the art room before it gave artists access to the engine room.

That is the shift to which many creatives are reacting.

FARCRAFT - takes place 200 years in the future after the apocalypse where all the humans are dead and the AI controls everything. This song track is about the AI losing coherence.

This is one of the first tracks the player will hear upon reading about the Bicameral Event - which is a StoryBay that describes a critical event in AI history.

Request for feedback: atheist-inspired avatar skin for my sci-fi game

Hello everyone,

I’m an indie game developer working on a sci-fi game called FARCRAFT. In the game, players can unlock different avatar exo-skin designs. These skins are not meant to be human skin, clothing, or costumes. They are symbolic textures on a futuristic humanoid exo-shell.

I recently created an Atheist Vow-inspired avatar skin, and I would sincerely appreciate feedback from atheists on whether the design feels appropriate, visually strong, and non-cringey.

The central back symbol uses an atomic / orbital model inside a precision instrument ring. The idea is to suggest naturalism, matter, evidence, measurement, and cosmic reality without using religious symbolism. My goal is not to claim that atheism is a religion, or that atheists “worship science.” I’m trying to create a sci-fi visual identity for a worldview rooted in reality and evidence.

Questions I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• Does the design feel appropriate for an atheist-themed unlock?
• Does the atomic / orbital symbol work, or is it too cliché?
• Are there any visual elements that feel wrong, misleading, or unintentionally religious?
• Would this feel acceptable as an unlockable avatar skin in a sci-fi game?
• Is there anything I should avoid or improve?

I’m asking here because I do not want to assume I got it right. I’d rather listen before using this publicly.

Thank you for any guidance.

Request for feedback: Hindu-inspired avatar skin for my sci-fi game

I’m an indie game developer working on a sci-fi game called FARCRAFT. In the game, players can unlock different avatar exo-skin designs through shrines. These skins are not meant to be human skin, clothing, or costumes. They are symbolic textures on a futuristic humanoid exo-shell.

I recently created a Hindu / Dharmic-inspired avatar skin, and I would sincerely appreciate feedback from Hindus on whether the design feels respectful, beautiful, and appropriate.

The central back symbol is intended to evoke a lotus-mandala / sacred radiance theme, without using text, deity images, or direct religious iconography. My goal is not parody or exploitation. I want the design to feel like a sci-fi “sacred-tech” tribute that a Hindu player would look at and think: “Yes, that was done with respect.”

Questions I’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• Does the design feel respectfully Hindu/Dharmic?
• Does the lotus/mandala theme work?
• Are there any visual elements that feel wrong, inappropriate, or misleading?
• Would this feel acceptable as an unlockable avatar skin in a sci-fi game?
• Is there anything I should avoid or improve?

I’m asking here because I do not want to assume I got it right. I’d rather listen before using this publicly.

Thank you for any guidance.

The word FARCRAFT refers directly to the spacecraft that are designed like humanoid avatars.

They are designed to deal with the utter lethal hostility of outer space.

They are stored in Body Bays and can be collected just like cars in garages.

The player can jump in and out of any of their bodies. This is similar to any RPG where the player can change characters - except that you don't have to actually leave the game ... you just park in a Body Bay whereupon your soul is auto-ejected.

You can view the 2nd video in the Steam Store that show the initial story where the player goes out of body up into space.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3930950/FARCRAFT/

This is a very typical scene after conquering a graveyard in a single visit.

All the Skels have dropped any gear that survived the fight. The next part of this core dungon loop is to process all the gear by looking at it and choosing to sacrifice it to the graveyard or wield it on the spot (when superior) or retain it for Recrafting back on the PIVOT.

Where do you draw the line with AI in creative work?

I’ve been experimenting with AI as part of my game dev workflow, and I’m trying to understand where people actually draw the line.

Here’s a real example (I’ll post the track + cover in comments):

• I started with the original Amazing Grace lyrics.
• I flipped the perspective to an undead narrator where the grave is salvation.
• I worked with AI to iterate on phrasing and structure.
• I finalized the chorus and title myself (Chant The Dead).
• I generated multiple music tracks and selected the best one.
• I iterated on album cover art through several passes until I got something that fit.

Important detail:
At one point, I fed the AI a screenshot from my own game to guide the visual direction.

That screenshot was rendered directly from my engine—zero AI involved.

I’ll also post that original screenshot so you can compare it to the final cover.

The final image was not created by recoloring or editing my screenshot. It was generated from scratch using prompts, with my screenshot acting as a visual guide.

The AI didn’t transform my pixels—it produced new ones based on the constraints I gave it.

And importantly: a human artist would follow the same pattern—using reference material to guide composition, lighting, mood, and structure, then creating a new image from scratch. The difference here is the tool, not the fundamental process.

What I think gets misunderstood:

Gen AI for art/music is not “press button → get result.”

It’s much closer to:

• Iterative mining / farming
• Rolling random dice repeatedly
• Using a reference filter to steer outcomes
• Rejecting most outputs
• Nudging toward something usable

It took multiple attempts to land on something that actually worked.

So in this workflow:

• The concept was mine
• The constraints were mine
• The visual grounding (via my game screenshot) was mine
• The iteration direction was mine
• The final selections and edits were mine
• The AI handled raw generation and variation

The question:
Where does this cross the line for you, if it does?

Is it:

• Using AI at all?
• Using it for specific domains (music vs art vs writing)?
• The percentage of human vs AI contribution?
• The idea that generation is stochastic rather than handcrafted?
• Or something else?

I’m not trying to argue—I’m genuinely interested in how people think about this.

Where do you personally draw the line, and why?

Head Mounted Guns

This is a somewhat ridiculous (albeit possible) weapon configuration for head mounted guns. There are 7 Viper guns mounted to the Avatar head. There are 8 prefabricated mounting points managed by the engine.

For guns of this class (head mountable) the player can auto mount them merely by walking near enough to the gun - such that the center of the gun is within half-meter of any of the mount points. This is easy enough to do but stringent enough to not accidentally mount a gun unintentionally.

The left mouse button and left gamepad trigger first any/all guns attached to the Avatar.

Players can now select the nameplates they like best and choose the opacity. This SS is the high-gradient sphere with 50% opacity.