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Upit Creator Spotlight: silas 🔦

Meet @silas94, an Upit creator who turned a spontaneous AI-powered RPG session into a passion for game development. In our first Creator Spotlight, he shares how AVA helped shape his projects and what he’s learned along the way. 1. What sparked your interest in game creation, and how did you discover Upit? Honestly, it all started out of boredom. One day, I asked ChatGPT to play a text-based RPG with me. I came up with a character and some basic lore, and it just improvised the rest by GPT. After a few days of playing around like that, I thought: “Maybe I should actually try making a game with chat GPT help.” So I aimed for Unity at first… and yeah, I bounced off it pretty fast (though I’m still learning how to work with it!). That’s when I started digging into how to make games using AI. I explored a bunch of platforms, but once I found Upit and saw how easy it is to create something and instantly see results (or an error 😅), I was sold and here I am! 2. How does Upit's AI assistant, AVA, enhance your game development experience? I think that, at least in my case, AVA is really good for prototyping and building the initial skeleton of a game. Sure, sometimes you end up generating the game 20 times and deleting everything but it’s worth it, because AVA can actually come up with some really awesome stuff. For example, in my first game Roll Souls, the boss fight appears right at the beginning. The entire structure of that fight, including the attack patterns and the basic player controls, was generated by AVA. I just replaced the placeholders with my graphics and adjusted the parameters to fit my style. But thanks to that solid starting point AVA gave me, I was able to build out the rest of the game and take it all the way to the final version. 3. Can you describe a game you've created on Upit that you're particularly proud of? Well… I don’t have that many to choose from yet since I’ve only made two games so far 😅 My first game was more of a creative explosion; it had three modes, a bunch of different attack types, but no real story. In the second one, I tried to build some kind of narrative and keep things more consistent. I’m definitely not a storyteller, but the part I’m most proud of is the final boss fight in Walkman Fighters. Maybe I’m biased because it’s the most recent thing I’ve finished, but I feel like that fight is the best thing I’ve created so far. Also, the music I managed to generate for it really stuck with me I even added it to my playlist. 4. What types of games do you most enjoy creating on Upit, and why? Honestly, I’m still figuring that out, I’ve only finished two games so far, and the latest one is actually way outside the kind of genre I usually go for 😅 Before making Walkman Fighters, the only rhythm games I really knew were Beat Saber and Osu! but I ended up having a great time creating it anyway. I mainly play RPGs and Soulslike games in general. I really enjoy games with progression systems, the classic “from zero to hero” kind of experience. I also try to keep up with the indie scene, because a lot of those developers come up with brilliant ideas. Once I’m done polishing Walkman Fighters, I’ll be going back to working on my other project, Solo Grinding, a turn-based tactical game with a pretty complex progression system. I’m not sure if it counts as “support,” but I feel like not many people are making this type of game on Upit right now, so I’d really like to release my own and hope people will enjoy it. 5. What challenges have you faced during development, and how did you overcome them? Oh man, I don’t even need to think about it, it's definitely rhythm maps. I made the rhythm maps for Walkman Fighters manually. I spent hours looking for some kind of AI tool that could handle it for me, but in the end, I couldn’t find anything that really worked. So I asked GPT to help me create a simple HTML page where each key on the keyboard triggered a different type of note Tap, Swipe, or Hold in one of three columns. That gave me 9 keys total, and it also recorded the exact timestamps of each press. I generated and listened to hundreds of songs, and whenever I found something that hit the right vibe, I’d play the track, close my eyes, enter “piano mode,” and just tap along by ear. Then I copied the results from that page straight into my game. There was even a period where my favorite background music was a 2-hour rain sound loop on YouTube 😆 6. How do you engage with the Upit community, and what role does feedback play in your development process? I’m still pretty new around here. I got access on April 3rd, so it’s been just under three months. As for feedback, I ask users, if you catch a bug or feel like something just doesn’t work well, let the creator No one can judge a game better than another person playing it. For the developer, it’s often insanely hard to judge their own game objectively. Big shout-out to @blackwidowink always gives honest opinions on my games. Thanks, man! Whenever I do get feedback, I try to look at it with a clear head and weigh the pros and cons of whatever’s being pointed out. But yeah, so far I haven’t received much, so there’s not a whole lot to analyze just yet 😅 7. What advice would you offer to newcomers eager to start creating games on Upit? I think the most important piece of advice is this - don't expect AI to make the whole game for you. Most of us are probably here because we don’t really know how to make games, but we want to make one and that’s totally okay. It’s a process that takes time. Sure, you can make a very simple, basic game pretty fast. But if you want to fully bring your own vision to life, you have to remember: AI is only as good as you are at using it. Sometimes you’ll have to open up GIMP to tweak some graphics, or change parameters in the code. You’ll have to put in something from yourself if you want to make the game that’s in your head. If you just type “Make me a game like XX,” the AI won’t magically create what you’re imagining. But if you take it step by step, working together with the AI, I’m sure you can pull it off. I’m living proof of that after finishing my second game. To be honest, 80% of the code still looks like some kind of unidentified alien language to me. But thanks to platforms like Upit, and the rise of AI tools in general, you don’t need to be a programmer anymore. All you need is imagination and patience. Sometimes the AI gives you something perfect that works instantly. And sometimes… you’ll sit for hours, trying ten different ways to make something finally work.

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