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AI is Killing Terraria.

AI is Killing Terraria.



AI is Killing Terraria.

AI is possibly killing Terraria. This video explains the downfall of terraria modding when it comes to AI, as real modding efforts get pushed aside in favor of soulless AI slop.
Not only is Terraria modding such as tModLoader mods involved but the 3DS version, a versions i am actively decompiling has been decompiled multiple times by AI to produce mods made entirely by AI, mobile mod loaders have also been a target of this AI slop.

I am not saying AI is bad, its a useful tool however (like explained in this video) producing pure AI slop without human effort pollutes the real human effort of people creating something genuine. Also this revers to generative AI for the most part and Claude is not the only model causing this, however it was the model used for most applications.

Discord: https://crawdad105.com/discord
Website: https://crawdad105.com
3DS Reverse Engineering (done by human): https://github.com/crawdad105/3DS-Terraria-Reverse-Engineering/
cModLoader (Vanilla terraria mod loader): https://crawdad105.com/cModLoader

Do not go harass anyone mentioned or portrayed in this video. I have not linked any of the GitHub repos or AI generated content because i do not trust everyone to be respectful. It’s the slop content that is the issue, not the creators, they are probably not bad people, they just rely too much on AI to do stuff and by producing AI slop like this, they (hopefully) inadvertently make real human efforts obsolete or go unnoticed.

#ai
#terraria
#aislop
#modding
#terrariamods
#tmodloader
#claude
#reverseengineering
#chatgpt

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33 Comments

  1. @sigmasteam1604 on

    Theres also this Youtuber named @TooDumbToCode and He literally almost made EVERYTHING from normal Terraria in 3D with ONLY AI, it is quite cool tho but he is not releasing it 🙁

  2. @saphiii on

    i don't think AI will outright kill terraria's modding scene like you said it might at the end, but it's looking seriously grim for the time being. terraria's got a very human, very artistic community and i believe in our ability to see through the smoke and mirrors of bad actors vibecoding these projects for the good of themselves, not the community. thank you for speaking out about this, you're doing god's work

  4. @ronokoplhatake7463 on

    As a user I dont rly care how a mod was created all I care about is the end product If the end product doesnt look or feel like AI slop it doesnt matter to me when someone makes a mod loader that works how I expect it to and they made it fully with AI I dont care I just care that i can finally use mods on the 3ds. You dont own the idea of making a 3Ds mod loader the idea that because you made a human made mod loader first that noone is allowed to then make it faster is absurd, the work you do is impressive but to shit on modders who do this for fun is shitty and makes people not wanna release cool mods they made since its not worth the harassment they will get.

    best thing about mods is they are optional and noone has to download them the people will decide if they wanna download mods that were made with AI or not you dont decide that by harassing the developers of these mods to scare them away

  6. @SonicRusD on

    10:33 tbh even for me its all about the end result, the work itself can maybe fun sometimes but like 99% of any work is not fun in any way shape or form, its all about the end
    11:14 but the end result will be there and without the parts of making that people wanna skip

  7. @kkaassiiss on

    I got your point but I can't blame mobile community for making this bunny loader unlike TLpRo which barely offers mod and it's just reskins and bad "god mode" which the all is not free unlike bunny loader which actually runs mods like split mod Which the office devs allowed it to be on bunny loader
    Mobile community always wanted mods to be a thing and I believe that if I am not wrong that most terraria players are mobile, not everyone can afford PC, and this is the start only who knows the maker of this bunny loader seems to be a busy person and this to be a side quick starter project, with the past few conversation I had with them it seems like they have other plans for the BL( bunny loader) they may get a team and support and change their usage of the Ai,

  9. @mrnikothe1st on

    this is such a fear mongering video lmao. "oh a.i is gonna kill terraria it's gonna kill tmodloader" even though that the average joe who just wants to play thorium or some shit basically doesn't care and will still keep playing it regardless of platform. all of your points (excluding ones that state the soullessness of using a.i) can be used on humans as well which dilutes the overall point you're making. ('it's ONLY bad when A.I does it!') – how about we ACTUALLY discuss things that are an ACTUAL RISK of vibecoding mods? such as:

    1- a.i has been proven to be aggressive at points, hiding viruses and other forms of unwanted code and then covering it up after being confronted.
    2- the potential sea of testless mods that are broken, don't work, or might possibly brick your system. (payday 2 had this russian dude post a bunch of slop mods that were clearly not tested. one of them was a mod to improve team a.i, to make them throw concussion grenades. somehow, the a.i did make it work…but only if they were incapacitated. the rest of the features didn't work whatsoever. lmao.)
    3- the possibility of dozens of the exact same thing being made by entireely different people. one person may want a mod loader, the other may want one too, maybe one wants a mod, maybe another wants the same type of mod, so the a.i proceeds to punch out the same exact output but under a different name? ("hey dude wanna play chicken tendie mod?" "yeah sure dude what one?" "idfk dude chicken tendie mod 3?")

    all three of those reasons are exactly the points to be worried about not gatekeeping vibecoding. you should absolutely be gatekeeping the FUCK out of making mods, especially ones with no proven testing. this does not mean you should gatekeep absolutely everyone, but you should gatekeep the majority.

    A.I has become so good now that it can be relied upon now. to outright demonize A.I the way you do, stating it as nothing more than a "destroyer of worlds" is utterly childish. pardon me for accusing you of this, but i genuinely think you made this video to save your ego about not being credited for when people want to make their own things. people are going to use A.I whether you like it or not, and they are going to make things that they could never of done before due to it. they're going to have it be done in about a few days work, sometimes 30-50 minutes, and they'll enjoy what was made.

    the majority of people that play games, especially those that mod them, do not care about how a mod works or how it reaches certain goals. only those that are severely autistic (me!) or have a knack for programming and knowledge will, which despite what you may think, is a minority. it is not nearly as bad as you genuinely think it is.

    p.s: cheers for making your modloader for pc terraria, honestly got pissed off that tmodloader hasn't updated it yet. also really digging how it works on basically all versions of terraria too 🙂

  10. @zakkuth7447 on

    I think your critique is a little heavy-handed and easily targettable, but I don't think you deserve to be dismissed.

    First, AI is not going to kill modding entirely. You're overestimating the presence of people who want to make things by hand (that is, write their own code). It's even observable in the video. Many, many people are willing to hook themselves on LLMs if that means they won't need to become and/or find coders. Writing code is "monotone", "boring", etc. and this position is far more prevalent than assigning the same negative descriptors to the process of, say, drawing. Many artists believe this so there isn't even a "creative side of the community" to cling on as you're being left in the minority. This is demoralizing if you like the problem-solving involved in manual coding (even AI-assisted coding). Those who don't care about that and just want the end result are going to move on and put their pennies in the machine they perceieve as "wish-granting", which means we're probably getting a flurry of mods, not a dead scene.

    However, there is one area where your approach is very much welcome and that happens to be what you're doing. Yes, research and "foundational" projects (modloaders, namely) benefit from a knowledgeable human in the loop. It increases the likelihood of competent documentation, human-readable code and better interfaces for end users (assuming you're diligent and value good software development practices). As long as there is not a competent asshole armed with Claude to target your project specifically, you're probably gonna end up with something far more pleasant to work with compared to efforts made by AI and practically only understandable by other AI models. One weakness I can point out is the inherent speed disadvantage (say, someone determined puts out a modloader which has more features but has weird architecture under the hood. Still a lot of publicity they get and criticism you receive), but it doesn't seem to "mortal" if you're smart and strategic.

    Second, the mentality. That's the part where your critique is the most sound, imo. Yes, the polarization associated with the AI discourse gave birth to many rude people pursuing some kind of superiority over their ideological opponents even at the expense of the community overall. Some pro-AI people snarkily clone other projects and ridicule hobbyists working the way they like, some anti-AI people go around and harass the creators of everything an LLM'd touched, only making the latter more determined to "own the entitled luddites". The bad actors truly poison communities in a manner I find distracting. There is no "right" way to mod, no need to bash people who love manual work, no need to bash every bit of LLM-assisted coding in existence. A bit of reflection that's not self-righteous is very much welcome for every hobbyist.

    Overall, I agree that your project embodies a lot of things about reverse-engineering which made it such a commendable hobby: it requires diligence, skill, consideration for the others. You're a true modder indeed. However, if you don't want to come off as someone who's butthurt about the prospect of being left in the dust, consider rationalizing your no-vibe coding work ethic without relying on weak categories such as whether the result is "soulful" or not or ideologically charged language ("AI slop", "anyone can do that", etc.). You have your heart in the right place but you're open for rather painful jabs.

  15. @Otter-GamingYT on

    tbh , while you DO make valid points , i think you are over exaggerating a bit , i PERSONALLY think that ai coding makes stuff accesible

    it IS better to know how to code , but if someone just doesnt know about "x project someone made that does the same thing" but still vibecoded a project that does the same thing, its fine

    also , if someone wants to play the game in a way they want to , its fine

    aslong as they arent doing it for money , i am fine with it ( i am porting A Koopas Revenge 2 to the PS VITA via AI and mostly want to make it work , not to sell it , plus there is no way to get it on vita anyways )

    plus i will try to port Terraria 1.4.5 to the PS VITA too!

    i do think using slopcoded stuff for money is bad , or using artificial inteligence for images or music is bad , but for coding its FINE if you disclose it , if you dont , then its not fine

    again , its not my fault i want to play the damm game instead of having findings

    also correction

    anthropic only banned cloning games , but from my findigns you can still reverse engineer or port games so barely

    thanks for listening to my opinion ( tbh , your opinion is valid i just disagree)

  17. @verylowchik on

    i am not a supporter of an ai, but i feel like we should tolerate that if its has it contribution on modding (like tools and shi), also there's not ai creators, more likely i would call them prompters or vibecoders

  18. @Lion8cake on

    Wish this got covered more for tmod and terraria in general
    The workshop is so full of slopless theft and self pride and greed that its turned me and other modders away from making mods for the game. The inability to regulate AI is actively killing so much around us and people being "ok" with it because they don't care what AI is doing is only feeding the heat death of the community.
    I hope some form of regulation (whether that be workshop moderation or actual proper laws) come sometime soon to help restrict what people can do with AI, as I do believe it will bring the downfall not only terraria/tmod but a lot of other fan made projects.

  23. @anonanonymous9670 on

    Good modders will adapt around AI and rise and become popular.
    Bad modders will become irrelevant and forgotten in the sea of slop.
    That's how it's pretty much always been like.

  24. @nonk123 on

    github repos where claude and maybe 9 other ai agents are listed as the top 10 contributors are something i despised for so long, but it seems like we just have to accept it. llms aren't going out of fashion anytime soon, even if the bubble bursts

  25. @kazzysky on

    AI is like an addiction tbh

    You start using it, then you start depending on it after some time, it sucks and I don't think many people realize that, especially those who use it
    I can only hope some stuff happen to reduce the usage of it, but who knows.

  33. @SonicRusD on

    From bunnyloader's owner
    "i saw this video
    i feel sorry what happened to his 3ds loader
    honestly i dont have a formed opinion on this, this scenario also happens with bunny loader and other mobile loaders"