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40+ days of reverse engineering a game. At this point, I'm not sure what's harder to deal with: the engine or the AI.
I'm working on an accessibility mod for Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. The idea is to give visually impaired players something similar to the navigation assistance in The Last of Us Part II.
I thought it would be difficult. I didn't think I'd still be fighting the navigation system over 40 days later.
The game has no source code available, so pretty much everything has to be figured out through reverse engineering. I've managed to reconstruct the story progression and objectives across the game, which was already a ridiculous amount of work.
But knowing where the player needs to go is one thing. Figuring out how to actually guide them there using whatever the engine has loaded at that moment is another nightmare entirely.
And working with AI makes the whole experience even more interesting. Not always in a good way.
I use AI extensively for coding. Without it, I probably wouldn't have attempted something like this in the first place. But the longer the project goes on, the more time I spend making sure it doesn't undo its own work.
We've had working systems replaced with broken ones, the same problems investigated over and over, and fixes that somehow bring back bugs from weeks ago. Sometimes I spend an entire day just trying to get back to where things were before the latest "improvement."
And the funniest part? The AI will confidently explain why its new approach is definitely the right one. Again.
I'm not giving up on the project, though. I've already put way too much into it, and I genuinely want this accessibility system to work.
If anything, this experience has taught me that AI can help you build some pretty incredible things. Just don't expect it to remember what the hell you're building.
40+ days reverse engineering so blind players can get through it is SERIOUS dedication. this is the stuff that matters
Thank you for your kind words)
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Experience buys you time.
Good references help a project, but they're not what saves it. What saves it is knowing the tools within your reach and the creative processes you can run.
I'm not an animator. Still, this project, which started recently here at the studio, called for animation: hand-drawn characters, in thin lines, living around 3D pieces from a furniture company, for a set of product Reels.
The client needed it in two days. Done the traditional way, it would have taken far longer, so I turned to AI tools. But using the tool for the tool's sake would never have gotten me here.
What got me here was the process. I spent my time hunting for the right reference, and found it in Vitra's "Mariposa Family" film, an excellent reference for illustration and for bringing 3D and drawing together. From there, the tools and the workflow I've built over the years did the rest. There's still room to improve, I know, but it's a good step forward.
I hear a lot that AI will take some designers' jobs. Maybe it will. But I see it a little differently. AI lets you do things that used to take far more complex processes. An axe in a lumberjack's hands brings a tree down. In a beginner's hands, it rarely gets the same result. AI works the same way: in the hands of someone who knows how to use it, it doesn't take work away. It creates more.
The tools will keep changing. What doesn't change is each designer's sense of aesthetics: knowing what fits, how it fits, and what to do. AI can make almost anything. Deciding what deserves to be made is still up to us.
Has AI taken work from you, or brought you more?
You brought creativity to the table 💪
Amazing work
Most people I see using AI in advertising are using it to generate video, and honestly I think that's the least interesting thing it can do.
Where it's actually changed how I work is 3D. I've got it driving Blender for me now, building out scenes, rigging the cameras, setting up lighting and running the renders, which is all the technical setup that used to eat whole days before I could even start on the creative.
But it hasn't made good work fast. Getting a car to actually look like a car still means going back through the lighting over and over, catching reflections that feel off, and re-cutting shots until the timing finally sits right. That part still takes time.
What's changed is where the hours go. I spend a lot less of them pushing buttons and a lot more of them making taste calls, which is the part brands were paying for in the first place.
Ye le Jani is AI + 3D wali post ke liye:
100% agree with this take! Everyone is just doing gen video, but using AI to drive Blender — scene building, camera rigging — that's the real workflow upgrade. This car render looks insane! Would love to hear more about your setup.