*The sound of crashing drums as the world collapses around me*

-=-=-

I was alright with the AI Music generators, up until yesterday.
Whilst trying to finish off this week's ALChoon, and realising I needed an extra verse of lyrics, and a music video to go with.

I struggled a fair bit, and my head didn't appear to be getting in the right place to do it.

Meanwhile, I was farting about online, as you do, and noticed that Suno.ai had had a BIG upgrade, with v3 now open to the public.

It was THIS track that stopped me in my tracks.
: Download

Hot damn, that's a good track.
It's got an epic beat, a really catchy singalong "Zo Zo Zo" bit, and the vocals (though quite, quite undecipherable!) are full of punchiness, and are just SO good!!!

Then I hopped back to my week's ALChoon, and it sounded like this..
: Download

...
*sigh*

Oh my god, how bad does that sound?
The vocals have no energy, the whole thing sounds so ludicrously disappointing, and it's just not good at all.

I generated 8 tracks on Suno, and almost all of them sounded infinitely better than the track I was trying to make myself.
...

At that point, I stripped out the vocals, used a generic visualiser, and uploaded it as it an instrumental.
The whole bloomin' thing was a giant smack in the face, in terms of what I do, and how I do it, and how nothing's quite what it oughta be.

Bah, humbug...

Meanwhile...

One of the best things about the whole Apple Ecosystem is that they do all the publishing and complexities themselves.
As a solo game dev, having someone else handle all the "worldwide publishing" kerfuffle is infinitely easier than trying to fathom it all yourself, and if they take a 30% cut, then so be it. Goodness known that paying for a proper publisher would likely be just as bad, if not worse!
But right now, Apple's being pulled through the wringer about their entire ecosystem, and both the EU and US are clambering to dismantle their giant Monopolistic ways.

Which is why something like this, sets alarm bells ringing.


(Click for bigger)

It's all about to explode, isn't it? The whole ecosystem's being rocked, and the stability of "Just launch on iOS" is going to end up being a ludicrous amount of extra hoops and worries and problems that, quite frankly, I just don't have the time or energy to put towards.

This past month I had a really great idea for an iOS game, and I've been working really hard to relearn how to "Do iOS", but I feel like a giant sledgehammer has been smashed into my face, and likely every other Indie developer who dared to try.
..

I think I'm giving up on that dream.

Sod it all..
Let's just do AGameAWeek, eh?

A link to my Patreon Page seems somewhat apt, this morning.


"Cartoon @Derek is downhearted, disappointed, upset, sad" by #ArtFlow.ai