How to add AI to your game: pictures, text and 3D

What players can create

Each feature you open appears in the game's AI studio, grouped by kind. The player writes what they want, sees the price and gets the result; everything they made stays in "My creations".

What matters is that the result belongs to the player. A portrait they described themselves feels like theirs in a way a stock image never does, and a player who has spent an evening making a hero tends to return to play with it. That attachment is what AI really adds to a game.

Who pays and how much it costs you

• Generations are paid from the AI credits of your plan, then from the Aspis of your iDos Games account.
• Players pay you back, if you want: a price in game resources or in Aspis for each feature, or free.
• A failed generation costs the player nothing: Aspis are charged only when the result is ready, and a refused request (limit reached, feature unavailable) charges nothing.
• Caps protect you: per-player limits and the spending caps of the title stop a viral moment from emptying your balance.

A simple start is a free feature with a small daily limit per player. When you see how often people use it, move it to a price in game currency that players earn by playing.

How to choose the first feature

Ask yourself three questions.

1. What does the player already do most in the game? If they collect heroes, the first feature is a hero portrait; if they build, it is a world or a building from a description.
2. Where will the result be seen? A generation nobody sees gets boring fast. A portrait in the profile, a skin on the character or a card in the deck is seen by the player and by others.
3. How often is it needed? A portrait is made once a week, NPC lines are needed all the time. Rare things can be paid, frequent ones are better as a hidden feature of the game itself.

One feature that answers all three questions is worth more than six that answer none.

Ideas by genre

• RPG: a portrait of the hero, a backstory, a name and a crest for the guild.
• Sandbox: a world built from the player's description; the voxel sandbox does this with a hidden feature.
• Card or board game: art for a custom card, a voiced announcer.
• Social games: player creations shared with others through the workshop.
• Any game: NPC lines written by AI from the game code, so characters do not repeat the same three phrases.

AI the game uses by itself

Not every feature has to be in the studio. A feature marked hidden is called only by the game code and never shown to players. That is how a game can write a new quest text each day, give an NPC a reply that fits the situation, or turn the player's short idea into a whole level. The player sees the result, not the prompt.

For developers

In-app AI works through client.ai in @idosgames/core. A refusal charges nothing, and waitForGeneration follows the server job for you:

const res = await client.ai.generateImage('skin-gen', { Prompt: text })
if (!res.ok) return showError(res.error)
const done = await client.ai.waitForGeneration(res.data)

Mistakes to avoid

• Opening every kind at once. Start with one feature that fits the game; a studio with six empty buttons confuses.
• No limits. Without a per-player limit one enthusiastic player can use the whole budget in an evening.
• A prompt that does too much. The hidden prompt should keep results in the game's style; the player adds only the details.
• Hiding the price. Show what a generation costs before the player presses the button.

If you are still building the game itself, start with how to make a game with AI and add in-game AI once the core loop works.