Hi! Well let me start sharing my thoughts about this by saying that I'm a Software Engineer who wants to develop game as well so I kinda get your situation. First of all I've to give you heads up about using AI in Game Development because that opens a possibility of negative feedback (from mild to harsh language that can be used in these comments😅). But I think that you shouldn't let that stop you, more of makes you prepared for it and to set your expectations right.
Now to move on to your question:
"Right way to use AI?"
Since my friend and I are still new to game development—we only developed 1 game—I'll tell you what we've figured out so far:
- Your idea, your plan: If you want to find a good result after using AI to develop your game you must be clear as water about all the details you want in your game. Get ready for lots of docs, diagrams, and sketches.
- Assets hunt: It's better for you to look for assets packs before you decide that you didn't find what you're looking for and make AI do it. This is better both for social standards and your skills.
- Repeated tasks: In our current game, I saw that I must fill the details of some assets objects in unity for 10 elements that I already had written down in my notes. For a similar case where it's all about copy, paste etc... I believe that's where AI agents work best.
- Tutorial for making your game: this is how we currently use it for Unity. By the way I find Unity's tutorial really awesome but to save the time to learn things on another template or game you can let it customize a tutorial to build your own game.
You might think that: "But I'll still do things manually" and yes. It might be because of poor internet connection, slow internet speed, or following a no-cost/low-cost strategy while using AI, but I found that AI-agents—on the free-tier at least— requires you to do things on your own. Which is not something bad you know 🤭.
By the way this all depends on the game engine you use, if you use one and what kind of game you're doing. You'll need to accommodate yourself based on the different conditions your game provides. And of course there's no ultimate instructions about the right way to use AI, I was just trying to share what we learned so far. 🙈