A modern RTS engine built for AoE2
Free and independently developed using Godot 4.
A Theological Inquiry into the Nature of Creation, the Sanctity of Pathfinding, and the Heresy of Automated Code Generation
It has been said by the great theologians that man is born into Sin. Yet nowhere in the sacred texts is it written that man must also be born into a world where six villagers cannot reliably chop wood without bumping into each other.
This omission has troubled scholars for centuries.
For what is Sin, if not the deliberate perpetuation of suffering when the means of alleviating it are readily available? And what is suffering, if not watching a knight turn around three times before attacking a stationary monk?
Saint Augustine taught that evil is not a substance in itself, but rather the privation of Good. By this reasoning, poor Pathfinding is not merely a technical defect. It is the absence of Pathfinding as God intended it.
We must therefore ask: if a man possesses the means to remedy this condition, does he not have a moral obligation to act?
Or must he first obtain permission from Reddit?
It is a curious feature of this controversy that the legal questions are, in many respects, easier to debate than the moral ones.
The law, whatever its imperfections, provides statutes, precedents, and reasonably well-defined boundaries. One may examine the conduct in question, consult the relevant authorities, and determine whether an offense has occurred. The parties may disagree, but at least they possess a common framework within which to argue.
Morality affords us no such luxury.
To argue that a man has violated the law, one must identify the law he has violated. To argue that a man has behaved immorally, one need only announce that his conduct feels wrong, and await the approval of others who share the sentiment.
This presents a particular difficulty for the critics of a free game engine.
For to oppose its existence on strictly legal grounds risks adopting an uncomfortable position: that the interests of a multibillion-dollar corporation ought to prevail over the voluntary efforts of an individual seeking to improve a beloved game.
Such a position is not impossible to defend. Property Rights are, after all, Property Rights. But it requires the critic to assume the mantle of the corporate advocate, a garment that sits awkwardly upon those who otherwise regard themselves as champions of the common man.
Few wish to stand before the assembled congregation and proclaim, "Think of the shareholders!"
And so the argument migrates from law to morality, where the terrain is infinitely more accommodating to the critic.
The undertaking is disrespectful. It is presumptuous. It threatens the community. It employs artificial intelligence. It was completed suspiciously quickly. Its author has failed to demonstrate the appropriate degree of humility.
Each objection may be advanced without identifying a specific injury, much less demonstrating one, and each can be made with impunity behind the safety of one’s keyboard.
And therein lies the peculiar asymmetry of moral accusation.
The accuser need not establish that the work has caused harm. He need only suggest that some invisible boundary of propriety has been crossed. The accused must then undertake the impossible labor of proving the purity of his intentions to an audience whose standards of Virtue may change with each reply.
Should he defend himself vigorously, he is arrogant. Should he remain silent, he is evasive. Should he acknowledge the assistance of artificial intelligence, he has not truly created anything. Should he emphasize his own labor, he is taking credit for the machine's accomplishments.
The tribunal thus achieves a remarkable theological innovation: a doctrine under which every possible defense constitutes additional evidence of Guilt.
Yet Virtue is not established by the approval of spectators, any more than Vice is established by their disapproval. The moral character of an undertaking must ultimately be judged by its intentions, its methods, and its consequences, rather than by the discomfort its existence inspires in those who did not undertake it.
This does not mean that the author is necessarily righteous. Love of a game does not confer infallibility, nor does the absence of a price tag absolve a man of every possible wrongdoing.
It means only that the accusation of immorality demands something more substantial than irritation at the spectacle of another man's ambition.
For the law asks whether a man has the right to do a thing.
Morality asks whether he ought to do it.
And the internet, having confused these two questions, has arrived at a third:
Who does this guy think he is?
A second controversy has arisen concerning the instruments by which this work was accomplished.
It is alleged that the developer employed an artificial intelligence to assist in the writing of code. This accusation, if substantiated, would place him among the most dangerous Heretics of our age.
For centuries, mankind has understood that the moral worth of software derives not from its utility, its correctness, or the happiness it brings to its users, but from the quantity of human suffering endured during its creation.
The programmer who spends fourteen hours painstakingly assuring the accuracy of dozens of JSON files is virtuous. The programmer who undertakes the same in 10 seconds through artificial assistance has committed an offense against the Natural Order.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, had he been granted access to GitHub, would surely have devoted an entire volume of the Summa Theologica to this distinction.
Yet, the product of his labor is free.
Its author demands no payment for admission. He has not imposed a Tithe upon the villagers, nor instituted an Indulgence by which players may purchase forgiveness for their idle military units.
He has simply undertaken to rebuild a beloved game engine, in the hope that others might enjoy its improvements.
And for this he must answer before the Tribunal of Public Opinion.
Had he charged seventy dollars, his greed would have been plain to see. Had he announced a subscription service, his exploitation would have been readily condemned. Had he promised a revolutionary new cryptocurrency backed by the productive capacity of virtual lumberjacks, his wickedness would have been beyond dispute. These would have been familiar Sins, easily recognized and comfortably denounced.
But to labor and release the result freely?
Such conduct defies the moral categories of our age.
There must be some hidden wickedness. Some secret vanity. Some unforgivable transgression against the natural hierarchy of game development.
And so, finding no monetary exploitation, the Inquisitors have turned their attention to the method of production.
He used AI. At last, the Heresy is revealed.
It must be acknowledged, of course, that these instruments are not reserved for the heretic. They are available equally to the established custodians of the game, though we must not presume that a multibillion-dollar enterprise has properly budgeted the twenty dollars per month required to procure them.
Perhaps its accountants have determined that the preservation of Traditional Suffering offers a superior return on investment. For surely no rational institution, charged with the stewardship of a valuable work, would knowingly refuse an instrument capable of multiplying the productivity of its craftsmen merely to preserve the sanctity of doing things the hard way.
There is, however, one distinction between the heretic and his corporate counterparts. The great institutions may employ these same instruments behind the sacred veil of nondisclosure agreements, proprietary processes, and Corporate Secrecy, their methods concealed from the judgment of The Faithful.
The independent developer enjoys no such sanctuary. His methods are laid bare, and he must answer not merely for his own use of artificial intelligence, but seemingly for the very existence of the technology, as a means by which to achieve the most optimal result.
Thus we arrive at a remarkable moral arrangement: the corporation may quietly employ artificial intellect in the pursuit of profit, while the individual who openly employs it to produce something freely given must stand trial for the Sins of the entire industry. One is called Innovation. The other, Heresy.
We must next consider whether it is morally permissible to improve upon a work already in existence.
There are those who maintain that the established engine, having endured for many years, has acquired a kind of Sacred Authority. Its deficiencies are no longer defects, but Traditions. Its limitations are no longer obstacles, but cherished characteristics of the human experience.
Under this doctrine, a villager who walks halfway around a lumber camp before returning to the tree immediately beside him is not malfunctioning. He is participating in a Ritual whose significance may be understood only by The Faithful.
To interfere with this ritual would be an act of profound arrogance.
Indeed, if the Pathfinding has been broken for twenty-five years, who is one man to suggest that it might be fixed?
Yet this raises a troubling question.
If longevity confers moral legitimacy, ought we not also restore the original game's population limit of 75? Should we abandon widescreen support? Should multiplayer once again require that a man possess both an Ethernet cable and the patience of Job?
The traditionalist offers no satisfactory answer, except to insist that certain changes are acceptable because they have already occurred, while others are unacceptable because they have not.
This is a theology of remarkable convenience.
Perhaps the gravest accusation concerns the possibility that a free alternative engine might divide the Community.
We are told that even if the new engine were demonstrably superior, its existence would constitute an injury to The Faithful, who must remain united under a single executable.
This principle deserves serious examination.
For if a community must never be divided, then no competing game should ever be created. No alternative client should be permitted. No mod should alter the Established Order. No man should be allowed to prefer one thing over another, lest his preference diminish the statistical concentration of players in the original matchmaking queue.
Under such a doctrine, Innovation itself becomes a form of Schism.
Martin Luther, confronted with this argument, might have nailed ninety-five performance benchmarks to the door of Wittenberg Castle.
And yet the question remains: can a community truly be harmed by the mere existence of an additional choice?
If the alternative is inferior, The Faithful will reject it. If it is superior, they may embrace it. If it is merely different, each may follow his conscience.
It is difficult to discern the moral catastrophe in any of these outcomes.
Unless, of course, the preservation of the Established Order has become an end in itself.
We must now confront a question that has troubled philosophers since the dawn of intellectual property law: by what authority may a man alter a thing he does not own?
The law provides a straightforward answer. The right to modify, reproduce, and distribute a creative work belongs to those who possess the appropriate legal rights. These rights may be bought, sold, inherited, transferred, or consolidated through corporate acquisition. They need not remain with the individuals who conceived the work, nor with those who labored to bring it into existence.
Thus, a game may pass from its creators into the possession of men who have never played it, never worked upon it, and perhaps could not distinguish a trebuchet from a lumber camp.
Yet the law recognizes their authority as absolute within its prescribed boundaries.
The original craftsmen, meanwhile, may have long since departed. The artists who gave the world its appearance, the programmers who gave its inhabitants life, and the designers who established its rules may no longer possess any legal authority over their own creation.
Their spiritual connection to the work is profound. Their legal connection may be nonexistent.
This presents a theological difficulty.
For if the right to determine the future of a beloved work belongs exclusively to whoever possesses its commercial rights, then we must accept that Spiritual Authority can be transferred by wire payment.
A sufficiently large acquisition, under this doctrine, constitutes a form of Apostolic Succession.
The sacred flame passes not from master to apprentice, nor from creator to caretaker, but from one corporate balance sheet to another.
And what of those who presently maintain the work? We ought not impugn their character, for they may be talented craftsmen who care deeply about their responsibilities. Yet their employment exists within a commercial enterprise. Their labor is commissioned, their priorities established by management, and their continued stewardship contingent upon the financial interests of their employer.
Should the enterprise determine tomorrow that the game is no longer sufficiently profitable, its support may cease. The sacred obligation to preserve the work would yield, as all sacred obligations eventually must, to the quarterly earnings report.
And here stands a peculiar figure.
A man who possesses no legal claim to the game. Who was not among its original creators. Who has received neither salary nor commission to rebuild it. Who has nevertheless devoted his own time to reconstructing its machinery, not because a board of directors demanded it, but because he loves the thing itself.
He asks for no money. He seeks no ownership of the original work. He merely wishes that the villagers might cease bumping into one another.
Does such a man possess no authority whatsoever?
The lawyer answers: none beyond that which the law permits.
But the theologian must ask a different question.
Can Devotion confer a Moral Authority that Ownership alone cannot?
Consider the ancient cathedral. Its original architects have been dead for centuries. Its legal title may belong to an institution whose administrators have never laid a stone, nor walked through its doorways. Yet when its roof begins to collapse, who possesses the greater spiritual claim to its restoration: the distant proprietor who calculates the cost of repairs, or the craftsman who arrives voluntarily, tools in hand, because he cannot bear to watch it decay?
The law may determine who is permitted to climb the scaffolding. It cannot, by that determination alone, establish who loves the cathedral more.
Nor does love grant the craftsman permission to trespass, steal the stones, or disregard the rights of others. Spiritual conviction does not repeal earthly law. Even Saint Augustine, one suspects, would have advised consulting an attorney before distributing copyrighted assets.
But neither does legal ownership settle every question of moral legitimacy.
A corporation may possess the right to abandon a game without possessing the moral virtue of preserving it. A stranger may lack the right to distribute its contents while nevertheless possessing a sincere and admirable desire to sustain its legacy.
And so we arrive at the central paradox.
The men who created the game no longer control it. The men who control it did not create it. The men employed to maintain it must ultimately answer to commercial interests. And the man who has voluntarily undertaken to rebuild its engine, for no reason more profitable than affection, is asked to explain what gives him the right.
Perhaps the answer is that he has no special legal right at all.
But if there exists such a thing as a Spiritual Right to participate in the preservation and improvement of human creations, surely it must arise from something other than the possession of a purchase agreement.
Perhaps it arises from care. From labor freely given. From the willingness to assume responsibility for problems one did not create, in service of people one has never met.
And perhaps, in the Final Judgment, when the great works of mankind are weighed upon the scales of eternity, the Almighty will not ask who held the Intellectual Property.
He may instead ask who bothered to fix the Pathfinding.
Having exhausted the questions of legality, morality, spiritual authority, development instrumentation, corporate ownership, and the proper number of years a man must suffer before being permitted to release software, we arrive at the question that ought perhaps to have preceded all the others.
Is the damn thing any Good?
This question, though deceptively simple, threatens to render much of the preceding theological inquiry unnecessary.
For if the engine is Good, if it remedies longstanding defects, improves the experience of its players, and preserves the qualities that made the original beloved, then what further justification does its existence require?
And if it is bad, if its pathfinding proves inferior, its collision system unsatisfactory, or its improvements illusory, then no quantity of moral righteousness, spiritual devotion, or legal sophistication shall persuade others to use it.
This is a profoundly unsettling proposition, for it suggests that the value of a work might ultimately reside in the work itself, rather than in the biography, credentials, methods, or institutional affiliations of its author.
Under such a doctrine, a game engine produced by one man with the assistance of artificial intelligence must be judged by the same standards as one produced by a hundred salaried engineers. Neither is entitled to admiration by virtue of its provenance. Neither is condemned by the circumstances of its creation.
The question is whether it works, and whether the experience it provides is worth having.
One can imagine the horror with which the medieval scholastics would have greeted this conclusion. Having spent nine volumes establishing the precise metaphysical conditions under which a villager may pass through another villager, they would be informed that the matter could be settled by launching the game and observing the result.
Centuries of disputation, undone by a playtest.
Even the legal question, though consequential in the earthly realm, cannot determine the intrinsic quality of the work. The law may prohibit the distribution of a masterpiece or permit the sale of an abomination. It may establish who is entitled to profit from a creation, but it cannot decree that the creation is Good.
Nor can spiritual authority rescue an inferior product. A man may love Age of Empires II with the fervor of a thousand monks and still produce an engine in which the villagers wander aimlessly into the sea.
His devotion would be admirable.
His Pathfinding would remain defective.
Thus we must distinguish between the Right to make something, the Virtue of making it, and the Merit of the thing made. These are separate questions, and no answer to the first two can substitute for an answer to the third.
There is, of course, one difficulty with this doctrine.
To determine whether the engine is good, one must actually play it.
This requires an act of considerable intellectual courage, for it exposes the critic to the possibility that his assumptions may be mistaken. It is far safer to debate the author's motives, scrutinize his development methods, or question his spiritual standing than to submit one's convictions to the indignity of Empirical Evidence.
Yet the Final Judgment cannot be postponed indefinitely. The players must decide whether the experience is better, worse, or merely different.
And when that day arrives, neither the blessings of the theologians nor the condemnations of Reddit shall carry much weight.
For the ultimate arbiter of a game engine is not the lawyer, the philosopher, the corporation, the programmer, or the prophet.
It is the player.
And the player, having commanded twenty knights to attack a single monk, shall know the Truth.
By their Pathfinding ye shall know them.