Real-time AI Rendering of an ASCII Game: Challenges and Breakthroughs
The author renders a prehistoric dinosaur game, "Thunder Lizard," in real-time using AI, transforming its ASCII graphics into high-definition visuals. This presented significant challenges: completing AI image generation, transmission, and display within 30 milliseconds. Leveraging fal.ai's low-latency inference capabilities and WebSocket connections, the author achieved 10 FPS rendering, albeit with noticeable latency. Model selection involved experimenting with ControlNet and image-to-image models, ultimately settling on a fast model and training custom LoRA weights to improve image quality. While the results aren't perfect, the experiment demonstrates the feasibility of real-time AI game rendering, opening exciting possibilities for future game development.