Ruse AI Hack

Teams of two to five had 48 hours to build a working AI app and five minutes on stage to show it. We were two: Galio worked on the interface, I worked on the pipeline. We planned before the event, as the rules allowed, and started writing code on Friday night.

The AI was slow and unpredictable. The step that plans the set took anywhere from 25 seconds to over a minute and a half on the same idea, so the app learned to say it was still working. Image requests hung on overloaded servers, so each one got a 60-second limit and moved on to the next of several API keys.

On Saturday afternoon we found why every full run had stopped at the 3D step: the request to the 3D service had the wrong shape, and it failed without saying so. One fix, and the models came out. Sunday morning went into the landing page, the demo models and a four-slide pitch. The last change, an hour and a half before the deadline, was a button that skips the slow 4K pictures and redraws them at 2K. That afternoon I presented it with a video of it running, and Asset Forge won a special award.

You type one idea, for example “cozy island survival camp”. Six AI steps turn it into a set, and you approve three times before anything is spent on 3D: the list, the style and the pictures.

1. Read the idea and write a short brief.
2. List what the set needs: a hero, props, scenery.
3. Write one style bible with the colours, edges and proportions every later step must follow. This is the point of the whole thing: other tools make one model at a time, so ten models come out in ten styles.
4. Write a picture prompt for each item.
5. Draw each item from four sides on one sheet, then cut the sheet into four pictures.
6. Turn the four pictures into a game-ready 3D model for Unity, Unreal, Blender or a 3D printer.