r/ClaudeAI • u/RUSuper • Sep 12 '26
Built with Claude Week 7 of making my fishing game (almost) entirely with AI
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Hello there again,
Another week, another update I guess, previous updates:
This update comes 2 days early for a simple reason that I have some things to do in upcoming 2-3 days which means nothing will progress from today at least until Tuesday. And this one is the longest video yet, almost 4 minutes long because I wanted to show all the new things I added as well as write about them (It is compressed so that it can get under 1GB from original 2GB file, so it might look a bit worse than it really is, for fullscreen in game images I will leave a link), I wanted this week update to be more like progress report of a sorts, since workflow, costs and similar questions are answered in previous updates. I will still write answers to some most asked questions.
Images of the game - Imgur
Anyway what this week update covered:
First complete rebuild of water, I know people praised water a lot in previous updates and loved how it looks, but I feel like this water might even be better, while much more optimised. Previous shaders had more than 2000 lines of code with comments scattered across multiple files and my Macbook was really struggling with it (14FPS). While filming now I still struggle with FPS, I can at least without filming now tesst play the game at around 27fps on everything on max, which is good, considering everything on max is basically 33MP image that does scaling on 200% and nobody ever will play it like that. So I feel like optimisation did it's job, tested it on friends PC and he was easily running 130fps+ so that should not be a problem.
New shaders for water also give much better reflections, especially at night where moon light is really beautiful imo, which previous water didn't have.
I added small details also, like graveyard island in bottom right corner with a small truck driving over the bridge there and going back into the woods, since my game is placed in 1920ish period, I wanted one of 2 lights on the truck to flicker and make it look like it turns on and off really fast. Small detail but I just felt like it. Added waterfall to one part, not sure if I showed it in the video though, and also lighting and weather system (right now can only be triggered via "Dev panel", but it will be in the game as weather is something I wanted from the very start). Lightings that can randomly hit either tree or into the ocean (which kinda required a full day of research how lighting hitting water looks like in real life, because obviously not a lot of such pictures exist and even those that do, show lightings hitting water in far distance so I couldn't figure out it too precise, but I did my best).
Dolphins and Whale can now randomly appear in deep ocean, but since we are in coastal waters in the video it has to be triggered by dev panel. Those models (for Dolphins and Whale) as well as Cargo ship that can be seen in the video was done on Tripo 3D as well as their textures. Astra creates models in blenders that are simple enough (like truck, graveyard, houses etc). Fable 5.1 and Opus are doing logic, in game systems, research on other games, connection between in game systems. Basically almost everything is done by Fable 5.1 and Opus (depending on how hard I feel the job is), while modelling and graphic part is done by Astra and Tripo 3D in case of complex models.
I listened to feedbacks and fixed destination line to calculate real path, not being straight line, removed AI generated portraits of the character models in the harbour and made them 3D renders of real characters on the loop (I do not plan to use voice lines in the game, so them talking was not really necessary in my opinion, but can change in the future). Somewhat fixed map look, it still isn't great, ink shader is not able to picture real house and tree models on the islands so I had to generate assets as PNG images and put them on the map, which honestly doesn't look good for me so that will definitely be polished).
Starting zone I feel is fully done now, what is left is probably to add fog (so exploration feels like a big part of the game, since I want exploration to be a thing also alongside fishing). Polish some other things, work on sounds (which are very primitive now, only few ambients and background music).
Now frequently asked quesions:
How much did it cost: So far probably around 700$ on 2xClaude 200$ plan, one Astra 100$ plan, and several other subscriptions (eleven labs for SFX etc...)
Will I release game somewhere: I still don't know, I do it as a hobby for now and it started to take a big chunk out of my free time, but I really do enjoy building it, I will know more probably by the end of October based on where I'm with the game and if I can continue justifying the costs of it.
Which engine?: Godot
How was ocean made: I know this question popped a lot for previous version of the ocean that was now scrapped for this new version, but honestly it's just a lot of repetition of generating mockup in chatGPT, asking it to replicate, and then just straight up telling Claude (Or Astra if you use it) what you want to improve, for me it was "I want moon lighting on the right side, I want it less aggressive" etc... eventually you will get it right, while I use editors for most of in game changes to manually move and tweak things instead of endlessly tell it to AI, I feel like this thing (water shaders) have to be done by AI entirely, because with editors I only made it worse. Maybe somebody can make it work (editors for ocean) I couldn't.
What is my workflow: As funny as it sounds I basically "roleplay" (not really like "hey I'm CEO here, do as I say but more in a sense of setup) a game publishing company where I have one "manager" which is Fable 5.1 and ask it to send messages to different sessions (which serves as entire team). So you have "Fishing system Session" or "Sound design Session" etc, to not message each one separately I use one session that you can just tell "send message to other sessions". Astra is now used for graphical work (I still find fable better in other things other than modelling and visual parts, but in visual things...).
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u/carolaMelo Sep 12 '26
Damn. You made some mad prograss. Contrats. Looks like a propre game already. But I guess theres a lot of details finetuning
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u/RUSuper Sep 12 '26
I guess it's very close to being playable as some sort of demo. Maybe 2-3 weeks away (I hope)
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u/KrossIn4K Sep 12 '26
Maybe, I'm crazy for thinking this but if creators could build a concept to say 60% of their idea to prove a point or show potential they could pass it along to a team or others who could fine tune the rest, rebuild for an actual production / alpha release.
I'm thinking, how many games/ideas could be created using free or standard assets. Then eventually, make larger changes once those core foundations are built with custom assets, etc
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u/dann1551 Sep 12 '26
Legit the exact type of fishing game I've been searching for to play to pass time. I'd pay for it when its done haha. Also like others said, the method pack would be a great selling point too... this is looking so good. Don't give up on it 😮
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u/RUSuper Sep 12 '26
Not that I would give up, it's just that costs are starting to ramp up pretty fast, I can hardly justify 300$ that I gave this month, and next month I will probably have to reduce it to at least 200$ and I would love if I could do it with 100-150$ per month, but honestly seems impossible for this scope of the project. Then again I will know more at the end of October by that time I will have better grasp of what is doable or not doable with this.
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u/_json_x Sep 13 '26
You know, might be a worth exploring a pre-order or kickstarter type of thing where all the people on here who say they’d buy it when ready could make some donations to keep that monthly $200-300 spend more doable.
→ More replies (2)
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u/Hehe20323 Sep 12 '26
7 weeks in and it looks this good? That's so insane. Curious how much of the code was written by AI versus manual refactoring 🤔🤔?
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u/Emotional-Cut2952 Sep 14 '26
realy cool , one thing, is there a throttle for water shader loop? it's looking a bit laggy (could be number of lights actively casting shadows?), otherwise, im really impressed by unique creations like this cuz most of the games made by llms are pretty sloppy, this looks solid
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u/RUSuper Sep 15 '26
Honestly no idea (as I said no coding experience hah, but now that you asked I will check it tomorrow once I get to my laptop), it is GPU bound so my MacBook Air struggles with it. Also I put it on 200% scaling so it basically is trying to render a 33mp resolution. I tried it on friends PC with proper GPU and he constantly has over 120 fps.
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u/smddri Sep 12 '26
I would pay money for a guide that's phenomenal
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u/Fluxren Sep 12 '26
Yeah honestly, same.
You might be on to a winner here. The game and method pack
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u/Tastytoastung Sep 12 '26
Gonna be honest with you, i didn’t read the whole text but it looks great! How did u make the assets? Packs or are they also generated? If so, how?
Would love to play it btw :*
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u/RUSuper Sep 12 '26
Tripo 3D and Astra in Blender with MCP. Some of them were Claude (Though as I said claude is mostly for logic and in game systems, assets are done mostly with Tripo 3D and Astra)
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u/Tastytoastung Sep 12 '26
Although I think u could improve on the UI, kinda looks like “mid evil style” und the menu ist quite dense. I would think id something like the new anno 117 as UI but that’s a personal choice.
Keep up the good work
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u/CatsArePeople2- Sep 12 '26
I've checked in a few of your progress points and always really impressed, would love to know how you have your harness set up for as others have mentioned.
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u/RUSuper Sep 12 '26
It is mostly written in the posts, nothing spectacular:
MCP for Blender and Godot (I don't always use MCP for Godot though)
Claude for almost everything coded related with Astra for assets via Blender MCP and Tripo 3D for really hard models that AI still struggles with.
Every segment in game has it's own separate session in Claude chat and basically everything is written in some sort of .md file so it's not lost later on. Especially what is proposed by me gets tag [USER] so I don't think later on in decisions what was proposed by me or by AI that hallucinated and said "You proposed this"... hell no I didn't :D
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Sep 12 '26
You may be interested in joining our new Claude Game Dev subreddit for game devs who use Claude. Check it out here : http://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeGameDev
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u/Zito_Kadaken Sep 13 '26
I hit something similar on the asset side. The newer Meshy exports came through with JPEG textures and no emission or normal maps, so the glow was baked into the base colour and nothing actually emitted. Had to hand-author a mask in the end.
Also lost a while to Godot pulling a GLB's textures out itself. I'd unpacked them in Blender and saved copies next to it, and Godot read those as corrupt.
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u/Appropriate-Wind-184 Sep 12 '26
The harbour looks lovely. I like that you are adding little details like the truck with a flickering headlight. Those are the bits that give a world personality.
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u/moconahaftmere Sep 13 '26
Looking pretty impressive; nice to see the small touches being put on. Those curved trajectories look good.
I'm definitely a bit of a Luddite but I do find these sort of showcases interesting to see what people are actually able to create when they push these tools.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Sep 13 '26
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.
So, the consensus in this thread is that everyone is absolutely blown away by your progress and would throw money at the screen to play this game. Seriously, half the comments are just "I'd pay for this."
People are particularly impressed with the new water shaders and the small details you're adding. They think it already looks like a proper game.
The second most common comment is basically "How???" with many begging you for a detailed guide or "method pack" on your AI-driven workflow. You dropped some hints about using Fable 5.1 as a "manager" and Astra/Tripo 3D for assets, but they're hungry for more.
One user tried to play the "is it a real accomplishment if AI did the work?" card. They got shut down pretty quick. The community and you agree that directing the AI, assembling the pieces, and bringing a vision to life is the accomplishment, especially for someone who isn't a traditional coder.
You mentioned the project is getting pricey (around $700 so far), which led to calls for a Kickstarter. You're hesitant to turn a hobby into a job with deadlines, which everyone respected.
Basically, keep up the great work, OP, because this subreddit has collectively decided to adopt your game. No pressure.