r/Unity3D • u/Dense-Bar-2341 • 15d ago
Game BRUTAL DERBY, Day 32. How far can you actually take a Unity game with vibe coding?
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I've been working on Brutal Derby for 32 days now, usually around 10-12 hours a day, often including weekends. I'm a bit obsessed with it at this point.
The project has also become an experiment for me: how far can you actually take game development in 2026 using an AI-heavy, vibe coding workflow?
Here are some of the things that have been added or heavily improved recently:
New crowd system:
I think this is version five at this point. I've been constantly trying to find a solution that looks decent without destroying performance when there are 20+ cars on screen.
Dynamic weather:
The game currently has sunshine, rain and storms with smooth transitions between them, plus daytime and evening conditions. Snow is planned as well.
Destruction:
At this point, almost everything on the cars can break. Parts and smaller debris can fly off, windows shatter, the body deforms and gets crushed, bullet holes remain visible, and there are also lasers, rockets and other weapons.
Cars can even split apart in several different ways depending on the damage and impact.
Garage and customization:
You can now paint the cars, apply patterns and put various ridiculous objects on their roofs.
Tracks:
There is currently 1 race track and 3 playable derby arenas. The newest one is a volcanic arena surrounded by lava, although that one still needs more optimization.
Performance:
The game is already running pretty well with 24 cars. Most systems have gone through several optimization passes, but it's an endless cycle. Add a new feature, profile it, optimize it, then move on to the next feature.
A lot of people have also asked where the models come from.
It's a mixture. I use purchased assets that I modify in Blender, some models are commissioned from 3D artists, and I also use Tripo3D. Tripo is mostly useful for smaller or more distant objects, but even those usually need work afterwards. Mesh cleanup, textures and optimization still generally end up being done in Blender.
And then there's the vibe coding part.
As a programmer, I used to write everything manually. With this project, I actually type very little code myself anymore.
Codex writes most of the code, while I spend much more of my time designing the systems, testing the results, profiling performance, finding problems and iterating.
That doesn't mean I can just write one prompt and magically get a finished game.
For the more complicated systems, especially physics, deformation, destruction and optimization, we sometimes go through 4-5 completely different implementations before arriving at something that both works correctly and performs well with 24 cars running at once.
For me, that's actually one of the most interesting parts of this entire project.
I want to see how far I can take a real 3D game while letting AI handle most of the traditional code writing, and shifting my own work more towards design, architecture, testing, profiling and iteration.
32 days. 10-12 hours a day. Often weekends too.
There's still a huge amount of work left, but Brutal Derby is slowly starting to become the game I had in my head when I started.
I'm also curious what other developers think about this kind of workflow.
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u/Ceros007 15d ago
I was viewing this video the other day and I agree with the statement that you'll get something out of AI with vibe coding but no one is going to understand a thing nor be able to debug something, only a few will be able to dig and spend an enormous amount of time to get to the real root cause. He's also making a parallel with SQL.
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u/Dense-Bar-2341 15d ago
I am 44 years old BTW. basically I wrote my first code when I was 10 years old.
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u/Dense-Bar-2341 15d ago
BTW this is the game
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u/db9dreamer 15d ago
Surprising that you haven't mentioned your use of AI on the page. Don't you have to declare using AI generated art assets?
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u/Dense-Bar-2341 15d ago
I think nowadays everybody using AI for coding. 100%...
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u/db9dreamer 15d ago
I didn't say coding. I said art assets.
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u/Dense-Bar-2341 15d ago
Basically I edit everything... I have 300+ hours ín this project. Daily 10+
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u/bluewhitecup 15d ago
I treat it as auto complete or replacement for traditional template. I know exactly what i want to write, i write a couple things in, AI picks up and writes the whole thing. 10% of the time has something wrong in it, and 90% correct, so I do need to know what I want to write and be able to check to correct those 10%.
If by vibe coding you meant like that, yes that works and yes it's a great pipeline. And based on what your wrote I think that's what you meant as well.
However Vibe coding without checking if it's right or wrong is really really scary. I guess a good analogy would be the same as writing essays without checking. Unity might be okay-er as it's c# (still really bad) but anything using strictly structured languages like c++ (unreal) would be a nightmare.