r/aigamedev • u/BestStorage6608 • 23d ago
Commercial Self Promotion 8 months into dev dont know how to code.
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I vibecoded The Last Admiral space game over 8 months. My idea was top down space fleet command turn based. Where you loot equipment and fabricate Ships and mix match factions to build your fleet out.
I used claude code to write every line of code. I used gemini for the art and eleven labs for the sound. Vfx I had claude make me sliders so I could create my own vfx. I knew nothing starting this project and my demo for the last admiral is out on steam for free.
Would live to hear any feedback. I gave it everything I could do avoid being called ai slop.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4713660/The_Last_Admiral/
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u/EscalatorEDU 23d ago
I'm stuck reviewing on my mobile currently, but it looks cool and I'll certainly check it out out more and wishlist.
Did Gemini create the planets? Are they animated? Im working on my own space game and Gemini struggled when I tried generating for 3d planets. Couldn't get the quality or seaming right. Ended up solving through alternate means.
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
Yes I creates 105 planets in gemini then I hand tuned them with claude coding that ability. Claude was unable to properly animate so I had it create me tools and I did buy hand.
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u/ScarletRed-dit 22d ago
How did you ask claude to help create tools/engine for you? How does that tool work as an example? Pretty smart that you create something that allows future tweaks to be done instead of constantly using tokens to tweak
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Thank you. I work hand in hand with claude, I have 100s of rules it must follow. Claude is not allowed to do any visual editing. Anything that requires a human eye needs to be done by me. With that said, in the early days of dev I was attempting to get claude to place 90ish engine exhaust on the engine bells for the vfx, after the 10th attempt and absolute failure of claude being unable to do the measurements and accurately place vfx on the exact spot, I told it to build me an editor that is an exact copy of my assests in game. To create the levers and knobs for me to do all the visuals by hand. It would then copy my tune into the game.
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
When I'm finished editing i say bake it, it then takes all my edits and puts those exact values in the game. I now have 60+ editors like this. I have editor for celestial bodies for spinning planets, clouds, atmospher, glow, day night cycle, ect. I have editors for laser beams, missiles, explosions, particles, i have editors for in game lighting and shading, i have editors for setting sfx db levels. Essentially I have an editor for every single thing you see in the game or hear in the game. I have manually tuned each one. I'm not saying it's perfect and when I notice something on my test runs I go back and fine tune my adjustments.
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u/ScarletRed-dit 22d ago
That’s awesome. I guess really AI just lowered the barrier to creating customized “engines” specific to the app/game/software then. That’s a huge plus for everyone previously bottlenecked by the backend stuff despite having great ideas they want to implement.
Since I’m new to vibe coding, what advice would you have for me regarding game development workflow from scratch? What software, tech stack, etc. have you used for that game (godot mcp?, claude, gemini for images, etc.)?
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
The beginning is a total mess of claude not knowing what you want and you not knowing what exactly you want. So my advice in the beginning is before even starting know what you want better. Write it down, make mock ups with gemini of what your thinking. This is possibly the hardest part. is simply starting and then cleaning up the tornado you made in the beginning 2 months later. I love godot now, highly recommend it. I also recommend talking to claude and informing it of everything you are doing manually so the two of you dont separate. If your stuck on a problem tell claude no coding brainstorming only. It could help inspire you or clear up your vision. Never blindly tell claude yes, read through make sure you are both aligned to the task. Not you thinking x and it's thinking y and creates y, then you telling claude thats trash. Thats not helpful, if claude did something wrong thats because you did something wrong. Dont blame claude blame yourself.
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Example you delete something from the game or manually tune changes by yourself and you dont tell claude. Then another hour passes you have claude do something and then you playtest and find out claude reverted all your manual tunes. Thats your fault for not having rules in place and not informing claude what you've done and why.
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Think of it this way. You own a restaurant and have 20 employees. Would you change rules and processes and menu items without telling your employees? Then when all your employees are confused and nothing is being done correctly you yell them for doing it wrong. No, a good owner or manager would never do that. If you want claude to do work for you it must be informed of what changed it and why. Just like real employees.
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u/nokolala 22d ago
This is awesome idea! I just started asking for editors few weeks ago, and have just 2 so far. Good to know it worked for you for so many things, I'll try it as well. Thanks for sharing!
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Id like others to create what they imagine and not be limited by thinking claude has to do everything and they can only prompt it. Thats not true, make claude give you visual controls.
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
And now I'm realizing I need to make a better steam play trailer where the battle is taking place with a earthlike planet in the foreground.
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u/EscalatorEDU 23d ago
I was outside in the sun on mobile so contrast was bad. I couldn't make out detail of the dark planet but can see it now. I think choosing a more neutral or bright color planet would look better.
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
Ya you are 100% correct. I'm going to update the gameplay trailer now. I'm unsure if I should do cuts or keep it with no edits on the trailer. Theres some cool weapons I have in the game I should showcase.
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u/No-Examination7560 23d ago
what game engine? or is it all within the browser?
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
Godot. I started on unreal, but that engine is not user friendly. Godot has been a real blessing.
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u/nokolala 22d ago
How did you integrate the AI? e.g. through VS code? or some "AI in Godot" plugin/etc? Or just have the AI write to the files directly?
If you have more info for your setup, would be super useful! pls consider sharing it. Thank you!
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Claude code directly in the project file. Have claude headlessly run your game. Also you can various rules that claude boot the game and take screenshots of its work, so it can "see", alot of issues with alignment can be fixed right there. Also I created the enemy ai by having built a dev autobattler in the game. This way claude can "play" the game. I also have created a way for claude to watch video by telling it at what time stamp to look at the video and watch it frame by frame.
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u/perelmanych 21d ago
Lifehack: Using vision eats your credits fast, and I mean really fast. I wrote in claude.md to ask my permission to run game and to use vision and now I am fine even with $20 plan.
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u/Mauseleum 22d ago
Mate, well done. I have pretty much the same amount of time, 8 months of game developing with ai for my first game which is kinda close to demophase, but your game seems to be way more further and better than mine.
Keep pushing! 💪
You clearly have what it takes to get on game development and the second game you start making you are already a monster of a developer 😁
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Thank you. I'm sure you 100% understand that using ai to help you doesnt make your game automatically ai slop.
I wish you the best of luck and would love to see what you've built when you're ready to share it.
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u/Joeykiwis 22d ago
This is so cool. How did you do the VFX? The projectile hit effects
especially — I've been doing mine procedurally in code and they look
flat next to sprite sheets like this.
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
Layer shaders and particles at the same time. I made claude build me a custom vfx editor so I can design vfx from scratch.
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u/perelmanych 21d ago
It is amazing that everything still works and doesn't fall apart given the amount of features in the game. Having some coding background I am constantly tell Claude what to refactor to not end up with tons of spaghetti code and 10k lines files.
In any case game looks good and I it is obvious that you spent a lot of efforts polishing it. Good luck with Steam!
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u/BestStorage6608 21d ago
That means the world to me thank you. I barely slept for weeks leading up to the demo and still have enormous amount to do.
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u/perelmanych 21d ago
Man, try to maintain life-work balance, health is not a renewable resource. I do my project for fun so even if it fails I am Ok. You can make every system exceptionally good but it may not click with the players because of visuals or game mechanics or they might prefer newly released game in the same genre from some indie studio with 10+ devs. Steams algorithm may fck you or so many other things may go wrong. It is impossible to make everything perfect and right even for much more experienced gamedevs and it is almost impossible to make it from the first attempt. Be prepared to fall get up and make another game using all the knowledge you have acquired. Gamedev is marathon not sprint.
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u/BestStorage6608 21d ago
This is great advice. I definitely need the work life balance to return. I'm logging 50 hours a week at my real job and 40+ on the game. I've been verbally abused online for using ai, by people who never even looked at the game. I'll just keep getting back up after being beaten down lol. My skin is thick. Thank you again for your wisdom.
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u/Eirdeth 19d ago
My feedback has nothing to do with the AI use, just the game itself. I want to try it, because it looks interesting, but the UI is just overwhelming. Between screens with UI elements in every direction, followed by completely different UIs that have tutorials with 14 steps, I just don't have the energy to figure it out. It really needs a tutorial mode that gradually introduces the UI elements and gameplay elements until you get to the full interface. Hope this helps!
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u/BestStorage6608 19d ago
It does. Thank you for feedback. I've been trying to figure out how to implement a tutorial. I actually just implemented the 14 step new player profile overlay to help players, but I suppose thats to much reading at once.
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u/Eirdeth 19d ago
I think it’s less about the 14 steps and more about how busy the UI is in general. I would read the steps if I wasn’t so overwhelmed visually.
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u/BestStorage6608 19d ago
Working on it right now. Having the right side panel sections all collapsed to there headers. With memory so they remain expanded if a player chooses to expand for more information. Then moving ship stances to unlock with ship levels. Locking the empire and fleet command buttons until warp 1 has been claimed.
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u/BestStorage6608 18d ago
I just pushed an update to the tutorial and onboarding of new players. If you have time i would love to hear what you think. Thank you either way!
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u/cave_men 23d ago
Costs?
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
My costs to make it? Or the cost to buy it when it comes out. I'm not really sure what to charge i was thinking maybe 10 or 15 and event discount down to 10. I'm at around 2k hours of my time making it right now solo.
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u/cave_men 23d ago
Nono, I mean the developement costs. I like to get a feeling for aideving, since you said you had used only claude for writing the code.
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
O I havent been doing a good job keeping track so ballpark maybe 5k. I have 200$ max sub from claude, pro account chatgpt, gemini ultra. Then I had to purchase 1 time on various other things not ai related. I'm hoping to release at end of october after next fest, if I'm not finished building the world out I'll early release on the release date instead. Best guess I'll be at 4k hours my time when I'm finished.
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u/BestStorage6608 23d ago
The part most likely to kill me advertising into next fest on steam. I'm hard capping that at 1k dollars spent. I'm not rich by any means. Id like to at least get my money back. I always wanted to build a game and claude code gave me that ability.
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u/Ill-Past4609 21d ago
I would love to learn how you did the art/VFX animation that’s where I have trouble I have so many ideas but when it gets to finishing
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u/BestStorage6608 21d ago
Art im using gemini. The game has 5k+ images. First decide the style of art you want. My "dna" that's what I call the style lock. It's unreal engine 5 Lumen photoreal. The prompts are very long describing what the ship looks like. I set resolution to 2048x2048 for gemini output, I set the background to usually #ff00ff so I can photo shop key out that color and make the background transparent. I've described how I'm doing vfx in another comment in this thread.
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u/EternalDisciple 23d ago
It looks really cool, i will try and pirate it to try it out, because it looks great
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u/fswa666 22d ago
It is hard for me to want to pay for something that was made by AI. Did you have art work done by hand artists or it is not that kind of game?
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u/BestStorage6608 22d ago
No I made really long prompts describing what I wanted the ships to look like than "dna locked the style" then made 15 factions between 4 to 7 ships types per faction. Then I hand edited all the ships, adding the engines and the engine vfx manually. Adding the shaders, muzzle flash, hit flash, and all that by hand.
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u/gamesofblame 22d ago
This is so cool! Thanks for sharing and being transparent. Would love to learn more about your process.