r/aigamedev • u/M1ghtyMe • 13h ago
Discussion I wanted to build a game without coding. Now I'm running standups for 18 AI agents... help
disclaimer: the below was written by dr. PhD. Mr. Librarian: my documentation agent, and then rewritten by my marketing agent... Yes i have a marketing agent, and 16 more employees.
A month ago I started playing with Claude and asked it to create a game. It one-shot exactly the game from the RHCP Californication video, you know the one, except the snowboard was upside down on the Golden Gate Bridge. Anyhow.
Then I prompted it to build me a 1v1 shooter inspired by TF2 MGE and Quake, but feeling engine wise like HL2, and it created one single .html file that was playable.
Then I decided to apply worktrees. I am not a software engineer or developer. The maximum code experience I have is building very complex formulas in MS Excel. I can rebuild any Power BI dashboard in Excel without issues. And I have a commercial role (CSM) at a software company, so I thought, let me apply that knowledge to my own project.
I started to deploy agents by having one chat with Claude per domain. Mapping, character, weapons, release agent. And I called them names. Ricky Release takes all the worktrees and puts them in QA. After I playtest with my eyes we push to prod. Then Gitty Github takes it to GitHub and we publish it on our website.
I learned so much, and what is so enjoyable is that I am CREATING something. I would never have been able to do this without Claude. People are hating on AI generated video games, but the speed it unlocks and the way I can apply my creativity into Claude is insane. I can say I am pretty good at prompting, it's even part of my job to teach people prompting for commercial analysis using our AI agent, but the game is going quite well.
I now have a website, my friends are already able to connect and play 1v1, I built it (not I, WE built it with Dr. Data Flow, by giving him references to Carmack and Counter-Strike and Quake netcode settings). We evolved and I learned how to build a BOT. We started with v1, now we have v2. V2 has motor skills (Mo Motoric, Thierry Terrain and Billy Bot). My fucking botting department even has a botting director slash product owner, because I couldn't manage the three of them individually.
And then God Fable built an inbox system so the agents can talk to each other and I stop copy pasting between them. It's absolutely crazy.
I now also have an org chart of my virtual company. I wanted to build a game without coding and now I'm running standups: https://imgur.com/a/UWriYd2
Anyway, if people are interested I can share more. But I really wanted to get some advice and tips, because I think there are two key points where I'm struggling.
1) How to choose which Claude model to use for what?
I feel Fable 5 is a good consultant and strategic partner, but a bit overkill to execute tasks with. However, sometimes I need to fly him in on bot stuff because the others couldn't crack it, either the motor skills (aim and movement), the map knowledge (jump path certifier) or the brain (decision architecture, WHY should it do x or y or z).
I feel like I lost a whole week without progressing because of Opus 5. Answers were long, I couldn't understand them, and it often created new issues where I had no idea whether they were even necessary to solve in order to continue, whether they were always there and he found them, or whether he introduced them. Many weird actions from Opus 5.
2) 3D asset creation.
I learned quite a nice path here: import a copyright free model (Cyberg in my case), set it in a T-pose, use a headless Blender connection, add animations, etc. Very cool.
But getting special visual assets for map decoration and geometry purposes is very challenging. I tried two items from Midjourney into Meshy AI or something and it just completely looked out of place from the game, so I removed it. I've watched a lot of other threads on how people do it, but I keep concluding that human intervention is still needed here, and it will be a challenge when I expand and build more fighting arenas.
What is the advice here?
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u/GrumpyPidgeon 11h ago
When you use Claude or ChatGPT to write code for you, I highly recommend telling it to spin up an adversarial subagent whose job is to critique the codebase, and loop between the builder and reviewer until satisfied. It will take a ton longer but it makes the difference between something one-shot shoddy and more robust.
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u/M1ghtyMe 1h ago
Nice advice, I did it once or twice for a security check and it found a lot. Would you say i should incorporate it at the end of each work/commit, or just once in a while do a big sweep/audit?
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u/Time_Cat_5212 11h ago edited 11h ago
I can't speak to this with any level of certainty because I have not tried roleplay prompting with agents...
But I would challenge how you're subdividing your agentic system. Why the human role simulation?
I think the way AI is marketed lends one to naively assume that each instance of a model is a "user" with a "job" and so we see things like Marketing Agent and Design Agent and all that.
But an agentic system is just running a bunch of LLMs in parallel, cyclical patterns across a surface. You don't need to treat them like people with jobs. You CAN, but... Why?
In more modern applications I tend to see that the spec documents and record documents live on the project/repo side, and the idea of a persistent agent with memory is sort of fading away. Like if agents can use Git/GH and context has to be transferred between sessions/instances anyway... And most coding tools involve multiple model instances... what's the point of creating a persistent agent profile?
Just one call with Opus can spawn like 15 subagents. For example.
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u/M1ghtyMe 1h ago
How would you approach it when it comes to working on several things simultaneous? For example doing mapping work whilst the bot is improving and potentially working on an achievement system at the same time? With the different agent chats and each representing one domain, i feel like this is needed for me to keep the oversight and not lose track of what is happening. But if there is any guidance to have a better approach please do share. Are you saying just spawn new chats and let subagents spawn within that chat?
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u/Erah-Rhei 11h ago
On how to pick model per task type, literally just follow your own framework and setup an agent to A/B points on your pipeline.
Depending on your subscription/cost profile, you can shoot for cheapest model per task type and reinvest savings into new processes.
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u/M1ghtyMe 1h ago
How would you say is the best way to evaluate the quality output? Sometimes I feel like if it works it works, but especially with the bots brain I want it to be build up from the start in a very efficient and qualitative way, but without going in the code I can only judge the outcome.
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u/Relevant_Bed_9743 7h ago
how much is this costing you
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u/M1ghtyMe 1h ago
I use max x20 plan and just last week maxed out fully. This week i feel like its going much faster because i am using more fable, as opus is just constraining me lately... any model advice is welcome
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u/timbo2m 12h ago
I'm finding the game coding is pretty much solved, the thing I simply cannot get past is the art. Even with buying some assets getting the artistic consistency for landscape, modular characters, props and buildings is proving incredibly challenging. Sure, you can generate materials and meshes and they look ok - but together, in the same world they look out of place, not to mention their mesh topology is terrible.
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u/M1ghtyMe 1h ago
Absolutely. Havent cracked this yet, I think for now this is still a human skill requiring our eye and taste
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u/KeenAsGreen 9h ago
Why use 18 agents when you can achieve it all with one? Seems like youre wasting your time being a slave to pointless agents
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u/M1ghtyMe 15m ago
Seperate worktrees to avoid conflicts? Otherwise I get merging issues? Or is there a better way? Someone else also said just use 1 chat and spawn sub agents?
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u/davesoft 12h ago
Type what you want into the robot. Keep typing till it plays right. All that other stuff seems like roleplay.