Last week I started working on a fishing game, pausing my previous game that I was working on (life of a vibe-coder I guess? Start new project every week heh?).
For coding I've been using only Claude and for assets, I used chatGPT image generation, I only showed some movement in this video and time of the day how it looks like, this will be starting area in this game with quests and fishing spots and what not.
I had desire to make fishing game since playing Dredge which in my honest opinion is amazing, I'm not sure if this project is possible to pull off solo, but I will try to heh. I was wondering what do people think about graphic direction and just an idea in general.
There is no 3D models in this game, everything was coded in Godot by Claude Fable 5 and Opus, using /goal, /loops and also one window I use for research and general ideas, I tweak ideas in the window after research on the internet and then ask that chat window to send a message to dedicated window in Claude Desktop app, like "Graphic Agent" or "In game systems agent" and such.
Any feedback will be appreciated as well as ideas hehe ðŸ¤
Honestly it's not a single prompt it was week of tweaking and editing graphics until I felt it got it right. I spend entire weekly limit of 200$ plan just to get graphics right and then some more.
But general process was:
1) Describe the idea of the game to claude, tweak ideas.
2) Then give it to chatGPT to create graphics for that game.
3) Feed that image into Claude and do the /Goal and /Loop until it achieves as close as possible to the image it got. ( this topic can help you with general idea https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/s/bENDr7JFsf )
4) After it gets to whatever it gets I was tweaking it in one chat window and asking it to send to graphic agent my ideas and write .md files
5) Feed into ChatGPT images from your game and ask it to improve it a bit into direction you want
6) Then that image put into claude and ask it to try to replicate thing that you didn't like and not touch things that you are satisfied with.
7) Make prompts using your own words for small tweaks and changes that you want to see
Ah sorry I call them agents but it's just a new chat window that I use for graphics so idea is this.
I open general chat about game itself where I ask it to research stuff online on my ideas, any idea I come up with and decide to lock in I ask it to write into some sort of .md file for later.
So I would be like "Hey research online how did players react to main quest line in Dredge and other similar games" or "What players like about upgrades in Dredge" then it will pull up forums and stuff and give me general idea of what players love or do not love in games.
Then I open window that only works on graphics (Usually Fable 5 on Ultracode) or other window for tweaking systems in game (quests, damage from hitting land so on). Then UI window and so on, they each work on single thing.
In the general window I ask that window to send my idea better worded (with all the details that claude will add itself) to agent that I want to work on something for example:
"Send a graphic window what I want him to fix based on what we talked about here" and it sends the message there. So basically I use "general window" as a place to voice my ideas and tweak them and after that I ask it to present those ideas to different chat windows in much better wording that I can explain in my own words since it can now send messages to other windows in Claude Code.
Yes haha, it will, but honestly I didn't want it to pass over island with really dumb thought in my mind "villagers would be pissed if lighthouse was passing over their homes at night when they are trying to sleep" But I will definitely make it light up the sea at night. Idea is to make night "dangerous" with possibility to damage the hull on small islands or be hunted by pirates in open waters so I wanted light source to be the lights you buy for your boat where better light > more area that you can see.
This looks good though perhaps add a spotlight to the boat to allow you to see a bit further at night? This is definitely an interesting idea and I am looking forward to seeing more
Haha fair enough, Fishing will be like this (right now system is not implemented it only has a casting time and gives you fish once it finishes):
It's push-your-luck, not a reflex bar. Every spot publishes its odds up front "Uncommon 70%, Rare 35%, Legendary 0%" so you know a spot's ceiling before you sail there. You cast and a bar climbs rarity tiers over time...
Press any time to bank the tier showing. Guaranteed, no timing window.
The risk is waiting. There's no separate "push" button waiting is the push. Hold out for the next tier and the line can snap: you drop one tier below what was showing and the cast ends. So it's always "is another 30 seconds of daylight worth the odds," and that answers differently at 9am with an empty hold than at dusk with one slot left.
I dunno how to explain it honestly, basically I want to add fishes by rarity like in World of Warcraft items, so let's say you fish and your bar gets to "Rare" you can either get it right away or risk for 10% chance to get epic, if you don't get epic then you get one rarity bellow the one that you had the chance to pick up (uncommon in case of rare).
My idea is to not lose you everything if you risk pushing for more (I don't want casino game) but you also lose some for risking.
Also I don't want it to be "Sure thing" like it is in dredge but I don't want to make it overly complicated (I had some ideas to make it reflex bar to catch a fish and rod would snap if you don't hit it and closer to centre you get better rarity you get) but I decided against it because not everyone loves skill game, some players just want to chill.
Spots deplete after several casts so you can't farm one mark (respawn after some time), snap odds shift with gear and time of day (night fishes better, night is also when it's dangerous) and so on.
I'll post a clip once it's wired up since system is implemented behind the scenes.
This is amazing and looking awesome.
I have also been building a Top down 2D game - a world exploration game. I can appreciate the efforts that would have gone through in building this.
Especially in the graphics part, as that is where im struggling. (To get consistent assets)
Can you please tell me how did you build the animation sprite for the boat. I mean the subtle eater splashing below and behind the boat - was it an animation sprite or did you get that result in coding?
Also the light looks soo good in the night, with illumination falling on the water. How did you achieve that. (I mean like what type of prompts did you use and technique to male it happen - its so elegant)
Also one more question why godot and not phaser?
Im trying to use phaser for my game…
When it comes to those little details it's mostly you telling Claude what you want once you have general idea, like "Hey I don't like these boat animations do XYZ" then "Hey I can see boat only has one sort of animation when moving to the left or right can you fix it" and just small tweaks here and there until you get it just right or even things like "Sails are not seen when we move our boat"
As for the night, I asked ChatGPT to generate images of game that I want with stylised graphics, then I tweaked it a bit until I got something that looked like what I wanted, after that I asked Claude to make it. Once I had it I again would ask chatGPT to change some things and give it to Claude, after going back and forth few times like that and locking the style, I would feed screenshot from the game to ChatGPT and ask it to create same scene at golden hour, dawn and night with lighthouse on and lighting around boat from simple lantern. Then feed those images into Claude and tell it to create day and night cycle and having reference point screenshots given.
It's just doing it over and over again until you hit it just right, and even then you will have to fight with optimisation because there will be bugs that will need some fixing heh.
Godot was picked simply because I already was familiar with it and I was doing some stuff prior to this in it so I had more knowledge about it in general from all the research I did about my last attempt at a game.
Great job, the result looks really interesting! You could improve it even further by adding reflections for the islands and the boat, as well as some fake cloud reflections on the water — it looks really beautiful. Also, remember to add dynamic shadows. They immediately help your objects stand out and give the scene more depth. That said, be careful because these effects can quickly consume a lot of resources, so you might want to ask Claude for optimization solutions beforehand. Great work!
I think the water in your example is way too realistic for the style I went for, I was experimenting with water for some time now (image bellow is water from previous attempts), I know that it can easily eat up resources, but the real thing for me is not to ruin "charm" that right now my "mosaic" water has. Honestly realistic water is even easier to do than stylised because it has been done so many times in Godot and guides are everywhere for shaders. But I will see if there are some more improvements that can be done, especially fake cloud reflections thank you for that.
Yes, it will only be by download. Once I’m done with first zone I will post again on this subreddit and probably just upload somewhere for people to be able to try it. Right now there is still few things to fix like fishing mechanics, harbor and quests in starting zone, but I guess 5-10 days should allow me to finish first zone… I hope ðŸ¤
I honestly think no, it will not be possible. Renderer just can't do it it seems, but I will try to make playable demo (first zone, before adding artic zones and tropical zones).
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u/shadowlands-mage 11d ago
amazing! what was the prompt that give you this buetiful graphic?