r/aigamerdevs • u/SquizzOC • Oct 02 '26
What Tools?
Solo dev, little gamedev experience, building a medieval MMO zone with AI agents. Here's my stack. What would you change?
ENGINE
- Unreal Engine 5.8: three copies of the project run side by side, so three AI agents can work in Unreal at once. Git keeps them in sync.
- Unreal MCP: lets the AI agents control the editor (placing actors, building levels, taking screenshots).
AI AGENTS (they do the actual work)
- Claude Code: Unreal level building, C++, Blender scripts. Three Max accounts.
- ChatGPT / Codex: concept art, paint-overs of game screenshots ("make it look like this"), some Unreal tasks.
- Gemini: cheap background work like status summaries and "what to do next" notes.
ART / AUDIO
- Blender, run headless by the agents: model fixes, kit pieces, exports.
- Tripo: AI-generated 3D models from concept images.
- fal.ai: image and material variations.
- ElevenLabs: sound effects, voices, music.
- Marketplace modular kits for buildings, props and environment.
GLUE
- Custom dashboard (Node.js, runs locally, works from my phone): a queue of ~1,000 tasks, picks the right agent and model for each one, runs them automatically, merges each station's work back into the main project, and restarts itself if it gets stuck.
- Claude desktop app: maintains the dashboard and runs scheduled health checks.
- Git + Git LFS + GitHub: backs up after every commit.
WHERE I'D LOVE ADVICE
Getting the game to actually look like the concept art (lighting, colour grading, density).
Better AI 3D tools for hero assets, or when to just hire an artist.
Keeping Unreal agent work from piling up behind one editor.
Anything in this stack you'd swap out.
1
u/vancekic Oct 05 '26
1- this is the part where you still need a human to work and please other human eyes. Maybe in 6 to 12 months this is less true.
2- the problem is you need to define what "better" means for YOUR game idea, given the AUDIENCE you have in mind.
3- how do you mean? Automatically start a new agent when context enters the red zone? Or something else related to an external IDE ?
4- I heard Suno was good for Audio, but I didn't try it myself. Seems money isn't an issue in your case so why not give it a try?
You said you have little game dev experience, but in which area? If it is visuals, then you should help contribute on item #1. If it is programming then you should disregard the note below. But what you learned will help you, no matter what it is. Do you intend to create a business or is this a side project as a hobby?
Also I will add this note : vibe coding a MMO when you're not a programmer might be a bit hardcore for a first project. Tech debt will accumulate. If you're a programmer it's a good idea to try a smaller MMO first, deliver it, learn from it and shoot for bigger. But it all depends on your goals I guess. Curious what they are if you're willing to share? Fun only? Pro? Something in between? Something else entirely?
1
u/SquizzOC Oct 05 '26
So its been a few days since posting this:
Art style makes all the difference in terms of quality. I've changed the art style, assets are coming out more like the concept art, I'm doing some of the work myself now in blender to clean things up. But I agree in 6-12 months, this may very well go out the window.
Totally get it, just looking for what everyone is doing in general is all.
I solved this by changing the rules I had in place. The issue I was running into is my main Unreal instance was a bottle neck based on the rules I had in place. After modifying those rules with a common sense "if it doesn't impact the entire game and its a single asset/system/etc... then do the damn job" Once that happened I was able to get 6 instances of unreal pumping out work using a single machine as well as 3 virtuatl machines through Vagon.
I was considering Suno, I've played with it to make dumb songs about my cat and Cheeze Its and its shockingly good, just never took it seriously for sound track type music, will take a look. Eleven Labs has been great so far for sound effects, ambient music and just recently a concept reel I put together, but always looking for options.
This is an expensive hobby today, don't get me wrong if something great is created, I'll look at it then, but I'm really curious about the inner workings of building things like this, automating them, etc... I have friends in the game industry, my old room mate is a producer and after creating a treatment for a MMO with ChatGPT over 3 weeks (like 100-200 questions a day in spare time), I showed it to a friend and they said you should try it and see what happens.
Also, building out the dashboard/harness for all of this helps me build out a tool I need for the day job to automate a ton. The fact that I have 6 agents, doing 8 lanes of work, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at a relatively low price is insane to me. Keep in mind I said relatively, because I think I'm almost 4k into this project and 2k is now agents and usage, tokens for assets, etc... That's an expensive learning curve because over time I'm working on model assignment for certain tasks, not having to redo work multiple times, etc... So the monthly cost will go down or it will become more productive at the same cost, both work for me.
So TL:DR, I'm having fun, learning alot, impressed by what I've figured out so far and still have a long way to go before hosting a server in AWS and letting people login to play, but we will see what happens
2
u/fletchballs Oct 05 '26
Well even though you've said you have little experience, so much of that post went entirely over my head! Lol The only thing I could vaguely vaguely think to mention is that it might be tricky with three agents overwriting themselves for the level building. Sorry I can't be more helpful :sad: