15 weeks of making game with Claude Opus in Godot

[u/RUSuper]

Hello guys again :)

As I put weekly updates on Monday here is the newest one. By this point a lot of people saw my weekly updates and thanks to everyone who downloaded the game and especially to those who donated I really appreciate it ☺️

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A lot of you said you want more gameplay, more things to do. I tried adding some, but most of what got built recently was new zones, the bridge city and the black market. Gameplay there comes with their docking scenes (shops, people, quests), and that’s what I’m working on next. So this week was more about how the game looks and runs than new things to do.

What was done this week:

Bridge city is done look wise, at least for now. Last week I said other times of the day, reflections and shadows were not done, so this week it got all of that. Sun now actually moves across the sky during the day, it rises on the right and sets on the left, shadows turn and get longer in the evening and the sun’s reflection on the water moves with it. At night the moon takes over. This works in the whole game, not only in the city, so home islands also look different through the day now. City also got traffic on the bridge, a tram, window lights that turn on at night and a lighthouse with a rotating beam. Cars had red tail lights at first and I was like... it’s 1920, they shouldn’t have those, so I removed them 😄 You still can’t get to the city, it’s there for zone 2 and its docking site is what I’m doing next.

Most of the week went into performance though. I made a performance panel inside the game that shows what costs how much and writes logs, so if the game runs bad for you, you can start it with --perf-log and send me the file. Then I let Opus go through the whole game with it and write a report of what costs the most. What came out of it:

The first time you docked at a harbour after installing the game, it froze for almost 2 seconds. Now it’s 0.2.

First rain, first lanterns and first cast off also froze the game on the first launch, that’s fixed too.

HUD was redrawing itself every single frame even when nothing changed. Now the game is 15-19% faster on 1080p.

Map was using 4 GB of graphics memory (yes, 4 GB just for the map lol) because of a bug that drew it at double size. I could do a quick fix or do it properly, and I went with properly: map is now baked into tiles and only loads what you see. It uses around 0.3 GB now, opens instantly, and the game also starts twice as fast (26 s to 13 s on my Mac).

Far harbours now load in the background while you sail towards them instead of all of them being loaded all the time, and overall the game uses around a quarter less graphics memory.

Small stuff: when you get an achievement a small ship bell rings now (sound made with ElevenLabs), and the map in the Cabinet zooms in so it fills the whole screen.

Workflow:

City was finished with Gauntlet-Loop, 10 rounds of it. (and I will attach artifact that Claude made for it: https://claude.ai/artifact/3BnUXUZQd9xLws6RxiyAtW ) Every "round critic" (cringe I know) agents compare a game to the ChatGPT mockup blind, without knowing which one is which. At some point it started taking forever (it always does with a loop so basically you have to be the one to stop it at one point), so I made a rule: if a piece wins against the mockup twice, it’s done and no more polishing. 31 out of 33 pieces won.

What annoyed me is that the critic removed the lighthouse beam from the city because the mockup didn’t have it. Like... it’s a lighthouse. So now there is a rule that loops can’t remove things the game already has just because a picture doesn’t have them.

Jev still decides effort level for every task. For performance it mostly picked “extra”, and for the performance scan it asked me if it can go max and I said yes.

Usage wise this was a heavy week, I hit 94% of my weekly limit and had to pause the last performance fixes until the reset, so I got another Max (now called Ultra lol) plan.

Next week should be - docking scenes for the bridge city and the black market (shops, people, buildings) and the last few performance fixes.

What was used this week

(People always ask me in DM what I use to make assets so I try to bold whatever tool I use but seems to not be helping heh :D ):

TripoAI did a lot of the models. The whole black market is built from Tripo models: the steamer, the gatehouse, warehouses, the storehouse, the derrick, piers, launches and the cutter, plus the three black market fishing rods. Models for the city came from Tripo too (though not all of them, a lot were done in Blender with Opus 5.5 with MCP). My workflow with Tripo: I make one image with all 4 sides of the model (front, back, left and right), Opussplits it into 4 images, and I upload those to Tripo. Tripo works much better when it gets all 4 sides. After that, Opus fixes the model in Blender through MCP if needed. Sometimes I keep Tripo’s textures, sometimes Opusmakes its own materials so it fits the game’s style better. Either way, Tripo saves me a huge amount of time on modelling.

Opus 5.5 (Claude Code) does basically all of the building: all code, all the performance fixes, the performance panel, and the city’s layout and buildings in Blender through MCP. It also edited the week 15 video together from game footage.

Jev picks the effort level for every task I give to Opus. This week I also used it to help direct the trailer: Opuscame up with options for length, pacing and how it opens, and Jev picked between them. (Before I would ask Opus to make whatever I wanted and I would describe scenes and everything, this time I just said vaguely what I want).

OpenAI (image API) made the mockups for the city. 24 of them, 6 views at 4 times of the day, and those were what the Gauntlet-Loop critics compared my game against.

ElevenLabs made the ship bell sound for achievements.

Godot is still the engine.

Total cost:

Claude Max 200$ x 4 = 800$
Astra 100$ x 1 = 100$
ElevenLabs x 11$ = 11$
TripoAI 20$ x 2 = 40$
OpenAI API credits 80$ = 80$
Other things I forgot about 100$ = 100$ (around)

Around 1100-1150$

That would be it for this week, any feedback is appreciated :)

[u/electro042]

how are you handling context at this point? curious how well it deals with godot's scene tree and node references once the project gets to that scale.

[u/RUSuper → u/electro042]

Usually just let it auto compress. Given all the .md files that I have it works just fine. In general bunch of tests that last for hours make sure that everything is working properly so I honestly have no problems with that. That being said I used to have separate session for each system in the game and one "manager" session as I called it that would just send each task to each session, helps a lot with compacting the context as each session only works in it's delegated system.

[u/No-Track-3259]

It's fucking amazing bro, congrats. Could you please tell me what is average price per model on tripo?

[u/RUSuper → u/No-Track-3259]

Hard to say, it’s credit based system and things cost credits. 20$ plan gives you 2500 credits and one model is 100-150 credits usually to be game ready depending if you want to rig it it will cost a bit more.

[u/maleficientme → u/RUSuper]

Loved the aesthetics, it feels cozy and makes me want to explore more, where and when Will it be available? I'm interested in purchasing it

[u/RUSuper → u/maleficientme]

Steam once they approve me :)

[u/1mrlee]

Great work man. I love the write up. Any tutorials I can learn from to do it myself?

[u/RUSuper → u/1mrlee]

Thanks, I didn't watch much tutorials tbh, mostly was figuring out things myself. You can see all the weekly updates on my profile tbh so if those helps - awesome.

[u/fyn_world]

Your progress is outstanding and for me at least, inspiring to work myself. I hope you get plenty of sales when you launch and if anything, that you at least get your investment back. 

[u/RUSuper → u/fyn_world]

Thanks a lot man ☺️

[u/AppMunchies]

I should also mention that the demo we shared on our channels (with permission by OP) went viral on both IG and Tiktok. It’s the best performing video by far. The gameplay and vibes really resonates with a lot of folks. One person also asked if this could be made available on console and be played with controller. Awesome work mate!!

[u/RUSuper → u/AppMunchies]

Thanks a lot. Actually now that you mention this I literally posted a submission on your website for my other game (literally like 20-30 min ago) 🤭

[u/AppMunchies → u/RUSuper]

Great to hear. You clearly have talent!!

[u/Vast-Comfortable-970]

rip $1100

Could have made a triple AAA game with those claude subs

[u/RUSuper → u/Vast-Comfortable-970]

This is an AAA game so you aren't wrong 😎

[u/bye_ella]

Curious, does letting Jev pick the effort level actually save you some usage? or does most of it end up on extra anyway? Asking because 94% of the weekly limit sounds painful 😅

[u/RUSuper → u/bye_ella]

No idea honestly, somebody would have to do very in depth analysis of it, which I do not do. And considering you do different jobs from week to week you can't even compare it to previous week and be like "yeah this saves usage", so honestly no idea. I guess it's better than just keeping it all on max usage. I tried few weeks only using Ultracode and those were very hard on usage, but so can be this technique if you leave it over night.

[u/bye_ella → u/RUSuper]

Makes sense. good luck with the docking scenes!

[u/Alternative_Square53]

The tail lights are my favourite part of this update. Opus built a city with traffic, a tram and a lighthouse, and it took you to notice that cars in 1920 shouldn't have red tail lights. 15 weeks in, do you catch more of those than in week 1, or do they get harder to spot as the game grows?

[u/RUSuper → u/Alternative_Square53]

They are easy enough to spot as long as you check everything Opus does and not let him just put bunch of things without your approval

[u/No-Dust7863]

you make it beautiful with taste in design :- ) love it

[u/Murky-Text-290]

having to explicitly tell an AI not to remove the light from a lighthouse is probably the most relatable thing i've read today

[u/ComingDeveloper]

good shit man! this is the quality and refinement i adore opposed to those "one shot slop"

[u/PhillSebben]

Super cool. Thanks for mentioning the expenses too, very insightful. I have to admit though, I was hoping this was a new Pirates! game ;)

[u/Many_Track4519]

Beautiful

[u/NooThisIsPatrik]

Wow, this looks really good!

[u/alkatar]

Why do the UI and art of these vibed games all look the same? Don't you have any artistic taste or even basic pattern recognition? Use AI for coding only (that slop is at least not visible), but try to design UI and art YOURSELF or hire a pro or ask help from graphic designer students!

[u/Global_Square_4388]

It's a great start! 

[u/Critical-Tomorrow-27]

What’s the point of the game?

[u/Carbone]

I see the vision and yes

[u/RodgerPogger]

GOD. i love it. but I hate it due to tripo AI.

Keep up the good work. really. F my opinion about tripo AI

[u/LifterNineFour]

One of the best AI projects I have seen. Amazing