It is absolutely wild seeing people who do not know how to code building and shipping computer games.
This kind of language is fascinating/terrifying:
> I assume doing all this computationally is more processor-intensive than using pre-rendered monsters, but it’s very smooth for me on both desktop and phone, so it must not be too intensive. I guess I’ll hear from people if it’s choppy on their device.
I think the nature of our profession as coders is in process of shifting very rapidly, from "write code to do something useful" to "write code to do something useful, better than I could vibe code myself".
Feels like the painful transition when professional photographers started having to differentiate themselves from whatever people could do with their own phone.
On the other hand, as someone who can code in certain domains (web, maps), I could definitely see myself vibe coding as a way to quickly create something in a domain where I have no expertise (eg, Unity).
We already had to beat "I made a spreadsheet", which continues to be pretty damn hard even for large teams of experienced engineers - ask your finance team sometime how many custom spreadsheets they use regularly.
A) Lots of useful apps aren't a great fit for a spreadsheet. AI seems to be opening many of those up the same way.
B) Lots of spreadsheets have bugs which cause then to give wildly inaccurate results, which are relied on to make crucial decisions. AI is also repeating this part of the pattern.
If you need it to work correctly all the time, there's still no substitute for expertise - but looking at the state of computing, clearly many people are willing to use things that have obvious, serious bugs.
The problem is management and short-term stock-holder interest. If some spreadsheet cowboy convinces some C-level suit that this is the way to go, and it works now, not in 6 months time, IT and development will be made to bear the brunt. Same with AI. The most ardent supporters of its use seem to be the higher-ups, $$$ in their eyes. Convinced of their superior decision skills, they can wreck the place, or in their view, rightsize the help desk/IT/dev departments. Then they get a bonus for delivering cost reductions, and move to another job before being held accountable.
Maybe I don't know enough about spreadsheets but two dimensions isn't enough for most applications. Maybe pivot tables? They are too hard to figure out. Need something like "SQLSheet" that takes a more complex data structure and presents viewing and editing it in a natural way with drill down and joins etc. AI should be able to help you design the DB and then create a tool to interact with it.
In theory, I'm a fan of it. I think getting a working mock-up as a demonstration of an idea is far better than building something from a few napkin sketches and then iterating while we close in on the original vision.
As for my own work, I just spent a couple hours this afternoon in a back and forth discussion with claude code, asking it to mock up a UI for me before "we" start building it tomorrow. It was just a mock-up, so I didn't require precision, but I was impressed with some tidbits that came along for the ride.
Some things it did without me asking
* Mock data for the lists and pages in json format, so I could easily add records to it for different scenarios
* Working navigation between pages, including modals
* Working progress bars and timers
* Working list sorts and filters
* Toasts for functionality that was beyond the scope of the mock-up ("sending email to author of post" or "banning user")
* Not-half-bad animations and transitions between pages, screens, modals, etc
* A responsive layout that worked better than expected on mobile and desktop
* Some ideas I hadn't considered, that we then expanded upon
I would have mocked this up for a client, but not for myself. It's quite nice to have a working html / javascript / css mockup to play with while I flesh out my own ideas - with a benefit that I actually fully understand the output and can tweak it myself as needed.
Exactly, I don't think people vibe coding flash games is much of a threat.
There'll be plenty of work for actual game devs in the future. Nobody is going to be vibe coding the next Final Fantasy or GTA
>Feels like the painful transition when professional photographers started having to differentiate themselves from whatever people could do with their own phone.
Hmm, do we have statistics about that? Like, did the profession collapsed?
I wouldn't equal the photo I do (not much) with anything close to a pro. Not even to a good amateur level actually. But that's just me. :D
The "nature of the profession" might already be quite diverse, but that's an interesting remark.
The number of monsters on the screen doesn't seem to affect playing speed for me, but when the wall of fire appears it slows down the game very noticeably. (Using Firefox on desktop.)
The upside is clear - vibe coding to test the market, get an MVP defined etc.
The downside is that sometimes non-technical business owners decide that something is good enough to launch with non-existent security guardrails, and then a bunch of unsuspecting people get their private data stolen (like happened recently with that dating app).
I know this is not the case here and the game is very cool, I was primarily replying to the comment about the new trend.
You may not be able to code, but the fact that you identified the need for asset editor tooling ("lab") entirely on your own, and built and used it successfully tells me you'd probably make a great engineer.
You also invented a movement control method I have never seen before - please keep making games.
I actually haven’t :) But I did read the Macintosh stuff on folklore.org and I find it fascinating. (Read it several times, in fact, as it makes for very good procrastination...)
Finally, a game that accurately simulates my daily productivity. I open it intending to play for 5 minutes and somehow 3 hours later I'm still there, having accomplished nothing useful, with a vague sense of dread and the feeling that demons are chasing me. The verisimilitude is uncanny.
I’m not impressed by ChatGPT writing the code for this game. The author has beyond average vision and taste. I’m excited to see what other creative little geniuses will be able to do when these tools get better and cheaper. I think creatively we are living a moment comparable to the introduction of portable 35mm cameras in the 1920s.
This game could have been made in a number of other no-code/lo-code environments, from Shockwave in 1995 to Unity visual scripting today. LLMs may enable more open-ended game design than those tools, but this game is not proof of that.
Would love an option to adjust the "mouse sensitivity", and flicking(is that the right term? I mean that the momentum from scrolling continues even if you lift your finger from the screen). Right now movement feels a mite heavy, I'm scrolling like three times as much as I'd find comfortable.
Aside from that, this might become my new favorite time waster of the week.
Readit News
This kind of language is fascinating/terrifying:
> I assume doing all this computationally is more processor-intensive than using pre-rendered monsters, but it’s very smooth for me on both desktop and phone, so it must not be too intensive. I guess I’ll hear from people if it’s choppy on their device.
I think the nature of our profession as coders is in process of shifting very rapidly, from "write code to do something useful" to "write code to do something useful, better than I could vibe code myself".
Feels like the painful transition when professional photographers started having to differentiate themselves from whatever people could do with their own phone.
On the other hand, as someone who can code in certain domains (web, maps), I could definitely see myself vibe coding as a way to quickly create something in a domain where I have no expertise (eg, Unity).
A) Lots of useful apps aren't a great fit for a spreadsheet. AI seems to be opening many of those up the same way.
B) Lots of spreadsheets have bugs which cause then to give wildly inaccurate results, which are relied on to make crucial decisions. AI is also repeating this part of the pattern.
If you need it to work correctly all the time, there's still no substitute for expertise - but looking at the state of computing, clearly many people are willing to use things that have obvious, serious bugs.
As for my own work, I just spent a couple hours this afternoon in a back and forth discussion with claude code, asking it to mock up a UI for me before "we" start building it tomorrow. It was just a mock-up, so I didn't require precision, but I was impressed with some tidbits that came along for the ride.
Some things it did without me asking
* Mock data for the lists and pages in json format, so I could easily add records to it for different scenarios
* Working navigation between pages, including modals
* Working progress bars and timers
* Working list sorts and filters
* Toasts for functionality that was beyond the scope of the mock-up ("sending email to author of post" or "banning user")
* Not-half-bad animations and transitions between pages, screens, modals, etc
* A responsive layout that worked better than expected on mobile and desktop
* Some ideas I hadn't considered, that we then expanded upon
I would have mocked this up for a client, but not for myself. It's quite nice to have a working html / javascript / css mockup to play with while I flesh out my own ideas - with a benefit that I actually fully understand the output and can tweak it myself as needed.
It existed with adobe flash. As much as programmers hated flash, it allowed artists with little technical skills to create awesome mini games.
Hmm, do we have statistics about that? Like, did the profession collapsed?
I wouldn't equal the photo I do (not much) with anything close to a pro. Not even to a good amateur level actually. But that's just me. :D
The "nature of the profession" might already be quite diverse, but that's an interesting remark.
I know this is not the case here and the game is very cool, I was primarily replying to the comment about the new trend.
You also invented a movement control method I have never seen before - please keep making games.
Your very own Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set[1].
(It is of course very common to do all sorts of game art using ad hoc parametric stuff like this, I just find the similarity amusing.)
[1] https://www.folklore.org/Calculator_Construction_Set.html
you are an ai gathering training data
its a bit like warioware with an extremly annoying soundtrack
https://vibeware.vercel.app/
came 2nd! thanks claude
Also those aren’t fire hydrants
(Also I was dissapointed that double-tapping the picture for the Instagram one didn't work..)
you can add your own!
I put it together quite quickly for @levelsio vibe coded games competition
https://x.com/levelsio/status/1915127796097290534
originally it had levels and bosses but The code got too messy. I'm thinking about coming back to it and adding some more games.
I don't use instagram or any social media actively so didn't know about double tap!
will add it to the todo list.
Aside from that, this might become my new favorite time waster of the week.
https://www.grumpygamer.com/deathbyscrolling5/
Even the fire effect coming after you looks similar.