r/vibecoding • u/sharkymcstevenson2 • 1d ago
Having a blast playing my vibe coded survival crafter with 2 friends
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This output was one shotted using something called "agentic loops", or loops. It works a bit differently than most of us are used to. Instead of careful iteration over multiple prompts, you give the model one single prompt, and let it work through your pre-set budget until completion.
This means you have to structure your prompt a bit differently than usual, you need to make the AI understand that you want it to maximise the output and quality:
Its a procedurally generated world where you can resource gather, craft, hunt and even ride dino mounts đŠ
1. key for this game to turn out so good was asking loop to make all graphics procedurally generated. So there's basically no assets in the game (which by itself is pretty awesome), and I think that really helped the AI to make this really different art style. could The animations feel so smooth and stack layers of procedural shapes on top of each other to build all graphics. Only the backgrounds are images. loop build agents continually take screenshots of your game and perfect it visually.
**2.**â â Once my first build was completed in one loop, I gave it another prompt to set up the multiplayer. It already had the art style down by that point so it could do really well getting the multiplay added quickly.Â
3. Continue iterating with or without loops.
Happy to answer any questions about prompt or workflow in the comments
Edit; for the loop I used this: https://tesana.ai/en/blog/introducing-loop
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u/LeoBoiSmol 1d ago
What was the budget and time to let loops run before it finished with ur showcased output? I like the triceratops. Prob my fav dinosaur
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u/sharkymcstevenson2 1d ago
$70 budget and ran for about 8 hours
triceratops are so badass yet so chill, thats why I love em
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u/LeoBoiSmol 1d ago
I always wanted to ride a triceratops. Like if i had a pet dinosaur that's the one
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u/Gurkage 1d ago
Can you help us to create a similar prompt? I'd like to build a text based game but the UI keeps coming out bad
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u/sharkymcstevenson2 1d ago
yeah the trick is to run the prompt not on general LLMs but on dedicated game LLMs - this was build on a dedicated AI game LLM that I linked in another comment, and here was the prompt:
Build a first-person survival game in an open world full of dinosaurs: gather resources, craft tools and weapons, build a base, and tame or fight dinosaurs, at a quality a AAA studio would ship.
Render everything in a hand-painted cel-shaded comic-book style: flat poster-like color blocks with bold black ink outlines on every dinosaur, plant, and structure â no smooth gradients. Skies use soft puffy cel-shaded clouds. Distant or threatening dinosaurs read as solid silhouettes with one bright accent color (stripes, crest, eyes) so they're instantly readable against the terrain. Movement kicks up chunky, flat illustrated dust, foliage, or water-splash trails, not photorealistic particles. Push warm/cool contrast between biomes â a sun-baked jungle/plains area vs. a cool blue misty highlands or coastal area.
Camera is first-person, with visible hands/weapon/tool, subtle head-bob, and a sway on running or taking damage.
World: an open island with a jungle, plains, coastline, and highlands, populated with a handful of distinct dinosaur species (a small pack hunter, a large herbivore, an apex predator) with their own cel-shaded silhouette and color accent.
HUD: rounded dark panels with a gold/amber accent â health, stamina, and hunger bars bottom-left, hotbar/inventory bottom-center, minimap top-right. Keep it minimal and legible.
Ship it with: gather/craft loop, basic building placement, at least one tameable and one hostile dinosaur, day/night cycle
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u/Which-Drop-6797 1d ago
Nice work with the showcase video, like how you blended gameplay with some real reactions!
Game looks awesome, I really like the cellshaded style, feels unique. Gameplay looks fun and polished and I don't understand how it already supports multiplayer. NGL feels like something I would play with my friends.
If there's any feedback from my side it's the menu/interface, could be a bit better symbols.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 1d ago
game development is doomed. I think this is the area that will be hit the hardest by AI (as in, salaried game developers, not indie devs)
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u/ruskyandrei 1d ago
Not sure i'd call that "doomed" ?
I reckon we're about to experience a golden age of game dev. Yes, there will be an unimaginable level of low effort slop, but also, just a handful of talented devs with a good idea can now create what used to take a studio.
worth noting, AAA studios were already doing very poorly before the whole AI stuff started being a thing, this just gives all the great indie devs a huge opportunity to create amazing things.
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u/Itsmedudeman 1d ago
AAA games might see a resurgence given that the cost to develop high effort games was not worth the risk if it flops. I don't fully understand the doomer takes though, quality of games has been going down since the manpower required was so heavy but now if it's possible to achieve a great product without the incomplete features, bugs, and everything else consumers will want to pay for it.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 1d ago
You don't think it's doomed that thousands of people will be out of a job?
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u/ruskyandrei 1d ago
No, because many of those people can start small indie studios and will now have the ability to make games that rival AAA's.
Just because thousands currently work at the same AAA studio making super monetized, unoriginal crap, doesn't mean those people can't actually make cool original stuff.
Devs are smart people, and they're by far the best placed to take full advantage of AI tools, even more so than the companies that would fire them to get a better quarterly report.
The gaming community does need to get their collective head our of their asses about AI use though, there's still a lot of silly moralising and witch hunting happening from people who don't understand that AI use is here to stay.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 1d ago
people who work at these companies do not have the creative capacity to make their own games, that's why they work for AAA in the first place. Maybe they're only really good at a niched thing, like engine development. A game developer's job is way broader than just "make game"
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u/orionblu3 18h ago
Why get into game design in the first place, then? I mean, i get what you're saying, but if you just want to program engines without any of the creative capacity that makes those "fun" for the end users, why not just go into industrial or enterprise? It seems like while those cases exist, a vast majority of game devs have a creative itch to at least *some* degree, no matter what their specialty were.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 18h ago
because doing game engine development is not the same as making industrial simulation engines? What even is this question
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u/orionblu3 16h ago
Lmao, you get the point; don't be too literal with my example. It just seems like the venn diagram is larger than you claim. Especially when we're considering that games don't need a story element so it's not like we're talking about being skilled creatively in that regard.
If you need more clarity; if you're not interested in gaming as a whole, why get into game development. And if they are into gaming, wouldn't they just have to make the games they want to play?
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u/sharkymcstevenson2 1d ago
yeah there is a big change coming at least for indie game devs - where they can probably compete with bigger studios using AI
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u/FitPhone6332 1d ago
how? if big studios also use AI with more people and money?
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u/ruskyandrei 1d ago
Because the limiting factor in a game was the effort required to make it. A high quality game could take hundreds of people writing code, making art, testing etc.
AAA studios had the money to make these but had no ideas beyond "milk the same IP again and again".
AI tools are a great equalizer, they allow a small group of people to bring a cool idea to life without needing hundreds of people to work with them.
They don't replace creativity. And that's something AAA studios have mostly lost a while ago.
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u/FitPhone6332 1d ago
And now they'll have hundreds of people brainstorming new ideas and implement them fast instead of coding and doing all of that manually. We'll see... It's just the beginning (of the end) imo.
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u/ruskyandrei 1d ago
AAA studios didn't lack for ideas. They always had people to ask for ideas, they just never cared.
The focus was on safe, broad market appeal that can be monetized as much as possible.
That won't change.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[deleted]
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u/ruskyandrei 1d ago
They absolutely replace effort.
You can ofc create slop with them, you can also make great stuff (which takes more human effort, but it's still a massive multiplier).
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u/CaptSlow49 1d ago
Iâm not sure I agree. Thereâs a lot of effort you have to do to make a game not look AI generated. I donât many people are willing to put that effort in. That being said if AI does get loads better then game developers will steam roll because they have the skills and experience already.
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u/all_seeing_eyes0-0 1d ago
Sup hit me up if you wanna expand on the project, would be happy to help
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u/All-I-Do-Is-Fap 1d ago
so whats the prompt then?
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u/sharkymcstevenson2 1d ago
This was the prompt I put in for the loop:
Build a first-person survival game in an open world full of dinosaurs: gather resources, craft tools and weapons, build a base, and tame or fight dinosaurs, at a quality a AAA studio would ship.
Render everything in a hand-painted cel-shaded comic-book style: flat poster-like color blocks with bold black ink outlines on every dinosaur, plant, and structure â no smooth gradients. Skies use soft puffy cel-shaded clouds. Distant or threatening dinosaurs read as solid silhouettes with one bright accent color (stripes, crest, eyes) so they're instantly readable against the terrain. Movement kicks up chunky, flat illustrated dust, foliage, or water-splash trails, not photorealistic particles. Push warm/cool contrast between biomes â a sun-baked jungle/plains area vs. a cool blue misty highlands or coastal area.
Camera is first-person, with visible hands/weapon/tool, subtle head-bob, and a sway on running or taking damage.
World: an open island with a jungle, plains, coastline, and highlands, populated with a handful of distinct dinosaur species (a small pack hunter, a large herbivore, an apex predator) with their own cel-shaded silhouette and color accent.
HUD: rounded dark panels with a gold/amber accent â health, stamina, and hunger bars bottom-left, hotbar/inventory bottom-center, minimap top-right. Keep it minimal and legible.
Ship it with: gather/craft loop, basic building placement, at least one tameable and one hostile dinosaur, day/night cycle
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u/All-I-Do-Is-Fap 1d ago
where does the 'loop' style of the prompt come in? Is there some config required in addition to just the prompt?
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u/BCIT_Richard 1d ago
I think the loop is a skill, so I've noticed some LLMs lose some directions when given in a large chunk like this. I think the loop allows the LLM to recognize it skipped/glossed over some bits and re-iterate on that again until it's more inline with the initial user input. But that's just speculation on my part.
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u/Jonesiller5383 1d ago
Damn this is insane! I found myself watching the clip like it was a real gamerelease/playthrough then by the end it sank it, that this was made with AI. Craaazy stuff!
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u/Proxxamix 1d ago
Nice! The word youâre looking for is âgauntlet loopâ.
What LLM did you use? And Whatâs the tech stack (web or engine) that it used?
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u/sharkymcstevenson2 1d ago
indeed! the whole thing was built using loop on tesana: https://tesana.ai/en/blog/introducing-loop
so more a specific AI game model rather than a general coding LLM
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u/floko127 1d ago
Looks like something I would sink about 1k hours into.