Wk. 6 of Vibecoding an MMO

(eldermyr.com)

12 points | by josiahturnq 2 hours ago

12 comments

  • tab_jockey 55 minutes ago
    I really enjoyed myself for 5 minutes, which is more than I can say for 100 games in my steam lib. For some reason my screen is shaking a lot when I play and it hurts my eyes. Would also recommend talking to show above the head in bold text to encourage social interaction, so easy to miss the chat box.
    • josiahturnq 19 minutes ago
      Chat tab has been added so it's not so easy to miss chats now.
    • josiahturnq 53 minutes ago
      Yeah this was a new find for me as well. I've never had enough players for this to become obvious, but I think every player's ultimate is causing every other player's screen to shake... new find, but really annoying. Queueing it up.
    • josiahturnq 19 minutes ago
      added the overhead chat display as well!
  • dinkleberg 1 hour ago
    Why promote this as being vibecoded? There are so many good games out there, why would one choose to spend a moment playing one that the creator of implies is half-assed by how they talk about it? If the game is good and you're proud of it, why not promote it rather than your means of creating it? We are all responsible for our own work at the end of the day, whether we code it ourselves or use AI agents. Emphasizing that it has only been done by AI is not very enticing.
    • walrus01 1 hour ago
      I think it's because people want to see what kind of a train wreck it is by being entirely vibe coded. It's a novelty. And to see what parts might be working normally or have clear heritage from existing RPGs.
    • zarzavat 1 hour ago
      You can see immediately that it's vibecoded so they kind of don't have a choice but to say so. It is interesting to see what can be achieved with AI even if few people want to play 100% vibecoded games.
    • kay_o 1 hour ago
      Probely because that is the entirety of it. There is zero story or creativity or anything else that goes into an actual game, virtually nothing is named and any that has is a simply word or two jammed together into a name -- the player guide is written in claudish and has a literal table of the number of roads.

      I don't think this is so much a game as a figure out how much can be vibecoded, such a tech demo rather of an engine

    • elif 58 minutes ago
      Do you also question why photographers list which lens they used to take a photo?

      Look I get it, half of us actively hate anything produced by AI. Just like half of photographers hated anything taken by digital cameras

      But there is a limited time window before the "I hate this" voice becomes a pedantic minority one. If the rate of AI progress doesn't show you a clear picture of what's coming, maybe it's time to reflect on that.

      • ThrowawayR2 19 minutes ago
        What is it about AI that causes so many of its promoters to write like a used car salesman using hard sell tactics to push a lemon onto an unsuspecting mark? Raises my hackles every time I see it.

        Even those who are pro-AI ought to discourage this; these people make you look bad.

    • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
      Frankly nobody will click into something that is just a game after 6 weeks. It's extremely unlikely to be interesting. 6 weeks of vibecoding brings the AI hype, and sets a truer expectation of substantial progress.

      Plus all the AI guys are intrigued. I would be, as one of them.

  • josiahturnq 48 minutes ago
    Apologies for anyone that got kicked -- I wasn't ready for the 300 players in 1hr. It does indeed scale with player usage, but wasn't quite ready for 35 players at a time!
  • walrus01 1 hour ago
    I'd like to see a vibe coded re-implementation of progress quest:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest

  • StilesCrisis 1 hour ago
    Is it really massively multiplayer? There are 7 players online.
    • Hasnep 1 hour ago
      I believe the "massively" part of "massively multiplayer online game" means all the players are in the same world, unlike other multiplayer games where you might join a match with a group of players.
    • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
      With 6 weeks in, we're working on the massive part lol.
  • dvt 1 hour ago
    Honestly, combat & movement feel pretty good and and it's very comparable to what a normal engineer would put together after 6 weeks. The hard part, when making games at least, is figuing out what makes things fun and (more specifically when it comes to RPGs) how to do the scaling. Both of these are pretty hard and require a ton of experimentation.

    Since it's vibe-coded, I was really hoping to see some AI-generated storylines (turn `go to <x,y> and do z` into a fun quest) and more worldbuilding. AI is surprisingly good at generating passable prose, certainly comparable to a middle-of-the-road RPG.

    • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
      Yeah making game mechanics is the easy part. A game that's actually fun is much harder and I'm struggling with that.
    • spike021 1 hour ago
      Yeah, I vibe-coded an iOS game last year. While I'd had the gameplay idea for years, it took so much time balancing everything and I still didn't really get it quite right.
  • ballon_monkey 1 hour ago
    It's smooth in Chrome but its buggy and unplayable in Firefox :( but fun!
    • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
      bummer! Just did a performance optimization but haven't tested in firefox. I'll look into it.
  • sicktriple 1 hour ago
    Honestly it's pretty cool besides the obviously Claude-written dialogue and tooltip text. That shit is so grating and makes my skin crawl.
  • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
    Would love feedback!
    • walrus01 58 minutes ago
      Started a game and was immediately attacked by a group of spherical green blobs, making it more akin to an action game than an RPG. Maybe put the new user in some kind of town or less hostile environment to walk around in and explore first. Take a look at the first 30-60 minutes of gameplay of something very old like Final Fantasy 1 for NES for an example.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_(video_game)

      • josiahturnq 54 minutes ago
        This is awesome feedback! I'd love more of this stuff if you have time for it. I have a discord link in the game or just chatting here (if you have the time to spare)
    • pitched 49 minutes ago
      The “nearby” list of players takes up half the screen on mobile (Safari) and I can’t see my player or really anything going on.

      I really like the Vampire Survivors vibe though and what I think might have been other players running around under my UI was really neat.

      • josiahturnq 20 minutes ago
        Didn't realize this, that's a massive problem haha. Thanks for the note!
    • goykasi 52 minutes ago
      The setting for disabling screen shake doesnt seem to actually disable it. Its really off-putting.
      • josiahturnq 21 minutes ago
        the world shaking all the time has been fixed now!
    • eqvinox 1 hour ago
      Feels appropriate to ask an AI for that, no? You're vibing it, so the feedback would be vibed too…

      (and at that point why not ask an AI yourself?)

      • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
        I get it, you don't like AI haha
  • Tostino 1 hour ago
    I learned coding on private MMO emulators (lineage 2 primarily). I had my own private server I was building in my spare time, implementing all the needed server features for the client one by one. Packet sniffing to know what any of the messages even meant. I was in the middle of that when I was approached by my business partner to do my first startup, and I haven't touched it since (2014).

    It'd be a whole lot easier to get that done (and adapted to another client) now if I pulled that code back out.

    Edit: After playing for a few min, not too bad! One thing I did notice, is the netcode/movement feels a little bit janky. I had jitter and ghosting on other players and NPCs.

    Cool project!

  • EveryonePoops 1 hour ago
    Still no storyline. Just random action and attacks.

    Why am I being attacked?

    Where am I going and why?

    Donkey Kong: the princess has been kidnapped by a monkey.

    I am going to rescue the princess.

    Simple as that my man.

    • josiahturnq 1 hour ago
      There is a storyline with the legion, but generally most users aren't motivated by that. I certainly am not in any games I played growing up.

      Noted tho that there are users here for the plot. So a plot they will get!

      • EveryonePoops 57 minutes ago
        Give them a non-binding plot with endless side games?

        You can rescue the princess or waste time drinking mead and gambling in the inn.

        • josiahturnq 56 minutes ago
          Fair. I respect that. I'll work on it!