Big progress made today. Finally fixed cloud shaders and optimized it to not eat VRAM and run smoothly in the browser. There's 2 big shaders involved here - the cloud and the wind which can be programmed to affect all other weather effects. The idea is to have a... complete weather system where you can mix and match anything. Done with Cursor with 70% of the work by gpt-codex-xhigh and around 30% by Opus 4.5. Opus rarely oneshots anything and is a total token waster but sometimes it gives a very nice solution. GPT is reliable and precise. And slow. Gets stuff done. Perfect to let it work while going out/eating/sleeping.show more

This is incredible

All thanks to you! If you never made noise with IsoCity I'd probably think it's simply not possible haha It takes a little snowball to start an avalanche!

:)

nice

Thank you! Cursor is really the MVP here haha

what stack did you use?

Frontend is Next.js and React for UI Tailwind for css Canvas 2D API (renders terrain and base sprites/game world) WebGL (custom shaders for post processing) localstorage for state management for now Physics/particles are all custom shaders

nice, ty!

love it, what's the plan for the MVP?

Single player, hopefully with high replay value - think Heroes3. Smaller map (100x100 or 200x200), 4 main zones with clear goal. Main loop + several integral factions/NPCs integrated. 3 unit classes. (out of 7 planned) Scaffolding for massive multiplayer maps. (up to 2000x2000)

wow, good luck

This looks great

Thank you very much! Hoping to improve further in next iteration!

Loving this. Are you generating the sprites or did you design/create them? That's usually one of the things that I get hung up on.

I sketch them simply, and let the model paint them. And then I have an i2v workflow to create spritesheets.

Nice. I'll have to explore that at some point. Too many projects on my plate that are eating through my tokens lol

I feel you! Like I got 2 short films that are waiting for continuation, this game engine, 60 pages of game docs already written + commercial AI work... like it's crazy. Lovely era we're living in. Truly a blessing for the creative mind!

I agree! I've been working on a project for most of the year that's been stewing in my mind for years. Finally using AI to bring it to life. Over the holidays I added 2 more projects and abused the crap out of Claude 2x token special lol

That's the beauty of it - everything we shelved due to lack of resources, means or even vision - now it can be unleashed!

And it's only going to get worse! We're close to being able to explain an idea and then let it do everything while we sleep. PRD, design, develop, QA, test, deploy, good morning!

Do you have the prompt? I generally get good results with shaders but not isometric buildings like that?

What the heck.. i cant sleep tonight.. motivated

I see FPS on zoom is tragic :)

is this a game?

It will be. For now it's an engine where I made a small shader lab to make beautiful effects!

Thats beautiful!

Thank you! I hope the game will be fun too. If not... at least the engine/shaders will be pretty for another attempt heh

Looking forward to it, going to develop my own game too.

Best of luck to us both! Lets make cool games!

Yeah haha, what language are you using? Im currently a beginner in games

My stack is Canvas2D for base, webGL for post processing and shaders, and the rest is Next/React with Tailwind for frontend. I don't have a database yet. It's all localstorage for now and I keep settings in jsons

Interesting, I’ve had the opposite experience so far, opus has outperformed GPT codex high in my projects

I think it depends on the task. Opus tends to mess things up a lot for me but kinda 'never gives up' and sometimes provides really creative solutions. It improved my math for cloud generation and made them so pretty. GPT however builds stuff that works and doesn't fall apart.

Cloning Dune 2000?

Lots of inspiration from the 90s definitely. Fallout, Tiberian Dawn (first C&C), Wasteland... but the game mechanics will quite different. And the setting won't be just the Wasteland - it's just the first starting biome.

@MMOStars God I can’t remember which memory hole this triggered. The original Wasteland or Fallout, I believe Wasteland but it’s been so dam long.

@MMOStars Super inspired by that entire era I think it has huge potential nowadays if done right with a contemporary twist

Awesome! Are you using some threejs skills in codex? What the best shader integration method?

So the base layer is simply Canvas2D. Based it off what @milichab used for IsoCity. Started from there and then realized some simple shaders were definitely possible. Then figured - why not try webGL if the models can handle it. Several days after with back and forth with gpt-codex and I managed to get some cool stuff working as a renderer on top of Canvas2D (if webgl fails for any reason it reverts to canvas). So far managed to work out performance kinks but still have some math issues where they keep endlessly speeding up unless reset.

the wind & cloud shaders look great, especially when zoomed out far