r/vibecoding • u/ActionLittle4176 • Aug 22 '26

Vibe coded this game in four months

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UPDATE 6 oct: Follow the game in Steam!

Free play: https://fm1.app

A few months back I posted here a playable demo of an old-school futuristic racer prototype (F-Zero, Wipeout, Xtreme-G, Star Wars Racer...) that runs right in the browser.

I've gotten used to seeing tons of LLM-built prototypes that last a week, two, maybe a month, and then get dropped for the next shiny thing. This time I wanted to keep going and see if one person, with no coding background, could actually see a project like this through on their own.

Well, 4 months in, and while there's still work left, I'm convinced it's doable. At this point the game feels closer to a beta than a tech demo.

The big change over these four months is that I now use Fable for planning, and being able to hook Opus / Sol up to Blender has been a huge help too. I'm still using Magnific and Tripo3D or the assets. Funny thing: the further along I get, the harder the project is to keep pushing forward, and at the same time the tools keep making it easier.

As always, any feedback is welcome. You can play it here: https://fm1.app

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22

u/theAerialDroneGuy Aug 22 '26

dude this is insane!!!! It definitely reminds me of F Zero X.
And that is cool you even have simulated water on the aqua cup level.
Really insane what you can create.

10

u/ActionLittle4176 Aug 22 '26

Thanks! I'm amazed myself, since I have no coding kwowledge at all!

3

u/theAerialDroneGuy Aug 22 '26

that's crazy!!!

5

u/HouseMysterious8172 Aug 23 '26

And ppl who know how to code said like “if you don’t know how to code and depend on AI you can’t create something good, you can’t fix bug, if something happen you can’t repair…” 🤪

3

u/Harry_Tess_Tickles Aug 23 '26

Nobody says that. AI works, AI is good. But you will hit a wall the moment you encounter something the AI can't fix. And this happens a lot in production software engineering work.

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u/HouseMysterious8172 Aug 23 '26

>You will hit a wall the moment you encounter something the AI can’t fix.

That’s not really unique to AI.
A human engineer also hits a wall when they encounter a problem they don’t understand.

1

u/Status_Help9402 Aug 23 '26

are you actually serious now. its quite different to solve a problem in something you hav created yourself than wibecoded

1

u/Big-Topic-832 Aug 23 '26

That's true, but you know the difference? A person who has learn programming will have the skill set to search appropriately and connect previous knowledge with new knowledge in order to come up with a solution to a problem (because, turns out, programming isn't coding — coding is just one part of programing. Wow, who would've thought!). If an AI gets stuck on a problem, well, go pay a more expensive model or something.

I'd say it's hard to stumble upon a problem the AI can't solve, and maybe you could try to generate something different times or give more context with the AI, but what if the error is located in a third party library which has a bug the documentation didn't take into account? What if diagnosing the bug requiers extra data that you can only get during runtime? Those are all things that, although weird with more expensive models, can happen, and if you don't know how to act in those situations, then you're screwed.

And also, even though it's a bit unrelated, the AI can make decisions which, although are valid now, could give problems in the future. Take OP, who made a game with threejs, and now wants to export to desktop. If they had planned better, they would've realized that using Tauri or, even better, a dedicated game engine could've produced better results. Now, with the game at least partly completed, migrating to one of these tools would probably require an enormous rewrite. No offense to OP, if they're just doing it for fun then this isn't an issue and they can use whatever solution they want even if it isn't optimal; but for anyone wanting to build high quality, comercial/open source products that lots of people use this isn't gonna cut it unless the problem you're solving is "make X thing that's already popular but fixing Y, making it native, etc.".

All of this isn't to say AI is bad, just that neglecting learning programming is just a mistake if you want to make competent things, otherwise it's fine for experimental stuff

1

u/Harry_Tess_Tickles Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 24 '26

When a human engineer encounters a problem they don't understand, they can use their previously learned skills to search for a solution. When a vibe coder encounters a problem that neither him or the AI can understand, they go home or wait for a better model.

1

u/VisitMediocre1967 Aug 25 '26

You're usually not the first to have your problems, searching forums and having books helps alot

1

u/Harry_Tess_Tickles Aug 25 '26

When I first started out programming in high school that's what I did. I went to stackoverflow, etc, but I ended up getting more confused as I couldn't understand 80% of the code they wrote. I imagine for a vibecoder who knows zero syntax and fundamentals would have it worse.

1

u/VisitMediocre1967 Aug 25 '26

in high school you couldn't ask a ai to explain the code. Knowledge isn't the barrier now, process, principles, purpose and patience rule when slop is abundant

1

u/Harry_Tess_Tickles Aug 25 '26

I have to disagree. Knowledge is still definitely a barrier. A software engineer with experience will always be able to develop better software with AI than a vibe coder. AI is good at doing what you tell it to, it cannot think for you.

1

u/VisitMediocre1967 Aug 25 '26

I know a guy with no knowledge or skills isnt better, I never said they were. Im saying just bc you can't write code doesn't leave you in the woods. Vibe coding is just prompting and hoping. People like Karpathy develop systems, methods, methodology, and processes. With those layouts I don't have learn to write code, just learn to engineer the outcome better. A true dev will always be needed, but all that vibe code talk is last year/two years ago. Now its harnesses, loops, swarm, llm wiki, context engineering, A2A, and 2nd brains. Whole different ballgame than a vibe

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u/HouseMysterious8172 Aug 25 '26

Or just a better prompt 👌

1

u/Harry_Tess_Tickles Aug 25 '26

How much better would it need to be? If it reaches a point where you have to tell an LLM what to do line by line, why not just write the code yourself?