ApexVerus

Attempting to make my dream game at 49 years old with no game dev experience, heavily using AI. Just to see if I can. Documenting the entire attempt.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

So, here's what I'm actually trying to build now. The plan changed a lot this week.

Think Dark Cloud, but bigger. 3D world, a little town that's been emptied out, and endless dungeons called the Unbound. Full action RPG combat, gear you actually wear, XP with no level cap, and a skill tree with combat and life skills like fishing, woodcutting, cooking and building. A full relationship system is planned as well.

Something pulled Brambleford's buildings into the Unbound. You go in, fight your way down, bring the pieces back and rebuild the town yourself. You place every building wherever you want, then decorate and recolor it.

And it won't stop at one town. Once Brambleford's back on its feet, you head down the road to the next one and do it all again. Hopefully it turns into an endless journey, going town to town and rebuilding the world.

No shop sim anymore. Instead, villagers come to you with wants: a piece of gear, a monster drop, a house near the water. Get it done and they thank you with a purse of gold or other rewards.

Townsfolk can also chat using an optional local AI running on your own PC for endless conversations. Turn it off, and you'll still get the written dialogue.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@snapsnocaps These people are mentally ill. Never bow to them. They always move the goalpost and are never happy because they are miserable human beings who have never created anything on their own in their entire lives.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@dextune Sim City 2000 was the first PC game I ever bought when we got our first real PC when I was in the 8th grade. I can't even imagine how many hours I spent playing that game.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@advancenine Congrats! It looks awesome, and only $6? That's crazy. I just bought a copy!

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

The Vellmere Chronicles has NPC interactions and its first quests! Only took me 2 weeks to get to this point. 😆

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@AdamWayne137 I haven't actually used it. Opus 5.5 medium is handling everything I'm trying to do so far and they say Fable uses up way more usage. I might give it a go if I run into something really complex at some point to see how it handles it and how much it eats up my usage.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

So, here's what I'm actually trying to build now. The plan changed a lot this week.

Think Dark Cloud, but bigger. 3D world, a little town that's been emptied out, and endless dungeons called the Unbound. Full action RPG combat, gear you actually wear, XP with no level cap, and a skill tree with combat and life skills like fishing, woodcutting, cooking and building. A full relationship system is planned as well.

Something pulled Brambleford's buildings into the Unbound. You go in, fight your way down, bring the pieces back and rebuild the town yourself. You place every building wherever you want, then decorate and recolor it.

And it won't stop at one town. Once Brambleford's back on its feet, you head down the road to the next one and do it all again. Hopefully it turns into an endless journey, going town to town and rebuilding the world.

No shop sim anymore. Instead, villagers come to you with wants: a piece of gear, a monster drop, a house near the water. Get it done and they thank you with a purse of gold or other rewards.

Townsfolk can also chat using an optional local AI running on your own PC for endless conversations. Turn it off, and you'll still get the written dialogue.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

New UI for The Vellmere Chronicles. How does it look?

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

I'm finding that it's easier to adapt the lore for my game to the gameplay mechanics that I want than it is to adapt the game mechanics to the lore I had planned.

I think I'm actually headed in a very different direction with the gameplay loop than I originally had in mind.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

I asked Claude to build a custom world builder tool for the game while I was sleeping. I asked for an easy to use editor like The Sims. Not bad for a first pass. We're building it in stages, so it's not feature complete yet. He's working on refining it right now.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@ankurnagpal If anyone wants to test it out, feel free to shoot 20k my way. 😆

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

Made the tough decision to switch the entire game to a much different art style by using @SyntyStudios assets.

It's not the style I had in mind for my game, but they are really nice assets and have pretty much everything I would ever need to build the game.

I went all in and purchased a full year subscription. This way, I can stop spending every day worrying about character creation and matching assets and get back to actually building game mechanics and making the game as fun as possible.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

I don't know how people are getting things like this from Claude. I've been struggling for over a week, like 8-10 hours a day, trying to get Claude to help me create a modular character system for my game. I need it to accommodate an RPG like swappable gear slots. Every time Claude generates any kind of 3D model it looks like something out of the N64 era.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@icreatelife Thank you!

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@AlonelyCat31 Thank you!. I'm working on getting a better, custom player character in the game now. The video is just using a free asset model, but I really want the player character to be in a slightly different style. Hoping I'll have it done today.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

The problem with Grok Bot is the things that set it apart from others is exactly what eats up so much usage, so you have to stop doing all the cool things and treat it like any other AI to get decent usage, but then at that point, you might as well just use a different, cheaper AI because they are better at the things they all do. I know that was a whole lot of word salad, but someone will understand me. 😆

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

Starting to look like a real world now. We have clouds and better lighting!

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@dextune That's what I'm using for my first game. Pretty smooth experience so far.

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

@AdamWayne137 Thank you!

[ApexVerus @ApexVerus]

My first fully rigged and animated character is complete. Say hello to Edda Sorrelby.