90s AOL proggie kid → self-taught HTML4/C++/Java, CompTIA N+/Sec+/A+ & BackTrack. Navy IT at 21. OC computer repair biz at 24. Grey-hat. Now indie dev studio.
Protip if you're vibe coding games:
Ask claude to make every system *configurable* with a constants file.
Separate the game system logic files from *configuration constants* so you can easily hand-tune things like game feel (animation speeds etc.)
I have an entire directory of config constants i can easily go in and edit without needing to wade into the game logic files.
For instance
https://t.co/RyLOsVZCXF.ROLL_TIME = 0.62
^easy to swap out this animation speed to get the perfect roll time.
If you try to tune these kinds of params with AI it will end up:
- Spinning up an agent
- Spending tons of tokens searching through your codebase to build context
- over-planning
- modifying 1 line (and if you're not careful, 10 other lines)
- running a whole battery of regression tests (because thats what these modern agents tend to do.)
You can speed up this process for simple changes, but it's always going to be a bit of a nightmare... so just get used to tweaking constants (you can even make a visual editor if you're a real GUI lover)
will speed up your game dev and save you a ton of tokens
It's been 2 weeks since I've launched Ocean Survivors, and today I've surpassed 1000 sold units!
I'm super happy and thankful that people are liking the game 🙏!
And I'm still working on the endless mode. It's taking more time than I anticipated, so it won't be this week!