Continuing discussion of Indie Game Development and the new world of Vibe coding, I’m currently working on a vertical slice for the Reavers Game Engine. This will be a final proof of concept test before going a wide with game system implementation. It will include natural language parsing, 1 location, 2 POIs and 6 Rooms.
Rooms are the basic content piece here. Some things that have been a struggle: Getting the rooms to feel alive, adding a travel system that is consistent and moves between rooms, location ids. Oh my location ids! Mid development I switched from a very basic Location_Id to a more robust Cosmic_Location_Id which supports multiple planes of existence. Chasing down all the references to the old system has been a process.
Anyway, that’s probably getting a little granular! I’m super excited with this project, I’ve been a working game designer for 25 years and have a working knowledge of game code but have always been focused on level design implementation. AI tools have completely changed the game for me allowing me to prototype and build things I never thought would be possible. I’m currently working with the Kiro IDE and to me overall it’s AMAZING! It’s not perfect, and who knows things may completely fall apart as I continue to deploy builds and integrate more complex systems, but frankly getting a frontend and a backend stood up has already taught me a lot. I’ll include the link to Kiro if you’re interested.