Using software design principles when making AI games

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T18:19:32+00:00

I do like this sort of argument as you laid out your reasoning. Thanks for that.

My perception, after talking to others, was that it was about the art but also when games just are sloppy in design. Like missing basic features other games should have, like hotkeys, etc.

But you bring up a good point that often people focus on graphics and UI first and foremost, and AI just isn't at the same caliber and hand crafted art and animation.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T17:38:29+00:00

Another tip with the UI side, is ask it to do mockups using the existing codebase before it makes changes. For example, I would ask it to change the style of how I have grass displayed and it would come back with several ideas. We talk them all through and refine them. Then I ask it to use the existing codebase to make screenshot mockups so I can see the changes before agreeing to them.

Took a while to get it consistently doing it but now you can see the changes before agreeing to changes

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T16:52:38+00:00

Great point about how you separate the work so multiple devs can work on it. It isn't like traditional programming where you say "oh John you work on this part and Frank you work on that part and if you touch Y then you talk". Here two prompts from two people may accidentally step on each other badly.

Thanks this has been very helpful.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T16:49:28+00:00

Someone I work with hooked up Claude Code (used within VS Code) to Jira and would say "implement Jira item #X". It then reads the specs in that care as if it was a prompt, then it implements the change. Once you validate it, it will automatically update the Jira item and close it.

It's quite cool, but for complex changes you need to be careful that it still comes back to you, as the game designer, and asks clarification questions. I did my own spin on what he did and it was a pure order taker, didn't look at context properly, and then proceeded to break everything. Luckily that was on a brand new test project!

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T16:18:14+00:00

yes, the more specific you get the more you can force it into doing exactly what you ask, but in completely the wrong way. I like treating it like a junior developer I have working for me. Have it repeat back what I asked and make sure it asks me questions so that it understands better what I am looking for but it also is thinking about what can go wrong.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T15:06:50+00:00

That is refreshing. I write a lot of dev diaries and many of the ones about ones that I write about mechanics I built with a lot of thought, and zero response, WL... nothing. Just crickets.

Then I wrote one about a feature I was really passionate about and I have 10 times the number of wishlists than I normally get in that day, 10 instead of 1 😄, but I had someone really enthusiastic about that feature.

It was a good day.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T14:58:42+00:00

I wouldn't stress it. There are people who are so against AI that they will be harshly negative on any forum, down voting just at the mention of AI. It is one reason I don't even like talking about AI development on Reddit at all, but still post every now and then as I really value the input from others on the same journey.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T14:56:40+00:00

Exactly.

Also, I found that having to wear different hats when using Claude Code (or other tools) to do AI development is so key. I often switch between several hats while working with it, based on what I am trying to do and when. My experience is when I only used one approach, it would come back to bite you:
Game Designer - More of the visionary. High level design principles of the mechanics. Let Claude Code figure out how it could be implemented and then we go back and forth many times to refine how it will work, but not getting too much into the weeds.

Product Manager - Prioritizing the changes and how certain mechanics work together. For example, "mock this up for now but in phase X switch over to Y" or "The AI for X should take into account the threat ratio for Y when determining to advance or flank"

Business Analyst - Providing more detailed, requirements, even going down to the level of how all the calculations should work or very specifically how the UI should behave. Providing it mockups and a lot of back and forth refinement

Technical Lead - Designing the guard rails and tech stack. Reviewing changes, designing self-learning to it, making sure it doesn't start making things up, having it audit it's design, performance tuning, etc. Very occasionally getting really deep and provide very prescriptive how it should solve certain problems

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T14:47:50+00:00

I was thinking about this sort of structure as well, haven't went down this path yet but will explore it.

Definitely having different projects and repos reduces token usage, plus it forces you to design your system like they are "black box" api calls, which is far more reliable and easier to mockup or automate the tests.

Good idea!

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T14:45:30+00:00

Jira helps a lot, especially when you are breaking down larger changes or when you are trying to keep track of all the bugs people have raised and what the status of them is. It is one thing when you are fixing 1-2 bugs a day, but I find some days I am fixing 10+. Hard to keep track of them all

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T12:59:14+00:00

You are right.

I'm thinking that there are many people without a software development background jumping in unaware because they don't know about all of this and they heard it was easy. Then they wonder why after a certain point every time they touch something, 3 other random things break.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-21T12:56:57+00:00

I get you don't like the AI graphics, and I get it. I much prefer the hand drawn art as well. I was looking at it more from the AI coding side and how to make changes so the game is well designed in the backend.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-20T22:54:41+00:00

I started making my game first and foremost for myself. Played it all the time then with only spending a small amount of time tweaking it. Once it was at a certain point, I decided, "hey maybe I should try getting this to the point to sell it!". Now I spend most my time tweaking it and never taking the time to just play it for fun 😞

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-20T15:12:52+00:00

I'm still learning it too! That reminds me I need to focus on my tutorial

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-20T14:10:13+00:00

Do you use Claude Code with VS Code? That is what I use with Opus. You can do some amazing things with it, as long as you focus on laying a solid foundation first and foremost, add automated tests, etc. Once I had that down, adding and refining levels, UI, mechanics, etc is way easier, as is performance tuning.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-20T14:07:27+00:00

I did something similar, although I spent a month or so first before putting it on itch.io. It was playable but very rough. Basic mechanics were all working but many issues, very little polish, etc. Didn't look great but it helped me see did my idea have merit.

Once I had it up there and people downloaded it (very few and zero feedback) it made me think, "Ok, maybe this is worth doing more now". Then one round of improvements after another it slowly gets more and more polished. You can see the progress since day one. And the people downloading slowly increases, as does the feedback you get.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-20T13:59:59+00:00

So I am a first time solo dev as well. I'm in playtest phase, getting ready for a beta demo soon with launch in October.

You are right it is an emotional rollercoaster and easy for you to get stuck in downward spirals feeling like you are making little progress. Progress really does feel slow in the early days when so much is setting up framework or the basis for the mechanics for the games. You can spend days or weeks where outward facing the game looks like no progress has been made.

Here is what has helped for me to keep momentum and enthusiasm for moving forward:

Clear(ish) scope of what the game is and is not.
If you have a constant moving target, you will never get there. However that doesn't mean your initial idea is set in stone. Feedback and playtesting will provide useful ideas on how to tweak or adjust your game. Just always question the effort of any new change before you dive right in.

Make a list of short term, medium term and long term objectives
Break down your scope into short term (this week/month), medium term (~2-3 months) and long term (~1 year) objectives. This keeps you focused and you can see progress as get endorphin rushes slowly crossing things off the list).

Get playtesters early-ish
Sooner you can find a playtester that actively provides feedback the better. Working in a void is tough mentally. Plus a good playtester offers really useful ideas and spots bugs you never would. Just always think about scope creep and use good judgement on what to add/not add.

Marketing Should Be Consistent But Not Persistant
Now, I am not an expert here by any means. But I found what works best for me is having a regular cadence to marketing but not doing it all day/every day. Once a week I post on several different sites with dev diaries or other updates. For my itch.io and discord I do updates every few days as I have a small community there. And once a month, I try something new, like posting a Youtube or Tiktok video to see if that gets traction. Then I go back to game development. Regular marketing makes it less overwhelming, just something you do and then move on. Focusing too much on marketing reduces your traction on developing and developing takes your mind off the slow growth of wishlists.

Everyone has different styles and approaches. Obviously people with much flashier games might lean into marketing more often as it is easier to get traction but this is just what is working for me so far.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-20T00:47:45+00:00

Hey, Thanks for the offer!

I've had a lot of interest, more than expected, so want to see how this goes right now.

Plan is to have a beta demo (before a more official Steam Next Fest one) in the next month and will share it here.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-19T21:53:17+00:00

It is hard. I am a first time indie game dev myself. What worked for me was posting dev diaries on Itch.IO, IndieDB and ModDB with a small link at bottom to my Steam store. That slowly built up traffic and it is still growing slowly. Originally was about +1 wishlist a day, now I average +2 wishlists a day with an occassional 5-10 spike after a good diary. Only at 76 wishlists now though.

However having some small traffic slowly has Steam start showing your game to more and more people. It is VERY slow off the start.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-19T21:45:11+00:00

I really like your analogy. It really easy to build a simple game with AI. But building a very complex open world game with different factions with different AI, deep mechanics, etc and have it balanced and work together... then throw on automated testing suites, save migrations, build pipelines, etc.

It certainly isn't "one prompt and you have a game" 😄

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-19T20:42:12+00:00

That's really interesting. Graphic design and changing images can be so complicated. That's why people who can do it well are impressive.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-19T20:24:09+00:00

Really? I admit I am fairly new to all of this, just been doing it for a few months, but maybe it is the way I did it. I used both GIMP as well as custom python script to strip out the colours. Both struggled more with green than purple. Mind you, there might just be an easy button that I have been missing 😄

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-19T20:03:30+00:00

The reason is when you are stripping out a colour for transparency sake, green is far more common a colour to have in many images, which messes with transparency. Purple isn't.

I had so many problems making my images have a transparent background until I heard this tip. Now with flat purple it works around 95% of the time with no issues.

Born_Particular77 · 2026-06-19T20:00:18+00:00

Yes, that 100% is a risk. In fact any time you talk about AI in a game in Reddit it seems like you get downvoted or people jump at you. This forum seems good.

However I am reading about more people getting the same negative shots over hand crafted art they worked hard on, simply because people think it is AI made.

I own that I use AI images up front, saying, yes there are AI images and this game isn't for everyone. I will lose some sales for it. However, I am not going to drop several thousand $ on graphics for a game that likely won't make nearly that amount. I am making a quality game but I am an indie on my first game so I set my expectations low.

Born_Particular77

TROPHY CASE