Hey Paisanos!
I come to you today with a very nice update. Last month I’ve been fixing up the web experience for my arcade project. This project pertains to getting my games finally together in one place. I’ve been trying to see how I was going to get ready a few titles I was still working all these years before, but I instead wanted to focus on some new experiences.
First of all back in October I initialized a plan to get a game done every 2 weeks. The first game concept I had in mind was the 3D maze game. I wanted to experiment how fast and easy I can do it with Claude. Claude is extremely beneficial to me in learning how to code whiles I put the game together. I was able to design the map and see how basic I can draw a 3D environment using a combination of JavaScript and simple html. That was when I realized I can do more in less time. The concepts can be realized so fast that trial and error don’t feel like a choir anymore. It’s super fun to see the code become something amazing and it’s all thanks to Claude.
So I finished the first game and let my buddies at work test it out. I then was able to share it with some other online amigos as well as my partner. All that feedback gave me an idea on what to do next with it but then I saw the game as “playable” enough to leave it alone now and move on to the next game project.
The second game project consisted of me trying to find out what is a good 2 player game. This time I wanted to have my tablet to share an experience with a friend. So I came up in trying to make a Connect 4 clone. It was super clunky at first though. I was getting bugs on bugs and it wasn’t a fun start to this. This is when I had to consult with Claude again, and basically I was helped to solve all those problems in the beginning. Even at the end there were bugs unnoticed until my coworker was able to detect them. This project was like dancing salsa, two steps forward, two steps back and the dance felt like I wasn’t doing any progress until I let Claude analyze what was causing the piece not to fall into place. It was going all over the playing area. Then the CPU bug of it just wanting to be in all places at once lol that was hilarious. The input bug though was the frustrating one that kept on coming back up – but all of that got fixed with a huge sense of relief. The project took me 3 weeks to work with and finally I called it playable enough for folks who were able to play it was challenged enough to be okay with it. The place where I work I have the kids also play it and it was a blast!
The 3rd game though, I wasn’t able to really finish it until last month. That one was a headache! It’s basically my GridXross game project replacement. This one was suppose to be on Arcade Zone first before the last 2 game projects, but I wanted to season up on my skill building first before tackling it. I can tell you I wasn’t ready yet but I was determined to get it done. So much crap though happened in between November to May, I wasn’t able to have enough downtime to work on it. Little by little this project felt like it became way to overly ambitious and impossible to make, but I kept on going! All the features I was trying to implement kept on breaking, and enemies were misbehaving too. It was such a mess and this valley of frustration and uncertainty hit me harder than the last project, but I persevered! The new years hit and I was determined to finishing this project somehow. There was though a huge gap in time where I wasn’t able to work on the project and I felt really depressed that I couldn’t. It was from January to April that I felt really off and displaced, just working all the time, 7 days straight.
Then finally after it felt like forever, I find a new tool called Replit that helped me super advance Geo Cross Trigger to new heights of advancements! Basically the Ai model fixed all the bugs and cleaned up the code. The only downside of it was that the design was changed drastically from just a vertical shooter to a 16:9 ratio one that scales to fit the screen. I wasn’t to hot about it but it matched up to the basic mechanics I was going for. Little by little though I got it to my vision of the game and then gave it to test it to my fellow programming designer friend who helped me list up a few things that I need to work out on it. Then it was just all about “Vibe” coding, where I pick out the things that need to fix from this new tool, and it gets fixed! Afterwards I hit my budget for the month so I had to take what I got for now and I published it as it is until later this month when I go back to it and rework the flow of the game again.
After all of that, then I went to focus once again to my baby Dark Zeta game project. I was curious if I can actually overlay an UI touch screen interface – and lo and behold the genius of Replit actually made it possible! The JavaScript code actually can connect with Dark Zeta’s Js file natively! It works! Then after I just went ham in adding features and making the controls tight enough with the ai model. It literally cut a whole years time of work dudes! It is INSANE! And finally I can share Dark Zeta demo to the world!
So right after that point, since hackers fucked up my Arcade Zone earlier in the year, I had to result in using Claude to remake the page without wordpress framework. This is why it took a bit but now is 10x better than ever before! And it won’t be taken down now since it’s just it’s own framework that isn’t sitting on other things. I’m going to keep working with Replit for future solutions to develop a point system and Auth login system so it can be secure enough for users to enjoy my page as it evolves. Insane time we are living now with all of this! And finally a dream is coming to fruition, and I’m so happy that I can! Now the next thing to do is layout some future time to rework Dark Zeta to it’s true form!
later my guys!