Huge wall of text incoming for anyone interested in more detail on the tech underneath this... :)
Nearly 100% of the game code was written from a combination of Opus 5, Fable, and Gemini 3.7 Flash. Generally we used:
* Fable for high-level architecture and project setup, including planning out new features and how they interact with other systems.
* Gemini for anything visual, which it seems to excel at, like HUD/UI, animations, particle systems, etc.
* Opus 5 for the grunt-work, writing code after we've finalized design plans and implementation details.
* All static sprites other than the characters were generated in Unity with Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (cheap, fast, and consistent).
* All animated sprites (including characters) are actually generated from code from Gemini; generating pixel-perfect spritesheets (and at a consistent PPU!) is hard enough with the fuzzy pixels that image models usually spit out, especially when they go through resizing/restyling pipelines, etc.
* To get around this design limitation, all of the character parts (hair, eyes, beard, arms, legs, etc) are all generated from code (snippet) that guarantee every pixel is actually a hard-lined pixel, and lets us drive animations from data rather than images (which makes restyling characters way more maintainable). We then can define characters as a collection of parts (including animations for those parts, generated in the same way).
We have two kinds of crafting in the game. In the beginning, you're told what to draw and are awarded if you can draw it. Later, you can draw anything you want and new usable game items are generated for whatever items you draw.
For did-you-draw-this-item:
1. NPCs you meet typically have a request for you to draw some specific item.
2. We used Gemini to mass-generate some "hint" templates for every item that basically tell you how to draw it, if you want that hint. After you've drawn something, we just do a basic similarity check of "how many pixels-different are you from a template".
3. If you are close enough, we can skip all the fun AI stuff here and just give you the item immediately. This cuts down on AI wait times, token spend, etc, and also avoids nasty issues where a player might follow a template and still be told what they drew isn't actually what they were trying to draw.
4. If you went off the rails and drew your own interpretation, we convert the pixel canvas into an image and pass it into Gemini 2.5 Flash to ask "Is this a picture of XYZ?" to use AI to classify whether you accomplished the goal or not. If you did, you get the same item as if you'd drawn an expected template.
For draw-any-item:
1. Your Crafting Table has a full canvas that you can draw anything in.
2. When you submit a drawing, we convert the canvas to an image and pass that into Gemini 2.5 Flash Image and ask, in short, "What is this a drawing of?" It tells us it's a teapot (for example).
3. When we get a result back, we pass that back to Gemini 2.5 Flash again and say, "Here are all the composable systems in our world that describe how items work. Please generate the item data for a functional teapot.
4. In parallel to #3 (to minimize wait time), we also prompt Gemini 2.5 Flash Image to generate us a teapot in the style of our game items.
5. When we have both the game data and sprite back, we write that to our item database and mint the new item in the game, then reward it to the player as a usable item they just crafted.
The existing systems in the game carry the weight for what it can do. For example, you might be able to water your crops with a generated teapot if it grabs functionality off the base Watering Can item. Or if you craft a Mega Torch, it might have the functionality of a base Torch but with higher brightness values. Or if you craft a Glowing Teapot, you might get a tool you could water your crops with but also gives a slight glow around you, and can be placed in your farm fo...
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 13.0 ms ] threadNearly 100% of the game code was written from a combination of Opus 5, Fable, and Gemini 3.7 Flash. Generally we used:
* Fable for high-level architecture and project setup, including planning out new features and how they interact with other systems.
* Gemini for anything visual, which it seems to excel at, like HUD/UI, animations, particle systems, etc.
* Opus 5 for the grunt-work, writing code after we've finalized design plans and implementation details.
* All static sprites other than the characters were generated in Unity with Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (cheap, fast, and consistent).
* All animated sprites (including characters) are actually generated from code from Gemini; generating pixel-perfect spritesheets (and at a consistent PPU!) is hard enough with the fuzzy pixels that image models usually spit out, especially when they go through resizing/restyling pipelines, etc.
We have two kinds of crafting in the game. In the beginning, you're told what to draw and are awarded if you can draw it. Later, you can draw anything you want and new usable game items are generated for whatever items you draw.For did-you-draw-this-item:
1. NPCs you meet typically have a request for you to draw some specific item.
2. We used Gemini to mass-generate some "hint" templates for every item that basically tell you how to draw it, if you want that hint. After you've drawn something, we just do a basic similarity check of "how many pixels-different are you from a template".
3. If you are close enough, we can skip all the fun AI stuff here and just give you the item immediately. This cuts down on AI wait times, token spend, etc, and also avoids nasty issues where a player might follow a template and still be told what they drew isn't actually what they were trying to draw.
4. If you went off the rails and drew your own interpretation, we convert the pixel canvas into an image and pass it into Gemini 2.5 Flash to ask "Is this a picture of XYZ?" to use AI to classify whether you accomplished the goal or not. If you did, you get the same item as if you'd drawn an expected template.
For draw-any-item:
1. Your Crafting Table has a full canvas that you can draw anything in.
2. When you submit a drawing, we convert the canvas to an image and pass that into Gemini 2.5 Flash Image and ask, in short, "What is this a drawing of?" It tells us it's a teapot (for example).
3. When we get a result back, we pass that back to Gemini 2.5 Flash again and say, "Here are all the composable systems in our world that describe how items work. Please generate the item data for a functional teapot.
4. In parallel to #3 (to minimize wait time), we also prompt Gemini 2.5 Flash Image to generate us a teapot in the style of our game items.
5. When we have both the game data and sprite back, we write that to our item database and mint the new item in the game, then reward it to the player as a usable item they just crafted.
The existing systems in the game carry the weight for what it can do. For example, you might be able to water your crops with a generated teapot if it grabs functionality off the base Watering Can item. Or if you craft a Mega Torch, it might have the functionality of a base Torch but with higher brightness values. Or if you craft a Glowing Teapot, you might get a tool you could water your crops with but also gives a slight glow around you, and can be placed in your farm fo...