@Morgan Page I know, the detail in things like cassettes blew my mind. ChatGPT image generation in the latest model is nuts. It already has the entire context of my game so my prompt (which gave 4 amazing posters and 4 magazine covers) was literally “make me a video game magazine cover featuring my game and a poster advertising it, both from the 80s”. And those were some of the results with that simple prompt. Context is everything! What I’m trying to achieve with almost no time is a bit silly really and is really stretching my “speed coding” abilities. I have 27 different modes, each with their own engine and controls. Some of the modes can overlap into several other modes. And I can’t test anything on my phone as the game is designed for PC play so would take forever to test properly on my phone as it’s too tricky. So basically during the day whenever I have a minute, waiting for kettle to boil etc, I send over a ton of pretty complex and detailed requests into lovable. I might do somewhere between 15 and 20 during the day with absolutely ZERO testing. Then every evening I have about an hour of testing everything that I did that day and make notes as I go. Then in bed I try and think about what areas need improvement / any new ideas / and what would ultimately make this fun. Then the next day the cycle repeats. I make a ton of requests based on my notes and test that evening. It’s a crazy approach but literally all I have time for right now. And while this approach is unlikely to get me the winning game I think it’s powerful to show what is possible and it should give me a strong enough foundation to then give it the extra time and polish it needs after the contest has ended to really make it shine (when I’m not in such a rush that I can’t test and refine as I go)

@Morgan Page essentially for this I’m going 90% of the actual “coding” on my mobile as that’s the device I tend to have with me when I have idle time. And is one of the major reasons I have stayed with Lovable vs looking at Claude Code with cursor. So it’s just mostly Lovable in Safari and then the testing I can do on my laptop late at night once kids and dinner and other work stuff is out of the way. With my first big project, Lander, one criteria I gave myself from the off was to see if I could create the whole thing on mobile (even though they get platform to play it on was PC) and I probably managed to do about 95% of the creating just from my phone. What has proved incredibly helpful is being able to get Lovable to report and document the code. So for instance I now have 27 different modes that need sound effects, with some sounds shared between all modes but then lots of unique per mode sounds etc. At this point I have absolutely no idea of all of the potential sound triggers in the game, what is currently shared over what isn’t etc as it’s jus a huge task to begin to keep track of that. So was able to get Lovable to create new sound design document detailing the handful of sounds currently in the game as well as full descriptions of all of the possible triggers and events within all of the modes that would need sound adding. I was able to give that document to ChatGPT, have it analyze it and then come up with an implementation plan and draft descriptions (and in some cases raw values) for all the sound to then feed that all back into Lovable. It’s just taking in what would insanely massive manual tasks and completing it in a few prompts. Now is this going to create the perfect soundscape for the game? Absolutely not, not even close. But it is going to give me sound, which I need and don’t have time to work on too much ore deadline, without taking up too much of my time. And then when I do have the time later (probably after gamejam submission is in) I can go back to tweaking and replacing sounds, adding music and samples etc. but for now I just want something that doesn’t make it feel empty from an audio perspective. So as always my method normally uses a couple of tools but to do lots of sweeping changes in one hit and continue down my path of speed coding.

@Greg Dunn Star Trek I spent a fair amount of time with, Omega Race I’m going to have to look into tonight…thanks for sending me down that route (the name does ring a bell so we will see )

@Jodessiah Sumpter I am working on something WAY better than this for the jam. Only problem is finding the time with four kids and a new business I’m setting up. I had my workflow set up really well between chatGPT, Claude and Lovable so I’m able to at least get pretty polished looking “rough drafts” up and running quickly. The actual polish though takes a lot longer. A game changer for me is being able to now ask lovable to bring in aspect’s from previous projects I’ve done with it rather than having to try and do that manually. So it means I can work in different elements separately and only bring them in to my main game if I get the to a stage I’m happy with.

@Jodessiah Sumpter love your breakout game, very cool idea! How many prompts are you now in?

I’m on the MAX plan as I’m using it for my new business. However, this should be a wake up call for everyone. Without a doubt at this stage a lot of the services we are getting are being subsidized by VC cash, everyone needs to be adaptable or be at the mercy of the fat that at some point these companies are going to want to turn a profit!