Ethan_Mick

I think this is a good moment to bring up a question I was thinking on earlier today.

In a world where agents are searching, building, and signing up for services, how do you advertise your product?

And not just advertise in traditional sense (ads in ChatGPT), but general marketing and awareness of what you're offering. Google search ads? Agents aren't using Google. Launch on Reddit for humans and hope your post gets scraped? Write up a bunch of marketing blog posts and wait for LLMs to ingest your content and have it feed into the next generation of models?

I honestly didn't quite know. If I were to launch a product today, I'd want it to be agent focused. But then how do you tell them about your product? Do these ChatGPT ads get returned if Codex does a web search? Is that good? Bad?

Yes, using it now.

I think this is a good question. Screenshots are hard on HN, but I could write up a blog post about it all once I have a demo of the game.

I've been using ChatGPT and GPT-4 since they came out, so I'm pretty aware of their limitations. You can't build an entire project in a single project. GPT loses the context at one point.

With that in mind, break down the project into chunks and make each one a conversation. For me, that was:

1. Initial Setup

2. Add a randomly generated tilemap

3. Character Creation and Placement

4. Movement

5. Turn-based execution

6. Fog of War

7. Enemy Monsters

Each one of these is a separate thread. They start with:

> You are an expert game developer using Phaser 3 and TypeScript. You are going to help me create a game similar to Pixel Dungeon using those technologies.

I then copy in relevant code and design decisions we already made so it has the context. If it gets the answer totally wrong, I'll stop the generation and rephrase the question to keep things clean.

Lastly, I'll frequently ask it to talk about design first saying something like:

> We are going to start with the world map and dungeon generation to start. We'll add a character sprite and movement next. What's the best way to do tilemap generation and store the data? Don't write any code, just give me high level suggestions and your recommendation.

This lets me explore the problem space first, decide on an approach, and then execute it. I'll also ask for library suggestions to help with approaches, and I'm generally surprised by the suggestions. Like all software, once you know the design, the pattern, the goal, and have good tools to help you achieve it... the coding isn't all that hard.

Thanks for the response! It sounds like (in a good way) there's no shortcut. You build something, make it better, make it great, and talk about it for a long time to establish credibility.

Probably a good lesson in there for everyone.

TypeScript happens to be my current strongest language. I picked Phaser since I wanted to learn the ins and outs of building the game and not need to worry about the language I was writing in. This was also helpful because GPT-4 would still get small things wrong with the TypeScript, but I was able to easily fix those without needing to ask it.

If I had tried this in Unity and C# (which I don't know at all), I'd still be figuring out the standard library.

I generally recommend learning one new thing at a time when building something new.

I was thinking of building this for Next.js in a very similar way. I love the fact that this exists for a different stack! I think your implementation of the project template is definitely the way to go. As a customer, when I buy something to jump-start me, I want it to be as clean and simple as possible. Generating the project from a configuration handles that nicely.

Outside of the generator itself, what have you found most beneficial for converting customers and convincing people to buy? Documentation? Videos? The community access?

> More importantly, it gives me the courage to dream and attempt things beyond my current abilities.

This is one of the small things that GPT has pushed me to do. I'm an experienced programmer and grew up playing video games, but I am not a game developer. I've dabbled over the years but can't build anything outside of a tutorial.

The other day, using GPT I went through and made a Pixel Dungeon clone using Phaser (JavaScript game engine). It was such a delight. Together we got the game to a working state before I started to change some of the fundamental design, and then GPT started hallucinating pretty badly. When that happened, I stopped for the night, and then just started new focused conversations to add or change a feature, putting in the relevant code. It's turn-based, with simple AI, enemy monsters, fog of war, line of sight, and a victory/losing condition.

Being able to build this in a couple of days is an absolute game-changer, pun intended. I can only imagine the riches of experiences we will have as people are unblocked on skills and can pursue an idea.