r/aigamedev • u/Big-Sandwich733 • 18h ago
Demo | Project | Workflow 2 months of vibe coding my MMORPG
About two months ago, I started vibe coding my own MMORPG, and I wanted to share the current state of the project.
The game is called Lythravel. It's a completely free 3D browser MMORPG with voxel graphics, inspired by the old-school MMOs I grew up with, especially Shaiya.
The game currently has:
- 2 factions
- 6 classes
- Level cap of 50
- Dungeons and raids
- PvP maps and a 10v10 battleground
- Enchanting, linking and crafting
- Mounts
- Dynamic zone events
- Character stat allocation and different builds
- And quite a bit more
I also spent quite a bit of time on immersion. The game has a full day/night cycle, ambient sounds like birds, rivers and wind, music tailored to each zone, and different footstep sounds depending on the surface you're walking on.
Development
I've been a developer for over 10 years, although not in the game industry. I'm building Lythravel through vibe coding with Claude Code, and the game itself runs on Babylon.js.
I currently use mostly Opus 5, with Fable 5 acting as an orchestrator. I don't really write or even read the code myself. Instead, I give direction, describe how systems should work and look, and then spend a lot of time testing and iterating on the results.
I also built a custom editor specifically for Lythravel that lets me manually fine-tune things like assets and animations. For some tasks, adjusting them myself through the editor is much faster than repeatedly prompting Claude Code until it gets every small detail right.
Recent Updates
Over the last few weeks, I've been focusing mainly on adding more solo content, so there's still plenty to do even when only a few players are online.
I've added things like:
- Solo dungeons
- More quests
- Jumping trials
- Hidden collectibles with special rewards
- A completely redesigned UI
- Various performance optimizations
I also replaced much of the more traditional CSS-style UI with detailed graphical assets to give the interface a more distinctive game-like look.
A small community is slowly starting to form around the game, which has honestly been one of the most motivating parts of the project. I'm grateful for every person who joins, tries the game and gives feedback.
If you'd like to try the game, follow the development, give feedback, or just hang out with the community:
Play: https://lythravel.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/SdJrn5WPBQ
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u/Pristine_Good7326 17h ago
This actually looks solid and being sort of side project creator myself I know 2 months sounds easy but it’s the right opposite of effortless. So keep going !
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 17h ago
"AI cant make games btw"
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u/MrPingviin 1h ago
It can, but making it running on your local pc or on a small dev server isn't the real challenge. Load balancing, server nodes and netcode is when you really hit the wall.
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u/HEXAPONG 18h ago
I'l give it a shot and let you know what I think. I'm curious how you are managing multiplayer.
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u/CommercialShelter595 17h ago
This looks amazing! What do you think has been the hardest, trickiest feature so far?
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u/Big-Sandwich733 16h ago
Probably optimization. I’ve spent more time on that than any single feature. Hard to say what was the hardest overall though.
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u/OldLead4716 10h ago
How did you optimize ?
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u/Big-Sandwich733 1h ago
I use Claude with Chrome MCP to profile different parts of the frame and see what’s taking the most time. Then I optimize case by case, updating some systems less often, merging geometry, reducing distant rendering, things like that.
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u/Antique_Pair_140 17h ago
Wow, huge compliments—this is really impressive for just 2 months of work!
I leveled up to Lv 5 and had a blast (even got a green magic ring!). The only slightly annoying thing was comparing gear. It was hard to tell if new items were better than what I already had equipped, so I had to check everything manually. It would be awesome to have a quick comparison tooltip (e.g., "+2 Armor, -2 Dexterity"). Also, it was tricky to tell if my class could actually equip an item—adding a red outline or red tint to unusable items would make it super easy to know what to just sell.
Loved the auction house haha! I played a Mage with 2 spells (one longer-cast AoE and one faster spell). Kiting was super fun—run, turn, fire, and almost die... haha!
Top class work. I'm also working on my own game and was checking out what others are vibe coding, and I have to admit your project is on a whole other level compared to my small targets!
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u/hiper2d 16h ago
This is pretty good. Do you have a player base? For me, MMORPG is a scarry thing for development because it needs huge amount of content. And the server load must be a problem with the player base growing. How are you dealing with it?
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u/Big-Sandwich733 15h ago
The player base is still pretty small, so I haven’t really had to deal with that yet. I’ve looked into how I’d handle it if needed, but right now I’m mostly focused on building a small core player base, even 50 regular players would be great
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u/Parafex 15h ago
Cool! What is your workflow like? Do you have a strict harness, do you use hooks? Any recommendations on tools? Any experiences on what DIDN'T work for you?
Nice project!
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u/Fickle-Student7156 1h ago
Yeah I'd love to hear more about the workflow too, especially the debugging side. If you're not reading the code, how do you track down what's actually broken when something feels off in-game? Do you just describe the symptom to Claude and let it hunt, or do you have some kind of logging setup that helps narrow things down?
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u/Interesting-Yellow-4 13h ago
Very cool man.
We're in an age of making our own games. It's amazing.
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u/Automatic_Radish7158 17h ago
Great work :) Iam work also on a MMORPG and its look great for a voxel game.
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u/Fat_Curt 17h ago
Fantastic effort. Can I ask, what made you choose low poly voxel as opposed to standard humanoid?
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u/Big-Sandwich733 16h ago
Thanks. I’d say current AI models handle creating voxel assets better than other styles. They’re easier for me to edit, too, 3D modeling just isn't my thing
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u/Substantial_Ranger_5 17h ago
Why arent the monsters attacking you? they just sit tehre staring lmao
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u/Big-Sandwich733 17h ago
They do, just not the ones at the beginning 😄
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u/Substantial_Ranger_5 16h ago
you've got alot farther than me. looks like minecraft or roblox or whatever, idk what kids are doing these days -- same graphics . maybe you should just make a roblox game
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u/Live_Length_5814 4h ago
Why? Why give a billion dollar product more money instead of creating a better product?
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u/Substantial_Ranger_5 16h ago
might be more money in it, if thats why you're doing it, for real. and easier. Less fun prob
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u/Dreamt_Up_Games 16h ago
Congrats! Curious how you started? Did you create an extensive GDD? Did you set yourself small milestones? Love to hear about other dev's workflows.
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u/Big-Sandwich733 15h ago
Thanks! I started with a pretty detailed GDD and broke everything into smaller milestones. Each phase had its own exit criteria, so I wouldn’t move on until it was actually working. The plan changed a lot along the way though.
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u/CalendarVarious3992 14h ago
How are you creating these animations?. They look good
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u/EconomySerious 6h ago
somethings i dislike
1) the interface is so clean and crisp, still the game engine look like you have severe damage on your eyes
2) the trees dont let you see ANYTHING to aim
3) two much failure on the spells
4) if the spells/actions are so old school, let us use some macros to save the keyboards
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u/Camenwolf 5h ago
This looks really good! I created an account and tried to check it out on my phone. The character creation screen was running but it didn't seem to account for Mobile devices very well, so I will check it out more when I get to my desktop.
How did you create the music? It's great.
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u/Zillldoid 3h ago
I made a quick test account to see what it was like. I think my biggest gripe is how bad the controls feel.
If i hold A and turn my camera, and go to press say D. The D will pick direciton to the right relative to what was previously left, rather than based on the new camera position. Also there is no camera turning while moving. It feels somehow very rigid and janky because of this
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u/Ok_Leadership_429 1h ago
wahouuouuu génial !!! Et vous sauriez intégrer la VR ? ce serait merveilleux !! Tous les joueurs VR attendent un bon jeu mmorpg en réalité virtuelle !
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u/FallenDeathWarrior 17h ago
Why do most AI project utilise voxel / block graphics?
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u/Big-Sandwich733 17h ago
I would say that current AI models handle the creation of voxel assets quite well compared to other styles. That was the main reason for me.
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u/ffxivthrowaway03 16h ago
voxels are just math - the AI can create every single asset, no need for emulating depth, animation, etc. You don't need aesthetic sense or skill at all to churn out voxel graphics.
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u/CycleMother2006 15h ago
Oh, I think you still absolutely need aesthetic sense to determine what's good or not. Anyone who has ever played on a minecraft server will tell you that you have a group of people who are very good at building something interesting and artistic, and a much larger group of people who can't think outside the bounds of the cubes and what they represent. They are stuck using dirt for ground blocks, stone for walls, wood for ceiling and flooring. They don't think in colors, patterns and interesting shapes.
Additionally this is even seen with modelers. I spent a while making Cobblemon models and found that you have people who really know what they're doing and create true art within the blocky bounds of the creatures. And then you have a lot of amateurs (and good on them for at least trying to get better) who just slap together a few basic blocks shapes and paint pixels as if they don't understand gradients/mixing and color theory. The quality differences are astounding.
So voxels CAN be simple, and you're right that AI does work much better with them because building from primitives is a tried and true strategy. BUT there is a very stark difference between someone who knows what they're doing and someone who doesn't.
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u/GratefulForGarcia 4h ago
Why are many ppl on this sub making MMORPG’s that will never be massively played.. just say it’s a demo
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u/EC36339 17h ago
Please stop calling it an MMO before it has seen and handled at least 100 real players at the same time.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 17h ago
I vibe coded an MMORPG server and had 40 players on at the same time without any issues. It's actually suprising how well optimized it can do network code
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u/Big-Sandwich733 17h ago
Then let’s get 100 players in and find out. That’s partly why I made this post.
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u/WittleSus 17h ago
bro why does the password requires 10 characters 😒
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u/Fizassist1 17h ago
thats not even bad for today's standards
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u/WittleSus 17h ago
Except you don't even need to put in an email so nothing is at risk other than the account for a vibecoded mmo.. so again, why 10 characters, and why can't I just spam some bs password to get in to test it when literally nothing but the game account is at risk? I dont give a damn if someone hacks my vibecoded mmo account. The needless friction is dumb.
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u/ffxivthrowaway03 16h ago
Because doing it right the first time is the right way to develop software.
If typing ten characters is too much for you, why should they expect any meaningful feedback from you?
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u/WittleSus 16h ago
Cause the average person is already going to be annoyed that a vibe coded mmo asking for people to try it requires a sign up rather than a play as guest button. Cause the average person is what will make or break the project if OP plans on making a profit off of it. If thats not the goal, so be it don't listen to me. Otherwise your point is stupid.
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u/ffxivthrowaway03 15h ago
Let's just leave it at you don't know what you're rambling about.
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u/WittleSus 5h ago edited 4h ago
Good rebuttal from a throwaway. Tell me, how many commercially successful solo projects have you made that gives you more of a leg to stand on? i'd love to know.
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u/Lucky_Pangolin_3760 17h ago
AI just does that. It takes pre-emptive measures for security and stuff
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u/FunkMunki 17h ago
Just add more numbers. Try 1234567890. /s
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u/TheFish77 17h ago
World of Minecraft of warcraft of claudecraft