I am back to working on Zotbox after wrapping up another project. Over the past year I had a fantastic opportunity to work on an amazing spine surgery system with a lot of talented people. The system is now heading towards FDA submission, and I am excited to see the team bring it across the finish line from afar.
My role in that project was a supporting one: helping work on the Unity-based digital twin that generated imagery to train the instrument tracking part of its AI. The system’s use of AI is focused on 3D reconstruction from 2D ortho images and instrument tracking within it. That kind of AI is all about computer vision, which is quite a bit different from the LLM-style AI that is pretty much changing the world right now.
While working there I was immersed in AI, and it was the first time I delved into heavy Claude Code usage. Using Claude, and likely other AIs similar to it, is really liberating in so many ways as a developer. It’s like having a superpower at your fingertips, and you are warping time in the process. It makes short work of implementing complex designs and can figure out very difficult problems quickly. My experience using it there has been transformative for how I think the future of software development will look.
And of course, with Zotbox, I dove right into it with Claude and started making short work of restructuring what I had, filling in missing systems, and sorting out long-standing issues. I have had it block out numerous missing pieces from my backlog and develop placeholder art, sound, and music. My project has literally been time-warped years ahead of where it would be if I had done all this by hand.
I am generally against using AI for creative content, especially image diffusion generation with its uncanny valley outputs. However, because of the retro approach to Zotbox, I can actually generate good placeholder material. I also feel some of it will likely stick around, even though I plan to humanize the creative aspects.
With the blocky, retro feel of the game, I have Claude generating synthesized sounds and chiptune music that would rival any old-school game. I also had Claude build an entire Blockbench plugin to support the game’s cube models – yes, I have my own model format now. And yes, it supports full humanoid animation. I even generated a full suite of boilerplate humanoid animations that are used for my various humanoid creatures: adventurers, castaways, zombies, and skeletons. Claude can generate all sorts of models in this format because of its simplicity. I also have my own workflow set up for adding sound and model prompts. Claude generates the synth sounds and the models by building them procedurally in JavaScript that runs in Node.js. It has even built an extensive support library behind this for all the parts that go into sound and model construction. It’s all just code.
Granted I am primarily doing this as a hobby, but for an indie dev like me this is like being a kid in a candy store. And for the most part, the sounds, music, and models, which I really consider placeholders, actually come out really well. I am sure many of them would survive into a final game.
I see and feel the AI hatred out there. This is especially true with all the AI duplication of games that is happening now. My own experience working with it is a mix of feeling my creativity liberated, feeling like a superhuman dev, feeling guilty about using a tool built upon mass knowledge, being scared for my career and for future software devs, and being sort of stunned at where we are now. This is a Pandora’s box that has been opened, so there is no going back, and its power is multiplying literally by the year.
That aside, I am now using Zotbox as an experiment in AI-assisted development done right. Going forward, I want to outline some of the approaches I use and what works and doesn’t, and hopefully demonstrate how combining AI with human creativity can lead to a positive outcome. I also want to finally push Lost Loot over a finish line and AI assistance is likely going to help me do that.
I really think things have changed for all of us, and even with all the AI hatred out there, things are not going to unwind and return to what they were before. Grappling with the reality of the changes and bending it to our creative will is the best path forward.
