Over Christmas break, I built GLITCH - a first-person survival shooter where you play as a "glitch" fighting debugging agents in a neon-lit spherical arena.
The stack:
React Three Fiber for 3D rendering
Zustand for state management
PostgreSQL for the global leaderboard
Hosted on Replit
What I built in ~40 prompt iterations:
- Full 6-DOF movement (fly in any direction)
- 4 enemy types with unique AI behaviors (rushers, floaters, brutes, glitchers that teleport and drop mines). If it's interesting, I have plans to expand.
- Shield ability with knockback physics
- Wave-based progression system
- Global leaderboard with nickname entry for top 10 scores
- Prodigy-style electronic soundtrack with random track rotation
- Visual effects: chromatic aberration on damage, scanlines, vignette
Interesting challenges we solved with AI assistance:
- Elastic boundary system to prevent players getting stuck at arena edges
- 3-meter knockback limit so enemies get pushed back but resume chasing
- Mine cleanup system with proper TTL handling
- The entire game loop - from concept to playable with leaderboards - was built conversationally with an AI coding assistant. Each prompt built on the last, iterating on mechanics until they felt right.
I actually wanted to build something I like to play instead of "consuming" others' games.
note: I'm passionate about this too. We're building https://fairlight.app/ as a successor to https://moneyflow.camplight.net/ (an internal tool that helps accounting and book-keeping we use to power our venture studio and agency as it's a real hell)
There's no extensive research on this topic. I really doubt coops are paying more than FAANG and if the only thing that you're after is money then coops are surely not your thing and that's OK ;)
In tech though, money is not the main unique value proposition and I would suggest getting curious about investing in happiness[1] so one can increase it's baselines[2]
Yup, I've read every semicolon in this thread, very thoughtful comments and I'm deeply grateful for people sharing their experiences. I couldn't ask for more :pray:
It struck me that you don't know your remote peers. In what setting are you working? I suppose you have a physical office with colleagues and a remote extension of teams with whom you occasionally collaborate?
about my role: I'm part of a digital cooperative and we too have power imbalances but not that direct as in a hierarchy. Our power dynamics stem from seniority but we all volunteered 2-3 years ago to do something about our team mental state and we're continuing to do it. Now it's part of the culture and this, of course, will alienate newcomers who dislike deeper harmonization but at the same time, it's strengthening the core team. Like everything, it has pros and cons :D
Thanks for taking the time to write and authentically share your point-of-view :bow: ️ I deduce that you don't have some process in your team for increasing the team's EQ other than 1:1 conversations? But you have a process for sharing frustrations/morale/etc. in your group? Do you do it usually in your weekly meetings or it piles up and it's discussed in some kind of reflection meeting?
for the record: I agree that if there's no consensus from the team to volunteer to create habits for psychological safety, it will become a recipe for disaster if it's made mandatory. People will leave, lie or disengage totally.
Thanks for the eye-opener! :bow: I'm far away from corporate culture as I'm part of a cooperative[1] so I appreciate your knowledge and your time to share it ️
Imho, The long term goals may be similar to what "normal" companies may have. Cooperatives are just means to an end but generally one may achieve lofty ambitions in any type of organization. The document sums up very nicely the pros and cons of cooperative targeting freelancers. The only thing one has to decide is wether one will reach sustainability in a normal company or in a cooperative - the journeys are two different wild adventures.
I've battled severe burnout after my first startup :( Almost 8 years down the road and numerous other startup fails now I believe teams can do a better job with burnout symptoms within colleagues [1]. Please be mindful for your buddies. They may not have the energy to pull out themselves \/
disclaimer: I've been involved in https://www.rulerapproach.org/ (as part of the development team from www.camplight.net)
It's interesting that the news release from gov.uk[1] focuses that they are doing one of the largest studies in the world with 370 schools... Looking today at our RULER statistics we now have almost ~900 enlisted USA schools.
Combining those will definitely become one of the largest, unless there's something similar in other parts of the world :O Have anybody heard something like this in other countries?
I hope all these initiatives lead to less bullying and aggressive behavior :))
I don't know if we practice "Agile Manifesto" or not but with our current flow[1] of collaboration and partnership we're pretty agile and able to respond to business reality within hours. Sometimes it's minutes depending on the complexity of the required "pivot" / refactoring. edit: also the team has no hierarchy and information silos. This trust builds a good rhythm.
I'm also trying to find and collaborate with a team which can do the same.
Our remote stack is based on: gitlab/github, skype, trello, google docs (we shifted from dropbox) and that's it. We don't need persistent chat because we're not big and we have a habit to use trello A LOT (we have like ~20 boards) :)
Greetings from the little entrepreneurship society of Bulgaria!
We need some help for validating our efforts. With this survey we are testing if the world is ready to level up its wisdom.
We started writing code like crazy but soon we realised it is not about writing code - it's about validating your idea. That's why, with little delay, we started to distribute this survey, hoping that people will be willing to spend some of their time to complete it.
