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Out of curiosity - what harness did you use, and what model? And how are you prompting? In my mind prompting like: “You’re going to make frogger in javascript.

Out of curiosity - what harness did you use, and what model? And how are you prompting? In my mind prompting like: “You’re going to make frogger in javascript. I want a complete clone of functionality for level 1, with amazing 80s era pixel art sprites. I’m super lazy, so you’re going to have to test everything, right from the start. Pick a test harness, write the tests, including tests for having amazing graphics, gameplay, input, UI, sounds, etc, and write a full workplan, then work through that workplan, in parallel where you can. The workplan should emphasize getting a stripped down version up immediately and have workstreams for all the major requirements after that. Add a final test that assesses how fun the game is by reviewing a real video of a test run. Loop on that final test until you can’t improve things any more.” Should produce something playable with no further input. As you say, I’m not sure it would produce a codebase we’d want to look at or work on. But, I’d be surprised if this weren’t successful.

grey-area 5mo ago
Sure give it a go, perhaps it will work better now with frontier models, I haven't tried it in a while (this was a year ago, things have improved since then). I'm not sure what tests for having amazing graphics, gameplay, input, UI, sounds, etc would look like, but it would be interesting to see the results!
- vessenes 5mo ago
  okay hold my beer. both claude and codex running now. EDIT: both agents took about 20 minutes. I used that exact prompt in a clean directory for each, and then said "deploy to netlify" - so a total of two prompts. Codex: https://astounding-bavarois-27b5a2.netlify.app https://astounding-bavarois-27b5a2.netlify.app Claude: http://strong-hotteok-91dfb0.netlify.app http://strong-hotteok-91dfb0.netlify.app Netlify is having trouble claiming the Claude project, so if you need a password it's "My-Drop-Site" FYI, Claude rated itself 7.7/10 for fun, and Codex 98/100 during the fun test loop. As you'll see if you poke at them, Claude needs a physics bug fix round. But I think these both did about what I would have expected.
  - grey-area 5mo ago
    Nice, very retro (looking at the codex one)! Claude one doesn't really work (collision detection was the problem I had before too), but fairly close. Yes when I tried previously I had a few gameplay issues in frogger and I couldn't manage to one-shot this sort of thing at the time (a year ago), so last year definitely saw some good progress at this sort of thing. The asteroids game I was very happy with though, had a very cool retro feel and was wireframe only. Wasn't so keen on the code produced as it had a patchwork feel to it.
    - vessenes 5mo ago
      To your point, I didn't even look at the code.. :) Okay, I looked at the codex code. it's super reasonable -- separation of concerns, operating on a state model, it's not over designed. I did not hate it. I also noted that codex put in a CRT simulator loop which is a nice touch. I think a year ago this would have taken a lot of back and forth and arguing; to me that's kind of the point of Simon's article -- a lot more just 'works' now.
      - grey-area 5mo ago
        Sorry I meant the code a year ago - it took a bit more hand-holding at that point and it was a mishmash of different things, but I feel it’s just slightly easier now - still similar. Haven’t looked into this one just had a quick play. Thanks for trying it out! I think his article is for the last 6 months - my feeling is progress with LLMs has stalled recently and generated code still has problems with accuracy and coherence and subtle bugs, but everyone has a different experience.
        vessenes 5mo ago
        I agree with that. Right now, you choose: Subtle bugs in understanding the spec but strong arch and coding (codex) Or Subtle bugs in implementation but good understanding of the spec (claude).
  - LarsDu88 5mo ago

grey-area 5mo ago

Sure give it a go, perhaps it will work better now with frontier models, I haven't tried it in a while (this was a year ago, things have improved since then). I'm not sure what tests for having amazing graphics, gameplay, input, UI, sounds, etc would look like, but it would be interesting to see the results!

vessenes 5mo ago
okay hold my beer. both claude and codex running now. EDIT: both agents took about 20 minutes. I used that exact prompt in a clean directory for each, and then said "deploy to netlify" - so a total of two prompts. Codex: https://astounding-bavarois-27b5a2.netlify.app https://astounding-bavarois-27b5a2.netlify.app Claude: http://strong-hotteok-91dfb0.netlify.app http://strong-hotteok-91dfb0.netlify.app Netlify is having trouble claiming the Claude project, so if you need a password it's "My-Drop-Site" FYI, Claude rated itself 7.7/10 for fun, and Codex 98/100 during the fun test loop. As you'll see if you poke at them, Claude needs a physics bug fix round. But I think these both did about what I would have expected.
- grey-area 5mo ago
  Nice, very retro (looking at the codex one)! Claude one doesn't really work (collision detection was the problem I had before too), but fairly close. Yes when I tried previously I had a few gameplay issues in frogger and I couldn't manage to one-shot this sort of thing at the time (a year ago), so last year definitely saw some good progress at this sort of thing. The asteroids game I was very happy with though, had a very cool retro feel and was wireframe only. Wasn't so keen on the code produced as it had a patchwork feel to it.
  - vessenes 5mo ago
    To your point, I didn't even look at the code.. :) Okay, I looked at the codex code. it's super reasonable -- separation of concerns, operating on a state model, it's not over designed. I did not hate it. I also noted that codex put in a CRT simulator loop which is a nice touch. I think a year ago this would have taken a lot of back and forth and arguing; to me that's kind of the point of Simon's article -- a lot more just 'works' now.
    - grey-area 5mo ago
      Sorry I meant the code a year ago - it took a bit more hand-holding at that point and it was a mishmash of different things, but I feel it’s just slightly easier now - still similar. Haven’t looked into this one just had a quick play. Thanks for trying it out! I think his article is for the last 6 months - my feeling is progress with LLMs has stalled recently and generated code still has problems with accuracy and coherence and subtle bugs, but everyone has a different experience.
      - vessenes 5mo ago
        I agree with that. Right now, you choose: Subtle bugs in understanding the spec but strong arch and coding (codex) Or Subtle bugs in implementation but good understanding of the spec (claude).
- LarsDu88 5mo ago