Show HN: AI-native browser game that users can craft unlimited 3D items
0.spaceMost games have limits. You can only use preset features, need coding for customization & adding mods, require expensive extra devices. We wanted to remove those barriers.
That’s why we are building space zero—a browser based 3D world powered by AI. We plan to build players can freely mix items to generate unexpected creations with unique properties and sounds. Also the world itself is dynamically generated, evolving endlessly.
I uploaded a demo version I’ve been working on for the past month! I hope to get any feedbacks or comments :)
> Most games have limits. You can only use preset features, need coding for customization & adding mods, require expensive extra devices. We wanted to remove those barriers.
But none of that matters if it isn’t fun. Limits are not inherently anti-fun. Limits are not what makes a game not fun. Removing those limits it’s doesn’t automatically make a game good.
I'm not a professional game designer, but I believe good limits is what makes game a good game. Without limits games tend to resemble real life too much thus making it harder to make fun.
Limit is good when the game has specific rules. Also if we make game for people who don't like open-world game, then there must be some limits to make them not be lost
I totally agree with you. Fun comes first when it comes to games. The whole reason I want to remove barriers is to make it easier for more people to just jump in and enjoy.
I love games like Minecraft, Roblox, Civilization, and Cities: Skylines. There’s something awesome about creating whatever we want, exploring huge worlds, and checking out what other people have built. And most importantly—they’re just really fun.
But Minecraft’s multiplayer can be a hassle, and you have to buy it. With Roblox, if you want to make your own game, you need to know coding and how to use the studio tools. I think it kinda bad that these barriers stop people from even trying.
So anyway my main goal is to make my game fun before anything else. Your comment gave me a lot to think about, appreciate it :)
Congratulations for making this! It's a good effort but you need to make it more of a game. Currently there's not much you can do in the world except collect items and stash them in "My Space".
I'd also change that name. Myspace is a social media platform:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
I'd also suggest you make the world more exciting. As far as I can tell there is nothing but flat black-grey dunes, without features. That's not very attractive, it will just put people off. There are a ton of issues to fix with just that featureless plane also, like the lighting and collision detection and so on. What engine are you using for this?
But, that's a great effort. Keep going! It's hard making an entire game but it's not impossible :)
Really appreciate the feedback! I know the game experience is pretty rough right now since it’s just a demo. But moving forward, I’m planning to add a lot more, and I’ll definitely take your suggestions into game—things like diverse terrains, textures, and more engaging gameplay.
Here’s what I’m working on:
- AI director system that generates sound effects and features based on crafted items (e.g., if a player crafts a gun, AI will add a shooting mechanic and gunfire sounds).
- AI NPCs that can play on their own, interact with players, craft items, and trade.
- Achievements & collection pages so players can feel a sense of accomplishment.
- An endless map to make exploration more engaging.
Right now, I’m building it with React Three Fiber. Also, I’ve never actually used MySpace, but I’ve definitely heard about it whenever people talk about Facebook’s early days
Imagine having to explain what Myspace is/was, I think I just aged 10 years just from reading that.
Okay so you made something that combines a couple of items into a new item, cool. There's no gameplay here though.
right we've built only 1 month so there's not much thing to do now.
We are going to build this in 1~2 months
- AI director systems which generate sounds effects, features based on the crafted items (ex: if player craft a gun, then AI will add shooting feature and shooting sounds)
- AI npcs which plays itselft and interact with players. They will craft items and can trade items with players.
- Achievements, Collection pages that players can feel sense of accomplishment
- Endless map
and so on..
thanks for comment!
I feel like you’re trying to launch a consumer product like it’s a B2B SaaS company. As it is (broken site with no polish, little to no gameplay features, product hunt banner) you seem like you’re to trying to chase AI/metaverse trends. Reminds me of all of the endless metaverse scams and scandals. I think you’re significantly underestimating the time and polish it takes to build a consumer 3D web based product . Most small game studios take years to build up even small games before releasing them.
If I were you, I’d think deeply about whether this is actually something you’re passionate about working on or if you just want to start a tech startup and chase trends. If the former is true, I’d close this down and work on it for a lot longer before ever showing it publicly. If it’s the latter I’d pivot to an LLM B2B SaaS company like everyone else like you and try your luck at that.
Thanks for the great comment! Here’s what I think:
I don’t really understand why making a game has to take years. With AI advancing so quickly, the cost of game development is dropping fast—creating 3D assets, BGM, sound effects, characters, animations, and more is becoming way easier and faster. So instead of the traditional waterfall approach of long development cycles before launch, I think it’s now possible to build games in a more agile way.
It might look similar to a B2B SaaS approach, but we intentionally posted on platforms like Product Hunt and Hacker News to get feedback from talented people in the industry. Meanwhile, we’re running a separate GTM strategy to actually bring in our ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and learning from that.
Also, I’m genuinely serious about games—not just because of AI or the metaverse hype, but because I truly believe there’s a huge opportunity here. I wrote a piece about my thoughts—if you’re interested, I’d really appreciate it if you gave it a read!
https://blog.0.space/p/the-next-internet-is-3d
I’ve evaluated almost any model that’s come out for game asset generation in the last few years and none of them are up to snuff. That alone tells me you haven’t looked at the output of these models closely or aren’t familiar with Gamedev.
Also, I’m sorry dude, but your blog sounds exactly like every metaverse pitch I’ve ever seen. Down to the “ROBLOX, MINECRAFT, ETC” highlight at the end. This doesn’t make me feel like I’m reading something written by someone that cares about games - it makes me think the author reads a lot of VC substacks and played League of Legends for a while.
Even mentioning “GTM strategy” and “ideal customer profile” tells me you’re drinking a lot of Kool aid. Stop watching YC videos aimed at B2B SaaS founders and reading a16z blogposts and work a lot harder on this stuff if you ever want to show it publicly.
Also keep in mind, there’s probably literally 100 other companies with the same pitch, vibe, and idea that you have.
> This doesn’t make me feel like I’m reading something written by someone that cares about games - it makes me think the author reads a lot of VC substacks and played League of Legends for a while.
After reading this sentence, I realize that the way I wrote might have come across that way. I’m a gamer who plays a lot of games and I’m so passionate about them that I even watch documentaries about the history of games. I have a lot of respect for people in the gaming industry. If my sincerity didn’t come through in that post, I guess that’s a limitation of my writing skills. There’s definitely a lot to improve on. I really appreciate this comment again
Really appreciate the honest and direct feedback. You’re probably right, I’ve been consuming a lot of YC and a16z content, maybe too much. And yeah, I’m ready to put in the work and dive deeper into this space
Thanks for taking the time to read and leave a comment. I’ll keep pushing, refine the quality, and make something great
Any can build games in an agile way and people have been for years. That's not new.
People who don't understand that HN and PH are really not a good places to find real gamers are a dime a dozen. Don't worry, I have done this myself as well.
Games take a while to make if you care about the details. If you want to create an engaging and interesting world that players want to engage with, that polish takes time. But AI is saving the entire industry time and effort. But sure, dump a game out incrementally. I just don't see a new opportunity, just the opportunity that has always been there.
No Man's Sky was there to tell us that you can generate a whole universe but if you forget to put anything your players want to interact with, you'll only get so far.
I mean, good luck. I don't mean to be pessimistic, I just spend enough time every day watching indie devs pitch their half-baked game ideas that this is unoriginal.
I said it wasn’t agile because the cycle between launching and getting player feedback takes too long.
And yeah, I agree it’s not really a new opportunity, just one that’s always been there. It just hasn’t been done right yet.
Games just need to be fun and well-made. I’ll put in the work to make it happen. Thanks for the comment!
> I don’t really understand why making a game has to take years.
Well, be prepared to find out. You're firmly in the "those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it" zone right now.
And before you reflexively reply that you're using AI in a fashion that nobody else has before you, I want you to consider just how much the average "big budget" game has ballooned in size and budget despite decades of advancement in tooling designed to streamline and speed up the development process. The increased scope of modern games has far more than counter-acted any sort of productivity gains we've experienced, leaving us with the multi-year development cycles you lament. And the scope of your game is, by your own admission, infinite, so basic math tells us that if there's even a tiny non-zero amount of effort involved in creating it, the development time required will be infinite as well. Consider strongly setting yourself some firm limits ASAP.
And not just for the sake of your development budget! Consider also this: a game in which you can do anything with anything to anything, with no limits, no restrictions, only utter personal player freedom? That's not a game anymore. It doesn't even sound fun; it's basically an imprecise artist's palette. This may be briefly amusing to tinker with, but it'll never be FUN.
Games are fun largely because they have very deliberate limits that we have to learn and exert mastery over to overcome. Defining and fine-tuning those limits, and the tools the player is provided is at the root of game design, and you have punted on it entirely, leaving you with not a game, but a toy. (And, to my personal taste, a not very fun toy, though you could always turn that around with the judicious application of some excellent taste, instead of an abdication of same.)
I know this is a very grumpy comment, but boy it really gets my goat when someone says "I don't know why this thing is this way" and then doesn't bother to try to find out, and instead just assumes everyone else is an idiot who hasn't bothered to think about or try anything new. Sometimes it do in fact be that way, but you have to do at least the bare minimum of investigation to find out if it is, and in this case, you clearly have not.
Let me leave you with one last thing to think about: you mention Minecraft in other comments here, but consider the explosion in popularity it enjoyed when it introduced Survival mode -- a mode that contrasted the existing Creative mode by the addition of... limits. And to this day, that is the most-frequently played mode, almost to exclusion.
Players prefer limits. That's where the game is found.
I don't find your comment frustrating at all. I really appreciate it.
To give you a bit of personal background, I'm a heavy gamer and I absolutely love the games I mentioned. I also fully understand why limits exist in games and why they are essential. It's one of the reasons I still enjoy those games.
However, I don't believe that the need for years of development is inherently tied to the existence of limits in a game. Whether or not a game has limits, if it doesn’t take too long to make, that's a good thing. Here, the point isn’t about the presence or absence of limits, but rather about the process of making, launching, and improving a game itself.
That said, as you mentioned, of course, my game will need rules and limitations. After all, that's what makes it a game. Your point about Minecraft's Survival mode was a great reminder and inspiration. Thanks for the valuable feedback, I’ll definitely give it some deep thought.
Lastly, I’ve never thought of anyone as a fool. If that’s how I came across, I apologize. I simply question the way things have always been done and explore different approaches. I’ve certainly looked into why things are done the way they are, but it seems that my intentions weren’t fully conveyed in my writing or the game itself.
Watching the video didn't really give a clear outline of what this is supposed to be. What is the AI aspect? Are you using "kinematic anchor points" to try to combine 3d models together, generating mesh topography from scratch, generating scriptable actions/properties given a compound object, etc.?
Tangentially related, but I know Roblox is working on some generative AI aspects - which makes sense since they already have a huge amount of assets in the sandbox.
https://corp.roblox.com/newsroom/2024/06/robloxs-road-to-4d-...
Appreciate the link! I actually read that last year since I play Roblox, and yeah, I think they’re in a great spot to make it happen.
In my demo, AI comes into play when you combine items. So if you merge a fox and a rock, the AI reads their descriptions and generates a new 3D model from scratch, so you might end up with something like a “rock-textured fox.”
Going forward, I want AI to auto-generate actions and properties based on what players craft. Like, if someone makes bread, the game will recognize it as food and automatically add an “eat” action. It’ll also generate matching sound effects for it.
Requires a login to test? Pass.
And refuse mozmail (Firefox Relay) email addresses !
you can watch a demo video here instead of logging in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_wDBGdr_jg
Yeah. Does this actually need an account? If the answer is anything but, “it absolutely, positively, fundamentally doesn’t work without an account” then don’t require one.
We thought account is essential because it is for your progress and creations are saved when you log back in.
It's first to build game so I didn't thought people will ask "why do we need an account?"
So we plan to make guest mode that people can play it without signin
> when you log back in
If only browsers had an API for persistent per-domain storage: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/loca...
Create a token (cookie) on the client. Tie that to an automatically created account. Give the user the option to register credentials for the token. Now it's on the user to decide to register before their cache gets cleared (warn them of course).
A guest mode is a great idea.
This is your slice of the web, you can of course do whatever you want. But you wanted feedback from a user perspective.
A nice thing about a “guest mode” is that you can let people jump right in, and if they’re hooked and interested, let them unlock those capabilities by making an account. Just don’t reset any progress or work!
okay! thanks for the comment, we gotta work on it right now
A big thank you to everyone who commented here! I’ve always wanted to have discussions like this on Hacker News and receive honest feedback, so this feels really great. Thanks to all of you, I’ve gained a lot of inspiration about what’s lacking, what I need to think more about, and how I should approach building things moving forward. This has also been incredibly helpful for my metacognition. I really appreciate it!
I can't create an account because it says any address I try with my domain is a disposable address. I would use an email address with the domain as the username, for security, this is a thing one can do with Fastmail
okay I'll take a look
I don't get it.
Yeah, it’s only been a month since We started, so there isn’t much yet.
Right now, the main gameplay is just exploring the world, picking up items, and crafting new things.
I wrote about what I plan to add in the next 1–2 months in another comment above!
Most games don’t require accounts.
Ha ha, David O’Reilly’s Mountain, but with AI generated junk, is not bad.
sometimes junk, but sometimes really good one haha