I Vibecoded Morrowind, Duke Nukem, and Serious Sam Onto an iPhone

[ArjunKL]

I can't code, but with AI agents I built native iPhone ports of Duke Nukem, Serious Sam, and Morrowind, learning where vibecoding works, where it fails, and why human direction still matters.

Read the full article here.

I Vibecoded Morrowind, Duke Nukem, and Serious Sam Onto an iPhone

 

[Vixiy]

I don't recall making a mixtape or burning a CD being such an involved progress, nor did it ever cost me hundreds of dollars and an entire neighborhood's health and peace.

 

[Deezy]

Great read, thank you!

Funny how we have gotten to the point now where we say "I finished by project in less than a week (part time), but OH MY, I burned through a whole $100 worth of AI credits!" Long term, to have any reasonable project completed, by a non-coder, for $100 and some time is an incredible bargain.

The times, they are a-changin'!

 

[umeng2002]

This could have been done for free without AI.

 

[Dr Roboto]

I personally thought this was a great article. I applaud all the hard work the author put into to try this. I especially liked how the author "managed" the agents to get the job done. I am amazed at what was accomplished. Great job.

AI coding is here to stay, but as the author pointed out, it takes experience and "management" to do it right. This was not just throw it over the fence and let an AI system do all the work. The author was a deeply integrate part of the process even though they couldn't write code.

 

[TechSam]

Really awesome to see. Non-technical people wouldn't have a chance in doing this, some people don't have an engineer mindset or interest in the technical part. But some people are great designers, they know what they want and how to ask for it.

Myself, I have moved away from using Unreal Engine all together and gone into reverse engineering games. I like this idea of being able to port old Arcade Games from the 90s to a modern C++ codebase. I'm having a great time doing it.

 

[Lew Zealand]

This could have been done for free without AI.

Yet it wasn’t.
But it was done with AI.
Hmmm…

 

[Squid Surprise]

This could have been done for free without AI.

Not by 99.9% of people though... AI brings this to the masses... and it will only improve with time.

 

[FF222]

"I Vibecoded" - that's an oxymoron. If it's vibecoded, then it wasn't you doing the coding.

Also, all AI did was copy an existing code, and tweaked it with already existing modifications, if anything. It didn't create anything new.

And finally the copyright/licence on the code is completely invalid, as AI generated code can not be copyrighted, even if it's legal to begin with. Which is questionable.

 

[FF222]

Yet it wasn’t.

But it was done with AI.

No. It was done _by AI_. The "author" had really played no measurable role in this.

 

[BadThad]

Incredible use of AI! BRAVO!

I found the details fascinating as an AI user myself (for work). AI is a tool, nothing more, it's like a prodigy child and needs to be treated as such. I've seen it flip flop 180° only to later completely pivot back. It has to guided along to the path of success by a skilled and reasoning human.

People fear losing their jobs to AI - and that may be true for some positions. However, the demand for skilled AI users will create new positions. Humans will always have to direct it and validate the output. Professionals will have to learn to embrace it and use it or perish.

 

[godrilla]

Speaking of AI. Did you know that RenoxDX used AI and uses vibe coding from his own original 100 mods ro create new mods to create DLSS 5 RenoDX mod? Here is a video of the interview...

He also does the proofreading, testing and verification.

 

[Squid Surprise]

No. It was done _by AI_. The "author" had really played no measurable role in this.

Really? Would it have been done had the author not USED the AI?

Do we take Napoleon’s military victories away because it was actually his soldiers who did the actual “winning”?

 

[Lew Zealand]

No. It was done _by AI_. The "author" had really played no measurable role in this.

LOL, no.

AI was used by the author as a tool to accomplish a goal which nobody else accomplished. AI did a lot of the gruntwork which is precisely what its is good at and why people use AI, the stuff that takes people too much time or is convoluted enough not to even try at all. After all someone already failed to make the Duke Nukem port without AI and here someone made it with AI's assistance.

AI is a tool but a person needs to use the tool properly to solve the problem.

 

[FF222]

LOL, no.

AI was used by the author as a tool to accomplish a goal which nobody else accomplished.

LOL, no. There were already several ports of Duke Nukem and Serious Sam that ran on iPhone. That alone makes the argument that this would have been some kind of goal accompished that nobody else has accomplished yet, completely false.

But that's not even what my argument was about - it's just your straw man or red herring. My argument was about who did the actual coding. And since the author merely prompted the AI to do something for him, and it was the AI that did the actual coding, it's not the author that coded the app. QED. Simple as that.

AI did a lot of the gruntwork which is precisely what its is good at

LOL, no.

AIs (LLms) are only good at doing things _that have been already done several times_. It's because they can only do things that they have been taught to, by previous instances of the same thing. They can't achieve something completely new, because that's not how they work.

AI is a tool but a person needs to use the tool properly to solve the problem.

Which is for not even true, but more importantly, not what the argument is about. And it doesn't even make a compelling straw man.

 

[FF222]

Really? Would it have been done had the author not USED the AI?

Well, _the author_ likely couldn't have done it without using AI. But that doesn't mean that nobody could have or nobody did it already. Hint: they already did.

But the more important distinction is that the author didn't do (the coding) it this way either. The AI did it. He merely asked the AI to do it for him. He did not do the coding.

You understand the difference between these words and concepts, don't you?

Do we take Napoleon’s military victories away because it was actually his soldiers who did the actual “winning”?

That depends solely on what part and role they played. Also, "victory" is not an activity. "Coding" is. I made a claim about the latter. Your question was about the former.

You understand the difference between these words and concepts, don't you?