First build Played by me the next morning
The brief and the first build
Tanks Mate 2 started at 23:19 on 3 October 2026 with a brief for an AI coding agent: a toony tank game for Windows PCs, for friends on the same network, with bots in the empty seats. I chose the art, two packs from the Unity Asset Store: Kawaii Tanks for the tanks and Modular Resort Town for the battlefield.
The first rules were short. Play over the local network only, with the host's PC running the match, and a free-for-all to 10 kills. Sounds are made in code or free to use. One agent session writes the code and checks its own work, decides anything that can be undone on its own, and writes each decision down for me.
Claude Code worked through the night. By half past four in the morning there was a first playable Windows build for me to try.
By morning
- The art packs moved to Unity's current renderer, with the networking and the content loading underneath.
- A tank for keyboard, mouse or gamepad, in eight colours, under a camera looking down from above.
- A small arena built from the town's pieces, with props to knock over.
- Hosting and joining over the network, a lobby, shells, damage, respawns and a scoreboard.
- Six abilities to choose from, five power-ups to fight over, and bots that find their way round.
- Effects, outlines on the tanks, and the sounds the tank pack did not have, made in code.
- Automated tests, including one that fills a whole room with network players on one PC.
