About GVibeDev
I’ve been taking computers and video games apart since I was a child. We installed things, tweaked them, broke them, sometimes fixed them, and usually learned more than we expected to.
Software development wasn’t my profession for most of my life. Computers remained tools, hobbies and, occasionally, part of my work, but not specifically for programming or development.
Much later, language models gave me a second chance, increasing enormously what I could build on my own.
It was enough to get started.
AI-assisted development
AI plays a major role in my work.
I make no secret of it, and I don’t see much reason to.
Language models write code, analyse problems, explain technologies I’m unfamiliar with and help me work through areas where my knowledge is incomplete. They also produce incorrect solutions, strange hypotheses and, from time to time, the odd bit of nonsense.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
The useful part is speed. I can test an idea instead of spending weeks wondering whether I’ll eventually manage to test it.
The rest still needs work.
Requirements have to hold up. Code has to survive real use. Interfaces have to be functional. Bugs have to be found, including the ones that, once fixed, quietly migrate somewhere else.
Quite often, a working build does not become a release.
Why GVibeDev exists
GVibeDev is simply the place I set up to make things.
Mostly games, game-related tools and utilities born from practical problems I run into. Sometimes I work on something else because there is an interesting possibility worth exploring.
There is no grand philosophy behind the selection.
If I need a tool and the available ones are not accessible or do not perform exactly the function I need, building another one becomes a way to understand the problem better and improve my workflow.
If I have a game system I want to explore, I build it.
Sometimes an experiment goes nowhere, and when that happens I have to admit it.
I am not particularly interested in turning every prototype into a product, but I do care about turning projects with real potential into something tangible.
Some projects will remain experiments. Some will be free. Some will be commercial. Some will probably end up in another forgotten folder.
That’s fine.
What matters to me
I approach software first and foremost as a user.
This makes me rather intolerant of things that work technically but are unpleasant to use.
I prefer tools with a clear purpose, interfaces that do not create extra work, and features that exist because they are genuinely needed.
The same goes for games.
Systems, rules, visual identity, interaction and atmosphere interest me much more than simply adding large amounts of content.
Arena Rubra fits naturally into this context. Other GVibeDev projects are much more utilitarian and exist because I wanted to solve specific problems.
I rarely have trouble finding a reason to create something.
GVibeDev is currently a small independent studio, heavily focused on experimentation and AI-assisted development.
Projects, tests, discarded bad ideas — promptly, if all goes well — and, every now and then, something worth nurturing.
That’s more or less the whole story.