So I really, really want to use Unity, but I don’t have the resources, so I have to use Three.js. Except I’ve run into two problems, one potentially causing the other:
A) I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve never touched a game creation software short of Microsoft Makecode Arcade (which also I would like some dev help with) and a little, teeny-tiny bit of Construct 3 (though, at the time, I didn’t actually know what I was doing with that, either). This problem led me to the solution of, why not just ask the two AI tools at my disposal (Superhuman GO powered by Grammarly, Google AI Mode powered by Google) to write me code. What could go wrong?
B) A lot. I don’t know if this is connected to the fact that AI sucks, but I could not for the life of me get my simple little physics engine to work. I had a functional hard floor by just forcing my player sprite to always be at y 0, but I found it impossible to get a camera to move with the player. And when I would ask one of the AI tools about it, they claimed that a mesh’s children will always maintain their coordinates relative to their parent, rather than the environment. It immediately became apparent that this was false, and, now that it’s been some time since I first started that headache of a project, I’ve come here. I’m hoping one of you can help me, either with my MakeCode Arcade project (I’m trying to make either a Minecraft-like game or a lightweight FNF-like game) or my Three.JS project, which I still haven’t figured out what I actually want to do, but that will probably have to be decided after I get functioning physics and camera movement. In any case, don’t expect me to respond too quickly, as I don’t use this forum much and rarely check it, but some help with both my projects would be great. Thanks! (Oh, and I’m using Three.JS editor, by the way, not implementing it into a website as a library.)
This is a good sample to start from for a fnaf/fps style thing:
The player movement + shooting is implemented.. It’s not using a complex physics engine, but it’s also very lean and readable. It uses an octtree for collision, and with a little bit of work in blender, you should be able to get a scene in it.
r.e. LLMs.. I’d advise getting google antigravity.. it’s a full IDE and is much more flexible than trying to chat through it with a web based LLM.
And regarding the AI’s assertion:
a mesh’s children will always maintain their coordinates *relative to their parent, rather than the environment.
That sounds exactly correct to me.. and I think maybe there is a knowlege gap that you have yet to cross to fully understand what you are asking.
If your goal is to make a game and you’re struggling with the basics (physics, camera movement, etc.), you might want to start from an existing engine or framework instead of building everything from scratch.
I’ve already built an open-world Three.js game engine that handles a lot of the difficult parts like camera systems, world streaming, and general scene management. So instead of worrying about engine code, you can mostly focus on creating the actual game content.
Demo: https://theneoverse.web.app#threeviewer&&redrock-ridge
In this setup, the main work is just creating or importing assets such as:
- environment assets (terrain, buildings, props)
- vehicles
- avatars / characters
- other GLB models
So the engine side is already handled and you mainly focus on the 3D assets and gameplay ideas.
Also regarding the confusion about meshes and children: in Three.js a child object does maintain its transform relative to the parent. That’s how things like cameras attached to players usually work (you parent the camera to the player object or a camera pivot).
If you’re new to 3D/game dev, it’s usually easier to start from working examples or an existing engine and then modify it rather than trying to build everything from zero.