Forge

Today I was trying to get my renders to stop looking like flat plastic.

I assumed my newest changes had broken something, so I started eliminating suspects. Reverted the latest feature. No change. Turned off the optimization. No change. Rolled everything back 10+ commits, to before any of it existed.

Still broken.

If reverting 10 commits changes nothing, the bug probably isn't in the commits.

Turns out the system responsible for making surfaces look realistic had never actually been switched on in my test setup. Everything silently fell back to a simpler rendering path, so I was testing code that couldn't affect the output.

The fix was one line.

After that, I got my first properly realistic render — and then got a door in the scene to open on command, rotating exactly 90°.

What I'm taking from it:

1. If a change does nothing, first check that the code path is actually running.

2. Write the startup checklist before you need it.

3. Silent fallbacks are some of the most expensive bugs to debug.

I also found another fun one: a generated scene came out completely black because it had zero light sources. It looked exactly like a camera/rendering bug.

Next up: fixing that and pushing the visuals further toward real.

What's the dumbest-in-hindsight bug that ate your week?

Hey everyone — I'm a solo developer, and this is my first post here.

For the past few months, I've been building Forge. The idea is simple: describe an environment in plain language, and Forge turns it into an explorable 3D world.

Not an image. Not a single 3D model. An actual environment you can walk around and interact with.

I originally started Forge as a personal challenge to see if I could build something genuinely different. But as I worked on it, I started seeing a much bigger possibility — a tool that could let people turn their ideas into worlds without having to build every part of the environment manually.

I'm still early, and there is a lot left to solve. I'm currently focused on improving the visuals, performance, and getting the first real users to try it.

I want to use Indie Hackers to document the process honestly — what works, what breaks, what I learn, and how Forge evolves.

If you're a game developer, 3D creator, indie hacker, or just interested in generative 3D, I'd love to hear from you.

What would you build if you could describe a 3D world instead of building it piece by piece?