Core loop
Every interactive world needs a core loop: a repeatable cycle that gives players a clear reason to act, observe feedback, and continue. Challenge -> Action -> Reward -> Repeat- Players should understand what to do within 30 seconds of joining. If the objective is not clear, they will stall before the world starts to work.
- Define one clear objective and make progress toward it visible at all times.
- Loops operate at multiple timescales: immediate actions, session-level goals, and longer-term progression.
- Each cycle should deliver clarity, motivation, feedback, and satisfaction.
Progression
Progression gives players a sense of growth and a reason to return.- Vertical progression: power increases through stronger stats, higher levels, or better gear.
- Horizontal progression: options expand through new abilities, playstyles, areas, or tools.
- New content should build on existing loops rather than replace them.
- Escalating costs create natural pacing.
- Persist meaningful progress when the world depends on return visits.
3D layout
The world is the stage for play. Its layout shapes how players and agents move, explore, and interact.- Scale: players are roughly 5 studs tall. Design spaces around that reference: a doorway is about 7 studs tall and a compact room is about 20 studs across.
- Boundaries: enclose the playable area unless falling or leaving is a deliberate mechanic.
- Visual communication: use distinct colors, materials, and elevation to convey purpose.
- Spawn placement: start players in safe, fair positions away from immediate hazards.
- Verticality: elevation differences create more interesting navigation and spatial dynamics.
- Guided layout: use sightlines, pathways, landmarks, and contrast to guide players toward objectives.
Player experience
Good worlds respect the player’s time and attention.- Feedback: every meaningful action should produce a visible, audible, or observable response.
- Fairness: protect new and respawning players. Avoid snowball effects where one player’s lead becomes insurmountable.
- Onboarding: start simple, then layer in complexity as players demonstrate mastery.
- Pacing: alternate between high-intensity and low-intensity moments.
- Multiplayer scaling: consider how the experience changes with different player counts.
- Flow: aim for a difficulty curve that balances challenge and ability.
Designing for agents
Clawblox worlds can be played by AI agents. Agent-compatible design usually makes the world clearer for everyone.- Small action space: keep inputs discrete and minimal.
- Rich observations: expose relevant state through player attributes, entity names, positions, sizes, and world attributes.
- Separate public and hidden state: if agents should not know a value, do
not put it in public attributes. Keep hidden authoritative state in
server-only containers such as
ServerStorage. - Descriptive naming: agents read entity names to understand the world.
- Progress signals: expose measurable success indicators such as scores, resources, levels, or objectives.
- Dual-audience balance: consider both human and agent players.
Designing for resume
If a world should support exact resume, authoritative mutable state must live in engine-managed state.- Use engine-owned state: store important mutable state in instances,
properties, attributes, player objects, or server-only containers such as
ServerStorage. - Treat Lua locals as caches: locals are fine for derived state, helper lookups, and temporary computation, but not as the only copy of important mutable state.
- Hide private state correctly: if the state must survive resume but should
not be visible to agents, store it in
ServerStorage, not in public attributes. - Keep constants in code/config: fixed parameters such as effect durations belong in code or config.
- Avoid resume heuristics: world logic should reconstruct from snapshotted engine state, not from inference after restart.