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Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

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Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#81

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

iliketrains wrote: post #31
fnordpiglet wrote: post #4

I’m a sad. No Mac. :-( Looks really good. Congrats man. 84% overwhelmingly positive isn’t anything to sneeze at too. The experience must have been amazing. I learned more about computers in developing games that were 1% of what you’ve done. No matter the financial outcome you are winning at nerd life, which is the only life that matters (other than to your spouse your family and friends).

Thanks and sorry for no Mac support. The hard truth is that Mac users represents less than 1% of our potential user base and it is hard to justify the time to support Mac. We are planning to revisit this decision soon and see how much effort would it be.

I've found that CrossOver[0] does a really good job at getting Windows games to run on Mac. It might be a good stopgap.

[0] https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#82

Post by iliketrains »

colpabar wrote: post #49

Awesome! It's so cool seeing you post this here, because I've been excited about this game since I learned about it a few days ago. I hope it's successful! As a question, what games inspired this one? How many hours have you put into factorio?

Thanks! The inspiration is a complex topic, I am sure that many games affected my decisions but it was more like making a game that I want to play that does not exist. I wanted to mine ore with excavators and see the land disappear.

Also, reality and real industrial processes was a source of inspirations. I have probably watched all episodes of How it's made!

But just for the record, I have probably a few hundred hours in Factorio and ~60 hours in Satisfactory. I also enjoyed Anno series, DSP, Tropico series, W&R: Soviet republic, Factory town, Oxygen not included, Frostpunk, and OpenTTD :)

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #55

I bought it last night and played for about 5 hours and can't wait for my work day to end today to get back into it. Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. Factory building with a dash of colony sim mechanics. My only criticism is that the tutorial is a bit lacking and basically info-dumps a lot of "what" without a lot of "why". If I didn't have experience with other factory building games, I'd probably be completely los…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#84

Post by iliketrains »

intrepidhero wrote: post #7

Wow! Looks super well polished. Did you create the art assets in house or contract them out? What 3D engine are you using? PS. I think I could just watch the excavator digging holes all day.

Thank you! Answers in a sibling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31588018

PS: There is a time-lapse recording functionality in the game, I am hoping as players get more comfortable, they will make some awesome timelapses of mining operations!

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#85

Post by duped »

iliketrains wrote: post #42
aasasd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that by now game engines just have two extra checkboxes to ’build for Mac’ and ‘build for Linux’. Perhaps the signing requirements changed that, though. Notably also, plenty of games work fine under Wine, but Steam client itself doesn't—on Mac.

We do use Unity that does lots of heavy lifting for you regarding porting to other platforms. However, it's not always that easy as checking a box. For example some shader optimizations may be specific to DirectX. File system works differently (no "User/Documents" on Mac). Or issues with native libraries. Our game does work on Linux Proton though, that was a surprise to us.

It's pretty straightforward to have an abstraction for file systems with "special" file locations, it's been common in app sdks for at least a decade in a half. Unity doesn't have something like that?

Eg you would never use /tmp or %USER%/AppData, but call a function File::getPath(TempDirectory) or something like that.

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#86

Post by fnordpiglet »

thomashop wrote: post #80
fnordpiglet wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we are the cool 1%.

is it 2005?

No. If you’re just waking up a lot has changed. There’s a pandemic. Donald Trump (seriously!) was president. There’s a new Cold War. Everyone works from home and drives an EV. Cars can drive themselves now. It’s a weird time to be alive. Good luck!

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#87

Post by aidenn0 »

aasasd wrote: post #78
aidenn0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed that picture was photoshopped...

Now get a load of a ship shipping ships shipping shipping ships: https://i.imgur.com/agDf1B0.jpg

See, I can easily think of reasons to ship ships on other ships. I couldn't think of any practical reason for cranes to lift cranes, and indeed it was a publicity stunt.

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#88

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

munk-a wrote: post #74
iliketrains wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aww, thanks! We heard lots of feedback about tutorials and it is our priority to improve them. > My only request would be to make it so you can click on a product and have it take you to the recipes involving it. Try right-click! > I also really like the design choice to not have to lay power lines everywhere. Haha, this was removed due to time constraints. We were thinking to have it introduced in some lightweight f…

Power tends to be interesting when it can be used for logic control - having some trigger that causes a portion of the industry to go dark to focus on some rarely used portion - too many games throw power in just because it's everywhere in factory sims. As you continue to develop the game I'd suggest you make sure the features you add are always accompanying some interesting feature expansion - one thing that always…

Oh yeah, was never a fan of Satisfactory's combat. Did they ever make it optional?

I really wanted to enjoy Satisfactory, but found the first-person perspective made factory building tedious. I know they've made some QoL changes like adding a grid to make it easier, but...meh. It's a beautiful game, but so far DSP has been my favorite factory builder, but gimme another dozen hours and I'll decide how CoI compares in the longer game.

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#89

Post by stevage »

bcjordan wrote: post #46

This looks super fun! Congrats on the release and hope you continue to grow the game though early access. Just for fun took a stab at rewording the game description following some tips I saw in a GDC talk on Steam store pages years ago, feel free to use any pieces if helpful. I'll try to find that talk link when I'm at a computer, it had some nice tips around not leading with a game category but rather very specific…

Good call, I also thought the description was a bit weak, and not super enticing.

Re: Show HN: A friend and I spent 6 years making a simulation game, finally released

#90

Post by iliketrains »

Seriomino wrote: post #53

Cool! How did you handle it between money, work and your spare time? Are you happy with your work work life balance? Have you tried a publisher? What financial expectations do you have for being able to keep on it? How do you balance family and friends?

> How did you handle it between money, work and your spare time?

That was hard, basically nearly no spare time. For some time I was also working part-time.

> Are you happy with your work work life balance?

Until now there was unfortunately no balance, all work. I am hoping that things improve from now.

> Have you tried a publisher?

No, we have got many enquiries and emails but we were not compelled by them.

> What financial expectations do you have for being able to keep on it?

The hope is to earn a similar or slightly lower amount compared to a SWE job (on average). If this game won't provide enough to pay my bills long term, then things will need to be changed.

> How do you balance family and friends?

This is also hard to balance, and pandemic made it only worse. Lots of online calling and rare visits.

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