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

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

#151

Post by iliketrains » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:36 AM UTC

loxias wrote: post #130

Hey, This looks super cool from the videos, and exactly the sort of thing I'd love to play. Would love a Linux build so I can play it though, haven't needed a Windows VM in ages. Added to wish list for whenever you release that! (I thought modern game development was cross platform these days?)

Thanks! I have heard that it works on Proton just fine, but your mileage may vary.

We just didn't have time to test things. We need to get Linux and Mac machines and test things thoroughly before claiming official support.

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

#152

Post by iliketrains » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:38 AM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #103

I purchased a copy of your supporter edition before I even finished reading. Part poor impulse control, part believing in the HN filter, part doing my part to support idealistic founders putting their time and opportunity where their mouth is. I hope that you find great success.

Thanks for your support! I hope you will enjoy the game!

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

#153

Post by Guthur » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:41 AM UTC

Oh yes please, I love economy game, big fan of Capitalism II way back when.

Will be giving this a spin for sure.

Great work getting this out to a steam release.

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

#154

Post by iliketrains » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:43 AM UTC

pooloo wrote: post #114

Just noting that I have interest in multiplayer support similar to Factorio or Satisfactory where players work towards a common goal, and also have purchased with that not being a feature per the road map. These types of games make for good time passers while conversating with distant friends.

Multiplayer is a big topic and it is obviously on our minds. The big questions is what type of multiplayer would be the best for this kind of game?

Would it be coop where each player would start on their corner of the map? Or would it be shared factory? Of maybe each player with its own island + trading?

Also, it is technically very challenging, since the entire simulation must be perfectly deterministic. We actually have most of the things deterministic, maybe like 95%, fixing the last 5% is a lot of work.

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

#155

Post by sitharus » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:44 AM UTC

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).

Same, I prefer games like this on my laptop so I can play casually. Still just install it on my gaming PC and use Parsec.

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

#156

Post by mentos » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:45 AM UTC

iliketrains wrote: post #144

mentos wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, I’ve been developing with Unreal since 2014 recently checked out C# support with UnrealCLR it’s very basic but probably enough to create an API between your game code and Unreal. Really curious to know what level of granularity your API is at?

Nice! I was not aware that Unreal has C# support. Making Unreal rendering layer would obviously be a huge task. Our current solution is overfit to Unity since the separation was done for ease of development and testing, not for support of different renderers. However, the communication between core sim and rendering is mostly based on (custom) events. Sim runs in a separate thread. Once it is done, renderer can read…

Awesome thank you for that insight sounds great ! If I had any free time would be a fun project to try to implement the API in Unreal but really not necessary game looks great amazing work!

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

#157

Post by mikebonnell » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:46 AM UTC

Looks amazing, would love a port to Nintendo Switch, though I understand that might be very unrealistic.

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

#158

Post by iliketrains » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:48 AM UTC

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #123

Looks really fun! Any hope of multiplayer (even just LAN) coming soon? My son and I can easily waste a weekend on the couch playing Factorio together. This could be another bonding/time waster for us.

I've replied in sibling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31590353

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

#159

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:53 AM UTC

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).

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by iliketrains » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 1:57 AM UTC

dsclough wrote: post #75

Congratulations! I've had my eye on this game for a while this post + your story motivated me to buy it. I'd be interested to hear what kinds of resources you found most helpful in getting something like this to a shipped state. I've never worked on a game before but having played factorio, DSP, and satisfactory I've had a lot of ideas / my own views on the genre. There's definitely room in the market still and I thi…

Thanks! I'd say that the most important "resource" is dedication. Anything else is just matter of doing it until it works. We've been chipping away for so many years without an end in sight and if just one of us gave up, that would be probably the end of it.

Of course my degree in computer science and computer graphics helps, but with dedication and you can just search your way through most problems.

I'd also recommend to limit the scope as much as possible. We might have been a little too ambitious. Don't design features that you cant make. For example, in one iteration we had a vision of global economy where you can buy/sell materials, competing with AI players. On paper, that's great. When we started coding, we had no idea how to make this all work, and after a few months of failed attempts we completely scratched it.