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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

#191
post #64
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For games it seems the trend is toward Windows emulation (Wine, Proton, etc). I onder if and how much games test and cater for those, to validate on emulation platforms. On one hand it's good thing in the big picture because it's a step in geting games to run sandboxed. For ARM Macs it might be not so good.

As far as I know, you get no support usually, when you run it with proton/wine. I'm not interested in paying full price and then having the risk all myself. Of course there is the return before two hours thing, but then I also don't wanna create all that hassle. But if a developer makes some guarantees about proton support, that'd be something else, actually.

Takes me longer than 2 hours just to download it :(

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

#193

>I also quite enjoy the added SWE challenges. I had to write so many complex algorithms (path-finding, logistics, serialization, ...) and optimize things down to bits (shaders, compression of in-memory data, ...) that were rarely required by my corp job. If you ever need a reprieve or change of pace and want to write some words instead of code, do consider writing an engineering blog about how you designed and built…

+1

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we are the cool 1%.

1st Quarter 2022, Apple shipped nearly 15% of all PCs sold in the US.

On Steam Mac accounts for 2.20% of hardware survey users.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

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

#195
Congratulations! This looks awesome!

I think this is very inspiring. I have always wanted to have an impactful side project. But every time I ran into some technical difficulties, I seek for an alternative idea. I ended up having many prototypes, instead of a single solid implementation that can be called a product.

I often see other smarter people can stick to an idea for years to deliver something really awesome. This is what I should do. I need to calm down and be patient.

I only have one question, for indie game development, how to get high quality game assets cost effectively? Did you learn to diy everything, or you purchase/outsource the work?

Thanks.

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

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1% of our potential user base How did you determine this? Factorio is available for Mac. How did they, and other game developers, justify the work for a Mac port?

Author mentioned that they only use unity for the rendering and audio, cross-platform games will use unity for a lot more, and generally get cross-platform for a significantly reduced "cost". This project is in C# so that's the first hurdle, I'd guess.

Compiling modern C# is usually not a problem on Unix. Building the relevant tools yourself is a challenge, but the average macOS dev won't be doing that.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! 1. All 3D assets and music was done by our contractors. All paid work. On average, one model is probably around $500. 2. C#. We both were familiar with it and it is a great language. Lots of nice features, easy to work with, lots of tools, less error prone (looking at you C++), has reflection (very helpful for serialization and code gen), and if you know what you are doing, it can be very performant (avoid…

> On average, one model is probably around $500. That's a pretty impressive budget, there must be hundreds of models in the game.

On a related note, how did you fund the development over such a long timeframe?

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

#199

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 thought Unity is cross platform
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