Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

221–230 of 289 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

Perhaps using Steam's hardware survey:

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but we are the cool 1%.

Sure buddy

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

#223
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.

Cross-platform languages (and by extension -- engines and frameworks) rarely work exactly as advertised. The "just check a box" rarely holds true except for the simplest of programs. In the old days, Java would advertise itself as being cross-platform (Write once, run anywhere!), but in practice, rarely worked that way.

The joke of that era was "Write once, debug everywhere!"

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

#225
Congrats on release, legit game.

My initial reaction is negative. I have really bad vibes with oil/gas industry mining and pollution. So now i'm wondering if there is a market for this same kinda game but its all renewable industries. Sustainable crop rotating farms, fog collection water source, planted forest for wood construction, public transport for workers, wind/solar power everywhere.

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

#226
Thanks for sharing this, very refreshing to see a new contender in the simulation space, rather than just another Tropico, anno, civilisation, etc.

I purchased immediately!

I also look forward to seeing the changes over time like how I have watched Factorio evolve over the last many many years.

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

#227
post #121

Any plans for a Linux build? Made the mistake of watching the trailer before looking if I can even run it. One of the best trailers I've seen on Steam! They're usually only about backstory with concept art and zero idea about what the game will actually be like to play. This could still have shown more UI, but at least the game itself was there the whole time and I feel like I have a good idea whether I'd like it :)

I’m in the exact same boat as you.

Watched the Steam trailer and instantly fell in love.

As a Linux user I’m delighted to hear that this will run with Proton.

Such a gorgeous game, can’t wait to give it a bash.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But Mac users are also more likely to spend extravagant amounts of money. Have you tried sending out a survey asking “how much would you be willing to pay for this game?”

The game is a one-shot purchase though, and Steam doesn't offer a per-platform pricing.

It doesn't look like a game where micro-transactions would work either.

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

#229
There are some basic things broken in the graphics engine:

1) Turning vsync "on" doesn't have the intended effect. There's still very visible tearing half way down the screen.

2) Turning vsync on in combination with full-screen mode results in a hideous stuttering when turning the viewport with the mouse. It looks like you got the swap chain sequence.. backwards? As in... swapping the "most recent" frame.. and then an older frame!? Or something like that. It's literally stuttering back-and-forth making my eyes bleed. It is also inconsistent: switching in and out of borderless windowed mode changes the behaviour.

3) The GUI scale setting is weird by default (140%!?), and is ignored for some UI elements. Do you test with 4K monitors?

4) Lots of GUI glitches. E.g.: clicking the tabs in the settings window will make it disappear for a moment and reappear.

5) The game continues to use 100% GPU even when I alt-tab out to the desktop

6) I have a 60 Hz monitor. The game generates more GPU load (75% vs 60%) with vsync enabled than if I use the "limit to 60 fps" mode, which confirms that the vsync setting is doing something very wrong. These two modes should produce identical GPU load.

7) Hovering the cursor over some in-game UI elements causes alternating-frame flicker. E.g. the "Right click & drag to remove existing designations" orange mouse icon thing.

As a former game engine developer, my advice is that with both DirectX and OpenGL there is generally only "one right way" to do certain things such as managing a swap chain. Yet, somehow, game developers manage to get this consistently wrong and never seem to test/fix it.

Test, test, test! Plug in multiple monitors. With different resolutions. Drag your game around between them. Try laptops with hybrid (NVIDIA+Intel) GPUs. Use a HDR monitor. Use one of those laptops with a hybrid card and unplug the power while your game is running. Plug the power back in. Change your desktop resolution while your game is running. Try to get 10-bit working. Try to get the game to look identical even on wide-gamut monitors. Etc...

Iron out these bugs through acid tests. You will never notice real bugs otherwise, because it's too easy to get stuck in some "happy path" rut, such as testing with a single 1080p monitor.

Non-graphics related feedback:

"Unsaved progress will be lost!"

"What year is this!? Am I stuck in 1990 again?"

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is this because they fab their own parts rather than off-the-shelf stuff that has been in supply side limbo for 2 years? $1000 "arm board" with impressive power and performance envelopes will get you some market share, especially if the existing ecosystem bends to the manufacturer's will. As they do. I fully expect the first company to really try and make an impressive risc-V workstation to clean up in that market, e…

No not that direcly. Even with mac + intel chips the situation is the same, the hardware not really the main barrier.

It's just a different software stack (OS, Drivers, Window management/UI, Sound, Networking, file access). It has similar barriers/differences in Linux. It requires extra build/compile pipelines at the minimum and most cases it means some refactoring of your code. In the worst case your gfx/audio/netcode is just plain incompatible (hard coded for a Windows/DirectX stack), meaning you have to rewrite quite a bit to abstract away the differences. This counts even in unity, it just helps here and there with making it cross platform and enforcing an opinion. These guys didn't use much of Unity and seems to use unity just as a rendering pipeline.

People who buy macs tend not to game on them much, they buy it for other reasons. I think people who owns macs and play games, tend to have consoles or even a gaming rig (since they can most likely also afford those to begin with).

Post reply on HN