141–150 of 152 posts
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I’m sorry that happened to you but this seems like a bit of an overreaction.
When someone shows you who they truly are, believe them.
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Arthur, I enjoyed playing your early version of SimAirport, and I'm glad you finished and released it -- that's excellent work and persistence! Will Wright always wanted to make a game called "SimTapeworm", however he could never get the green light on that from Maxis or EA. I hold out hope that some clever indie developer will figure out how to monetize the serious educational parasitic infection simulation genre. M…
I always enjoy seeing your posts on HN; I'm honored that you played the early versions of SA (and admittedly a little embarrassed at how rough & unpolished it was back then). Really appreciate the kind words, means a lot coming from you -- thank you! I don't remember if we actually shipped it or not, maybe it was only on a beta branch (or maybe it's sitting on a git branch still), but I actually implemented an "infec…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_r...
https://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Zhabo
>Margolus and Toffoli make a interesting simile between the Zhabotinsky reaction and a reef of tubeworms. When a tubeworm feels safe, it sticks a plume out of its shell to seine the water for food. If a feeding tubeworm senses any disturbance nearby (e.g. the presence of several other feeding tubeworms), it retracts its plume and waits for a few cycles before feeding again.
I always thought SimAnt should be an MMPORG!
Then the ants could catch Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis Sensu Lato fungal infections, and turn into infectious zombies!
Three-dimensional visualization and a deep-learning model reveal complex fungal parasite networks in behaviorally manipulated ants:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1711673114
One of the first downloadable objects for The Sims was a guinea pig (which was later included with Livin' Large), which included a communicable disease that could spread between characters, and even kill them:
https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Illness#Guinea_Pig_Disease
>Guinea Pig Disease
>Guinea Pig Disease is introduced in Livin' Large. Sims can catch it if they are bitten by a guinea pig that has a dirty cage, or from other Sims who have been infected with the disease. Objects cloned from the guinea pig can also cause this disease. Sims infected with Guinea Pig Disease will sneeze and cough frequently, and their Comfort and Energy motives will rapidly decline. An infected Sim will die if not treated within time.
>Due to a glitch, a Sim who dies from Guinea Pig Disease cannot be successfully resurrected by the Grim Reaper. Once they are restored to life they will immediately die again.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebMjT1D5Nyw
>Each instance of Guinea Pig Disease is restricted to the lot the Sim was infected on, so an infected Sim will not display symptoms, be infectious, or die outside of the lot on which they caught the disease. Therefore, a Sim with the disease can safely go to a community lot or be invited to another Sim's house as a visitor. It is possible for a Sim to be infected on multiple lots, however.
>Treatment
>Keep the infected Sim home from work or school and try to keep their Comfort and Energy motives up. Purchasing The Forgotten Guinea Pig painting will clear the disease from the household after 16 Sim hours. A Sim who drinks a white potion created with The "Concoctanation Station" chemistry set will be immediately cured of the disease. Additionally drinking a blue potion will restore three random motives which, while not directly curing the disease, can help them to recover from it.
Some of my work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7iA3_mbd4U https://explorerdude.net https://novagame.net https://choreomania.net
Something I think would sell: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11GreRAVxi-TO8zBt_Q0xKDno...
I created Snake '97, the retro phone game remake that has gained some traction on Android and iOS (50M downloads): snake97.com On how it got where it is, including a fun back story, I wrote a blog post: https://willem.com/blog/2018-02-21_updating-snake-97/ It must be said: developing a game and have it enjoyed by millions is something very special. Things really went bananas when I was invited to an art gallery showc…
Wow, 50M downloads is huge, congrats! Are you able to get meaningful income from it? (Google Play store mentioned it contains ads tho I haven't seen any)
Part of the game's (organic) growth is (kindly + infrequently) asking players to share their high scores with their friends. It saves me from having to advertise the game to reach new players. (If a player shares his or her highscore, ads are even less frequently shown, as an hidden reward)
I'm developing a racing game as a hobby. But I generally don't discuss my game with other developers since they are not the target audience for my game. I prefer to talk with players and get 360° feedback. I don't get the benefit of sharing the game to fellow developers.
This kind of makes me sad. I feel like this is a terrible trend that is/has basically ruined gaming. The way I see it, making a game is art. I want to make games to express my ideas, and my feelings, and I want to do the best I can to convey those feelings and ideas in my games. The moment you start seeking player feedback for your game you are no longer making art, you making a product. I suppose that is all well an…
What the GP describes is making a game for others.
Both have their places.
yes.
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I think the games people are buying on a whim, though, are the games with 10-year staying power that they haven't gotten to yet -- not throwaway projects that aren't good enough to care about.
That is absolutely not how the market behaves. None of the big (or small) moneymakers in last few years came close to "10 years" of popularity and probably won't. Where do you get this stuff?
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On the other hand, there's a lot of people wealthy enough to buy games on a whim, try them out for an hour or two, and then never launch them again (and don't refund). So, maybe that helps the situation somewhat? Otherwise, I agree - no one I know is a serial gamer. We all have our favourites which we've been playing for 10+ years. The best game studios can make in such situation is make a game with in-app purchases,…
I think the games people are buying on a whim, though, are the games with 10-year staying power that they haven't gotten to yet -- not throwaway projects that aren't good enough to care about.
I started with big ambitions the initial inspiration was Battle Brothers, Underrail, Jeff Vogel's old Exile RPGs and Caves of Qud (never played but seen lots of talks and material on it). Now it's evolved (devolved?) into a procedural simulation game of sorts. I wrote lore and world building. I want to do something deep and engaging that has high replay value - even with shabby graphics for years and years and something that I can continue to add content over time and expand the depth and scope of.
A big decision at the beginning was to build using C++ from scratch and not use an existing engine. So really I would say up about to the 10 months mark was just me figuring out application and software development - I come from an analytics background so in the beginning it was basic baby steps - like wrapping my head around doing everything in a giant infinite while loop, understanding how to manage memory, profile to figure out where frame rate is slowing down...not so much touching any content.
The hardest part was and is the architecture, how to add components, assets and generally organize the code so it doesn't become spaghetti as the game complexity grows - I started using a ECS early on but even still, I refactor the code structure a few times already and have simply come to accept some degree of chaos is inevitable. Next to that the UI is completely vectorized and drawn in-game so as to scale to any resolution and that has been a huge pain in the ass. There is a surprising amount of complexity in UI and I am devoting a lot of attention to it.
So now after 12 months I am finally close to the point of dedicating myself to mostly content creation and working on the game as opposed to the engine. After that I probably have to make a decision on whether to continue full time or devote some time to making some money elsewhere.