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Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

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Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 30% rip off by apple and Google app stores Sounds like a happy problem to me;) By the way you don't only have to file a report for Epic whenever you release a game using UE, you also have to report them your yearly sales and calculate what income is "directly attributable to UE" for that game. For an ordinary small person, for whom you imply lifetime 5% off gross worldwide revenue is a "happy problem", this is way…

At the point where you have 1 million in revenue you for sure have an accountant even just to do your yearly business taxes. So reporting to Epic just becomes an extra hour of work to make the report.

Or not. I depends on the country and its tax system.

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#232
post #123
post #119

The dev is a person from Indonesia (Rizky Nova) who's device has 16GB of ram. Being able to use the Unreal Engine for free to develop this is awesome. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago.

I think this is incredible, and I am so happy for him, he deserves all the praise he gets (and maybe more). I will sin and make this about me, briefly, but just to say that when I was a kid/teenager with a really slow computer, a) I enjoyed coding much more, b) I think I was a way better programmer. Constraints make you better, you have to be smarter. I miss those times.

Re: making things about me (but also kind of related), I am working on a project that requires sending encrypted telemetry data from a Crazyflie drone (so, STM32) and it's such a fun experience. Each telemetry payload is just 26B so I had to get creative, write down packet diagrams and then make it work in C. An AI agent helps a bit with some stuff but you're mostly on your own.

In general I highly recommend going the embedded/IoT way if you look for challenges and constraints.

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever wanted to try flying a plane or running a city or being a tycoon of roller coasters without having to invest much time, money, and energy to take flight lessons, run for political office, or work your way up through an amusement park company? Sim games let you play with these complex systems easily and walk away when you get bored.

I have often said that for many people that want to change the world (for the greater negative), they need to get addicted to Sim games. They will end up doing a lot less harm in that situation. The real question is, how do you determine who is going to do negative or positive gains. A debate that is millennia old.

i remember years ago reading a tweet, i'm paraphrasing but it went something like:

"I love how men go from 'I'm gonna conquer the world!!' to 'im gonna sit here and paint my model figures'"

I think about it a lot, and your comment made me think of it again.

Flight sims are my 'model railways'

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#234
post #59

I always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?

Almost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software. I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand ho…

If that's how it was developed, then it wasn't made by a solo developer. What you're describing is called a team.

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#235
post #218
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All journalism is terrible these days. They just want a catchy headline for the ad view and nothing else matters, including whether the headline is true or not.

There is like 1 or 2 actual "video game journalists" everyone else is just a glorified blogger.

The irony being, that youtubers and Twitch personalities have almost certainly played the games they are reviewing.

But they are considered at least a 'rung' lower than games journalists when it comes to how much access they have, and how much their opinion matters professionally.

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#236

I never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2. But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?

for me its the abilty to 'switch off' I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ets) and its my happy place, its just zen, Sometimes i will have a plugin that will get me local radio stations and i will cruise through italy and greece listening to talk shows in languages i don't understand, sometimes i will do it listening to the rumble of the truck, and i switch off, and allow my thoughts to run free. I've recently started get…

If you're flying a larger passenger plane into basically any major airport, ILS should get you most of the way down - you just need to control speed (you're looking for landing speed +10 by the end)

Depending where you're flying, some arrivals have gaps which threw me off massively when I first started - it's because IRL there's ATC there to guide you to the final intersection for the runway, usually 10NM out... so aim for that and capture ILS, it's quite a wide margin for capture.

If you're going manually, 10nm out you want to start descending at around 600-700fpm from ~3000ft and you should have visual on the runway at this point

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software. I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand ho…

I depends on the background. I'm 2 years into solo developing a game and all programming, artwork and animation is my own. I had to invest into quite some learning to make it possible, but I figured it's a worthwhile investment. I do work with a composer, though. Point being, it depends on which skills you bring to the table, which ones you are willing to learn and which ones are worth collaborating on. I still think…

If a project is far more work than one person can do (as this train simulator obviously is), the term solo developer is no more justified than it would have been if Steve Jobs claimed to have solo-developed the iPhone, even if he could have justified saying he "brought the iPhone from idea to the finish line."

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're not introducing constraints, you're creatively trying out things to fix your problem. They're not a wall preventing you from reaching your goal, they're the bridge. Your constraint is the temporary lack of creativity, and what you introduce is the creative solution. I feel like we're talking past each other. Adding these sort of requirements in order to "fix the problem", is typically what people are refe…

I think you're missing the context of what started this thread: > I was a kid/teenager with a really slow computer [...] b) I think I was a way better programmer. Constraints make you better, you have to be smarter. The goal is "write software" not "write optimized software". When your goal is to write a software that runs on your machine, having the constraint of a slow machine forces you to write optimized code whi…

> I didn't expect this simple concept will need so many explanations.

You and me both brother :)

> No programmer will ever say "making the computer slower really helped a lot to write code".

I guess I'll be the first, as a programmer I do this all the time, when developing browser stuff I frequently throttle the available bandwidth and introduce jitter in the network connections so I can see and understand how things work with less optimal network connections, loads of us professional programmers do this when aiming for high quality software meant for end-users, in loads of different environments, not just browser development. Making the computer/IO/whatever slower/"less" does help a lot to write software for others.

> You're expecting programmers to introduce things that prevent them from reaching their goal of creating programs that run.

Well, yes and no. I expect professional programmers, my peers, to do this, as this is how you typically build reliable software, but I don't expect everyone to do this, definitively not amateurs just programming for fun.

> Your goal is "make a creative song" but you're stuck. You don't introduce constraints because they'll make it harder to get unstuck, you introduce them to make it easier. You literally said "they still help a lot".

Cheers for the attempt to decide what my goal is but no, the goal never is "make a creative song", the goal is precisely as previously stated: "make a song". Helpful tip for the future, read and understand what people write and don't assume they lie or misunderstand their own intention, and it'll be easier to understand other's point of view.

Regardless, I feel like both of us are digged into our understanding what the whole "add constraints to do better" process means and is, and no harm no foul, what I know helps me and I'm sure what you know helps you, so lets just leave it at that :) Wish you the best of weekends!

Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, please, define "developed the game" for us. Is doing all the programming "developing" the game? Is coming up with the game design and hiring programmers "developing" the game? sits back with popcorn

> Is doing all the programming "developing" the game? Yes, if you're also doing game design. > Is coming up with the game design and hiring programmers "developing" the game? Yes, so is using LLMs to do the programming.

What if you hire voice actors for each of the characters? And level designers? And animators? At what point does it stop being a solo project? Only when outside investors get involved? Or does it only stop being "solo" if those investors demand board seats? Or can it _still_ be considered "solo" even then?
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