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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

#241

Post by lihogloglo »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #177
pjmlp wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and then we always get those regular posts "project XYZ is no longer", yeah people not paying. Unreal is free to the extent it contributes to bringing even more people into the ecosystem, eventually becoming paying customers, Epic doesn't make it available out of their kindness, rather also taking into account there are other competing alternatives.

It's important to keep development going but commercial projects is not the only way. Godot Foundation exists and there are plenty of others in open-source space. A nonprofit means actual reports about how money is used, and it's not as if commercial projects are somehow better because they don't fold or get sold or canceled. And even between commercial ways, charging royalties is one of the worst. It doesn't cost Ep…

I love Godot but it's not a particularly brilliant example of what you are trying to say. Many games made with Godot generate more profit than the entire budget of the engine itself.

The engine itself is far from cutting edge and missing several features that are now quite common elsewhere, like texture streaming, bindless textures, etc. The speed of development isn't blazing fast either (see the implementation of the traits system). Devs are excellent at what they do but one could wonder how much faster and further it could go with more fundings.

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

#242

Post by close04 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #238
close04 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You do that because your goal s “optimized code” not just “code”. Your constraints are a tool that helps you achieve your goal. For most others the constraints are limitations from achieving their goal.

For me wearing a parachute is a constrain and carrying it is an act of will. For a skydiver not so much.

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

#243

Post by hjkl0 »

culi wrote: 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.

Out of curiosity, what is the significance of the 16GB of RAM?

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

#244

Post by simoncion »

LadyCailin wrote: post #229
embedding-shape wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with no meaningful alternative Steam (which I'm guessing you're talking about) is nowhere close of being a monopoly. There are loads of alternatives out there, in wide use by people already. World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, Roblox and more are all examples of big time successful games that never been available on Steam.

I would even go further, and say that this logic applies not just for massive games from massive publishers, but platforms like GoG works well as an alternative for indies.

Plus, consider the software distribution situation in the pre-Internet world. There was getting someone to arrange for very-limited-time distribution in physical stores (and paying out the ass for the privilege), or paying to advertise your mail-order distribution, or encouraging BBS operators to distribute your shareware that includes a "Mail $AMOUNT to this address and we'll mail you a full copy." message inside.

Of those options, the BBS one is probably the lowest cost, but -"shockingly"- that option is still available today... and is probably way easier for people to find your software than it was back in the day.

There are astroturfers out there who pretend that Steam is The Worst Thing Ever, but they distribute your game, dev-selected old (and pre-release) versions of your game, promotional materials for your game, and host forums and a news feed... forever. Valve also pretty clearly chooses to distribute games that are in the intersection of what's legal to distribute in the US and what the busybodies at MasterCard and Visa permit them to distribute.

If we lived in a just world, because of MasterCard's and Visa's enormous size, they'd be declared as something like "payment processors of last resort" and required to process transactions for anything that's legal to sell in the US, and subject to enormous fines if they so much as suggest to any merchant that MC/Visa will stop processing that merchant's payments for any reason other than a clear and obvious history of fraud.

Alas.

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

#245

Post by high_priest »

hjkl0 wrote: post #243
culi wrote: 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.

Out of curiosity, what is the significance of the 16GB of RAM?

In development, you don't have the privilege of using optimised culling and LODs. For rapid development, very little code is compiled & there are extra IDE tools running.

When you consider that 16GB has become the minimum requirement for modern A+ titles (with the Windows OS & background tasks squating on 4-6GB). Creating such a title might be difficult on memory limited machine.

Unreal had made some improvements in this regard recently, with direct from storage assets loading & stuff.

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

#247

Post by pelagicAustral »

hjkl0 wrote: post #243
culi wrote: 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.

Out of curiosity, what is the significance of the 16GB of RAM?

I can tell you right now, from an M5 with 16 GB of RAM, I'd be hard pressed to squeeze a bit of ram for a game of sodoku if I'm already running an Android emulator plus a few IDEs and 10 tabs in Chrome... Being able to produce something of note, especially in the gaming space, with 16 GB of ram IS a feat in and of itself

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

#248

Post by simoncion »

oalae5niMiel7qu wrote: post #240
streetfighter64 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Given that Death Stranding 2 only credits Kojima as the game's writer and designer, I guess -by GGP's very silly definition- it's a solo project. XD

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

#249

Post by vitorfblima »

rablackburn wrote: post #182
ffsm8 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nothing is easier then adding constraints. Removing them is what's difficult - so why don't you add them back if it makes you a better programmer and you enjoy doing it more? Personally, I think the reason you enjoyed it more as a teenager is just down to the fact you were fully in control of what to do and had no external pressure to earn money etc, so if anything you had less constraints - at least from my po…

> Well, nothing is easier then adding constraints. Which is why dieting and quitting smoking are famously easy things to do! ;) There's something to be said for the "scrappyness" of resource limitations inflicted upon you when solving some problem. A sense of Triumph against the Universe itself is a nice pay-off

Smoking and eating unhealthy food are constraints to life! ;)

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

#250

Post by simoncion »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #140
999900000999 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Linux alot. But if the biggest multiplayer games straight up don't support it, that needs to be acknowledged. Add League of Legends to the list. I've had Deck verified games straight up refuse to work on Linux. It always feels like it's my fault somehow. 'Well of COURSE Wayland doesn't work, skill issue'. Vs Windows where I can blame Microsoft.

It should be acknowledged, yes, but not while failing to mention that it mostly applies to the genre of competitive shooters. "Generally don't run" doesn't apply to pretty much anything else, where a statement closer to truth would be "generally run, with some notable exceptions".

> ...where a statement closer to truth would be "generally run, with some notable exceptions".

Yep. Devs usually have to actively make their game not work on Proton for it to not work on the version of Proton that Steam ships. Most devs aren't so petty as to put in that extra work, so they don't.

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