One person made the best train sim. Meanwhile AAA studios need 400 people to make the same game twice.
I think Elder Scrolls Oblivion was like 80 person core team and 4 years of development and New Vegas was like 70 person dev team and 2 years of development. But starfield, which was widely criticized by fans, was over 100 people and 8 years development. With the most common criticism from former devs being about the additional management structure and difficulty of communication. I can’t help but feel there is a less…
Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
351–360 of 375 posts
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#352I bought it yesterday, not too hard to get running on linux, and played for an hour, it's immense fun.
What do you have to do to get it working on Linux? Is there a way to signal my hatred of Windows when I buy it?
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#353The 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.
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#354Earlier 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?
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#355Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference between today and 30 years ago is that if you are an individual developer, you are at the complete mercy of a single company (Valve), who can force you to do essentially anything they want for the privilege of publishing on their platform, with no meaningful alternative, and zero recourse if they say “no”.
> 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.
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah I think I've seen it but it's not a serious sim, right? I'm really looking for a more serious one. Edit: It does look serious on steam, maybe I am thinking of another. Thanks!
Derail Valley is about as serious at it gets!
But I see the crashing isn't the objective of the game but rather a consequence of its realism. Nice!
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
For "the best train sim ever made" they probably reach it.
Sure, and then he can afford it, because he's making over $1M/year revenue on this sim, and taking a very reasonable 5% off the top of that. So it blunts the profits a bit at that point, but it hardly seems like such a terrible thing at that point.
I'm not saying it's a terrible model and it's great that games are made with it but let's be honest it's not all rainbows.
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unreal is completely free for up to $1 million in revenue. And at that point, the 5% royalty is very much a happy problem.
Lifetime royalty fee on any related worldwide gross revenue is a happy problem?
steam did provide the basic dev/hosting/sale/marketing platform.
Re: Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like for some other simulation games, I am impressed how can some go to such lengths to get as close as possible to the real thing but would not actually do it as a job. Not making fun of it, I just found it fascninating.
I can get it. I can totally see something being fun if it's 2-10 hours a week, but not fun if it's 40-50 hours a week. Also very different when you are in control of exactly when you're doing it, you can pause anytime you need to go grab laundry, etc. Driving/train sims have pretty much zero appeal to me, but I enjoy flight sims a fair amount. I'd never want to make the sacrifices to my life that would be required to…