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

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351–360 of 375 posts

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

#351

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…

You can also reduce team size by employing insane, life-destroying crunch time.

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

#352
post #320

I 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?

Using the steam deck flavor of Linux, literally just buy the game, download it, and hit play. Runs pretty well

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

#353
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.

Oh not even from Japan? I just assumed he's from there because that's what the game is about

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

#354

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?

I would say when you start hiring people for monthly salaries rather than for specific tasks.

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

#356
post #212

Earlier 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.

Steam has a 75% share of the PC gaming market. The mere existence of alternatives doesn't negate a monopoly. Whether it's a monopoly or not depends on whether Valve uses its market power in a pathological way.

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

#357

Earlier 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!

Yeah I saw. The derail thing sounded a bit sensationalist, like one of those car games that are like a demolition derby.

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

#358

Earlier 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.

By that logic we should be OK with Adobe's subscription model. It makes it affordable to people who can't otherwise use it. Ultimately it means we can't own it (and just like we can't own UE, we owe Epic income reports for life).

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

#359

Earlier 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?

are people really balking at paying 50k on 1 million of sales? that is a problem i would like to have.

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

#360

Earlier 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…

Okay yes, it actually makes a lot of sense this way.
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