Train sim created by just one person is being called the best ever made • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by kmeisthax » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #271

kmeisthax wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By modern standards, yes , writing a bullet hell shooter game is not hard. But ZUN started on the PC-98. To put that platform in a western context, imagine if IBM had gone with planar graphics for VGA. Or an Amiga with no coprocessors, sprites, or scrolling[0]. You have a lot of pixels to fill and no help to do it with. It can't even run DooM[1]. Most other developers threw their hands up and shipped RPGs, erotic vis…

What you described is even better: an Atari ST :)

An Atari ST with 4x the pixels to push

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

#372

Post by wrsh07 » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #369

wrsh07 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, then do that? The game you make will be limited by that choice. If those limitations are acceptable, then great! My contention is that people can build more ambitious games that are more likely to make their creators rich if they use Unreal, and if the creators also think that they should use Unreal and if they don't they shouldn't.

I was replying to someone who said how fantastic it is that the guy was able to make it for free. I'm not saying it's all completely bad, again Adobe subscription model and past piracy tolerance allowed many people who couldn't afford their stuff to use it while paying less or nothing, just adding nuance about "free"

Of course! And I think it's fair to require people to be honest.

I just fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking:

> even a subscription is better than royalties

Royalties are a great business model that allows more creators to create. You can dislike it, but I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art (or other things!)

And while there were a bunch of interesting side effects of piracy (people who pirate more music were bigger fans of music and spent more later - correlation/causation questions obvs), I would strongly prefer that the easy thing to do (ie cheapest/lowest friction to get started) be legal

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

#373

Post by ku1ik » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #314

In my region of the world this title (and also the title of being "the worst ever made") was reserved for the unnecessarily detailed electric locomotive simulator MaSzyna: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1033030/MaSzyna/ Turns out that such a vehicle, even though simple in principle, has quite the startup procedure and a layman would have trouble making it go.

From the screenshots MaSzyna looks much better than I’d expect from a game released in 2001!

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

#374

Post by oalae5niMiel7qu » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 10:24 AM UTC

amiga386 wrote: post #302

oalae5niMiel7qu wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

This is somewhat deconstructive. So you need the solo developer not to contract out or buy in existing music, graphics, 3D assets, animations, marketing, or you won't call them a solo developer. Right, so do you also need them to create the 3D engine or are they allowed that off the shelf? Oh, they need to make it themselves. You're strict! Ok, so they're allowed to write for a platform? Oh, no they're not, that's re…

So if Bethesda fires all its developers and then gets its next game made by hiring those same developers as independent contractors, then Bethesda would be a solo developer?

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

#375

Post by ShinyLeftPad » Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

wrsh07 wrote: post #372

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was replying to someone who said how fantastic it is that the guy was able to make it for free. I'm not saying it's all completely bad, again Adobe subscription model and past piracy tolerance allowed many people who couldn't afford their stuff to use it while paying less or nothing, just adding nuance about "free"

Of course! And I think it's fair to require people to be honest. I just fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking: > even a subscription is better than royalties Royalties are a great business model that allows more creators to create. You can dislike it, but I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art (or other things!) And while the…

> I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art

I think the guy did it on enthusiasm and if he used say Godot he could probably have a pretty good result too, if less impressive visually. But you have good points, sure.