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Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

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Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#81

Post by yieldcrv »

chairhairair wrote: post #7

The productivity of solo indie game devs is just really impressive. While I’m aware of the “go fast alone, go far together” quote, I’m depressed by how inefficient app/ui development is at big tech companies compared to game studios, especially short staffed indies. Really makes me wonder about the “engineering excellence” that tech leads and “architects” pride themselves in when games are developed much more quickly…

how far do you really need to go, alone

You need a win, but not that big of a win in the grand scheme of things

Six figures, a couple million

Whereas big studios need multiple hundred million+ hits

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#82

Post by plorkyeran »

bestinterest wrote: post #37
chairhairair wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding on this in a reply to my own comment. Grinding Gear Games, as an example, is a NZ based game studio that releases a new expansion to their famous RPG - Path of Exile - every three months. The game is not a simple program by any stretch - which might be a fair criticism for Papers Please by comparison since it is purely client-side and all possible states of the game can be fairly easily enumerated. Path of…

I have the exact same feelings. Is immediate mode GUI's just that much better? Instead of a complex React/Redux style setup, how much easier would state management be if we had a render loop like game dev? Does that even make sense? I am very envious at the pure programming skills of so many game developers. UI's in indie games are just a side thing in the deep complexity of a game and they end up looking incredible…

They've drifted away from calling it that, but the whole idea behind React was to bring immediate-mode rendering to the web. It has an event loop where each "frame" you render the current state from scratch, rather than explicitly updating the state of retained controls.

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#83

Post by fragmede »

komadori wrote: post #73
alexb_ wrote: post #63

I actually didn't know it was on mobile, so I searched for "Papers Please" on the Google Play store. Only complete garbage came up, and I had to actually go to the website to find a link to the game (which only has 5k downloads!) I wonder if there's a solution to this.

Oh, wow, thanks! I did likewise and assumed the mobile port hadn't actually been released yet. Google's search is clearly awful :-/.

Hilariously the correct play store link is the second hit for https://www.google.com/search?q=papers+please+android

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#84

Post by wly_cdgr »

keyle wrote: post #8

The blog post is really top tier. Consider how much time some engineers spend considering details when they're just being contracted to do a job (I've work with lots) and how this indie game project is being explained, nitpicked, loved and cherished. The blog post alone makes you want to purchase whatever this person has been working on based on how much passion is oozing off the explanation of how it's made. Side no…

This blog post is good, but is pretty average stuff for a real professional. You are just used to reading webdev tip&trick postlets from third-rate hacks

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#85

Post by matttb »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #72
ElevenLathe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically bounce around the twitch category before settling on one. These tend to be smaller streamers who don't have regular hours. One that I try not to miss is Jonathan Blow, though his current project is in a custom engine (written in new language on a custom compiler, even) so it's not immediately relevant to learning about modern game editors.

A bit of a tangent, but I lost quite a bit of respect for Jonathon Blow when he made comments about impostor syndrome: https://youtu.be/ECwHZlvvVH4?t=3370

Interesting you feel that way, I found it comforting.

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#86

Post by JoeyJoJoJr »

bestinterest wrote: post #37
chairhairair wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expanding on this in a reply to my own comment. Grinding Gear Games, as an example, is a NZ based game studio that releases a new expansion to their famous RPG - Path of Exile - every three months. The game is not a simple program by any stretch - which might be a fair criticism for Papers Please by comparison since it is purely client-side and all possible states of the game can be fairly easily enumerated. Path of…

I have the exact same feelings. Is immediate mode GUI's just that much better? Instead of a complex React/Redux style setup, how much easier would state management be if we had a render loop like game dev? Does that even make sense? I am very envious at the pure programming skills of so many game developers. UI's in indie games are just a side thing in the deep complexity of a game and they end up looking incredible…

I use Zui with Kha/Haxe - an immediate mode GUI library. I cannot overstate how immediate mode GUI greatly simplifies ui development. React is massive step up from OOP/scenegraph/display list style gui, but it is still so complex and cumbersome compared to immediate mode. I can’t fathom why there is such little exploration in this space and it seems mostly limited to gamedev.

https://github.com/armory3d/zui

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#88

Post by seba_dos1 »

yojo wrote: post #30

I played through Papers, Please back when it came out on desktop, and at the time I remember wondering: "why is this fun?" I enjoyed it tremendously, but on the surface that didn't make any sense. Who wants to play an immigration officer sim? Getting this peek behind the curtain helped me understand all the little decisions that add up to an unexpectedly fun experience. The level of thought given to tiny UI interacti…

> Any other dev would just make it a static image and call it a day.

You think so? Games are often full of little things like that. That's a good thing to point out, but it certainly doesn't seem as unusual as you paint it. Letting the user be playful is generally what games are good at ;)

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#89

Post by egypturnash »

Torifyme12 wrote: post #60
egypturnash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make comics. I grew up reading stuff that used the space of a magazine spread in all kinds of clever ways, I fell in love with the way I can play with layout across a page. I made an entire graphic novel with multiple storylines running in parallel across every page. A phone can show one or two panels at a time, at best. There’s a lot of stuff you just can’t do. It’s a tiny, limited canvas, even before it gets shit…

Scott McCloud of Zot fame was an early adopter of the web, I attended a talk from him where he was talking about how frustrated he was that the 3 panel format had persisted to the web, when there were so many ways to use space creatively. He later adapted that talk for his "understanding comics" Ted talk. Worth a watch if you love the medium

I've got all his books and he's even linked to one of my comics in the past. http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/ if you're curious.

It's pretty cool on a decent-sized screen, it was designed around the size of the iPad I'd just gotten when I started it. Not so cool on a phone. Try it on both and you'll see what I mean.

Re: Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones

#90

Post by seba_dos1 »

macintux wrote: post #77
krallja wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be reasonable if they had a Bluetooth keyboard.

I remember when young adults were blazing fast at typing on flip phones. It’s perfectly reasonable to be productive without a keyboard.

Flip phones had keyboards though.
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