The dev is a person from Indonesia (Rizky Nova) who's device has 16GB of ram.<p>Being able to use the Unreal Engine for free to develop this is awesome. This couldn't have happened 10 years ago.
I think this is incredible, and I am so happy for him, he deserves all the praise he gets (and maybe more).<p>I will sin and make this about me, briefly, but just to say that when I was a kid/teenager with a really slow computer, a) I enjoyed coding much more, b) I think I was a way better programmer. Constraints make you better, you have to be smarter. I miss those times.
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?<p>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 point of view
> Well, nothing is easier then adding constraints.<p>Which is why dieting and quitting smoking are famously easy things to do! ;)<p>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
Which is often the case in music too actually. So many famous artists and bands created their best work early in their careers. You would think touring and several albums make them perfect the craft of making songs, but I think involving money and external pressure actually kill the creative spark if you’re not mindful about it.
Those early albums often consist of material that was basically battle-hardened by the time it reached the studio. Bands early in their career often spend lots of time all in the same room, writing songs together then do lots of playing for small crowds, where they get a very up close feel for the audience response. Material that doesn’t go over well with band mates and audiences gets dropped.<p>With the industry’s album release cycle, bands are often under time pressure to cut a new album, so they end up writing in the studio, each person laying down tracks individually, and missing out on all the feedback of earlier iterations.
Simple and easy are often conflated a bit, but measured by outcomes, are quite different. Comments offerring humorous parallels of common simple and easy conflations will follow.
That's true, I just wanted to maybe add a new perspective to 101008 view that <i>if he enjoyed working with technical constraints, he can still target eg embedded systems with massive resource constraints</i> - and also to force an acknowledgement that the reason for his likely nostalgia to this kind of coding is likely more related to the mental freedom he enjoyed while working back then ... Because that too can be done, albeit with the caveat of <i>time constraints</i> because life doesn't go away no matter how much someone may want it to.
> nothing is easier then adding constraints<p>What's easier is removing the constraints you just added artificially. Constraints you can remove with a flick of a finger are not constraints.<p>> so why don't you add them back<p>The reason the proverb says "<i>necessity</i> is the mother of invention" is because "<i>desire</i>" is usually not enough to drive it. It's easy to take the hard road when you're forced onto it, but very hard to choose it when there's an easy alternative.
> Constraints you can remove with a flick of a finger are not constraints.<p>Why not? Who cares how/why they're there, as long as you follow the constraints, regardless of how easy they are to remove, they're still there.<p>I frequently use this when stuck creatively in music production. "Ok, now I can only use this filter for any sound shaping", or "Make a song using only instruments outputting mono", or "Maximum 10 cables to make a new sound on the modular synth" or whatever. Really easy for me to skip these artificial constraints at any time, they still help a lot.
> Who cares how/why they're there<p>The people who face them. The constraints are making the goal harder to reach. The goal is on the other side of the constraints and it takes power of will to refuse to remove them and keep pushing. This forces a different, slower, more difficult to reach solution.<p>> when stuck creatively in music production<p>So you're not introducing constraints, you're creatively trying out things to fix your problem. They're not a wall preventing you from reaching your goal, they're the bridge. Your constraint is the temporary lack of creativity, and what you introduce is the means to reach the solution faster.<p>> Really easy for me to skip these artificial constraints at any time, they still help a lot.<p>When you remove these you're stuck in a creativity block and failed to achieve your goal. When you remove actual constraints you make the goal easier to reach. It's a matter of perspective and what you want to achieve. You wouldn't want a long road through the mountains as your daily commute but it's probably lovely as a hike.<p>The only way to make the problems comparable is to set a programming goal of "write the most efficient code to do X" but for real work the goal is almost always "do X".
> So you're not introducing constraints, you're creatively trying out things to fix your problem. They're not a wall preventing you from reaching your goal, they're the bridge. Your constraint is the temporary lack of creativity, and what you introduce is the creative solution.<p>I feel like we're talking past each other. Adding these sort of requirements in order to "fix the problem", is typically what people are referring to as "adding artificial constraints to foster creativity".<p>The goal is making a song, anything that restricts you on how you are allowed to do this, is a constraint, as far as I understand the word "constraint" at least.<p>> When you remove actual constraints you make the goal easier to reach.<p>Yes, this is why the previous examples are constraints, not "bridges". Without them it's easier, with them it's harder.
I think you're missing the context of what started this thread:<p>> 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.<p>The goal is "write software" not "write optimized software".<p>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 which is a slower, more difficult solution. When you have an unconstrained fast machine you can write boilerplate unoptimized code, which is quick and easy. If you constrain your fast computer you go from "easy solution" to "difficult solution" for the same goal of "write software". No programmer will ever say "making the computer slower really helped a lot to write code".<p>Your goal is "make a <i>creative</i> song" but you're stuck. You don't introduce constraints because they'll make it harder to get unstuck, you introduce them to make it easier. You literally said "they still help a lot".<p>> I frequently use this when stuck creatively in music production. [...] Really easy for me to skip these artificial constraints at any time, they still help a lot.<p>That's what you're missing. For you the real constraint would be to get creatively unstuck without any tricks. You are introducing things to help you reach your goal to get unstuck. You're expecting programmers to introduce things that prevent them from reaching their goal of creating programs that run.<p>In reality one huge reason software is slow and unoptimized is because programmers have beefy machines and can afford to take the easy road.<p>I didn't expect this simple concept will need so many explanations.
> I didn't expect this simple concept will need so many explanations.<p>You and me both brother :)<p>> No programmer will ever say "making the computer slower really helped a lot to write code".<p>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 work with less optimal network connections, loads of us professional programmers do this when aiming for high quality software meant for end-users, in loads of different environments, not just browser development. Making the computer/IO/whatever slower/"less" does help a lot to write software for others.<p>> You're expecting programmers to introduce things that prevent them from reaching their goal of creating programs that run.<p>Well, yes and no. I expect professional programmers, my peers, to do this, as this is how you typically build reliable software, but I don't expect everyone to do this, definitively not amateurs just programming for fun.<p>> Your goal is "make a creative song" but you're stuck. You don't introduce constraints because they'll make it harder to get unstuck, you introduce them to make it easier. You literally said "they still help a lot".<p>Cheers for the attempt to decide what my goal is but no, the goal never is "make a creative song", the goal is precisely as previously stated: "make a song". Helpful tip for the future, read and understand what people write and don't assume they lie or misunderstand their own intention, and it'll be easier to understand other's point of view.<p>Regardless, I feel like both of us are digged into our understanding what the whole "add constraints to do better" process means and is, and no harm no foul, what I know helps me and I'm sure what you know helps you, so lets just leave it at that :) Wish you the best of weekends!
I feel exactly the same way. Though one extra factor is that I feel like my time was so pure back then. Now, with multiple degrees, I keep thinking about weird concepts like 'opportunity cost'. There was no opportunity cost when I was a kid. There was just time. Bucketloads of it!
I enjoy going back to basics every once in a while; do Arduino / embedded programming on a shitty netbook (it came with Windows but it has only 32GB of storage so it couldn't even update), build games / stuff in Pico-8, start a new Go project with just the main toolkit, etc.
Yes, true creativity usually or mostly comes from real constraints, in my experience.<p>As, if there are no constraints in some specific area, there is no kinda "survival need" to improve there, hence brain is not working as hard/smart/deep as it could.
> I will sin and make this about me (continues to make an awesome, general point about engineering)<p>:)
And that is why gamedevs do not get machine-upgrades
Re: making things about me (but also kind of related), I am working on a project that requires sending encrypted telemetry data from a Crazyflie drone (so, STM32) and it's such a fun experience. Each telemetry payload is just 26B so I had to get creative, write down packet diagrams and then make it work in C. An AI agent helps a bit with some stuff but you're mostly on your own.<p>In general I highly recommend going the embedded/IoT way if you look for challenges and constraints.
> This couldn't have happened 10 years ago.<p>I agree. Something similar could have happened 30 years ago, and it did, see Transport Tycoon (or a lot of early games). But from 2000 to 2020?
How is Minecraft doing these days?
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”.
Even if Valve holds a significant market share of the PC Gaming market, this is a harsh conclusion. There are other significantly more expensive and restrictive options, such as the Windows Store for Windows, or the Play Store for Android, or the App Store for iOS and MacOS.
PC has much free-er and more accessible options for indie developers, like itch.io. It's probably the least monopolistic gaming market out there.
The struggle of course is advertising and reach, not sure who the gate keepers for that were with TTD, maybe magazines?
> with no meaningful alternative<p>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.
Unreal Engine's been free for just over 11 years now: <a href="https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free" rel="nofollow">https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free</a>
If you think about how much time a single developer has to invest to create all the assets for such a massive game, 11 years doesn't sound like a lot of time...<p>(assuming he did all the assets himself and didn't use AI, which might be a bit naive)
I have said it for a few years now. If Epic ever decided to go public on the stock market, I would throw a significant amount of my savings at them. Their technology is astounding.<p>Yes, some games have some issues but it really seems like that is a problem of developers not knowing when to say 'No!' to the giant tool kit they have been provided.
I'm not sure myself, as there's Epic the ligitous games company that wants more money from Fortnite, Epic the attempted digital games platform whose main userbase just claims a free game once every two weeks, and Epic the engine company.<p>I have more faith in Epic the engine company than the other Epics.
Very cool to see an Indonesian dev on the homepage of HN!
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.<p>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.<p>Unreal had made some improvements in this regard recently, with direct from storage assets loading & stuff.
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
> Being able to use the Unreal Engine for free to develop this is awesome<p>... and paying Epic 5% of all lifetime profit is a blessing too (if he makes money appropriate for "the best train sim ever made")
Unreal is completely free for up to $1 million in revenue. And at that point, the 5% royalty is very much a happy problem.
That is fair for something that makes the game possible in the first place.
Can’t tell if you mean it (that it’s fair) or you would’ve preferred a different pricing structure?
I mean, if he makes a boatload of money then it's fine if a fraction of it goes to the engine. When his immediate needs are met, he can choose to either stay with unreal or move to an alternative later on without cost pressures.
Unreal devs have bills to pay as well.<p>We already know what happens in Nebraska.
To those asking about the reference to Nebraska, I'm pretty sure it's a reference to XKCD 2347 "Dependency": <a href="https://xkcd.com/2347/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/2347/</a>
Yep, and then we always get those regular posts "project XYZ is no longer", yeah people not paying.<p>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.<p>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.<p>And even between commercial ways, charging royalties is one of the worst. It doesn't cost Epic extra if my game starts making more money. Just make the engine a one-time purchase (per version, so you get to keep sales going) and everyone will be much happier. Sell additional services which actually do cost you money to keep up (multiplayer hosting).
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.<p>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.
Nothing against Godot, it's a great project, but looking at the wikipedia list of notable games using the engine, there's a single one I have heard of. Meanwhile about 28% of the market share of all video games is using Unreal. So I don't really see the need to make "everyone much happier" honestly.<p>> Sell additional services which actually do cost you money to keep up<p>After a game has been released a solo dev often has very little work to do, since they've already invested all of the development time ahead of release. So, by this logic they shouldn't really be allowed to charge anything for the game, except to cover potential work on updates.<p>Perhaps game projects don't need to operate like nonprofits, but then why do game engine projects?
There are notable games missing from that list. Unrailed 2, for example, which is, in my opinion, one of the best games ever created. I am not even a avid gamer and I recognize several games from that list.
I just think of Steve Ballmer's ad for Windows 1.0 (1986)<p>"Order today! PO box 286 DOS... Except in Nebraska!"<p><a href="https://youtu.be/sforhbLiwLA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/sforhbLiwLA</a>
I doubt Epic struggles for money. By the way what happens in Nebraska?
What happens in Nebraska?!?
I always wonder how a solo developer can source high quality assets like these, plus develop a full game with them. In this case did the dev create the assets or did they purchase them from a freelancer? How much would purchasing this many assets cost?
Almost every time I see a halfway polished “solo developer” game, they did not do all the work themselves. Especially, they usually hire out the music, maybe other sounds, and much of the artwork. Sometimes they also have freelancers doing marketing and such. Sometimes even some paid help writing the software.<p>I highlight this not to bring those developers down, but because I think it’s important people understand how these things actually come to be, so they aren’t discouraged to try themselves by thinking they ought to <i>actually</i> be doing 100% of the work solo. That’s pretty rare.
The perception of what a polymath is is changing incredibly fast, as both the floor and ceiling for being passable or outstanding in any field is rising exponentially. For the last 50-oddish years, it's been the case that being proficient with a single piece of software can make you an invaluable asset in industry; understanding the concepts behind the software and the problems it solves even moreso. Rather recently, we've reached a point where software ergonomics, freely available education and information, and even AI assistance in development or usage have lowered this floor in terms of cost, knowledge, effort, and skill. For example, it's trivially easier today to create a 3d animation than it was 5, 10, or 20 years ago, and the visual quality of it would be similarly disproportionately better.<p>The domains of different crafts are ever-expanding, including all of their history and all new developments, of which new developments seem to be coming at an ever-increasing pace as populations grow, internet access grows, and the free time of populations spent doing things other than merely surviving grows. There is a larger and broader base of knowledge necessary for a person to be considered competent in the current state of anything, and the number of disciplines is also increasing. Two decades ago, having a person specializing in frontend development for a specific web browser would have been unthinkable.<p>All of this work is built upon the backs of other people. Game engines, 3d modeling and texturing and animating, language design and implementation, audio software and sound design, graphics libraries, runtime optimizations, operating system APIs, networking improvements, distribution networks, etc. etc.. To think that any one person could possibly create everything they use to then create these final products, no matter the scale they are, is ignorant.
> For example, it's trivially easier today to create a 3d animation than it was 5, 10, or 20 years ago, and the visual quality of it would be similarly disproportionately better.<p>True, but this also means that the bar has risen for animations in general, so while you might be able to create animations today as an amateur that is even better than the animations just five years ago, it still won't come close to what professionals can actually achieve today.<p>Your very last point speaks a lot to me though, almost every effort people are amazed by have at least two people involved, indirectly or directly, and attempting things like this on your own would be a fool's errand.
I depends on the background. I'm 2 years into solo developing a game and all programming, artwork and animation is my own. I had to invest into quite some learning to make it possible, but I figured it's a worthwhile investment.
I do work with a composer, though.<p>Point being, it depends on which skills you bring to the table, which ones you are willing to learn and which ones are worth collaborating on.<p>I still think the term Solo-developer is justified in any case. The one who soley carries the burden of bringing the game from idea to the finish line is the solo developer, IMHO.
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."
Even the famously brought up cases of solo projects often end up hiring help once they become popular. Stardew Valley and Dwarf Fortress come to mind.<p>I think for the later stages it's common to contract someone for other platforms, especially mobile.
I would never view a truth-teller in a negative light.
If that's how it was developed, then it wasn't made by a <i>solo</i> developer. What you're describing is called a team.
Yes, solo developer does not mean "solo developer, composer, artist, etc."
Not lately, loads of sub-jobs going to LLMs..
Solo developer just means they developed the game themselves, not made it all themselves. I'm not sure how you could write what you wrote without that occurring to you.
Absolutely not obvious to me, especially since I have heard a lot of solo dev stories that insist it was purely a 1-person project. And it’s true in some cases.
In that case, please, define "developed the game" for us. Is doing all the programming "developing" the game? Is coming up with the game design and hiring programmers "developing" the game?<p><i>sits back with popcorn</i>
> Is doing all the programming "developing" the game?<p>Yes, if you're also doing game design.<p>> Is coming up with the game design and hiring programmers "developing" the game?<p>Yes, so is using LLMs to do the programming.
Designing the game and having codex shit out the code is how I roll.
Hmm, it didn’t occur to me. Yeah, not sure it’s obvious to many people so was glad for the explanation
FWIW, that was not obvious to me either, and I appreciated the parent comment
It's not so much about the assets as the framing, lighting, positioning and blending it all in a compelling way. For instance in the trailer I recognize the large brick building at 0:14 from a cheap/free asset pack, though I don't recall which. And look at it - it's super generic copy/paste layering with some slight variations, and seemingly baked on lighting given the identical shading per floor/layer. But put in a well lit scene with appropriate framing, and suddenly you're here thinking it's a high end custom built asset.<p>Now a days you can also get basically endless assets for free. Unreal gives away a new pack every few weeks or so on Fab (and has been doing this for years), KitBash3D gives occasionally gives away some amazing assets, and many more. But again none of this matters without some serious artistic and style sense. Given I recognize at least one asset there, I'd imagine a good chunk of his assets are from stuff like this. But you're not going to be able to clone anything comparable even if you had the exact assets he used. Placement and such is way more of an artistic thing than you might expect.
Anecdote, but I recall my friend saying he worked on freelancing assets to some train game and showed me some pictures of the said game. Unless there are more of these in existence, I think it was this.
Well, there are 864 other train sim games on Steam right now, so there are quite a few others in existence.
Please tell him thank you from us all :)
It wouldn't surprise me if Japan has its own market for train assets. There's a big community of train simulators! Go to the Kyoto or Tokyo train museums, they have dozens where you step into a replica of a train cab and then drive a photorealistic simulation (sometimes also just film) - the ex-keyboarder for Casiopeia runs a train simulation game company that makes those <i>since the 90s</i> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya</a>). There are some Nintendo Switch train simulators like Densha de GO that are only available in Japan.<p>I'm sure there's a treasure trove of already-built high-quality assets of Japanese trains.
You can buy them overseas from online secondhand stores like mandarake and play on your switch, because there is no region lock. Interface will still be in Japanese, but it is pretty obvious what to to and how.
I was looking at the controller support and apparently there are game controllers designed to follow the layout of a train operations controller with the same two levers that you can see in game.
I thought it was kind of commoditised these days - there's an Unreal asset store I think? Probably one for Unity as well.
There are lots of assets to purchase or even for free. majority of small devs will buy them, if they have money then will freelance. It’s very rare for one dev to do everything but do exist.<p>Assets are generally cheap, unity asset store itch.io<p>Unless you commission someone for work 1-2K would cover many small games easily.
Nowadays a solo developer could use AI to generate some of these assets.
I like this one, too : <a href="https://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/" rel="nofollow">https://alexanderperrin.com.au/paper/shorttrip/</a>
I own it and played it. It's good, very pretty, but highly repetitive. It's one 40km track, two trains, and most of the scenery is the same. It is one step above a Unreal Engine tech demo (e.g. the matrix demo from a few years back).<p>For one person it's impressive, but it won't knock the major players down any time soon.
> including support for the Zuiki MASCON, a bespoke peripheral for train driving sims.<p>This just makes me feel so glad to be alive today!
Yeah, love that is just works.<p>I'm working on a bit of a hobby project to rebuild a beefier Mascon. Mainly inspired by how much I enjoyed Running Train
I'm on the fence because I have a TSC-X controller and it's unclear if it's supported. Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works.
> Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works.<p>I don't have a TSC-X, but did frown a little bit that there wasn't a generic support for controllers with plain axes. I have a VKB STECS, and basically a 85% of train sims need a workaround.<p>The good news: Claude Code threw together a working prototype for me in a few minutes that had me mapping the two axes (power / brakes) perfectly. It's really a low barrier to entry these days. Can confirm that this game is amazing with it.
"Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works."<p>Joy2Key has been a staple for many a gamer for a while, and reliable. I've used it to control my mouse, even, from my gamepad.
Game looks amazing from a solo dev but this article is terrible, like the journo didn't even play the game they just watched the game.
You make it sound like they didn’t even buy and run the game, but that’s not accurate.<p>> While the game encourages you to master the reasonably simple controls of its range of perfectly crafted engines, you can also just set it to play itself and then take over the free camera as it does.<p>That seems like a perfectly valid way to experience the game to me.
The author is "not exactly a train enthusiast" as they say, and nor are the vast majority of the audience . Yet the article presents the game in a way that sounds appealing to such an audience, potentially exposing it to more people than just the train fan niche. I think that alone makes it better than "terrible"
The job of a games journalists isn't to play games or explain games to gamers. It's to explain the social context of a game to a general audience.<p>If you want a review service or consumer guide then pay for it.
Yeah, it’s a classic bystander’s assessment.
>like the journo didn't even play the game<p>That is industry standard
All journalism is terrible these days. They just want a catchy headline for the ad view and nothing else matters, including whether the headline is true or not.
Paid journalism is still often good (Bloomberg, FT). But yeah if you're just going to free sites it's the same as the free newspapers they used to give out for free in the subway - a few salacious articles, one or two ostensibly 'real news' pieces, and a bunch of ads.
There is like 1 or 2 actual "video game journalists" everyone else is just a glorified blogger.
The irony being, that youtubers and Twitch personalities have almost certainly played the games they are reviewing.<p>But they are considered at least a 'rung' lower than games journalists when it comes to how much access they have, and how much their opinion matters professionally.
This is a 1 person job?! It looks practically photorealistic. That's absolutely wild.
> It looks practically photorealistic.<p>what has improved a lot recently is the physically based rendering - specifically, the lighting. Looking at the steam page, this train game has that type of lighting.<p>Another game that uses similarly realistic lighting is <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2406770/Bodycam/" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/app/2406770/Bodycam/</a>
Not to dismiss the effort by dev, but all Unreal engine games look photoreal these days. My point is that photorealism does not show effort these days.
Most of the review is about the art assets, and I doubt the big ones (e.g. the trains themselves) are off-the-rack Unreal assets. An engine like Unreal 5 will cast your assets in harsh relief. Which is to say, if your game's assets look custom and look good in Unreal 5, it does indeed demonstrate effort and skill.
No engine in the world can make bad assets look good.
Are we talking about train engines or games engines:)
Eskil Steenberg's LOVE has entered the chat.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-A8xvFKaRA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-A8xvFKaRA</a>
Oh wow, I didn't know engines provided that much functionality. Thank you.
The game in question is <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/app/4630570/RUNNING_TRAIN/</a>
I fell down a YouTube hole and watched all of these Derail Valley playthroughs: <a href="https://youtu.be/JSONttyEJ4o" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/JSONttyEJ4o</a><p>Highly recommend if you like having something interesting on in the background.
"Played properly, Running Train asks you to carefully control your speed, braking, and prompt, safe arrival at train stations, and rewards or penalizes you accordingly"<p>So it's basically a clone of 'Densha de go!' series.
For the uninitiated:<p><a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a28954/new-japanese-train-simulator/" rel="nofollow">https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a28954/new-j...</a><p>A full-scale arcade version in this genre, evolving since 1996. Realistic controls, some seem even to include train crew uniforms you can wear while driving…
Pretty much, but no complaints there.
Very impressive! Well done
Looks great. Too bad that steam deck isn’t supported, I hope they’ll add it.
This YouTube is a pretty good walk through of the gameplay: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxGEMOzWt8w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxGEMOzWt8w</a>
I wonder if it's got VR. There's not many train Sims that do even though the sim community in general has really embraced VR.
It works great with UEVR, there's a discussion post in the steam forum on how to set that up. It plays really nicely in VR.
Not yet. It's been asked but since the original dev is doing all the work, he has to prioritize the backlog.
I have almost no appreciation for trains and I’m incredibly interested in trying this.
<i>> one-person development</i> team<p>:)
> is in fact set in a fictional region of Japan, but is created so lovingly that you’ll believe it’s real life.<p>This is actually a major cheat. Realism is expensive, and exposes your creation to the equivalent of the "uncanny valley" for vehicle simulation - the simulated world is never accurate enough and you can't help but notice the differences with reality. E.g. if you see generic buildings ("autogen") near a location you know IRL, the simulation feels immediately sloppy.<p>Yet, as long as I'm not interested in visiting real places, I would go for a vehicle simulation in a fictional world any day. I wouldn't mind if the vehicles were also fictional, as long as they require some technique to drive them. What matters in games is challenge and mastery, but not what you master; your RTS, FPS or chess skills have very little value IRL.<p>> Zoom out far enough—and for some reason it will let you—and you see the tiles, the roads that don’t line up, and the various tricks and techniques that allow it to look so realistic from low down. But don’t do that! That’s silly. This is a train sim, not a plane sim, you’ve no business in the sky.<p>OpenBVE one-upped BVE train sim with external cameras, and as a result you see all this too. In my eyes, they sort of miss the point of a train simulation: the view point is normally attached to the driver, so one can use all sorts of tricks to avoid having to "paint the entire wall" - which is quite important if you count on a community of fan modders who have limited resources.
I never got the appeal for these sim games. From the screenshots, it looks like a beautiful game and I guess I could enjoy the visuals for an hour or 2.<p>But I don't see how it'd entertain me for hours on end. If someone here is into these sim games, what's the reason you keep going back to them?
The simple pleasure of a job well done, even if the job is completely imaginary, because my real job is complex and stupid.<p>Driving the train is a little technical, but not overwhelmingly so. You need to pay attention to the gradient, speed, train weight and rail slipperiness to brake with perfect accuracy every time you come to a station. Signalling is not overly complex but you can benefit from tabbing over to a reference sheet every so often (Ah, double flashing yellow means we’re on a diverging route ahead with a reduced turnout speed so I must brake soon). Learning the german safety systems (PZB and LZB) was interesting. Guiding a 3000t freight train down a mountain isn’t something that can be rushed, it forces you to slow down and be patient.<p>So relaxation mostly. I can launch the game, drive something somewhere for an hour or two, get some endorphins because I did it all right, etc.
These Japanese style train sims are quite a bit less realistic, including fewer signals you need to know (Densha de GO!! essentially only has speed limits, g-forces, train load, and weather modeling.) and simplifying the controls to essentially a single handle that goes from full brake when pushed all the way forward to full traction when pulled toward you, with a switch you need to press to be able to pull it past neutral.<p>But in return they add very technically difficult tasks, such as stopping within a millimeter of the stopping point within a second of the time in the timetable without re-braking or making passengers uncomfortable, or stuff such as pointing at signals. They even add completely unrealistic stuff just for the sake of gameplay such as bonus zones where you need to stay at an exact speed, sounding the horn for overpasses and level crossings, or dimming the lights for oncoming trains.<p>They "feel" very different to games like Train Sim World, but I like them both regardless.
It hits that mid point between complexity and simplicity. You can kind of chill out but without the process becoming too mundane.
Imagine if we can replace all the locomotive drivers with pensions with retired software engineers who literally will pay to do the job remotely? Even better if there is a prediction market and twitch stream on top with bets for the most mundane things.<p>edit: This actually sounds awesome
for me its the abilty to 'switch off'<p>I play Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ets) and its my happy place, its just zen, Sometimes i will have a plugin that will get me local radio stations and i will cruise through italy and greece listening to talk shows in languages i don't understand, sometimes i will do it listening to the rumble of the truck, and i switch off, and allow my thoughts to run free.<p>I've recently started getting into flight sims, and i'm looking for the same sort of thing with that (the only problem with ets is the graphics still looks like a 2013 game) and i think i will get there, its just i'm at the 'learning to fly' stage, and thats kinda difficult. Well, actually flying is surprisingly easy, landing is the tricky bit ;-)
If you're flying a larger passenger plane into basically any major airport, ILS should get you most of the way down - you just need to control speed (you're looking for landing speed +10 by the end)<p>Depending where you're flying, some arrivals have gaps which threw me off massively when I first started - it's because IRL there's ATC there to guide you to the final intersection for the runway, usually 10NM out... so aim for that and capture ILS, it's quite a wide margin for capture.<p>If you're going manually, 10nm out you want to start descending at around 600-700fpm from ~3000ft and you should have visual on the runway at this point
I never thought of mixing that with local radio. That sounds wonderful.
After school I played countless hours of Euro Truck Simulator. It was an awesome escapism. Being a truck driver, driving through sun and snow, in different parts of Europe. Crazy drivers at night, needed to think quick in difficult situations.
I started playing Farm Simulator 2025 recently because a friend wanted me to. Even now, I <i>really</i> long for a proper <i>game</i> with progression, etc. But it's really just a way to drive machines.<p>And I find myself wanting to do that, even without the progression I crave from a game. But then I also feel like I'm <i>massively</i> wasting my time, and I could be playing other games, getting stuff done around the house, or just reading a book. Instead of driving a tractor for no freaking reason. But I still want to do it.
Maybe that is the lesson. No matter how much we wish to progress, we just have to accept the stasis of the world. There will always be more to do.
What would progression look like in a farming simulator? I tried it a few times but have had a similar feeling.
I've been trying to figure that out myself, and I think it involves things being locked away at the start, and unlocking them as you meet certain criteria.<p>Currently, the only criteria is money. You can literally just buy anything at any time, if you have the cash. Tractors, land, buildings... Anything. Almost all of it is instant. The few things that aren't instant are just annoying and not worth the effort.<p>There is a mod that unlocks tractors according to the year, matching them up with when they were released. That's at least a kind of progression, but still not what I'd enjoy.<p>In short, I think I want it more gamified and less of a straight simulation. Unlocking better tractors would mean reaching certain goals while using lesser tractors, etc. Motor Town has this. You need to do a certain amount of work with lesser machines to unlock the later ones. You also need the money.<p>But it would also go beyond what the game has. For some reason, you can be hired as a contractor for things, and rent the necessary equipment for fairly cheap. But as a landowner, you have to micromanage that situation. It's up to you to have the equipment and actually be ready to do the work before you can hand it off to an AI worker. And they're often <i>terrible</i> at it, especially with the lesser-used machines, like (according to a bug report I saw) carrot harvesters.<p>The game absolutely nails simulating driving a tractor. But as a "game", it fails.
Going from a little tractor on a small family farm, to a huge corporate megafarm with all the toys.
Have you ever wanted to try flying a plane or running a city or being a tycoon of roller coasters without having to invest much time, money, and energy to take flight lessons, run for political office, or work your way up through an amusement park company? Sim games let you play with these complex systems easily and walk away when you get bored.
I have often said that for many people that want to change the world (for the greater negative), they need to get addicted to Sim games. They will end up doing a lot less harm in that situation.<p>The real question is, how do you determine who is going to do negative or positive gains. A debate that is millennia old.
i remember years ago reading a tweet, i'm paraphrasing but it went something like:<p>"I love how men go from 'I'm gonna conquer the world!!' to 'im gonna sit here and paint my model figures'"<p>I think about it a lot, and your comment made me think of it again.<p>Flight sims are my 'model railways'
I get the impression he's not saying all sim games, but "drive the vehicle" sims in general. I have to agree. There's just nothing engaging about it imo.
Similar to you, I don't see the attraction of these sims.<p>I have a theory it is a mindfulness thing like many hobbies.<p>Think knitting or crochet or even building and running a model train set in the garage. These things aren't terribly hard once you learn the basics but you have to pay attention to various details over time and it allows you to tune out from the rest of the world when you want to.<p>But I really don't know.
A mind is slightly different from a body in that it really does not understand the concept of "off". It is movement by its very nature. Even its relaxation is expressed through activity. Simple repetition and continuous low-level positive feedback is a way for it to rest while moving.<p>At least, that's my working model of it.
For the same reason that the Vegas attraction “dig a bunch of holes with industrial diggers” was so popular: people want to do jobs they think are cool <i>without</i> years of training cost up front, and this is a way for them to do so.<p>Farming simulator and Car mechanic simulator are both in my todo list, because those are hobbies I’m truly interested in pursuing and I’d like to know what it’s like to do them as a sim <i>first</i>. Most other live sims like this are deeply uninteresting to me, even if they have lovely visuals. Meanwhile I’ve seriously considered buying a Renesas SH-2A simulator for nearly $3k so that I can develop better car software!<p>Is there some job you’ve always wanted to do that requires extensive training that you can’t / won’t complete at this time? That would be a use case for sims that’s less game and more hobby for you (but that’s always a blurry line for all of us so don’t take that as criticism).
I have never played any train sim, but I read video game press that this one hits different.<p>A lot of train sim are about building the rail network, where Running Train focuses on driving. The scenery (dozens of kilometers of japanese railway) is beautiful and it reproduces the japanese railway system realistically.
A lot of these train simulator games are a mix between job simulation and arcadey fun. To give a big example of the latter, in the Densha de GO!! games, the goal is to follow all the speed limits, brake gently without allowing the G-forces to exceed a certain amount, and to arrive at the station <i>exactly</i> on time while stopping at the exact right spot to the millimeter.<p>For some people, just the fact that it's a simulation is enough to make it fun. But to many others, the challenge (and I can promise you it is quite difficult) is what makes it a fun game.<p>I've been playing these games for half a decade now, and I've only managed a zero zero once (meaning that you come to a stop exactly on time to the second and stop within 0.0cm of the marker.)
An hour or two of entertainment for $19.99 isn't outrageous these days. A trip to the movie theater can easily cost more.
To crash the [train, plane, automobile] of course.
Escapism fun. Being able to do the fun parts of something without the bullshit of doing it for real.
"I could enjoy", "How it'd entertain me" - have you even tried a few?
Another notable, if old, train simulator from Japan is OpenBVE. It was easy to model railroads on it. Many short Brazilian routes were/are modeled in OpenBVE. It is particularly convincing since it simulates well the typical lateral wobbling that metric trains are known for.
Looks beautiful and I am filled with an instant sense of nostalgia looking at the screenshots.<p>Personally if I were going to adopt a nerdy train hobby, I would tend more toward train photography. Recently train photographers have been in the news for mostly bad reasons [1], but I have also seen train photographers setting up in rural locations and the scenery looks stunning and also totally chill. The problems arise when people gather en masse to get the "iconic" shots that have been probably been photographed a million times before.<p>Or just go out and actually ride a bunch of different routes. It's been a long time since I've done it, but just riding a local or express train through a scenic area is delightful.<p>Of course there's no reason that true train afficianados can't do all of the above, as well as building model trains!<p>[1] <a href="https://petapixel.com/2025/12/15/japanese-railway-pleads-with-photographers-to-stop-being-dangerously-dumb/" rel="nofollow">https://petapixel.com/2025/12/15/japanese-railway-pleads-wit...</a>
The one thing that is keeping me from riding the routes that I believe would be the must fun/scenic is the OBSCENE cost of those tickets. Granted, these aren't commuter tickets.<p>I would love a trip across the high plains and through the mountains by train. Just like I would love to take a cruise from the bottom of the Mississippi to the top.<p>But them tickets is too high.
In Japan it's quite reasonable to ride local trains. I've been meaning to do a trip along the recently re-opened Tadami Line [1], for example. The one way cost for the full 4-hour, 135km trip is only ¥2,750 ($17).<p>Though when you add in the costs of getting to the start/end of the line, overnight accomodations, and potentially the cost of getting to Japan first - it gets quite a bit more expensive. But staying at a little guesthouse along the way is also part of the charm.<p>[1] <a href="https://fukushima.travel/blogs/tadami-line-5-sights-you-shouldnt-miss/33" rel="nofollow">https://fukushima.travel/blogs/tadami-line-5-sights-you-shou...</a>
So is it fun to play or just fun to look at? I'm getting "Mixtape" vibes from the article (not good!)
You probably won't enjoy it because it's a sim game and not fun in the same way Super Mario Bros is. But it's probably more interactive than Mixtape since you are operating a train.<p>I personally probably won't play Mixtape or this game but both look like good experiences to me if you are in the respective target audience.
'Gameplay' isn't what this is about. The is literally an option to turn it off. For some it will be thousands of hours of fun.
Windows only? :-(
Nowadays most games will run on Linux thanks to Valve's Proton compatibility layer.
2026 Steam hardware survey [1]:<p><pre><code> Windows: 94.10%
Linux: 3.68%
macOS: 2.21%
</code></pre>
[1] Click the "OS Version" row to expand the table, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...</a>
Windows versions running on Linux over Proton tend to be more stable than any native Linux version would be.
It’s beautiful. I wonder how much an LLM was involved if at all.
I’m wondering the same thing. I’ve been thinking about getting into solo LLM game dev. I don’t know the first thing about it
You’re all set!
I'd be happy to help you! I'm working on a game myself.<p>My first piece of advice is: Pick one mechanic or idea, and ship it all the way to a player (a friend) to see if it's legible or fun.
Step 1: acquire land for datacenter.
If the Touhou games or Cave Story were released today, all of Hackernews would be like "dude, I wonder what their LLM workflow is like!" Japanese solo hikikomori devs have been putting out insane stuff since long before LLMs emerged.
"<i>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.</i>"<p>"<i>Don't be snarky.</i>"<p>"<i>Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.</i>" It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Not really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me).<p>You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course.<p>The hard part is the content in the game, and ZUN was already a composer. That just leaves the code which is easy, and the bullet patterns, which ZUN clearly improved at through his earlier games. (and the art, which is famously bad though endearing)
The other comment said that <i>obviously</i> no solo dev do everything by himself. They must have asset maker or song maker who do all things mostly uncredited. But, here we are, of course there are true solo devs!
> Not really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me).<p>That very much depends on how much they did themselves. If they used unity, and went very light on the simulation, sure.<p>> You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course.<p>No you couldn’t. Well you could but it wouldn’t be appropriate for actual beginners unless you stripped it down so much that calling it an engine was meaningless.
By modern standards, <i>yes</i>, writing a bullet hell shooter game is not hard.<p>But ZUN started on the PC-98.<p>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 <i>lot</i> 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 visual novels, or porn. Getting a fast action game running on PC-98 is a genuine accomplishment.<p>[0] I am aware that I just described a compact Macintosh.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0-KvV0SC0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj0-KvV0SC0</a>
the (physical) zuiki mascon seems like a labor of love too.
This place has become an AI-focused hellscape. It really is sad.
It actually seems to be a relatively small vocal group. I've marked most of them red (as I previously did the one above) with <a href="https://hackersmacker.org" rel="nofollow">https://hackersmacker.org</a>
The people touting LLMs or the people <i>complaining</i> about LLMs? :)
Thanks for the recc, very cool extension!
I'll sometimes search for the LLM string on random non-AI related articles. It's sad.
[flagged]
I read the title and assumed this was going to be about Transport Tycoon.
>And oh my goodness, it’s so pretty.<p>Am I the only one that thinks the word "pretty" is overused to describe the visual quality and artistry of games? I see this word thrown around often and it feels so low-effort.
Looks very realistic, however I have to question the whole premise of a train sim, trains seem to be the most boring vehicle to choose here, they run in tracks so not much freedom, basically accelerate and brake.
Then you know nothing about trains and the track networks they run on, which is probably why you dont find them interesting. Thats fine, just realise there is much more to trains than accelerate and brake :)
Well TBF OP is more or less correct, and I say this as a person who is pretty much into trains (although not train sims specifically). All a conductor can do is accelerate and brake - respect speed limits, brake in time so you don't overrun the platform at the next station (for passenger trains), be on the lookout for people/vehicles crossing the tracks illegally (and hope that they get out of the way fast enough, because once you see them, it's usually too late to stop in time, unless the train is <i>really</i> slow), be careful (especially when you have a freight train) not to be too slow before an incline, otherwise you might not make it all the way up etc. etc. Where you go is not your decision, the points are set remotely.
There is a lot more than that. Monitoring things like power generation, fuel, breaking ability, wheel heating sensors, managing door systems, human aspects like reading signals and lights and deciding what to do, all the way down to simple things like horns, wipers, and lights. Its pretty much exactly the same as a car but without a steering wheel and lots of added electrical systems.<p>Would you say a car is just accelerate, breaking, and steering?
Just my experience from being on trains, they accelerate, cruise, slow down and stop am I missing anything? They must be ripe for automation.
Pretty much (see Docklands Light Railway), with the caveat of most trains still needing a safety driver to watch for humans.
Just my experience from being on planes, they take off, cruise, slow down and land, am I missing anything?<p>...seriously, 99%+ of the job of a conductor (and of a pilot) could be automated, the reason you still have a person (or two) in the cockpit is the rest of the time. As the saying goes, "flying is hours and hours of boredom sprinkled with a few seconds of sheer terror". And the same is also valid for trains. There are automated trains, but AFAIK all of them are metros or people movers where the whole system is closed off (platform doors etc.) and track conditions are closely monitored. I'm not aware of an automated train running on a "traditional" track network.
You're correct for train driving sims, but they hit a very particular niche of people who <i>really like</i> trains.
They're insanely popular in Japan.
Railroad Tycoon hints at a world outside of accelerate and brake.