For the uninitiated:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/a28954/new-j...

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…

I think this is incredible, and I am so happy for him, he deserves all the praise he gets (and maybe more).

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.

Very cool to see an Indonesian dev on the homepage of HN!

I thought it was kind of commoditised these days - there's an Unreal asset store I think? Probably one for Unity as well.

Yeah, love that is just works.

I'm working on a bit of a hobby project to rebuild a beefier Mascon. Mainly inspired by how much I enjoyed Running Train

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.

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 actually be doing 100% of the work solo. That’s pretty rare.

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.

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 since the 90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Mukaiya). There are some Nintendo Switch train simulators like Densha de GO that are only available in Japan.

I'm sure there's a treasure trove of already-built high-quality assets of Japanese trains.

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.

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 never played any train sim, but I read video game press that this one hits different.

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.

"Somebody on the forums posted a tool that converts generic joystick axes to keypresses, but not sure how well that works."

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.

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.

Link added to toptext. Thanks!

An hour or two of entertainment for $19.99 isn't outrageous these days. A trip to the movie theater can easily cost more.

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.

Please tell him thank you from us all :)

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.

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.

Windows versions running on Linux over Proton tend to be more stable than any native Linux version would be.

It's a simple word that does the job. No need to overthink it.

I like this comparison. That’s a good way to think about it.

Hmm, it didn’t occur to me. Yeah, not sure it’s obvious to many people so was glad for the explanation

100% they look incredible.

I mentioned Densha de GO above, they have a designated controller like that for the Nintendo Switch too :)

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.

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.

They "feel" very different to games like Train Sim World, but I like them both regardless.

Nowadays most games will run on Linux thanks to Valve's Proton compatibility layer.

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

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.

Something of a self-reinforcing statistic. Steam is rarely installed on Mac because there’s hardly any point doing so.

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.

edit: This actually sounds awesome

Yeah, it’s a classic bystander’s assessment.

I'd be happy to help you! I'm working on a game myself.

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.

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 exactly on time while stopping at the exact right spot to the millimeter.

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.

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.)

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.

"most" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Multiplayer games generally don't.

Haven't tried this one yet, but in my experience it's like 90% of single player games work and the remaining 10% will never work.

You’re all set!

Similar to you, I don't see the attraction of these sims.

I have a theory it is a mindfulness thing like many hobbies.

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.

But I really don't know.

Do you mean actual Brazilian railway track engineers used this game to plan/develop actual routes? Or just that you can play Brazilian routes in the game?

I would never view a truth-teller in a negative light.

At least in my experience, every single game I've launched has worked on Linux. I don't play online shooter games which seems to be the only category that doesn't work.

I game on Linux (have so for years) and the only thing I can't play is a few AAA FPS titles. Honestly not much of an issue depending on what games you play.

Games with anticheat generally don't. Multiplayer games without anticheat generally so work.

"Most is doing a lot of work".

So, 90% isn't most in your book?

the (physical) zuiki mascon seems like a labor of love too.

> Multiplayer games generally don't.

"generally" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

A pattern I’ve found useful in other settings is starting with code for an existing “game” that sort of resembles what you want to make and then modifying components until you have a whole new game but it shares similar infrastructure to the original. So you benefit from the existing system and avoid a lot of problems.

Not really, those games are very simple code wise. A high schooler could do it (source me).

You could make a bullet hell game engine as a project in an intro CS course.

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)

This place has become an AI-focused hellscape. It really is sad.

Are we talking about train engines or games engines:)

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.

FWIW, that was not obvious to me either, and I appreciated the parent comment

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 be a commercial pilot. Being a personal/hobby pilot is very expensive and quite a bit more dangerous.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

"Don't be snarky."

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Proud 2.2%er

But I also have had it installed via Crossover at some points to check out a Windows-only game.

Which I just realize also skews the statistic because Crossover basically creates a Windows VM.

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.

At least, that's my working model of it.

They're insanely popular in Japan.

You're correct for train driving sims, but they hit a very particular niche of people who really like trains.

An Enders Game for train drivin’ eh

Eskil Steenberg's LOVE has entered the chat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-A8xvFKaRA

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?

sits back with popcorn

Recent big multiplayer games:

Marathon, no Linux support.

Call of Duty, no Linux support.

Battlefield 6, no Linux support.

Valorant, no Linux support.

The Finals works and is great, but I'd be mindful of what games I'm giving up if considering a full switch

What would be your added value?

I was just playing Sand: Raiders of Sophie.

Before that Arma Reforger.

Before that Arc Raiders.

There are a very small minority of games that use kernel-level anticheat that won't work, including newer BF6 and COD. Tbh I wouldn't play those anyway because of that feature, which sucks because BF series was fun.

Macs have a single digit market share globally, so even if people started installing games on them the needle wouldn't move much.

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 :)

Railroad Tycoon hints at a world outside of accelerate and brake.

The ideas and aesthetics

The other comment said that obviously 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!

Just to play the routes.

Designing the game and having codex shit out the code is how I roll.

His Behind the Scenes video for LOVE is one of my favorite developer vids ever.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f90R2taD1WQ

Those all require kernel level anticheat.

Mac market share is closer to 20% when you exclude machines installed in offices and enterprises. Some estimates put the number as high as 30% in North America.

The fact that the Steam number is as high as it is, despite the extreme lack of compatible content, is noteworthy.

Ah yes that's wider than driving a train, if thats what this games I misunderstood.

Thanks for the recc, very cool extension!

That's the part that is visible to everyone else, so that's the part that an LLM can see. That means someone else can clone your ideas and aesthetics. The ol' double-edged sword.

> 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.

...and yet out of 280 multiplayer games in my library 200 are marked as Deck Verified or Playable (and most of the rest has no rating available). Also, looks like all of your examples are from a single particular niche.

Everything. The story, how the game works, the art assets, voice lines, music, etc.

Programming is like 10% of a game. The world building and UX is the juice.

Anybody can make Lord of the Rings, but there's only one.

> ...which sucks because BF series was fun.

Was, yeah.

I enjoyed the hell out of BF I and BF V. I also enjoy shooters that have "modern" weaponry. Given how fun BF I was at launch, and V was when I picked it up, I purchased a copy of BF 2042 at launch because -given that that's the time before the "I'm going to do nothing but snipe from spawn to maxxximise my KDR and get Sick Youtube Clips" crew comes to be the majority of the playerbase- that's the best time to play these games.

I regret that purchasing decision so much. BF 2042 was very, very pretty. It looked so good. But -as a game- it was so bland and boring.

> 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.

You definitely can. One of the assignments in the CS intro course I took was a bullet hell game. "calling it an engine was meaningless" is an opinion that requires ignoring the fundamentals of what a game engine is.

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 really 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.

Just my experience from being on trains, they accelerate, cruise, slow down and stop am I missing anything? They must be ripe for automation.

It only works when starting with open source to show to LLM. To monetize my modification, I would not make mine open source.

If the licensing allows for it I’m fine.

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?

Absolute nonsense. There is no cookie-cutter formula for game development, despite what the idea guys think. Mario 64 was literally just Mario in a single small room until the last six months of development. They focused purely on the actual game - the mechanics, physics, movesets, items, and enemies - inside that tiny room until it felt perfect. Then, in one final push, they quickly slapped together all the levels and the storyline at the very end.

We are very quickly going to see the reality: games are made by programmers. Everyone else who has spent decades comfortably riding on the programmers backs is being replaced by AI. This includes the artists, the junior programmers, the testers, all of them. The future isn't bloated teams, it's going to be just one lone genius (or a small group of programming geniuses banding together) and his magnum opus across the board.

I like Linux alot.

But if the biggest multiplayer games straight up don't support it, that needs to be acknowledged.

Add League of Legends to the list.

I've had Deck verified games straight up refuse to work on Linux.

It always feels like it's my fault somehow. 'Well of COURSE Wayland doesn't work, skill issue'. Vs Windows where I can blame Microsoft.

Big BF fan from the first one up to BF1 (WWI)

Bad Company 2 is probably my fav next to BF4

A game engine is a framework that allows you to create games. Assuming you don’t have tons of content (and I’m sure you didn’t in an intro CS class), building a game is an easier task than building a game engine.

Let me ask you this. What were the parameters of your assignment? What libraries were you allowed to use.

Pretty much (see Docklands Light Railway), with the caveat of most trains still needing a safety driver to watch for humans.

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.

Would you say a car is just accelerate, breaking, and steering?

Just my experience from being on planes, they take off, cruise, slow down and land, am I missing anything?

...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.

Given that Death Stranding 2 only credits Kojima as the game's writer and designer, I guess -by GGP's very silly definition- it's a solo project. XD

Most of my favorite games don't have physics engines, and many are story sequels. One of my favorites is the modern Equivalent to Myst.

Good luck with your idea tho

I vouched for you

It should be acknowledged, yes, but not while failing to mention that it mostly applies to the genre of competitive shooters. "Generally don't run" doesn't apply to pretty much anything else, where a statement closer to truth would be "generally run, with some notable exceptions".

Cmon planes move is 3 axis (yes trains technically do but not via the controls) and take-off landing is a lot more complex than leaving/stopping at a station, the comparison is crazy.

> ...where a statement closer to truth would be "generally run, with some notable exceptions".

Yep. Devs usually have to actively make their game not work on Proton for it to not work on the version of Proton that Steam ships. Most devs aren't so petty as to put in that extra work, so they don't.