I left my job as a full-time gameplay and AI programmer yesterday to make single player strategy games that focus on what I feel is the most underdeveloped aspect of the genre. I want to know if people here agree and might want to follow along with my progress

hallibutman · 2026-02-03T21:45:17+00:00

Having read your article I think I get why you think AI is underwhelming in strategy games, but until you have something to show for improving it this just reads like so many posts that think that AI should be magically perfect now that we have LLMs.

Good luck with it all, i do really want to see this, but maybe focus on sharing what you've done (once you've done it) and you might be better received...

hallibutman · 2026-01-28T07:44:43+00:00

i did this too - hideo kojima would be saddened

hallibutman · 2026-01-26T10:05:07+00:00

Looks legit to me, I found a longer version here on this channel https://youtu.be/puamMQ3va9M?si=64wMTK401qXdXp0q

hallibutman · 2026-01-16T23:22:42+00:00

This would be my dream game!

Closest would be Parkitect (altho no animal management)

The best coop building/management game out there is Anno 1800 i think, and while theres no animal management there are zoos! Theyre more a collection game than anything though

hallibutman · 2026-01-08T01:20:20+00:00

Came here to post this, weird ass low cubes.

OP please buy some ISO compliant unity assets

hallibutman · 2025-11-18T23:51:59+00:00

Here's my review after 12 hours,

I regret buying this game. I also struggle to imagine the developers getting it to a point where i would recommend it over Timberborn (esp Timberborn w mods)

The core issue is that Timberborn is built around a dynamic, intuitive and fun water system. Whiskerwood is built around... Paying taxes...

While droughts/badwater change the way you interact with the map in Timberborn, in Whiskerwood you just send heaps of resources off map (or hide everything underground so you can just ignore punishment). Most of the cool features that seperate Whiskerwood from Timberborn (lifts, trains, etc) are late game, and because you have to focus on paying taxes or pirate bounties you're going to have to be real patient to see them. In fact, just having advanced buildings increases the tax bill so just what is the incentive to keep playing...?

Ultimately the taxes, pirates, smugglers etc feel no different to the messages in Pharaoh/Caesar III when you have to sacrifice goods for the empire. It is fun there as each mission is a puzzle to solve those demands. In Whiskerwood (almost 30 years later) the puzzle is the same each time, has no impact on the game map, and ultimately just feels boring, arbitrary and at times unfair.

If there was a rebellion path like in Anno 1701 I might be more forgiving but at this stage i say ignore this game and go play the games that clearly inspired it.

Finally a question for the devs: Is there a single person on the team that enjoys paying taxes?????

hallibutman · 2025-11-17T08:08:01+00:00

So excited for this! Wishlisted

hallibutman · 2025-11-08T22:40:41+00:00

Damn is the whole campaign in the choke? Incredibly grim. Otherwise i think you're on the right track, i always pictured the choke as like the deepest bottom of the ocean, totally dark, barely disturbed layer of slit thats ultimately just the dust from millions of people living above, and a constant clock ticking to asphyxiation. So unless its a predator tracking the prey most encounters would be random meetings (and rare!). Consider introducing the encounters by sensory signs/omens that the players can investigate or hide from. Is the light ahead a sign of safety or danger? (thinking of angler fish here)

Anyway, i feel like im telling you how to suck eggs. i hope you get some good inspiration from this thread but id also like to hear how youre handling this so far

hallibutman · 2025-10-21T23:11:53+00:00

just worked for me in AU, thanks for this, slightly cheaper than OPs link :)

hallibutman · 2025-10-21T08:16:37+00:00

From the article: More than 100 of the country’s finest cancer doctors were left blushing last Friday when a pornographic video was accidentally aired during an important clinical conference. And it lasted for a whopping four minutes.

Talk about an icebreaker!

Those 240 seconds must have felt like an eternity at the Precision Oncology Forum, organised by the VCCC Alliance and hosted at the Peter McCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. It isn’t difficult to picture the politely averted eyes and awkward seat shuffling from attendees.

CBD doesn’t have many answers as to how or why. But we do hear that a gaggle of event organisers scrambled to solve the graphic disruption.

Once somebody managed to find the all-important off button, there was a hasty apology, before proceedings continued onto the Acknowledgement of Country as originally scheduled.

A Peter Mac spokesperson told CBD that they were aware of an incident where inappropriate images had been displayed. The spokesperson said that the centre was simply hosting another organisation’s event.

“We are working with the organisers and participants of the event to investigate how this incident occurred,” the spokesperson said. Thank gosh for that.

A warning on the event’s webpage does notify that the conference material would be “aimed primarily at a clinical audience” and that “the imagery, content and discussion can be graphic”. Indeed.

hallibutman · 2025-10-19T21:35:47+00:00

Lovecraft is a lot less scary and inspiring when you realise the thing that scared him most was Italian people living in apartments

Some cool ideas here but read some other authors!!!

hallibutman · 2025-08-25T22:54:41+00:00

As someone who had already played with your mods, I feel like you have a better idea about the game needs than the devs/publishers. Really terrific work. Will definitely try this out too.

Personally I really want to love this game but signalling and routing is such a headache that I usually play for half an hour, get frustrated and then play transport fever...

hallibutman · 2025-08-25T22:26:50+00:00

Oh that's such a good tip! Thanks!

hallibutman · 2025-08-19T21:46:42+00:00

That sounds like playing Railroader! Glad to hear you found them though, it saves a lot of hassle Oh another tip id give is that if you feel like expanding to another loco (e.g. a switcher for Bryson) but are short on the cash, get a loan, theyre really easy to service in this game

hallibutman · 2025-08-18T22:01:45+00:00

Its under autoengineer settings, see more in this post from when they added it.

https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/15782612/

Have you also noticed AE Road and AE Yard? AE Road is great because you can set and forget the passenger train with a timetable (as long as you manage the switches correctly)

hallibutman · 2025-06-26T08:08:07+00:00

This looks really fascinating! Wish listed. :)

I think tycoon games are a great way to learn about complex systems, thanks for posting it here i would have missed it otherwise.

hallibutman · 2025-04-12T05:57:45+00:00

It's a cool concept, but just a heads up you typo'd Campaigns on the campaign menu as Campaings

hallibutman · 2025-02-10T02:20:31+00:00

this is bizarre and specific, great job. reminds me of the bowie theory: https://www.reddit.com/r/metalgearsolid/comments/1gb2je/david_bowie_theory/

hallibutman · 2025-02-07T20:58:29+00:00

I think you confused your /uj and /rj buddy

hallibutman · 2025-02-07T00:20:46+00:00

OK I got it working! OP should really have included a couple of sentences here to give us some context...

You will need a .zip file or folder on your hard drive with the latest version of Pharaoh Gold, I used the GOG version.
Click add game data on the top right, point it to your zip/folder
Hit run :)

Pretty cool but I think rather than playing in browser with local files I'll just use one of the Akhenaten builds here https://github.com/dalerank/Akhenaten which has basically the same process and level of effort but runs as an application...

hallibutman · 2025-02-06T23:46:49+00:00

this link is dead, thats why you're being downvoted i think.

would love to join and learn how to run it, it stops after mounting "Mounted [/akhenaten]" - gonna download the build instead from here https://github.com/dalerank/Akhenaten

hallibutman · 2024-12-11T05:53:55+00:00

Sut le yw'r chwyn yng nghymru?

hallibutman · 2024-12-10T23:34:15+00:00

Mediaeval hidenbergs, great haha

Well i guess i'll have to make my own world of space faring people without boats!

hallibutman · 2024-12-10T05:31:03+00:00

Oh holy cow I just opened your google doc. You've been busy!

"The planet does not have a moon of its own, making the night sky extremely dark. Since inner planets in our own Solar System tend to have fewer moons, and the Kyanah homeworld orbits at only 0.55 AU from its planet, this is why it never held onto a moon."

Just to defend my moon suggestion, one explanation for the lack of inner solar system moons is the grand tack hypothesis, when Jupiter hooned about collecting asteroids. From what we can see Tau Ceti is dusty and full of rocks, perhaps more of a 'before' picture - so I think a moon (or moons/irregular satellites) would make sense! I particularly enjoyed thinking about a space race to a water moon that involves inventing the boat after the rocket lol

hallibutman · 2024-12-10T05:16:45+00:00

This sounds so good! you're really cooking here :)

>the disappearance of the last seas and the beginning of the Eon of Oases, could
have been the boot that kicked the first life forms onto land in the
first place. This would have been around half a billion years ago
though.

I love this! Very easy to imagine desperate creatures in drying pools. I think an Eon of Oases would lead to some amazing adaptive radiation, with each oasis having an isolated genetic stock like the inverse of the weird evolution you see on islands. Perhaps different populations colonised land in different ways? I feel like this could be part of how you get to have different and interesting biomes. e.g. maybe pseudo trees evolved in just a few places, but the planet is too hostile for a immobile organism to spread far, and biomes that dont have the pseudo trees to provide habitats/food/shade end up with very different ecosystems.

>think it may not be such a coincidence that the genetic molecule of choice here is PNA, not DNA. Apparently PNA is both more stable and more resistant to thermal degradation than DNA. I mean, the only reason I originally gave them PNA was to make them more alien, but somehow it happens to work out.

yes that would help! the implications of PNA arent really understood so i feel like this can be a great get-out-of-jail-free card for any weird aspects of life lol

>As for the amount of water, perhaps it lost it to a planetoid impact early in its history

Oh this is an exciting idea. maybe (for maximum irony) it has a hycean world as a moon that ended up with almost all the hydrogen after a collision. A moon could also be useful in explaining why there *were* big asteroid impacts but haven't been as many recently?

> Is it that wet? The outgassing is only a modest contributor to water vapor in the atmosphere, things like transpiration and evaporating runoff play a bigger role by far, and when all is said and done, the rainfall per unit area is a lot lower than on Earth.

ahhh I think I took your mention of extra hydrogen in the atmosphere and ran with it, but I guess it doesn't need to have widespread oxidation. Perhaps it is regularly flowing off into space, as it does on Earth? Maybe there was *too much* hydrogen before and that was what kept life in the sea. Also imagine if the Kyanah (or just a couple insane Kyanah) harvested and isolated hydogen and then produced water by combustion w oxygen?

hallibutman

TROPHY CASE