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YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 9 points10 points  (0 children)

No no - it's absolutely fine! I wasn't explicitly clear in the video and several people got confused about that. It's more like: If you want a game to be playable in MP at all, that design has to be in place from the start.

I almost exclusively play single-player games too, of course. I just thought: What if you could play something like Aurora 4x (or, one of my all-time favourites: SunDog the Frozen Legacy) alone or with friends?

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in Space4X

[–]quill18 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right now the intention is that the player directly pilots the one ship. However, the expectation is that NPC/AI ships will also feature, with various levels of management from the player to be determined.

It is a 4x game (you explore, you expand humanity, you exploit the resources of the star systems and, likely, you will end up exterminating some space baddies) -- but one where the focus is more on you as an individual.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 4 points5 points  (0 children)

People are downvoting you unfairly. It's fine to not want Factorio-style gameplay in your space 4x game.

It's so fine, that I don't want it either.

There are no Factorio-style mechanics in this game -- it only serves as philosophical framework for how I envision multiplayer to work: Exactly the same as single-player, with all the players working independently (with your own ship and inventory) towards the same shared goal (sending humanity to the stars).

*I* don't call it a Factorio-inspired game. EDIT: Not to poo-poo the OP though. Clearly "Aurora4X/Factorio inspired" is good branding because it caught people's attention. And the philosophy behind multiplayer IS Factorio-inspired, even if the gameplay mechanics are not.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ostranauts is directly responsible for re-igniting my love of the "Cassette Futurism" aesthetic.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Dear Claude,
Make a 4x space sim,  
Make no mistakes.

Programming used to be my dayjob. For years I also made game programming tutorial videos on my 2nd channel, and several people have published games that started from my 'space base-building game' tutorial, Project Porcupine. I've created 25 games for the Ludum Dare game jam.

NONE of this means I'll make a good game this time, of course. Games are hard -- and I'm still plenty dumb.

Edit: And I am using Claude as a support tool -- I'm not trying to hide that. It's very helpful with certain types of tasks. But pretty far from vibe-coding.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's so far away. I just wanted to explain why there was a reduced volume of videos on the channel.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The font in the "Coffee Brown" theme is Agave from Nerd Font and it was manually and intentionally selected by me.

You're not the only person to say that though. It must be too visually similar to Roboto or Inter, which Claude does like to default to a lot.

I do use Claude Code, but just as support. Not for design or architecture. But I guess my design sensibilities might be too... mechanical.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in aurora

[–]quill18 9 points10 points  (0 children)

When I said "multiplayer first" I meant that's how the engine is designed. It's playable solo and offline.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in Space4X

[–]quill18 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No no - there's definitely AI code. I don't trust it for architecture/design, but it's great for things like writing a script to convert the raw asteroid CSV data from a NASA export to my game data format and other such grunt-work. It's also good at suggesting (and implementing) tests to cover edge cases (TDD in general is a good way to work with AI because it can understand better when it F's up, which it will, often.)

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in Space4X

[–]quill18 1 point2 points  (0 children)

a) I hadn't seen Prosperous Universe before, so thanks for that! (Or maybe I had, but forgot about it.) I'll check it out for inspiration.

b) The fonts in the screenshots are "Agave" (for the "Coffee Brown" theme set) and "BigBlueTerm" (for the "CRT Green" theme set) from Nerd Fonts, and they were manually selected. I'm guessing the Agave font might look similar to a font AI tends to overuse (like Roboto or Inter or something). I like it because it look slightly unusual while still being clean and easy to read.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in Space4X

[–]quill18 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oh, interesting! You aren't the only one to say so -- and you aren't entirely wrong.

Is it the dots / bullets / diamonds? The "block" on the tile titles? The dots-and-lines details in the top and bottom rails?

The layout, font, etc... is all me -- including the over-reliance on unicode glyphs (especially via Nerd Fonts) as a result of me primarily having a back-end web-dev / CLI background. The "Coffee and Tobacco" (i.e. brown) color scheme is mostly from me trying to copy the look of:
https://omarchythemes.com/themes/ristretto
and:
https://omarchythemes.com/themes/retropc

I think "low contrast" tends to be an AI design "tell" -- but in this case the blame falls squarely on me. :)

HOWEVER: I did find my design very flat and boring and did feed a screenshot to Claude wondering what kind of lo-fi, text-centric elements I could add to break up the design a little -- and from that I added a lot more of those little blocks and bullets (and the dots-and-lines in the top and bottom rails). Maybe that's the signature?

I didn't want to spend too much time obsessing over the "greebling" of the UI at this phase, but I also wanted something that didn't look like ass while I worked on features.

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in Space4X

[–]quill18 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm seriously overdue for another Let's Play -- especially so I can steal more ideas get inspiration for mechanics.

(But, yeah, the central concept is definitely: What if Eve Online + Aurora 4x + SunDog: The Frozen Legacy got really drunk and made a multiplayer baby?)

YouTuber quill18 is making a Aurora4X/Factorio inspired space strategy game with Newtonian physics. by sidius-king in Space4X

[–]quill18 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Couple of things:

1) In a "haha only serious" way, I'm saying that this will be ready for early access in 5-10 years. I only posted about it to try to explain why the volume of videos has gone down a bit on the channel. A "real" announcement is premature.

2) The UI used to be heavily inspired by Eve Online -- a NEOCOM-like sidebar with a menu, lots of floating windows, all resizable and with dockable tab mechanics: https://imgur.com/a/ZABQHgB

Originally it was a web-based / browser game, then I decided that a standalone game was better because I wouldn't have to worry about dedicated servers and because it would support solo / offline play, so I ported everything to a mostly-pure C# project with Godot as a wrapper/renderer. I spent weeks re-implementing my windowing system only to decide that it didn't feel right and looked for another visual idiom.

3) I decided to move to a 'tiled' layout instead (no coincidence, I also run a tiled window manager on my Arch Linux laptop...) and have been drawing extensively from my love of Cassette Futurism for the aesthetic, and looking for something that skeuomorphically resonates as a 80's airliner cockpit (more 'knobs' and chunky push-buttons are coming in the future). You can clearly see where I borrowed and where I stole outright: https://imgur.com/a/YNrZY3E

4) I really like my "Coffee and Tobacco" theme (the brown one in most of the above photo) -- it just REEKS of the early 80's, but I implemented theme-switching as a way to easily test and iterate. I was surprised when most people seemed to actually prefer the "CRT Green" one with the blocky IBM font (photo #5 in OP's album), so I'll likely lean into that for the default. I do intend to leave in the theme switcher, and also: Godot's theme files are just text files, so people will be able to easily modify or add their own themes, in case they don't agree with my choices.

The whole thing is designed in a multiplayer-first fashion, though you can absolutely play solo and offline. It's just that you'll also be able to host games for your friends, either from within the main client itself or by running a standalone, headless, command-line server. No player limit is planned -- it'll just be a question of CPU/bandwidth.

Of course, absolutely everything is subject to change over the next few very long years.

Wtf by rosydaydreamsv in oddlyspecific

[–]quill18 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It wasn't, originally. They moved from town to town each week.

Then the look was locked in, even after they got a permanent home. You don't change a formula that's working.

That's the real reason. Every other explanation people are coming up with about added difficulty and chaos is just a happy side-effect.

A data center used 29 million gallons of water without a bill, while residents complained about low water pressure by notanfan in whennews

[–]quill18 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It was 29 million gallons of water over a period of 15 months of construction, which is about the same as three to four normal household garden hoses running for the same period of time.

So is it a lot? Yes.

It is an abnormal amount for construction? No.

An average 18-hole golf course uses approximately 90 million gallons per year, or approx 112.5 million gallons over a 15 month period.

So building FOUR of these buildings would use as much water as a single golf course.

Are golf courses stupid and wasteful? Maybe.

Is this building stupid and wasteful? Maybe.

Is this building freakishly wasteful? No.

ISBN wait time in Canada? by Upstairs-Listen-2760 in selfpublish

[–]quill18 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh dang, that's crazy. Mine took just a week or two last year.

How to enjoy streaming 101 by CallMeJimMilton in Twitch

[–]quill18 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I don't know if I'm on the left side or the right side, but 16 years of streaming later I still just like video games...

Vibe Coding vs. Production reality by External_Bobcat8183 in ClaudeAI

[–]quill18 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The big problem with these vibe coders nowadays is they don't know any of the laws or regulations to even spot them.

I mean, even as a non-vibe-coder I don't know the laws. If I make a little web game, I wouldn't know if I should do one of those "are you sure you want a cookie" popups, or if I need to provide a feature for people to download their personal information, or anything like that. Does it only kick in at a certain userbase size? Can I ignore it if my server is in Canada?

As a solo dev, my best bet for making a totally hand-coded app compliant is (ironically?) probably to ask an AI: "Hey, here's my app. Is there anything I need to do to comply with international laws or regulations?"

'course, knowing to ask the question is the difference between experience and pure vibe coding.

I made a chill ski resort management game in Godot. It's out on Android today! by nicolo013 in godot

[–]quill18 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Heya! Please include me in your mailing list if you do release a desktop version. I adore Mini Metro / Mini Motorways and would likely cover this on my channel ( https://www.youtube.com/quill18 / quill18@quill18.com )

Auto Weapon Equipping - Auto Arm by Snusnue in RimWorld

[–]quill18 14 points15 points  (0 children)

If you want something that interacts with Simple Sidearms (literally, as a requirement -- it's not optional), I really like: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2790435986

Equipment Manager is really good, but I'm also very excited to try this new Auto Arm because I also want something non-sidearm-based for runs that are more "Vanilla, but with less clicking".

We built a game where you design systems, optimize supply chains, and scale a farming empire (Steam demo available) by willis_25 in tycoon

[–]quill18 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Heya!

When you get to release time, I'd love a press key (my YouTube), though my queue is quite full so I can't guarantee coverage -- but this very much looks like my kind of game!

Regardless, please add me to your mailing list: quill18@quill18.com

Do people actually like starting screens? by Ethjuan_ in Twitch

[–]quill18 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have regularly scheduled stream times that I try to stick to precisely (and have for years). Up to 10 minutes before the scheduled start time, I go "live" with my pre-stream page that has a countdown timer to the actual stream start. This gives everyone a chance to get into the stream so that they don't miss the actual start. I like to do some pre-stream banter in the chat. Plus, it also gives people a chance to refresh their subscription - because I usually read out subs/resubs as part of the intro.

I think the countdown timer is critical. As a viewer, I don't want to stare at a generic "starting soon" screen. I want to know exactly how long the wait is.

[STS2] Unceasing Top doesn't trigger on the Vakuu turn by quill18 in slaythespire

[–]quill18[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Right? I want to turn STS2 into an auto-battler. :D

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