6 comments

  • derdi 18 minutes ago
  • Insanity 15 minutes ago
    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.

    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?

    • LollipopYakuza 7 minutes ago
      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.

    • fragmede 9 minutes ago
      Escapism fun. Being able to do the fun parts of something without the bullshit of doing it for real.
  • kotberg 7 minutes ago
    "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"

    So it's basically a clone of 'Densha de go!' series.

  • dash2 37 minutes ago
    > including support for the Zuiki MASCON, a bespoke peripheral for train driving sims.

    This just makes me feel so glad to be alive today!

  • wolvoleo 17 minutes ago
    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.
    • LollipopYakuza 15 minutes ago
      Not yet. It's been asked but since the original dev is doing all the work, he has to prioritize the backlog.
      • wolvoleo 7 minutes ago
        Oh ok I'll still try it out though. But hopefully it'll come one day
  • dyauspitr 50 minutes ago
    It’s beautiful. I wonder how much an LLM was involved if at all.
    • marginalia_nu 29 minutes ago
      Well they shipped something, which speaks against LLM involvement.
      • LollipopYakuza 14 minutes ago
        I wish this was true. That AI slop couldn't reach prod and polute our virtual stores and assets marketplaces.
    • bitwize 22 minutes ago
      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.
      • Ferret7446 18 minutes ago
        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)

    • therobots927 30 minutes ago
      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
      • blipvert 28 minutes ago
        You’re all set!
        • therobots927 15 minutes ago
          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.
      • markdown 20 minutes ago
        Step 1: acquire land for datacenter.