Improving Steam Engine Simulator With Community Feedback
Вставка
- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
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Wishlist the Steam Engine Simulator DLC on Steam!
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In this video, I talk about the negative feedback about my game's new DLC and I try to address those concerns.
Download the OG Engine Simulator for free!
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Join the Official Engine Simulator Discord Server!
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Timeline
00:00 - Intro and Master Mechanics
00:20 - Brilliant [Sponsored Segment]
01:10 - Disastrous Testing Results
04:25 - Solving the Problem
05:47 - Fixing the Steep Learning Curve
10:37 - Fixing the Difficulty Progression
14:55 - Sound Effects and Other Changes
16:05 - Conclusion
#physics #simulation #gamedev
FTC Disclaimer: This video was sponsored by Brilliant.
Thanks for watching! - Розваги
EDIT: I'm noticing a lot of people in the comments blaming the testers or just commenting "skill issue" and I think I am partly to blame for this. The testers simply provided honest, valuable feedback and I believe the vast majority of it was useful. They are not stupid and were all selected through an application process. As a software developer, my job is to write software that will provide value to the user and I can't just write off all negative feedback as "skill issue" and "haters hating". The feedback I received from this process was extremely useful and has made the product better. The feedback was integrated into the game without sacrificing depth and the gameplay was not changed significantly. It just communicates to the player more clearly and is more polished.
ORIGINAL COMMENT: If I survive the creation of this DLC, I promise I'll make a train DLC. For legal reasons this is not a real promise. Thanks for watching everyone!
Without this channel's sponsors, none of these projects would be possible. To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/AngeTheGreat . You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
"I promise ill make the train dlc. Oh btw its not a promise" Lmao
Promising anything in the video game industry is a dangerous proposition lol
@@AngeTheGreat true
There are Diesel trains too 😉
@@AngeTheGreat I see you have learned quite fast.
I gotta be honest, I'm 99% here for Engine Sim but seeing how much you care about quality in the DLC gives me a lot of confidence that you'll do Engine Sim right.
Yeah I respect this a lot
And he's *_transparent about it all,_* which also deserves praise!
@@DUKE_of_RAMBLE -- YES! The transparency is a massive factor in community trust and support. It's one of several things that separate the "WUBE software"s from the "Intercept Games"s.
the idea of a steam engine rage game is hilarious
Steam engine simulator horror game
i can imagine running a real powerplant in this economy is stresfull af
@@Thefreakyfreek horror game versions of this though
@@delavantythe fuel prices are the horror
@@chugachuga9242 nah I'm talking about like five nights at Freddy's kinda horror
At this point I think I've helped inflict more psychic damage than my patreon will pay for, my bad
The handover from AI to player can have its own storyline of some seniors at a workplace guiding your way while slowly stepping back
I had that exact same thought
YES!
Have an early "bad ending" where you deliberately sabotage the power plant once you get the responsibility
And then overtime they all die under suspicious circumstances and it leads into the next DLC, which is somehow a detective DLC..
@@jwalster9412 Steamengine Horror game
13:10 When accounting for power generation, the higher amounts of power demands need to be weighted heavier. Under-producing power isn't an option, so the price has to lean towards the maximum, not the mean.
NOOO
soop
Under-producing is an option, it is just that it will annoy people to various degrees depending on the severity.
There is a choice to commit rolling blackouts in the States
@@Aereto Rollingblackouts is a Capacity issue, and it is used to prevent a total black-start.
2:26 as someone who worked on nuclear power plants I kinda love this. It is incredibly hard work and we follow extremely strict SOPs set out by physicists for a reason. Heh while you didn’t set out to build a rage game. I think the difficulty is inherent to the subject matter and I like that your initial builds did not shy away from it.
Agreed. I want to play the first alpha
I'm not going to lie I really kinda want to try the realism mode one that made people mad. "I can fix her" but ... a steam engine?
Making a game itself, is relatively easy - figuring out what is pleasing to the players, is by far the hardest part.
Exactly...
4:00 I just want to tell you that I look forward to every video and they really do make me happy :)
Thanks, I'm glad to hear that
I agree. All of your projects are super interesting!
you took adverse feedback, made the changes, and didn't once sound angry. absolute legend!
11/10 game dev, can't wait for engine simulator to release!
it was fun being a tester even though my boiler kept popping
*crunchy sad cat face image
I don't think you should worry about making a steam train simulator. To all the people who really want that, check out the in development game Century of Steam, which is a 3d narrow gauge railroading game that simulates realistic locomotive firing, operation, and railroad management.
Give Ange some breathing room, let him finish this up and get to engine simulator.
If they hated your game, they would be outraged at the turbofan test cell simulator I built years ago while working for Lockheed and Rolls-Royce at Stennis Space Center.
I'm a former turbofan test engineer. Back in 2010 I designed and built a 6 screen stimulation, including a custom throttle, that simulated the testing of large jet engines. Specifically the Trent 9000, 1000, and XWB. The simulator had failures to test the crews reaction to problems as well as a playback of a real jet on our test stand that was synced to the simulated jet engine run condition.
It was used to allow training of test crews without risk of damaging a real jet.
That sounds like a fun thing to watch, at least.
@@scottwatrous, it was interesting! I had a blast building and programming it for over six months. The test crews and other facilities also enjoyed using it. Better than destroying a 20+ million dollar R&D engine!
@@JarheadCrayonEater But the high stakes are always so much fun! (and stressful)
That cable snapping event needs a lot of sparks lying all over the screen, with the cables continuing to spark as long as they are broken to really sell that something is not right.
Testing this game was a blast Ange! Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be a part of this cool project.
At 13:00: The average-value operator does not (in general) commute with a nonlinear function. This could be "fixed" by having price-by-demand simply be a linear function, but that would probably be boring. Instead, an effective but approximate solution would be to sample demand at several points during the day, take the price at those points, and average those samples. As long as demand isn't too spiky and the price-by-demand curve is smooth, that should be close enough to the true value.
That's basically it. The precise solution would be using calculus, though. You'll have to redefine average as taking an intergral and then dividing it by the period over which it was taken. Then you'll just take the average of the price as a function of demand, with demand being a predefined curve in this case.
You need to integrate two different things. First, you integrate demand * fair price vs demand to get a total price for the amount of power needed that day, then you divide by the total demand for the day (integration of demand).
We watch you for you. Whatever you make I'll watch.
Ange remember, we all love you (at least the patrons do)
Not just patreons
Wasn't all this frustration PRECISELY because of the Patreons?
@@lucchesi87 well the Patreons just gave him honest feedback on the game which he asked for. Ange wasn't frustrated, he was just not sure what to do since he has a heavy workload right now and has to choose what to prioritize.
but that has NOTHING to do with the Patreons, they just did what he asked them to.
Honestly, at 4:11, I think you might be misenvisioning what it is that a good chunk of people look forward to hearing about from you. I'd reckon a quarter or so of the people who've wishlisted the SES DLC on Steam originated from UA-cam, stopping by on Steam primarily to support you and only secondarily because they want the DLC. And let's not forget that Patreon is a paid service. As is, there are undoubtedly plenty of people who would join the Patreon (and therefore have desires more aligned with the "Patreon" category on the diagram) if they could more comfortably afford it, but remain only within the "UA-cam" and/or "Steam" category in practice.
These are just two of the forces at play and there are plenty of other forces and counterforces I could list off, but the point is that you might want to reconsider what it really is that the different groups of people are really looking forward to. Especially your following on UA-cam; it's common knowledge that just making videos doesn't cut it on this platform. There may even still be viewers whose only interest was 2D engine simulator and are holding out hope that the 3D version will be a cut-and-paste replacement for it! You do seem to have a good grip on the way you handle the different groups in practice, though.
This video does a good job addressing a lot of points people might want to bring up on many different fronts, and paints a positive image of the progress made on the DLC. I suspect there'll be a lot of ES fans that won't watch it and several that'll click away halfway through, but for those who watch it in its entirety, I think they'll agree that your work on the DLC has been entirely justified and be satisfied with the video too.
Also, at 13:00: in general, \frac{ \int g(f(t)) dt }{ \int 1 dt }
eq g( \frac{ \int f(t) dt }{ \int 1 dt } ) for continuous real-valued functions f, g defined on certain real intervals (where the integrals are taken over specific time intervals), right?
I consider Steam to be a separate audience because there is an unexpectedly large lack of overlap between my audience on Steam and my audience on UA-cam. A lot of the people who play Steam Engine Simulator actually don't know this channel exists and don't know who I am. It's surprising but true and I've analyzed this data extensively. Only about 2000 downloads of the base game originated from my UA-cam channel initially. When the game went viral on Steam and was featured on the Steam home page, the game reached a significantly larger audience than even my UA-cam channel could reach (over 100,000 players organically with almost no downloads originating from promotion on my channel). Again, it seems counterintuitive but it's true. Furthermore, while this is only anecdotal, most people I interact with on Steam and Discord about Steam Engine Simulator, clearly don't know who I am and found me purely through the Steam algorithm. In fact, almost everyone that arrives on Discord via Steam doesn't even know that Engine Simulator exists.
It's for this reason that the priorities of this group are surprisingly different from the priorities of my UA-cam and Patreon audiences. There is a large (but not complete) overlap between UA-cam and Patreon audiences but the priorities are clearly different. A lot of my viewers are game developers or software engineers and don't actually care to interact with my products. Many of my viewers who join my channel Discord server have never even downloaded Engine Simulator, so they're primarily interested in devlogs for the programming content, and not necessarily to get development updates.
Anyway, the point is that the nature of the three audiences don't line up with what you'd think intuitively. Most would probably think that my UA-cam audience contains essentially everyone with Patreon and Steam being subsets, however, this is definitely not true. Maybe I should have explained that more clearly in the video.
Your mathematical answer is correct, those things are not equal in general. Thanks for watching!
@@AngeTheGreat Ah, ok. Good to know you know your audience. Guess I too am fallible to the biases and pitfalls I was pointing out.
@@AngeTheGreat simultaneous congratulations and condolences on having a large Steam audience
@@AngeTheGreat -- I will say that referral links to Steam probably aren't the most accurate. I found out about SES from this channel alone, yet I obtained it by searching it up on Steam. That might just be me being highly suspicious of links in general though, I have a habit of avoiding them if I can find the destination myself.
@@AngeTheGreat A question:
I for example downloaded the game because of your videos and your channel.
However, I did so by searching for your game on steam and not clicking any links.
Would that count as a Steam or a UA-cam audience.
Because such a situation might be skewing your numbers.
l love how this "quick tech demo'esk side project" became a full game release with story, quests, etc
The thing about the throttle is that your AI system is basically exactly how real life steam engines controlled their throttles and were able to maintain extremely consistent RPMs. Real life steam engines in industrial settings used a centrifugal govenor, where the output wheel was linked to a vertical rotating shaft with two balls. As the wheel sped up the balls would swing further out and close the throttle and when the wheel slowed down it the balls would fall inwards and open up the throttle valve, you can find schematics for it in one of James Watt's historical patents. Basically a mechanical feedback system that was remarkably effective, in fact so effective that steam engines make for some of the most accurate mechanical clocks. Perhaps you should just add the centrifugal govenor as either a difficulty setting or an upgrade, you could include it along with other historical upgrades to the steam engine like a double acting piston, firetube boilers and compound expansion.
Also a consequence of the centrifugal govenor is that historical steam engines were able to maintain a consistent RPM by varying their wattage.
Yeah. Responding to changing power demand or other conditions should be a challenge, but in reality keeping a power plant stable under constant conditions was a solved mechanical problem so the player shouldn't need to babysit it. Though, a breakdown of your governor forcing you to BRIEFLY manually control it could be an interesting disaster.
As someone who has developed software for years myself, I find one of the harhest parts to be how the majority of people simply do not have the prerequisite knowledge necessary to understand how much time and effort it takes to actually develop high-quality software. This is, of course, not their fault -- I can't expect everyone to know the details of software development. But it is one of those pain points every dev has to deal with, particularly solo/indie devs. Kudos to you for working through that and making a product up to your standards, while also taking harsh criticisms to heart and making big changes!
It's honestly incredible how much you accomplish in such a short timeframe. You don't really see people interacting with communities of this scale while single-handedly writing a massive project, editing videos about said project, and doing the same thing concurrently with another even larger project. How do you find time in your day to sleep lol.
Glad I got to test this, it was fun being a pain in your neck! (sorry)
I’m excited for the dlc
Thanks for the update!
Thanks for watching!
Something important I learned doing data warehousing of grid telemetry, was that you do not use fancy interpolation, even linear, when translating between energy and power. Nominally you receive the kWh value (for the whole hour)-the total actual energy-so you directly have the average kW over that hour.
Treat everything as interval values, so you preserve your integrated values. That is, use rectangular interpolation (i.e. don't interpolate at all). No midpoint values, etc.
This is also true in many other fields of measurement. A timing event value has a right tail but no left tail (can't be negative), for example, and so if you take the average of a distribution that is one-tailed, you will end up somewhere on the tail instead of at the median where you might expect. Math is freakin' hard yo.
yer AI gizmos might be handy later if you ever implement automatic transmissions or EFI in engine simulator, those are both effectively black boxes trying to optimize something by flipping levers based on some engine condition parameters
I was introduced to your channel via the OG engine simulator videos, but I really just watch for the problem solving aspects and technical challenges you tackle. You could make any project or video about game design, physics design, or anything programming related and I'd still watch it. It's just interesting to watch someone deconstruct and tackle programming challenges and you have a unique style of doing so that I haven't seen anywhere on UA-cam.
a) I don't remember if I found you before the first Engine Sim video, but I've very much enjoyed your progression from Cereal Adventures till today
b) Having a feel for how your mind works via how you present your process, I am fascinated by your experience with game dev
c) The crossover of economics and culture apparent even in your small sample size of user experiences is, to me, illuminating all on its own
So... good job, thank you, and I look forward to future learnin'. =)
Three things ive understood after developing my apps:
1) You cannot make eveyone happy, no matter what you do, it will make some happy and some upset, but the hardest thing is figuring out which choice is the correct/best one. You dont know how a feature is gonna impact the whole userbase.
2) People don't like to explore (anymore?), whenever you think "yep this should be clear enough" or "i mean people just need to click some buttons to figure out what happens", no they won't, always keep a group of users (experts and beginners of your program, variety is a must) to ask for feedback BEFORE (and After) implementing a feature, this will save a ton of headaches
3) making your userbase happy is stressful xD people demand, request, get angry, I've had a feature i wanted to implement for a year in my app for which I'll have to pretty much change half of the codebase for, I've been delaying working on it simply because i can't get myself to start, people demand it, and it pushes me away even more, feedback loop of stress and guilt.
Do what you think is the best for your mental health, that's the most important thing
You keep going. It’s insane to me the level of commitment and passion (though I suspect you might not like working on this as much as you did previously lol) you have for this. Nobody is perfect, but you’re doing pretty dang great
16:30 I study computer svience and I got second hand anxiety from watching this video. I can't even imagine how stressful it is to undertake such a massive project ❤
Small idea/suggestion: The AI can be incorporated into the narrative as a senior engineer that training the PLAYER, with the player being a novice, so until the player is experienced enough he will handle most of the tasks(inputs). Then the senior slowly delegates more and more responsibility to the player until he is fully capable.
Hello, first timer here, this video has been recommended to me. It looks like a good project, and a great presentation too.
Just one thing I've found is that it's really weird from what you've said: "One of the main objectives of the game is to increase the town's population", but I haven't seen a single number or graph that directly measures it, other than achievements.
It's not that odd that the players keep maximizing profits when the big numbers on the center of the screen are about money, not the town's healthiness.
10:10 is that control theory sneaking in? Imagine a DLC for the DLC where you need to discover the plant transfer function, and tune a PID controller for the engine, maybe extend it to a MIMO problem :)
I want this so much
Honestly, I got into watching your vids by the Gen1 Engine Simulator videos I found while randomly hitting youtube. Now? Well, I'm here for the science lessons, and I'm waiting for the Steam Engine DLC. I know that it's going to be an excellent piece of work and I will definitely enjoy it. Keep up the good work and ignore the people who can't criticise constructively!
I am just interested in anything you do. Your focus is superhuman. This shows you have a great attitude to match. Well done. (PS: the old timey letters could be clearer, use bold font and lighter background for more contrast)
12:55 The reason taking an average doesnt work is because you need to root mean square. The average of a sine wave is its DC offset. RMS gives you the effective power delivered
You are a rare find as a game dev, thank you for taking the time to make things right and taking the time to listen to the community, that means a lot! Even if the community can sometimes be harsh and less than helpful! I appreciate all of your hard work!
"instead of maximizing population maximized profit" capitalism by definition lmao
Even though I'm mostly here for engine simulator, I'm always just excited when another one of your video's come out because of the educational aspect of them all! Thanks for making such great content.
You didn't mention it, so I don't know if it's something you thought about but couldn't figure out the feasibility of, but when you don't want to do a tutorial yet want to fix the learning curve, one of the easiest and most intuitive methods is to adjust when players have access to features (similar to AI but less overwhelming).
One example: to teach players to deal with expenses, a simple way would've been simply to disable most of the economy at first, only keeping expenses.
Anyway, I know it's unlikely to be something you'd want to revisit, so good luck working on Engine Simulator!
It seems you have the correct goals for this project and you are figuring it out the best you can, adapating your concepts, methods, priorities... As long you keep on this road I don't mind to wait for the release of this DLC and other engine sim updates or videos you also have going. These updates showing your dev process are priceless.
6:56 These points are amazing considering there are literal books trying to help people overcome this mistake. Profit First comes to mind which the tests might want to read lol
I would love to hear more about the music in the end of the video. I love it!!
Ain't no way, I just randomly though "Lets check if Ange has posted a new video, it's been a month now" and here I am, just 1 hour after you posted it.
Same lol
you need to get subbed asap
@@tostitossssss done lol
I’d love to see a completely autonomous mode! Perhaps you could fiddle with the load yourself and see how the program deals with situations.
I love the ideas and progress of the DLC, although I have a few ideas/suggestions in mind if you have not already had them in mind. I feel like if you had to perform maintenance (i.e maintenance costs on the steam engine or the power generator) could bring more realism and events to the game, and possibly having some upgrades like upgrading the boiler to withstand more pressure, upgrading the power generator/steam engine to output more/higher values of power to the city allowing demand to go high. I also have in mind that you can expand to manage a state/province, giving players a bit more challenge.
Cant wait for the DLC, ive been waiting for ages for it
I want the steep learning curve and no spoon-feeding. KSP frustrated the shit out of me but it was soooo rewarding when I conquered things, because it was just me vs a game mechanic. I feel like story modes in general detract from that, so if it's appropriate to add a sandbox mode with zero help I would definitely try that option first.
The Editing and Logical progression is outstanding. having never played the game, the video makes me want to try it out
A lesson about how things can look way more intuitive than they actually are when you've built them. Also I find it fascinating that this game about operating a steam engine is getting a storyline. Well, always fun to explore unconventional storytelling lenses!
Can't wait for the DLC! Great work you've done by now!
For the cable snapping events, it feels like there should be a more obvious visual indicator. If it's an impactful event then I feel it might be good for it to be highlighted, possibly with an exclamation mark appearing briefly or some electric?
Power demands can not only be introduce as problems but also as repetitive events that happens throughout the game like world cup every 4 years. Further challenges include requiring user have planned outages with scenarios like the engine requiring planned maintenance or inspection that user can put off n number of times before some law enforcement forces them to. This event can coincide with challenges currently in the game such that the difficulty changes in every game run.
I look forward to this dlc. i know making stuff like this isnt always easy, but ur doing a great job, keep up the good work!
I gotta say, seeing the simulation of technology progression in the town as time goes by, regardless of the population, changes as the introduction of electric heaters and hotplates, primitive lights and ovens, as they start out a little later in the game around the year they where more common, and they start out power hungry and inefficient, then slowly get better as they evolve similar to how it did in real life, would be kind of an awesome feature if it where to be added/has already been added, and have the power demand change depending on the time of year and ambient temperature and weather, alongside the power demand for evolving communication and detection equipment would also be cool
Thanks for the video. Really enjoy all your content from raytracer over engine simulator to dlc development!
Please find a balance to avoid burn-out. Negative feedback can be crushing. I wish you all the best with whatever you will decide. I admire the effort you put into this and your approach. You really are Great!
The market price function P is nonlinear, so for demand values d_t, it doesn't satisfy P(Avg_t(d_t)) = Avg_t(P(d_t)) except in cases of coincidence. More specifically, it seems that the market price function is concave, so we'll actually have P(Avg(d_t)) < Avg_t(P(d_t)). The latter quantity (average price) is what we actually care about (rather than the former quantity, price at average demand), so we should compute prices before averaging.
Here's a simpler function and a few specific values to showcase the problem. Suppose P(x) = 1 - x^2 (a downwards opening parabola with vertex (0, 1) and roots x = -1, 1). If your demand value samples are -1 and 1, then your average demand is 0. The price at the average demand is P(0) = 1 - 0^2 = 1. However, at each of your demand values, -1 and 1, the true price is P(-1) = P(1) = 0, so the actual average price is 0. Overall, 0 = [P(-1) + P(1)] / 2 < P([-1 + 1] / 2) = 1.
I hadn't heard of your game before now, but the video was quite interesting and now I'm interested in the game too. The youtube algo worked for once??
It's nice to see a dev that actually gives a care about the game and it's users. I appreciate that a lot, especially nowadays.
12:50 - How to correct: average the result AFTER the convolution occurs, not before
In short and simple terms: A linear average function multiplied by a root function is very different to a sinusoidal function multiplied by a root function.
In Medium: when performing many small discrete sums (an integral) over a root function (an inverse exponential), inputs derived from a linear function provides a significantly different result to those of a trigonometric (sine) function that fluctuates. Due to the gradient of the root function small changes when at high demand increase the market price far more than small changes at low demand... at least i think thats the way round the axes in the price vs demand are since high demand usually means scarcity, and scarcity means higher price.
in Long: this aint LaTeX kid, this is youtube comments section\
In systems engineering this is called a PID controller
I hope that we can play the DLC soon
You know I wish I can hear those words coming from many other devs, but you my friend, you did it, thank you. :)
I've mentioned this on other videos, but it'd be great if it was possible to make a custom steam engine/valve gear, to see if we could make something more efficient ourselves, which could also be carried over to the racing game you're considering making to enable steam cars.
You can save space by changing the °C/°F to just what the user wants to see of either of those
Exactly one month before this video was uploaded, I found the game.
And only now have I discovered your channel.
Only then did everything make sense.
To be honest.... A) you never intended to make a game people play, per se. B) people are the worst, even in small amounts. ie, beware the vocal minority. The anonymity of the keyboard emboldens the average asshat. and C) other peoples happiness is not your responsibility. These days too many people have a sense of entitlement to having their good feels coddled. They are wrong. Sorry, not sorry.
You are not their monkey. You are allowed to have your life, and have time away from the monster you didnt intend to create in the first place. Your efforts are not in vein regardless of the slings and arrows some in the void may cast upon you.
I for one would just like to reiterate, from the silent masses, you are doing a great job. Thank you for your works. And we are eagerly awaiting your next release. Keep up the good work, man.😎👍
Incredible what has become out of a "simple" simulation showing the people a principle. Awesome work!
You're an awesome dev man! You inspire me in my own dev journey! I wish you the best! Good luck!
@12:49 because during high demand more power is sold at a higher price (and vice versa less power sold at the lower price during low demand).
I love how it started out as a small project and it just keeps growing.
Also when will a developer license steam engine to create a steampunk themed racing game?
I see that you included titles in the letters from NPCs. Are you planning to include an option to change title (Mr. / Ms. / Mrs. / Mx.) and such in game?
Kinda funny, I just came from watching LGR's "SimHealth" game review, which is essentially the original SimCity + healthcare system economics. SimHealth allows you to do some incredibly fascinating stuff with it, but it just wasn't fun unless you were already trained on the subject. I think you're doing a lot better than SimHealth in the "fun" department, and showing it's still possible to make a complicated, model-driven sim fun.
Btw as a frontend dev, I must compliment the consistent feel you've built with the interface.
I always think of the quote "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad" - Shigeru Miyamoto
Had no idea this existed. Now I’m going to look into it because it looks cool and you as the dev seem to give a darn.
Honestly bro, take your time. Don't rush and remember timelines are just suggestions. A great product takes as long as it takes. Predicted and unpredicted changes included. Keep up the good work friend
having worked at a power plant when I was younger, this is my version of city skylines that I'll like to play when it releases
I just turned 14 and I’m always looking up to you and it’s my dream to make stuff like you
I'll bite at the challenge mentioned at 13:02 . My first thought was Jensen's inequality (or at least closely related), but more broadly it looked as though the fair price function was non linear in the first place, so mapping the average post vs pre transform was always going to be different.
Solution: apply the fair price function to the moment-to-moment demand function, then calculate your average from there.
How'd I go?
Add a way to capture steam output and condense it back to water for recycling. Maybe an upgrade path?
Do what you want my man, you owe nobody anything. I'm just glad to catch a video every now and then, it's all amazing work I think.
Wow those wires are wobbly! 😊
What I think would be a neat future update is a game mode where the player can write an AI to control the simulation. I can imagine one approach would be to just use threshold limits to set different control states, but someone else might use a neural network to train an AI. These AIs could use an API and drive the simulation using whatever technique a user wants to use.
first time optimistic game dev: *construct a finely tuned game with intuitive mechanics that you're proud of and sure people will enjoy figuring out like a puzzle*
game testers: *be game testers*
first time humbled game dev: *go back and make a tutorial like the rest of the industry*
Tale as old as time, many a game dev big and small have gone through the same thing. Consider it a right of passage!
Hey Ange! I hope youre doing well, I would love to see the older content you did (rendering, bloom etc.)
Cool to know that Maisteer is supporting you on Patreon.
Have you considered contracting out something like a second DLC if this one is successful? That way you could focus on your core competency and interest of simulation development while keeping people entertained and possibly earn some money.
A battery would help with the difficulty. You could have a battery upgrade that is expensive and doesn't pay back for a while but it gives a bit more room for error when running the engine. The enhancements to the battery could get more inefficient as time goes on and the demand for power rises, while technically possible to run the city for days on battery only it would take so much time that people wouldn't ever use that method. It could also help with random events both positive and negative. If there is a drought or higher fuel price you could operate at a slight power deficit and use up battery charge until the water or fuel is stable again. Or maybe a lightning storm takes out some of your batteries forcing you to pay a higher cost to repair them. I think some kind of power storage could help with the balancing issue. At the very least it could be an optional thing for people to buy that might make the early game a bit simpler and I know some people would make challenges on how far they could get on battery storage as their main counter to energy demands. A battery would be very useful. I also think that it would make it more difficult to spiral into a negative account balance like so many testers seemed to do, if you could store power in a battery you could use that strategy. Let some energy from the battery out during the day when demand is higher and let it charge at night when demand is lower. You could also hold a battery charge and use it as an emergency tool! If something unexpected happens you could salvage the situation or reduce the damage by using the battery power. But if you rely too much on the battery then you could find that a problem or fault in your power storage could be devastating! I already mentioned a storm could take down the battery but what if the battery could catch fire? Or if you overcharge it could get damaged and possibly explode?! This would not only cost money to fix but it would also mean you'll lose all or most of the charge you accumulated, power that could have been sold directly for profit. Basically. The battery could add a risk vs reward mechanism. Where if managed properly could be helpful but if managed poorly could be very detrimental- and it could all technically be optional. As in you are never required to use the battery but you can if you want to.
The way you've dealt with the feedback speaks volumes about the quality of your character. Well done.
Could be interesting to introduce the concept of grid frequency synchronization. The more imbalance is created and frequency starts deviating from target, the more tomorrow's prices are affected.
TBH, my hope is that SES and ES will eventually be combined into some sort of "Heat Engine Simulator".
I want some sort of environment where I can build the overengineered turbo-compound-electric-hybrid-with-combined-cycle-steam-heat-recovery engine I've been dreaming up.
Also, SES could use a "5 year old power the boiler on the choo-choo with an electric burner connected to a generator" mode, or so says my inner five year old, who is *definitely* a perpetual motion scammer (at age 5, so was my outer five year old).
I'm sure you are well aware of the standard effect in this type of industry where no news is good news and any news will be the bad kind. Please do NOT let the negative Nancys ruin your motivation. I LOVE what you are doing, and eagerly await the outcome. Let the naysayers continue naysaying, those of us genuinely interested in the project are watching with bated breath.
Hi Ange
Awesome! Can't wait!
Dude, you are one of the best devs out there right now. Whatever you release will be good. You have an understanding of this world and it's physics thay is astounding.
your game engine is perfect, i played this on a 2007 PC without problems
honestly, the test period seems like a good study on people's intuitive understanding on how to manage large interconnected systems