18 ms·
Cab Ride: Drive a train, forever, through a dreamlike land
- oddeyed 6y agoA nice bit of fun. I kept missing the platforms and restarting as I felt bad for the passengers that I'd left behind...
- mrzimmerman 6y agoSame! my only complaint was how very accurate I had to be at the stops to operate the doors and let passengers on an off.
- burnte 6y agoYou felt bad for missing passengers, so you destroyed their entire universe by resetting the game? That's cold. So, so cold.
- brundolf 6y ago> Try and stop at the marker at each station for a high rating. Nitpick, but I hate it when devs - even devs making tiny weird experimental games like this one - feel compelled to add some objective, any objective, into an otherwise open-ended experience. Even if it's optional, it's lurking there like an unnecessary specter, ruining the freeness of the experience. Edit: This came off as more negative than I wanted it to. I would never discourage someone from exercising their creativity, and creativity (and craftsmanship) clearly went into this. I was just using it as a jumping-off point for a broader discussion about something I see as holding back game design as a whole, which I better articulated here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25995867 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25995867
- ugh123 6y agoSounds like you want something different than what he intended. That's his business, not yours =)
- brundolf 6y agoYeah. The problem is I want something different from what seemingly the entire space of game developers is willing to make, even when there are no economics at stake. When I see a little game like this, which clearly came from a place of inspiration and was positioned to break the mold, and then it's still spoiled by just a tiny piece of needless gamification, it's doubly frustrating specifically because it came so close to escaping that trope. I don't mean to come off as demanding - people can make what they want to make - I just feel like sometimes people tack this kind of mechanic onto a game not because it's essential, but because (consciously or subconsciously) they're afraid people won't know what to do with a video game that doesn't give you a dopamine kick in the form of a number going up. Of course I don't know if that was the case here (though I suspect it might be), it's just that this game touches on a much bigger story of exasperation with the world of game design, for me.
- gridspy 6y agoSo you're objecting to the gamification ... of games? What would your ideal "not-game" look like? Are you sure you wouldn't be happy with a game like Factorio which is basically a perfect sandbox (despite having lots of stats if you go to look at them)?
- brundolf 6y agoMainly I'm advocating that people explore this design-space more in general. Sandboxes are cool in their own way, but aren't really the same thing For me personally, the specific version of this that I want is a world to explore for exploration's sake, without anything quantifiable to be gained by doing so. The Stanley Parable is a good example of this, if you've heard of it. I use "world" and "explore" very loosely; exploring where you can go and what you can do as the engineer of a train would fall under this umbrella. Even if the answer is "not a whole lot", there's an aliveness and a wondering that comes from even such a tiny slice of a world. But as soon as a performance metric is introduced there's this "should statement" hanging over my head, reshaping the whole experience.
- doomlaser 6y agoWhat a beautiful creation. People are making more and more exciting projects in Pico-8, the virtual console that this is made in. It is a fully self-contained environment and provides a great set of constraints that have led to a lot of creativity and ingenuity. It's a bit like the demoscene in that way. > The Pico-8 program integrates a Lua code editor, sprite and map creation tools, and an audio sound effect and music editor. The program can load games saved locally on a computer, in the form of text or as specially encoded .png images. The interface also supports a splore mode, where games uploaded to the BBS can be previewed and then played in the Pico-8 program. The PocketCHIP miniature computer shipped preloaded with Pico-8. > Pico-8 games, as well as the program's interface itself, are limited to a 128x128 pixel, 16-color display, and a 4-channel audio output https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico-8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico-8 More games written in Pico-8 on itch.io: https://itch.io/games/tag-pico-8 https://itch.io/games/tag-pico-8 (sorted by popularity)
- abrookewood 6y agoThe fact that someone can create this in Pico-8 just blows my mind.
- Ericson2314 6y agoDo they limit memory and processor?
- mxwsn 6y ago32 kb addressable memory, and 9 MHz cpu https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/Memory https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/Memory https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/CPU https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/CPU
- simlevesque 6y agoThe Pico-8 is real hardware so it is limited by it's specs.
- mrec 6y ago
- meibo 6y agoIt's densha de go, but cute! Thanks, great work - Pico8 is such an amazing tool, I'm consistently amazed at how powerful it is. Curiously I have a bit of an itch for games like densha de go, sometimes you just want to drive a train through the city or countryside for a while.
- neogodless 6y ago> Densha de Go! (電車でGO!, "Go By Train") is a Japanese train simulation game series originally produced by Taito and more recently by Square Enix (who purchased Taito) and Railfan Holdings Co., Ltd. The game originates from a 1996 arcade version and was first released for the PlayStation in 1997. Ooo!
- banana_giraffe 6y agoFor what it's worth, Techmoan recently did a video on one of these: https://youtu.be/Do-ZBPWhhbQ https://youtu.be/Do-ZBPWhhbQ
- rmvt 6y agoanother user shared this gem yesterday: https://www.jp.square-enix.com/denshadego/syodai/game/ https://www.jp.square-enix.com/denshadego/syodai/game/ (use mobile user agent if you're not on mobile)
- f430 6y agoReminds me of games like Densha de Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9LlMSMsgrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9LlMSMsgrc
- hlandau 6y agoWhile I'm familiar with train simulators, from the related videos I just discovered a weird kind of one that's completely news to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNTQhT5cx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNTQhT5cx8 Rather than rendering in 3D, it's literally just a driver's eye video of a real train journey played at variable speed. Actually genius if you think about it - the linearity of a rail simulation makes it possible, and it's better than any renderer.
- f430 6y agowow that is impressive graphics for ps3. smooth, photorealistic.
- softgrow 6y agoTaking a cab video and then syncing it with controls is a fairly old approach. The first example I've seen was from Ongakukan in 1995 (Win 95J) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Simulator_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Simulator_series). The video were 360x240 or similar and filled a CD. Quite realistic as long as you "play the game" and don't stop near a road near stations where there is road traffic that then stops too.
- pwarner 6y agoI've been watching and unreasonable amount of train cab ride videos on youtube. Some how it's a good way to unwind at the end of the day, and pretend I can actually go somewhere :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9qiV7XlFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9qiV7XlFs
- davidjhall 6y agoDid this remind anyone of Hollywood Medieval on the Atari by Douglas Crockford? Much simpler than this, you moved through hallways or streets, pressing the fire button to change musical phrases. There's supposedly an ending but I can't find a video of it. Simple demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnktY6gOmaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnktY6gOmaA Detailed discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXL8jwg-tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLXL8jwg-tk
- annoyingnoob 6y agoI got stuck at the end of the line, no reverse.
- atum47 6y agoLooks gorgeous. I'll take a deeper look when I get home.
- atum47 6y agoYeah, I think this is really cool. I'm not ver familiar with pico-8, but from what I see I have to buy the "software" to create games for it so I can share it for free? I mean, I often publish my stuff for free, but why buy software first? Sorry if this sounds like an ignorant question, I just want to know if this a hobby, or a community...
- roywiggins 6y agoIt's not unlike when you had to buy a copy of Adobe Flash to create flash applets. But much cheaper. There are open-source fantasy consoles like TIC-80 that try to scratch the same itch, but PICO-8 has the biggest community of people creating things with it.
- Wingman4l7 6y agoReminds me of the aesthetics of Drivey: https://drivey.com/ https://drivey.com/ (Demo of JS version on Github: https://rezmason.github.io/drivey/ https://rezmason.github.io/drivey/)
- burnte 6y agoWow, the JS version has wildly different speeds in Chrome vs Firefox. It's smooth as silk in Firefox, about 1.5fps in Chrome for me.
- cousin_it 6y agoAnother similar game is 4Ever Transit Authority: https://turnfollow.itch.io/4ever-transit-authority https://turnfollow.itch.io/4ever-transit-authority
- aerovistae 6y agoWhy is it called cab ride if it's about a train?
- asimjalis 6y agoI could play this forever.
- Animats 6y agoTrain cab ride through Norway.[1] A train driver in Norway has been posting cab ride videos. No selfies, no music, little commentary, just a front view out the cab window. Very peaceful. [1] https://youtu.be/1-o1Z0CVnPY https://youtu.be/1-o1Z0CVnPY
- hh3k0 6y agoWe had a TV show like that in Germany, it ran from 1995 to 2013: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_sch%C3%B6nsten_Bahnstrecken_Deutschlands https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_sch%C3%B6nsten_Bahnstrecke....
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ed312 6y agoWow, I got sucked in and realized I'd watched 30 minutes. I also just realized I want to live in a small 1 train stop town in Norway.
- la6471 6y agoVery nice. How can one convert this to VR (google cardboard) format?
- aydwi 6y agoThe Internet keeps reminding me that I would give up my Software Engineer gig in an instant to drive trucks/trains in Scandinavia.
- Gravityloss 6y agoA train driver is one of the hardest jobs to get into - you're personally responsible for a thousand people and it's very very boring. It requires a lot of discipline!
- teh_klev 6y agoSee also Don Coffey's channel. There's a decent selection of high quality cab rides around the TransPennine UK rail franchise area: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8LH7xMAyCSqpClAvTHwJRw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8LH7xMAyCSqpClAvTHwJRw/vid...
- Scene_Cast2 6y agoOn a similar note, youtube has a bunch of very long (hours) train videos from the cockpit perspective. The Nordic ones are quite peaceful, as well as the Swiss ones. Here's an example: https://youtu.be/MpDLyLjQz6E https://youtu.be/MpDLyLjQz6E
- antoniuschan99 6y agoSo crazy. The videos where people wander around in the streets seem to have gotten popular I assume because of the pandemic and no travelling. You can find ones for Europe. I like to watch the ones in Japan: Rambalac or Japan4k, etc.
- McDev 6y agoThis looks great. On a side note, I was wondering why the controls were freaking out when I was trying to depart, and then realised I had my foot on my rudder pedals I use for flight sim (not useful for trains despite my best efforts). I was trying to disable it in Brave browser but couldn't find a way. It seems any website can just read your gamepad input? This doesn't happen on Firefox and this [0] is probably why. I imagine this could be used for fingerprinting, am I missing something? Anyway, back to driving trains. [0]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/securing-gamepad-api/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2020/07/securing-gamepad-api/
- Kaze404 6y agoThis made me very emotional. It reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Spirited Away, which also has an incredibly emotional train scene. Thank you for sharing.
- ctdonath 6y agoCan’t not mention Desert Bus: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-bus-the-very-worst-video-game-ever-created https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/desert-b... And now on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/desert-bus/id470288016 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/desert-bus/id470288016
- chrischen 6y agoThis game reminds me of the JR Train Simulator they have in arcades in Japan. They have a train operator hat you don and 3 screens for a panoramic view, and you pull the lever to stop and go and operate the circular loop Yamanote line. Surprisingly difficult and realistic (I'd imagine, since I've never operated a train).
- Waterluvian 6y agoI had absolutely no clue pico-8 could do snes style 3d like that. What a fun little game.
- timpark 6y agoIf you didn't notice the link in the game credits, it says the game is based on code from some tutorials if you want to learn more about how it's done. https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767 https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767
- Waterluvian 6y agoI didn't see that and really appreciate the link. I do want to experiment with this style.
- Kimitri 6y agoReminds me of the music video for Star Guitar by the Chemical Brothers: https://youtu.be/0S43IwBF0uM https://youtu.be/0S43IwBF0uM The game looks really beautiful and I would not have guessed it’s running on Pico-8. Wonderful!
- jmiskovic 6y agoAlso check out music video Hunnybee from Unknown Mortal Orchestra https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJrKlSkxRHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJrKlSkxRHA
- agys 6y agoI want to add another train-related reference to this long list, this time audio only: El Divisadero, by experimental musician Chris Watson, an hypnotic ride on “El Tren Fantasma”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDQZTXz2-7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDQZTXz2-7o
- numpad0 6y agoAnyone else having stuck Up and Right keys? You can check it by clicking [+ ..] to the right of game window.
- gambiting 6y agoI don't understand what kind of programming wizard you have to be to make this work so smoothly in Pico-8. I've made a Tetris game with a scrolling parallax background for fun in Pico-8 and it struggled to stay at 30fps, and this is running full 3D environment?? Also it blows my mind that this is only 15 colours, incredible how much can be achieved with so little.
- gmueckl 6y agoThis isn't 3d graphics as we know them today. Instead, this is scaling and moving 2d sprites to create the impression of depth. The basic idea is similar to how racing arcade games worked in the late 80s/early 90s before rendering polygonal models became possible.
- newobj 6y agoI think his point might be that the level of overdraw with this scaled 2d sprite solution is expensive. The CPU costing model for PICO8's scaled sprite (sspr) function is 2*n (n = number of pixels drawn). So drawing something the size of the screen once is 32k cycles, which is 0.4% of the CPU budget for the frame. Let's say 32 full sized layers, that's still only 8% of CPU budget, so ... yes I agree this doesn't seem expensive even via brute force with no tricks. :)
- walrus01 6y agoPeople who like this might enjoy the many narration-free videos being produced in Japan these days, in which somebody puts a high quality 4K camera in the front end of a train and lets it record for 4-5 hours. Search youtube for "japan 4k cab view" example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwb_u0sciaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwb_u0sciaY
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoAwesome escape from blizzards and COVID! I’d love to pick apart the source. When my son was young I’d take him to the front car of the NY subway and let him lookout the window (works best on 7 line, some other lines have some sort of polarizing film on the glass that makes it hard to see through). I think they have well captured all of the different above ground scenes in this little game, pretty amazing.
- rmvt 6y agoyesterday's discussion on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25980018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25980018
- ZeroGravitas 6y agoThere's a theory that PTSD can be cured by moving your eyes left and right. The rationale for this is that your brain calms the fight or flight response if it thinks you're actually fleeing. But the feedback to the brain comes via the eyes, and as you walk forwards through a landscape your eyes dart left and right. When I first heard this theory I immediately thought of the number of games where you're heading into a 3D world and if this is part of the calming effect some of these games have.
- geogra4 6y agoMan I would love to get a physical pico 8