5 ms·
Not sure if games count as software but if they do - Factorio. I don't play much these days but I'm still utterly stunned how a relatively small, humble team of
by cedws 5y ago
Not sure if games count as software but if they do - Factorio. I don't play much these days but I'm still utterly stunned how a relatively small, humble team of developers can build something so robust and performant. Granted, I've never really tried pushing the limits, but not once have I felt like the game is even breaking a sweat while processing thousands of machines, belts, and bots. It's a miracle to me.
Their devblogs are really nicely written and you can tell they are extremely passionate about getting things right. In my experience that's a rarity now.
And of course, it's a brilliantly addictive game.
- ibejoeb 5y agoIf they're made of software, they count
- ramesh31 5y agoDoubly so that the game is written entirely in native C++ and is fully cross platform compatible (mac/windows/linux) with a tiny binary size. The responsiveness and performance of that game even with thousands of agents onscreen has always impressed me.
- kjeetgill 5y agoSimilarly, mindustry is written in java by a single developer freshly out of college and is incredibly performant for the amount of moving pieces rendered at a time. Granted I'm not in video games, maybe it's not too hard, but I thought it was really cool. It's also an incredibly cool, interesting game design. If you like Factorio + Tower Defense you should check it out.
- jpeter 5y agoFactorio is able to handle insane base sizes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QjAhxxKWIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QjAhxxKWIk
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago> I'm still utterly stunned how a relatively small, humble team of developers can build something so robust and performant. I'm not sure that, on the whole, robust and performant software can be put together by teams much larger than that.
- Aardwolf 5y agoI've definitely pushed the limits of performance with way too upgraded huge range artillery turrets hitting all the biter bases, but yes, very performant with large factories otherwise :)
- ThunderSizzle 5y agoI'll also point out that the UI for Factorio is almost among the best. I'd prefer a factorio over almost another UI. I'm imagining a port of factorio's UI into most strategy games would be very nice, both from a VERY zoomable map, a clear research/progression tree. A few improvements could be made IMHO, but it's lighyears better than TF, CS, the Chris Sawyer set, etc.
- jawarner 5y agoWhat are TF and CS?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- momothereal 5y agoTeam Fortress, Counter Strike, and Tycoon games.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ThunderSizzle 5y agoTrain/Transport Fever (1/2), Cities: Skylines
- momothereal 5y agoDamn, I was completely off!
- Gigachad 5y agoFactorio is apparently one of the very few games with CI / automated testing.
- synicalx 5y agoFactorio really is a bit of a modern marvel, even HUGE factories don't seem to run poorly at all and I genuinely have no idea how. Other similar games made since (Satisfactory comes to mind) seem to struggle with things like keeping track of resources on belts at scale, which IMO is a perfectly understandable problem to have but still makes factorio that much more impressive.
- kevmo314 5y agoYou can definitely hit the limits of Factorio. My largest base runs at ~10fps which is how I know it's time to start a new game. Egregious use of copy/pasting and an automated robot production will get you there. It's still leagues ahead of any other game I've played though.
- waste_monk 5y agoThey have some fantastic dev blogs, such as this one on belt optimisations https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-176 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-176
- gitgud 5y agoAnother elegant game is [1] City Skylines. It's amazing how they can create such a huge virtual world with millions of simulated individuals that roam around and have complex lives in your city. [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/Cities_Skylines/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710/Cities_Skylines/
- YesBox 5y agoErr, have you played the game? I cant get past 100,000 without the game beginning to slow down. I have a decent computer too. I was bothered by this problem so I solved it for my own city builder game, Archapolis (still very early development): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q0l87hwmkI I can path 200,000 to 300,000+ units simultaneously to random destinations, with a bonus of utilizing all shortest paths between two points. The paths are all cached for constant time path finding, but I figured out how to do so efficiently (both building and storing tree/graph) I wrote a non-technical article here: https://www.yesboxstudios.com/2022/04/27/all-nck-shortest-paths-in-near-optimal-time-and-space-complexity-introduction/ https://www.yesboxstudios.com/2022/04/27/all-nck-shortest-pa...
- SatvikBeri 5y agoThe developers have a blog post on how their codebase was a mess and difficult to work with, and their process of fixing it: https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-366 https://www.factorio.com/blog/post/fff-366
- tomc1985 5y agoThere's a series of space strategy/4x/combat sims called X where the latest entry seems to simulate entire economies and individual ships in real time. Dozens of sectors with hundreds of ships and dozens of space stations all humming along at 30-60 FPS. Like Factorio it's incredible and makes me wonder wtf I was doing chaining together bullshit service APIs in my day job.
- cmeacham98 5y agoThis game sounds really cool, but I can't find it when I lookup "X game" or "X 4x game". Can you link it to me please?
- tomc1985 5y agoX4 Foundations is its name https://store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/392160/X4_Foundations/ The expansion packs have expanded the size of the game world considerably, making the whole thing even more amazing
- cmeacham98 5y agoThanks!
- tomc1985 5y agoIt's a little quirky (ok, very quirky) but one of my favorite games ever!
- joshbochu 5y agogreat example!