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Mindustry: Open-source automation tower defense game
- dang 3y agoRelated: Mindustry – Open-Source Game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32422522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32422522 - Aug 2022 (135 comments) Mindustry: A open-source sandbox tower defense game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25626286 - Jan 2021 (6 comments)
- solardev 3y agoHas anyone tried Dyson Sphere Program with the recent combat update? How does it compare to Mindustry?
- iansinnott 3y agoThis game will suck you in. It's wonderful. A great holiday game actually. Good timing on this post. I first played it because I heard it described as "Factorio lite", which seems fairly apt after playing it. It's not nearly as deep as Factorio but it scratches the same itch.
- jeanmelson 3y ago[dead]
- fwsgonzo 3y agoDoes it make sense to publish Deb packages for this game? Also this commit: https://github.com/Anuken/Mindustry/commit/5548e727501793479c4cdb557e267a9441dd5698 https://github.com/Anuken/Mindustry/commit/5548e727501793479...
- gbuk2013 3y agoWhile I agree that commit message could benefit from punctuation for readability, the change diff itself seems quite reasonable.
- vultour 3y agoIt’s 6 words long, there’s no point in punctuation.
- ta8645 3y agowhy punctuate your nine word post
- thejohnconway 3y agoIt's 6 words long no punctuation It's 6 words long? No, Punctuation!
- qwertox 3y agoMirrors exactly my feelings on Android development.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WA 3y agoMindustry is fantastic. Played the Erekir campaign twice. I didn’t like the Serpulo campaign. It’s almost like two different games. Erekir is automation plus RTS. Serpulo is automation plus tower defense.
- Aeolun 3y agoI think it’s nice that you can do both. There’s also ways you can turn Serpulo into RTS if you gather enough guys :)
- criley2 3y agoI'm the opposite. Longtime Serpulo fan who really enjoyed the game and just can't stand the Erekir RTS style game at all. I don't want to build or direct troops in a Factorio game. That's literally the opposite of what I want. Bummed at the direction of the game and how they abandoned Serpulo as they pivoted. Serpulo never got finished/balanced and likely never will now.
- scotty79 3y ago> I don't want to build or direct troops in a Factorio game. You won't like upcoming Industrial Annihilation then probably.
- criley2 3y agoI enjoyed Planetary Annhilation and this game claims you can let the AI do all of the RTS and just base build, so I would enjoy it. "Build impressively productive bases as your primary focus and delegate advanced artificial intelligences to do the fighting for you. Or, roll up your sleeves, and get hands-on by leading the real-time strategy action yourself." If in Mindustry the AI completely controlled the units, I would be fine with that. I am just long past my 200 action per minute starcraft RTS clicking days. Hyper-controlling individual units is not a fun meta.
- genewitch 3y agoThese days i use wemod or cheatengine to bypass the challenge in games. I buy games to support the arts, and play games to see the story or experience the art. But the second a game has a time sink element, i break out the cheats to bypass it. I don't mind challenging content, but i give each game maybe 5-10 "reload from checkpoint" before i bypass the content with a cheat. back when i used to "compete" in starcraft, i don't know what my action rate was or anything. I didn't micro that much, either. I never played terran, only protoss and occasionally zerg if my opponent was a well known zerg-er. at one point i was top 10 in the world, and i forget if that excluded or included cheaters. That was something we used to joke about, me and my competitive gaming friends, especially the RTS leaderboards - "ranked 23rd, but everyone above me is an obvious cheater!" After starcraft and Total Annhilation, went on to getting ranked top 10 in a few FPS (never counterstrike, barely played, oddly), and leaderboards on indie games. Having a newborn took the steam out, no pun intended.
- hutzlibu 3y agoI find the new trend interesting, to sell the game on Steam, but have a link to Github with the actual source. So free for developers and people who care to find out. Thats fair, I think, but I would prefer if the direct donation model would be more established among the masses. But this link points to the general site, with lots of options and also directly the free version. Kudos. Will try it out later.
- epiccoleman 3y agoShapez.io does the same thing - and not having to figure out another JavaScript build process in my spare time was easily worth ten bucks.
- nonethewiser 3y agoPlus developers who want the steam version or just want to support the makers. Aseprite (pixel art editor) has this sort of “if you can build it you can have it” arrangement. I wonder what percentage of would-be-paying users are getting it for free. I guess it’s probably significant but still nothing close to a majority.
- zerd 3y agoI noticed e.g. Cyberduck do the same. It's open source software, you can download it on the website for free. But if you want to have it one click on the App store it's $24.
- Aeolun 3y agoIt’s because it’s sold on Steam mostly for the features that directly integrate with Steam (like joining friend’s games). If you don’t care about that, the game is free :)
- WhereIsTheTruth 3y agoThat's not because you didn't know about it that it is a "new trend" https://github.com/Poussinou/FLOSS-Games-on-Steam https://github.com/Poussinou/FLOSS-Games-on-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38475471-Libre-Open-Source-Games/ https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38475471-Libre-Open-S... It's nothing new, and also exist in the tooling side of things https://store.steampowered.com/app/431730/Aseprite/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/431730/Aseprite/ - https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite https://github.com/aseprite/aseprite
- bloopernova 3y agoIf someone has played both this and Factorio, could you possibly compare the 2 games? Thank you!
- laserbeam 3y agoIn mindustry you build smaller factories, mostly to power turrets/build units to attack an AI. Focus is on tower defense. Logistics is cute but minimalistic. Each level takes 30-60 min on a casual play though. Factorio is much more in depth on logistics and is a single "level". Takes 30-60 hours on a casual first playthrough.
- Kiro 3y agoMindustry is more arcade and tower defense, with scenarios instead of an infinite map and a meta progression between scenarios where you unlock tech.
- edent 3y agoMindustry is great on mobile. The resource aspect is quite simple compared to Factorio - drills never run out of a resource, for example. But you can make some fairly complex bases - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/02/mindustry-scrap-to-everything-schematic/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/02/mindustry-scrap-to-everythi... Mindustry is more "Tower Defence" focused. Waves of enemies attack and you have to build turrets to stop them. As the game progresses, you can build units which can attack the enemy's base - so it become a bit of an RTS game. So there is a superficial similarity to Factorio - discover and unlock new things, build a base - but it is much more focused on the attack/defend paradigm.
- herpdyderp 3y agoAfter a combined 1000 hours between the two, I find Factorio easier and much more satisfying. Factorio's base building is very explicit, while Mindustry's is very limiting. The main reason for me saying this is that in Mindustry all production buildings output their goods in all directions which makes it really annoying to design efficient layouts. It's also harder to play co-op in Mindustry because the maps are so small. Maybe my preference would be swapped if I had played Mindustry first rather than Factorio, but whenever I play Mindustry I think "wow I'd rather just play Factorio". Mindustry is still awesome though, especially considering that it's open source.
- pjmlp 3y agoLooks quite nice, and brownie points for Java.
- dash2 3y agoI would love to see a video of the game, perhaps that would be a good idea for the home page.
- ptspts 3y agoYouTube has thousands of Mindustry gameplay videos.
- janfoeh 3y agoI for one would rather not have to click through heaps of grimace-faced thumbnails, "heeeyyy guuuys" and the other .. idiosyncrasies of the content-creator industrial complex just to get a frickin' glimpse of the gameplay. So a short official clip would make a nice amendment to the homepage.
- dash2 3y agoI just think it's a good idea for a game's website to have a video of the gameplay.
- mdaniel 3y agoYou may have missed it since it's midway down the page but it has a Steam offering and those almost always come with video (as is the case here, too): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1127400/Mindustry/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1127400/Mindustry/
- khnov 3y ago[flagged]
- KeplerBoy 3y agoWatch your words! You are commenting on a game which is certainly not bullshit. Mindustry is a fun game I lost quite some hours to.
- ritzaco 3y agoPlenty of previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32422522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32422522 (Mindustry – Open-Source Game, 135 comments) Great game, though a bit addictive.
- wilg 3y agoFascinating that the review is basically "it's too good".
- _the_inflator 3y agoThanks for the warning, I suppose it is - and that's why I stick to my guns and won't play it. Since playing Age of Empires II online around 2000 took such a heavy toll on my study habits to achieve a 2000+ rating at the time, my mantra goes by the saying: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". ;)
- Weryj 3y agoAnd here I am, a new player of Factorio and wishing I stuck to my prevention. On another note my factory is growing!
- polivier 3y agoMindustry is such a great game. I sunk tons of hours in both campaigns with a friend of mine. For those who come from a Factorio background, Mindustry has less automation and more combat. Also a Mindustry map does not take 50 hours to complete; rather it will take a few hours and may sometimes take several tries as some maps can be fairly hard. Space is limited as compared to Factorio, so space-efficient designs do matter, especially for defense (you want to pack towers tightly, with the constraint that towers must be fed by a conveyor of ammo or a pipe of liquid, or both). You also need to consider that you often need different combinations of towers in order to defeat different types of enemies. Overall, a very well-made game and very addictive.
- mcv 3y agoSounds like something I might try. Factorio has a tower defense element that never really works because the attacks are too small, my base is too large, and I always just wipe out the biter camps. That's an aspect of the game that clearly needs a lot more challenge, but lots of players just ignore it and build. For my first half-dozen tries, I always built may bases far too compact. I really had to learn to use the space available to me. A game that rewards compact building might be just for me.
- Tyr42 3y agoTry Rampant?
- Pay08 3y agoYou have the difficulty sliders and the death world preset and an entire enemies tag on https://mods.factorio.com https://mods.factorio.com. What more do you want?
- bee_rider 3y agoThe pathing of the enemies in Mindustry feels somehow more like a classic tower defense game. I think they come from a small number of points and are primarily focused on your “town hall” type structure. They’ve certainly got a lot of overlap, but Mindustry feels like a tower defense game that has a good factory builder added on, while Factorio feels like the other way around. Anyway, two great games.
- jackowen261 3y ago[flagged]
- simonmysun 3y agoIts PvP mode is also excellent. You can complete both defense and offense by laying supply lines. It's possible to ambush the opponent's supply lines as well, gaining a significant advantage on the front lines before the enemy detects the disruption in the power facility and logistics system. This is what I consider one of the most important characteristics of a real-time strategy (RTS) game. It would be better if one could steal expensive components from the opponent's conveyor belt (like processors in Factorio)
- matkoniecz 3y agoThough open servers with team modes had huge griefer problems when I tried it.
- sensanaty 3y agoHad no idea it was OSS! Regardless, I have 0 regrets paying for the game, absolutely amazing one.
- simplify 3y agoSlightly off topic, but does anyone have any resources / tips on how to build your own tower defense game with multiplayer? Been deving for a very long time, but game dev feels like a completely different beast.
- ctippett 3y agoI'm a game-dev outsider, but I've come to romanticise the idea of creating a tower defense game myself. Ever since Warcraft III it's been one of my favourite genres, but everything I've played in the intervening years seems to fall short of something that leaves me wanting more.
- KeplerBoy 3y agoI feel like mindustry is a great example of just trying something. If you were to ask this question in a game dev forum, people probably wouldn't recommend you to look at Java and yet mindustry uses Java and made it work. I guess something along the lines of JavaScript with Websockets would also work really well and you wouldn't have to worry about building for different platforms. Research some options for JS game engines and get cracking (possibly with copilot, it's not too bad at getting one started). I think it's entirely feasible for you to have a working prototype before the new year rolls around.
- andruby 3y agoAnd mindustry does it really well in Java. The game doesn't use much cpu, even on large maps and runs on windows, mac (including apple silicon). Graphics looks good too
- adamredwoods 3y agoGame dev options are huge these days, but Java isn't a bad choice: mature platform, good VM, cross-platform. I would guess javascript is further behind in performance, but with Electron/Cordova, it's a valid cross-platform choice as well. Or one could explore lesser known tools like Haxe. And then there are monolith dev kits like Godot. Heck, even Lua is still around thanks to Roblox. There's so many options!
- arkameatys 3y agoThis is funny to me and maybe worth mentioning. In prison they charge inmates for this game on the tablets, is that legal? It's AccessCorrections or Access something, I know for a fact, I played it for years and now hate it because of the associations it draws for my uneuphoric recall of doing time. They also charge for Andors Trail, another open source project.
- dosssman 3y agoJust curious, but was it an US prison ? I have trouble seeing them allowing the prisoners to play game. Also, how are the prisoners supposed to make money to pay for the game ? Thanks in advance.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoThere are paid jobs in the prison for the inmates. They are not very good, but it's a thing. You can also send funds to an inmate's commissary account, if somebody you care about is in there.
- chromakode 3y agoIt's legal to charge for distributions of GPL licensed projects. The OSI definition [1] specifically notes it's one of the freedoms in licenses considered open source. Back in the mid 2000s I recall seeing drama about projects like The GIMP being repackaged and sold. While legal, the sellers exploited information asymmetry to profit from people unaware the software was available for free. The counterpoint is that distributors do work packaging the app -- maybe AccessConnections contributed some value by reviewing the content as a trusted third party. So yeah, it's legal but might not be ethical. Open source licenses do require the source code and license to be accessible to the end user. This can be tucked away as a link in a credits screen. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm curious whether a link counts as source code distribution if you know your end users won't have unrestricted access to the Internet. [1]: https://opensource.org/osd/ https://opensource.org/osd/
- zachromorp 3y agothey what???? That sounds like legal racket to me. US prison industry is disgusting.
- junon 3y agoMindustry was a great game prior to the campaign rework, which in my opinion made things harder to progress and really enjoy. But if you've never played it, I still really recommend it as it's a cross between lighter factorio and a tower defense game.
- rbosinger 3y agoIt's one of the only games I play! I have it on Android and one thing I like is that it's fast to open up and play a bit, save, and then quit. No ads or a bunch of intros to try to skip, etc.
- grey_earthling 3y agoAlso on Flathub: https://flathub.org/en-GB/apps/com.github.Anuken.Mindustry https://flathub.org/en-GB/apps/com.github.Anuken.Mindustry
- majora2007 3y agoI bought this game after playing the open source variant for some time. It was just what I wanted, because Factorio isn't focused so much on defence, but this is. The game underwent a huge overhaul and is much more fleshed out. I need to get back to it and try and complete the campaign.
- cyanydeez 3y agoApple and open source are odd bedfellows
- __natty__ 3y agoI love this game and even more the distribution model. Do you want a free game? Use officially available sources. Do you want to support the developer or have Steam integration? Buy on Steam. Just want to donate? Donate. Want to change something in the game? Git clone.