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phaser
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  1. phaser
    Microlandia - The Brutally honest city builder.

    I started making this game several years ago, sporadically, abandoning it for month-long periods, but after posting it here a few times in Show NH I got the encouragement I needed to publish it to itch.io, then to Steam.

    This month it crossed the $500/month mark by far, but it was a long road to get it to a state where it can actually be an interesting enough game to make money.

    https://microlandia.city

  2. phaser
    It’s interesting to see the posts from warpbuild, blacksmith, buikdjet and others defending their business model that was based on the inefficiency of GitHub. I love the fact that git is built in such an open way that if you are worried about running in your own infrastructure you can easily deploy it (It’s just like SSH!) yourself. At least for me, cheaper GitHub actions is a win because I can’t justify running my own git. But these companies that are based on offering you a faster or cheaper github actions service are actually the worst of both worlds: they are not your platform and they are not in the position to offer you a better service. I’m not gonna miss them when they’re gone or transformed into an AI pivot.
  3. phaser
    Hahah this is the third time I get this. Now I can't unsee it... will do it :)
  4. phaser
    Regarding custom buildings, it will likely start as a simple JSON setting some variables like workerCapacity, studentCapacity, depth, height, etc and a voxel 3D file, so players can create cities with custom architectural styles.

    Like a city with only stalin-era and soviet-era buildings. Or something where all the residents live in victorian townhouses.

  5. phaser
    Thanks for the purchase. In the next days I plan to release many bugfixes targeting Linux and steam deck, it's the most requested thing at the moment.
  6. phaser
    Parking is a constraint in microlandia :) and parking issues have impact on company productivity and employment. however, there’s a lot of things I’m still missing, like different types of lanes (bike-proprity, bus-priority, highways, etc) so it’s one of the things i will work hard on the next month or two.
  7. phaser
    Exciting idea! I see that it could happen in more than one way:

    there is a simulation parameters file that we document openly[1]

    it’s a no brainer for me to allow playing with a custom simulation file.

    buildings are typescript types with hook-functions, making new ones is quite fun and easy and after adding sandboxing and safety it should be totally doable to plug in custom ones

    also, the simulation is a websockets protocol, so the game client can connect to a totally custom simulation

    however at this stage data types and names are changing too fast for practical modding

    1. https://microlandia.city/simulation_parameters

  8. phaser
    I started working on it around years ago very infrequently, this was the time where I experimented with concepts and programming languages... initially it was a monetary policy simulator written in go. Around 3 months ago I had the concept and basic idea working, then it was decided that I should launch.

    At this point I pushed an early access build to itch.io as soon as possible. It was very incomplete and full of problems.

    I changed the alarm clock to 6am and started working for a good 3 hours before work every weekday, this was great to capture my early morning energy which is when I'm the most creative and sharp. Weekends were full-time days. I sacrificed my social life completely (which is what I'm now determined to get back) what I did not sacrifice was sleep.

    I released a build every single day during those three months. Some of the time was new content, some of the time was bug fixes, most of the time was both. Shipping every day forced me to slice every task in something that can be managed in a couple of days so I would keep the daily cadence.

    I'm fortunate to have my wife help me with art and my good friend Pablo with the soundtrack.

    So basically my formula was: 1. Work before the job 2. Sacrifice weekends 3. Sleep well 4. Daily progress 5. Ask for help

  9. phaser
    Right now, a little flaky: Issues with controls and texture loading in Linux have been reported, but now that i've launched I'm gonna take a deeper look, hopefully next week playing in steam deck will be a decent experience.
  11. phaser
    Your game looks super interesting! Very looking forward to playing :D
  12. phaser
    I seem to be the only one with some degree of success with Tauri :)

    After someone suggested here in HN I switched Microlandia[1] from deno-webview[2] to Tauri.

    So far, it’s been a pretty good experience in Windows and macOS, of all the bug reports I received, zero are related to Tauri. Only one caveat: For Steam Linux, I had to package the game in electron after spending an entire weekend in library hell trying to get it to work in the Steamworks sniper SDK.

    1. https://explodi.itch.io/microlandia

    2. https://github.com/webview/webview_deno

  14. phaser
    I think the context here is important. regardless if videogames are an artform or not. putting off work, parenting or whatever are priorities in life to get a videogame fix is not the same as playing video games in your leisure time when is not an impulsive decision
  17. phaser
    This reminds me of the heartbreaking story of “The Lawyer, the Addict”, which was a reality check for me.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/business/lawyers-addictio...

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