Quoting: Acrophobic

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI always look at Rust and think "I can do all of this in C++ and have a larger wealth of libraries available - and most importantly I can code however I want, without being forced into some styles and restrictions to *keep me safe*.".

IMHO the "keep me safe" part is what make language like Rust and Go really popular.

I could see that for starting out with programming.
But as someone who has been doing C++ for a long time, I can code in it, shoot myself in the foot, find the bug and fix it - all of that faster and in my own way than if I'd have to subject myself to restrictions I really don't agree with.

I don't know too much about Go, but I think it is very different from C++ on many levels, and from that follows different areas of usage.
While Rust is actually very similar to C++ in all but a few key points. And thus both fulfill pretty much the same roles and areas of usage.

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Quoting: PatolaIt's not a method to lull our brain to sleep. Is to make things believable. Ever heard of suspension of disbelief?

Absolutely.
And there is absolutely no problem in suspending my disbelief if the graphics are consistent and well implemented. If they are realistic or not is rather irrelevant.
Because I'm actually using my imagination. Not actively, mind you, like most things mind-related, it happens "in the background".

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf you want to lull your brain to sleep with AAA graphics - because that is exactly what happens, your brain got nothing to do there as it doesn't need to fill any blanks, the more realistic the graphics get - well, that's your choice.

So, making the brain tired with artificial, non-believable graphics is something you enjoy? Curious. I'd think they get in the way of enjoyment, not somehow improve it.

You're not painting a very optimistic picture of your brain if a bit of imagination is already tiring it.
The brain is like a muscle, excercise it. It is not too late (assuming you are not 60-70+ and the cells are actually decaying).

I continually use it from working to learning a language to playing games that require actual thought and imagination - and I'm not having tiredness problems with any of it.
Of course I rest it, too. Rest is important. I usually do it before going to bed, helps with sleeping.

Quoting: Patolabecause you are not even first-person (except for Hardcore Henry, a truly amazing flick).

I see a pattern forming here.
First person makes immersion a lot easier, no doubt about it.
But it isn't the only thing allowing it, it can be done with pretty much any perspective.

Though I do agree that was maybe not the best example. Series and movies are almost exclusive watching someone else do stuff, you are not the protagonist.

Quoting: PatolaSimple graphics .... They instead offer you a simplified, flat version of what you would be supposedly interacting with -- a token of an entity, and not by any means an attempt at a convincing exposition.

Exactly. And everything they do not show you, every thing lacking to complete the "picture" and form a non-flat version of what you are seeing, all of that is done by your imagination.

Quoting: PatolaAt no time you have to really imagine something, but if you really had -- like in those games made for blind people, with sounds alone, where you have to use the imagination all the time -- it would likely be a bad, tiresome game, at some point you would really demand to see the monster, or whatever that is it should offer.

So you acknowledge that your brain goes active if it is presented with a lack of information.
Good, that is correct. That's how brains work, filling the gaps and completing patterns is what we're really good at. Especially if trained correctly.
But retro graphics are full of a lack of information. The only difference between something like an audio-only game and something with a simple graphical style is the amount of information lacking.
Your brain doesn't care, it becomes active either way, the only difference is in how active it has to become.

You don't have to take my word for it. I would seriously recommend reading some books about how brains work, or at least what we know so far.
We got recommended these two in a completely random course at my "vocational school" (not sure what the correct translation would be) years ago, or at least older printing of these:
https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Mind-How-Brain-Works/dp/0393974464 [External Link]
https://www.amazon.com/Imagination-Understanding-Minds-Greatest-Power/dp/1643132032 [External Link]

Though I didn't finish the latter, to be honest, it was a bit "out there" with its excourses into psychology.
Edit: The latter one says it was released in 2019. Uhm... I'm either mixing it up with another one with a similar name or they got the dates wrong.

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I think it is fair to say that in general, the majority of games are not well done.
No matter what industry or kind of skill you talk about, people who are truly good at what they do, the top of the class if you will, are in the minority. Thus, it is only natural that the majority of products in any sector is not good - while the few that are good crystallize and become apparent over time.

The thing is just that there are a lot more indie than AAA games, and with that naturally also comes a larger number of good indie games compared to very few good AAA games.

AAA games have the advantage of being shiny on the surface level - and many players rarely look further than the surface when it comes to games.

I'd compare it to cinema - are all the movies that are most successful also the best movies? Certainly not.
They are just good popcorn cinema. Won't demand much from your audience, will show quite a spectacle on the screen, people leave with a good feeling (well, if the movie wasn't downright terrible) while not really being richer in any meaningful way and having no thought provoked.
Truly great movies rarely achieve a high level of success, even though some certainly do, often over time.

I don't think there's anything wrong with popcorn cinema, and I'm definitely mostly a popcorn cinema viewer.
My standards when it comes to cinema or movies in general are a lot lower than when it comes to games.
But I'd never even get the idea of saying that large scale cinema movies are better than their lower-budget counterparts in any way other than surface-level bling.
Quite the opposite, actually. In true artistic value, not a single movie by Marvel comes close to anything put out by Von Trier, for example. I watched Antichrist once and it still finds its way into my thoughts every now and then - that sure won't happen with a Marvel movie.

It is very, very similar with gaming.
Just that indie games are a lot easier to access and consume than indie movies and therefore can find a potential audience more easily.

Quoting: BeamboomIt's also quite symptomatic that an indie game does some parts well, but are very weak on others. A direct consequence of being so few on the project.

The parts that indie games do well are the parts most important to any game, those related to gameplay, to whatever the core of the game is.

The parts that they don't usually do well in are art and, to some degree, audio. And I'm not talking about high-end effects or models here, those have nothing to do with art quality. What's important about quality game art is its consistency and (usually) variance. That's where many indies fail to various degrees, and not always because of budget.

Just to make it clear, I'm talking about good indie games here; that bad ones fail at what they do is kind of a given.

AAA on the other hand focuses on high-end art and audio - because that's what will rake the cash in big time, with the casual audience. While gameplay, if things went well, is serviceable at best. Which is kind of funny, because great gameplay can be achieved by very few people and is thus actually much cheaper than high-end art which requires lots of manpower.
A AAA game that is also truly good or even great in gameplay and not just a boring rehash of things devoid of challenge and creativity?
Dark Souls comes to mind. I'm struggling to name more.

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Quoting: Geppeto35aaah Rust... recoding everything in Rust, the hobby of the moment in the linux community (after redocing in ruby, in python, ...) XD

Not only Linux. I always look at Rust and think "I can do all of this in C++ and have a larger wealth of libraries available - and most importantly I can code however I want, without being forced into some styles and restrictions to *keep me safe*.".

Though I do get that after many years of C++, you definitely wanna do something else - for me that became Python/GDscript and JS, somehow.
Backend development and game dev as a hobby take you in funny directions.

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Huh. So I always pronounced their name wrong.
The more you know.

Also, funded in under a day.
But they deserve it, while I didn't personally like their last game too much, they are just very reliable devs and still release patches for their older games.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: TheSHEEEPOf which you did not counter a single point, so I am most likely simply right about you.

Again an assumption. You are really eager at judging others, aren't you.

An assumption in a sentence with "most likely"? Why yes, yes it is!
And one you continue to reinforce by evading all points made.
I am not one of those people who pretend judging others would be something bad. All of us judge everyone else (and ourselves) all the time, we do it since we walk around on this dirt heap. I'm merely as open about that as I am about anything else and do not care for initial handshaking to get a discussion started.

Quoting: BeamboomThe problem is your attitude, it's not one I care to spend time on. Be a bit more inviting and not so full of attitude and you may establish an interesting conversation. I don't have a single thing against people with different perception on things than me. But I do have a thing against people that respond like you.

I have no interest in being inviting. My interest lies in speaking my mostly unfiltered mind and receiving an equal response.
Take it or leave it, but know that leaving it will only reinforce my "assumptions" about you - not that I could give you any real reason why you should even care about what a random online person thinks about you.

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Game development is a tough market, especially for smaller indie developers. I've seen quite a lot rise and fall over the last few years as creating games and getting them onto a store has become ridiculously easy compared to a few years ago so there's more competition than ever.

The problem in most cases is actually a staggering lack of community work.
Games nowadays have almost 0 chance of success if the developers do not spend time themselves to get into communities, introduce their game, and stick around and communicate openly and regularly.

That is, in addition to having a game that actually looks interesting to play (where this one also struggles a bit, IMO).

Getting some spotlight on large media outlets is out of the question anyway - and also no longer that relevant, as these non-niche sites continue to dwindle thanks to... well, that's a different topic.
Instead, you now have to get out there and communicate with streamers, youtubers and communities directly.
It is a lot of work, but I think indie devs can forget about any kind of success if they don't reserve some time for doing that every day for an hour or two.
Which certainly increases the workload, but I'd say most people going indie dev knew going in it's not going to be an 8hr/day job.

Case in point, I am part of a few communities (two of which have sections or are focused on strategy/sim games), but have never heard of this game before now.

But (yes, that's a large but).... this dev did the right thing, put money aside to focus on what is likely a dream of his or a life-bucket-list kind of thing and spent a year doing something that he likely loved doing. Without going into debt or anything like that.
Which is admirable. I plan to go the same route eventually.

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Before switching to Manjaro with KDE Plasma, I was also using Cinnamon (though I just installed it on top of a normal Ubuntu).
It is indeed fairly nice and I think one of the easiest interfaces for people switching from Windows (or just testing the waters in general).

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: TheSHEEEPEdit: Sorry if that all sounded too aggressive, but graphics-whorism always gets to me.

Then stop assuming everyone you disagree with are just whores. Cause what you released there was plain ignorant nonsense, hot air.

Of which you did not counter a single point, so I am most likely simply right about you.
If someone by their own admission primarily cares about secondary attributes of games like graphics, then sorry, but those people are graphics whores. That's kind of the definition here.

But hey, despair not! I know many people who are proud of that status, for some reason.

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Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: Samsaiat least to me this indie stuff is more interesting anyway because indie games feel like they at least have some soul

And that's your opinion, and one you are fully entitled to, of course. Just like I am entitled to mine. I respect your point of view. I'm glad for you. Cool! Enjoy the small games!

Your argument hinges on the absurd point that indie games would be small.
Small?!
Games like RimWorld, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, tons of Roguelikes, Atom RPG, Pathfinder, the list is endless .... they all have more depth, more gameplay to them than the majority of AAA titles combined.

I couldn't even spend more than 6 or so hours in the latest Tomb Raider as it was just so devoid of challenge, played itself for the most part (even went so far as to introduce skills that actively remove some of the gameplay that was left, now that's true AAA design) and was basically exactly like the one before.
Good port, though ;)

Meanwhile, something like Supraland with its singular vision and brillance in every detail didn't allow me to put it away from beginning to end.

Every once in a blue moon, a AAA title comes along that is actually more than just pretty to look at for a handful of hours and has something akin to actual challenge, creativity and good worldbuilding.
And it usually makes headlines when that happens.
But all the rest might as well just be a movie, because it is as deep as a pachinko machine. Just instant gratification in a Hollywood movie dress.

Quoting: BeamboomBut I've been a gamer for four decades now. I have played Pong on coin-up arcades back when people still paid to play that black'n'white game with coloured transparent stickers to create an illusion of colour. It's not like I've never played anything but the flagships of today.

Quite the contrary. I've played sprite based 2D games for thousands of hours back when that were the bleeding edge technology - there wasn't anything else. I played games back when they had to make them unfairly hard just to make them last, as they could not write bigger programs, the machines would not tackle it.

So for me, to go back to that kind of software - low budget, short games, small team efforts, limited resources, limited everything - well, I played nothing but that for years.

This is so incredibly sad to read.
You were never interested in what games are actually about: Gameplay.
You just went running after the currently best possible method to lull your brain to sleep that was one step above just being a movie, weren't you?
Well, you finally got what you always wanted. Just not on Linux.

If you want to lull your brain to sleep with AAA graphics - because that is exactly what happens, your brain got nothing to do there as it doesn't need to fill any blanks, the more realistic the graphics get - well, that's your choice. But then why not just watch movies and series (or read books)? Those can focus on nothing more than "graphics" and acting and stories - which seem to be the most important things to you.

I always watch one or two episodes of some series before going to bed. Or a movie. It's nice. Shuts me right down and makes me ready to sleep. Just like most AAA titles would.
But why the hell would I want to do that for the rest of the day (well, the free time part, anyway)?

Quoting: PatolaAnd I am also angry at the developers that try and use Pixel Graphics as pretending "being artsy" instead of plainly saying it's the small budget.

Not saying this is never true, as it sometimes is.
But nowadays, you can definitely go for more modern graphics with a small budget, too.
So I would argue that the majority of titles that do use Pixel Graphics or sprites do so not because of budget reasons but because they simply want to go with that style.

Because that's what it is, believe it or not: A style.
And a good one, too.

Since no amount of realistic graphics can ever replace the best renderer that ever was, is and will be: The space between our ears.
The early era (90s- early 2000s) had the incredible advantage of being restricted in graphical possibilities, and the solutions they came up with have advantages that are (thankfully!) being rediscovered today. And used for reasons other than technical or budget limitations.

Just like you still have all the classical instruments around, even though we now have the capabilities to do tons of other stuff electronically. They aren't "just old", they are different.

They spark the imagination, they are just more interesting to look at than "realistic plant and rock number 67632487", they make your brain go into (or stay in) active mode.
If I wanted high-end realism, I could spend my time hiking through the forest. No PC could beat that. Yet.
There is so much more a title like Ion Fury or Dusk offer to you (single-player-wise, anyway) than something like the last 10 Call Of Duties or abominations like the latest Wolfenstein would. It's a damn shame you are declining the offer.

Edit: Sorry if that all sounded too aggressive, but graphics-whorism always gets to me.

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