I thought this game was well known but I haven’t seen almost any mentions of it recently. It’s very weird for a FOSS enthusiast not to advertise one of the best open-source games of all time so here I am trying to make it spoken about again.
Disclaimer: this game may be addictive for some individuals. Player discretion is advised. If you notice any symptoms of addiction while and/or after playing the game, stop playing immediately and consult with your doctor. Untreated gaming addiction may result in severe consequences such as digestive disorders, social behavioral disorders, loss of job, and depression.
Awesome. I loved playing WC3 tower defense. How does this compare to those old school maps?
Any one got other FOSS game tips?
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead! I don’t recommend it on mobile unless you have no other choice (I’m largely not a fan of mobile games anyway though) but it’s amazing on desktop. If you can get past the simple graphics (like dwarf fortress it hss ASCII graphics, but you can easily get different tile sets to add graphics for everything), it’s an amazing game with a ton of content.
It’s a zombie survival rogue-like game, you don’t gain skills or anything between runs (you can unlock different scenarios and professions though, or just unlock them all from the settings), but you do gain your own experience. You can have a character for hours, then die and make a new one that dies in 5 minutes, etc. Save scum if you want, but the whole point is to let your characters die and try something new (I save scum on longer-running characters when I run into new mechanics or monsters but that’s it). When I say there is a ton to do, I mean it. People have added (and continue to add) a ton of content, and mostly with a focus on making interaction as realistic as possible.
Want to kill zombies with traps? They can start with a basic tripwire to trip zombies to slow them down and alert you, and go up to mechanized blade traps that cut them in half quickly.
Want to do a stealthy run? For melee, the Ninjutsu martial art has silent attacks and makes you walk quieter. For ranged, bows and crossbows are quiet (and can be made quieter with mods that reduce bow-string noise), but you’ll want to make your own arrows eventually - and you can!
Want some transportation? Cars! Plenty of broken ones scattered in cities and towns - decent amount that still work too. There’s gas, diesel, electric, hybrid, and several other kinds of vehicles. You can train up your mechanics skill (or start with a high mech skill, if you want) for replacing/repairing parts, adding onto to existing cars, or even assembling them from scratch. Got something you don’t know how to kill? A random car you find driving 40+ mph works wonders for turning problems into smears.
Want to eat just candy and junk food? Your character will eventually get to varying levels of overweight which reduces your stamina and speed. Don’t eat enough calories? Become skinny, decreasing your strength and health. It’s not hard to eat balanced, but it is something to keep in mind.
Find too many things you’re trying to bring back to your car or base? Find a shopping cart (or my preferred item mover - industrial trash cans) and load items up, much easier to move more and heavier things in a single trip can even mount your shopping carts and trash cans to a car with bike racks so you can bring them with. Can also weld baskets or install trash cans in/on cars to increase your storage area.
Want to do colony survival? You can recruit NPCs you find in the world and make a compound.
Farming? Yep. Brewing/distilling? Yep. Magic? There’s a mod for that. Loony-toons esque killing a big scary zombie with an anvil (or other heavy object)? Just put one on the roof and push it over the edge. Guns? Whole stores of them. Fire? I like lighting 2 story houses on fire, they make a ton of noise and draw in all the nearby zombies, then the falling debris and fire kill them.
https://pioneerspacesim.net/ Although, after watching a few videos on how to play it, felt an itch to play Elite Dangerous. So haven’t played Pioneer much.
What do you mean?
It’s great and all (it really is), but the target audience was just presented factorio 2.0 (and space age), so we’re busy for a few months.
but the target audience was just presented factorio 2.0
I totally missed that this was a thing. Saw this and then bought the DLC yesterday at 7pm, figuring I’d get a couple of hours in before going to bed. (I get up early)
Yeah, rigt. 4am this morning and I was still playing. .
Sorry didn’t know that. I’m not interested in Factorio because imo it looks terrible.
EDIT: I’m gonna open an issue so Lemmy lets OPs edit and delete comments on their posts. The amount of argument on here is too bad for a standard centralized moderation model.
EDIT: I’m gonna open an issue so Lemmy lets OPs edit and delete comments on their posts. The amount of argument on here is too bad for a standard centralized moderation model.
Not only do you insult a game that many people have a huge amount of love for, for the weakest reason possible - then you get all salty because people disagree with you.
And THEN, you complain to the developers that you should be able to delete other people’s content that you disagree with?
Seriously, get some perspective and stop being a douche. Please.
This kind of accusation is just an attempt to discredit me. I already said many times that I’m fine with disagreements but I’m not fine with toxicity and fight creation. Lemmy admins are fine with it though so I request such a feature. This is selfish but any attempt to prove, promote or empower your own opinion is selfish in general.
I know people are going to continue misinterpreting (even intentionally) my words. I went through it a lot. Hopefully this is not something that can break me now. I just chose to laugh at such attempts and imagine hurting people who do so. After all I have to defend myself from this evil world somehow.
And very few people are going to agree with such philosophy. I understand it. It’s a natural disadvantage of not complying with preset community rules.
Why would I care enough to try and discredit you on any grounds than you’ve written here? I don’t know you, I don’t care about you other than what I’ve read in this thread where you come across as arrogant and the aggressor. Not quite the innocent party you’re trying to project.
Don’t worry about replying, I’m going to use Lemmy’s block user system. Not used it before, but I think it’s the best way to deal with someone I have a disagreement with and don’t want to talk with any further, rather than wasting others time with vexatious development requests.
“imo it looks terrible” friend…,
- Imo
- Giving the reason of an action or an absence of action is not wrong but just can trigger some people to show their real personality. Though I agree it wasn’t the best way to say it.
You’re really not getting it, huh?
I rarely downvote but this deserves one.
If you want to be able to edit and delete comments from others you might want to look at hosting your own website where you can rule however you like.
The person you’re replying to was just making a comment that alludes to the fact that people who like this genre get addicted to other games. It was a light-hearted comment and you’re the one who got negative first. People asked you to elaborate on your negativity and you got defensive. Now you’re doubling down on that defensiveness. I get it. I’ve been there. But come on, man. I think everyone’s got the same interests in mind here.
If you think that’s bad you don’t want to ask his opinion on homosexuality. He’s a raging homophobe.
I know it’s off-topic but that guy really gets on my nerves.
Huh, I’m new to Lemmy so I was unaware of this guy before now. Definitely not down with homophobes. Even outside the moral implications of homophobia, its antithetical to the idea of open source software and privacy, which the lemmy.ml instance is all about.
I scrolled through a few weeks of his comment history and didn’t find anything (or missed it), but he posts quite a bit. I’ll be on the lookout now, though. If you have an example, feel free to DM.
Hmm I’m not sure if my comment was that negative and objectively triggering. I still remain with the position that being triggered is solely a problem of the one who gets triggered. Though now I think including the part about graphics may not have been necessary.
People asked you to elaborate on your negativity
I don’t think I saw such requests and if I did, I rejected the request because of the “Do not feed the troll” rule. I don’t think I need to explain anything to rude, triggered or other rather questionable individuals. I’ve been in many situations when doing so resulted in very bad things.
Also some may consider me a troll. I get it because I do exhibit troll behavior sometimes. But just let a broken soul be defensive and rejective already.
I rejected the request because of the “Do not feed the troll” rule.
The majority of the people weren’t trolling in my eyes. They were upset because you said a game looked terrible without elaborating. You could have just kept that to yourself and said “not my cup of tea” but you ellicited a reaction, seemingly on purpose. And now you’re acting like the victim in the situation and doubling down. That, in my mind, is the definition of troll behavior. Which at least you admit I guess.
Troll or not, I can see this discussion is going nowhere. So I’m just gonna mute this and move on.
EDIT: I’m gonna open an issue so Lemmy lets OPs edit and delete comments on their posts. The amount of argument on here is too bad for a standard centralized moderation model.
Lmfao
Would make a good copypasta
Truly one of the most embarassing things I have ever seen someone share publically.
Over polite comments responding to an opinion about a video game.
That has to be a joke, no?
I’m gonna open an issue so Lemmy lets OPs edit and delete comments on their posts. The amount of argument on here is too bad for a standard centralized moderation model.
LMAO you’re waaay too thin skinned to be given that sort of power. There is just some polite discussion of Factorio’s graphics going on.
You should probably just leave Lemmy if you’re that hyper sensitive to any form of disagreement.
There we go again. I’m fine with disagreement but I’m not fine with the kind of expressing it that the modern society (and especially the American society) has fallen to. There are some people here who are discussing it very nicely and I respect it a lot but others are much more questionable. FYI my “hypersensitivity” is an expression of my different opinion on how disagreements should be done and is what I’m very proud of. Now bring that downvotes on. I haven’t had a good laugh in a while.
Ahh yes comments so deserving of being deleted or edited by hyper sensitive authoritarians such as
What do you not like about it?
my different opinion on how disagreements should be done
Let me guess, all people should disagree the still unspecified way that you alone are aware of, so anything and everything remains free for you to censor because you made a post?
You’re going to have a bad time on the internet snowflake.
hyper sensitive authoritarians
That is actually true about me. I believe force is the only way to change something now.
all people should disagree the still unspecified way that you alone are aware of
Yes and no. I indeed haven’t elaborated on that topic but I’m not sure if I have enough English knowledge and rhetorical skills to do so. Basically I have much stricter rules about everything related to arguing. I’m not saying that everyone has to follow a strict pattern (because that would result in a hostile environment for personalities) but I’m definitely much less permissive than most people nowadays. It may and will be considered completely against the current youth culture and social trends but I don’t think it’s a problem.
so anything and everything remains free for you to censor because you made a post?
Not only me and YouTube has such feature for a very long time. However adding it comes with a major increase of reports (legit or fake) of abuse of the feature. Having such power is beneficial for figuring out the personality of every OP (based on their comment deletion habits) but definitely not good for Lemmy admins unfortunately.
I don’t understand. You think Factorio is visually not pleasing but Mindustry is? Are you for real?
I like both games but this is subjectively true. I think a lot of people would find the art in Mindustry a lot easier to look at.
Seconding, Mindustry is much more visually pleasing to me than Factorio. From the screenshots I’m looking at, Factorio’s graphics just don’t have consistent composition, so elements in the same image look out of place. Shadows aren’t even going in the same direction or logical lengths, and only sometimes they’re pure black giving weirdly high contrast in certain objects and not others. Many environments are various shades of puke colors. The perspective looks weird to me, as if we could turn the map 90 degrees and then all the buildings would look like the leaning tower of Piza.
I would compare and contrast between the original Fallout, perhaps, or as Captain Aggravated here else said, “Factorio does look like Age of Empires with a 3 pack a day habit.”.
Now, whether these are problems or style is a matter of opinion, and furthermore whether it should have an appealing style (as Cpt. Agg also said, pollution is a theme in the game) but some of those points are objectively straying from conventionally appealing elements.
Shadows on other planets go in different directions just look at photos taken on the “moon”.
Yes. Mindustry has a decent style and its minimalism makes it less time-dependent. On the other hand, Factorio looks pretty much disgusting to me.
I’m gonna open an issue so Lemmy lets OPs edit and delete comments on their posts. The amount of argument on here is too bad for a standard centralized moderation model.
That’s a bad idea.
Factorio is amazing.
I like how other people are being nice about it. Makes me have a little hope for humanity.
You’re objectively wrong though.
Makes me have a little hope for humanity.
Don’t fall into that trap. There’s no hope for it.
You’re objectively wrong though.
Objectively? Hmm give psychological research papers please.
Spicy take around these parts.
Factorio does look like Age of Empires with a 3 pack a day habit. And given pollution is a major mechanic in the game it’s on theme.
Mindustry meanwhile has the look of a game you’d find on one of those old 101 games on 1 CD! complilations you’d find back in the 90’s, and yet it runs…well like every other game that’s ever been packaged as a .deb.
I don’t really hitch horses with a game whose main gameplay loop involves keeping an eye on things that are off screen.
I’m not interested in Factorio because imo it looks terrible.
What do you not like about it?
He just told you: “it looks terrible.” And he’s not wrong; Factorio’s art really does kinda suck.
Man I love factorio’s art, had no idea people thought it was bad. Maybe at release. But there’s alot of attention to detail in the sprites, even the trees sway gently in the breeze. You don’t see that often in other games of a similar style.
It’s the color palette. It’s genuinely terrible. The pixel art itself looks pretty good but those colours just kill it.
Edit: god damn UK phone… color not colour.
That sentence could just as easily mean “I’ve never played it, but it looks like a really bad game”.
Factorio’s art really does kinda suck.
I will restate the original question: What do you not like about it?
I don’t think it necessarily sucks. It’s just old and I’m not a fan of it.
Calling Factorios graphics bad on a post praising Mindustry is just absurd.
It looks like the “good enough” placeholder art that devs put in before they get around to hiring an actual artist. It’s serviceable to understand what things are and what’s happening, but there’s no style to it.
Mindustry looks like one of those games you’d find on those “1001 Games!” cds back in the 90s thatbalways had the Hugo Whodunit games and the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D. It has that MS Paint look to it.
I personally disagree, I really love the dramatic sprite style they’ve gone with. Everything’s so hyper industrial with lovely details when you zoom in.
It’s also so wonderfully mechanical and smoothly animated. Might not hit for those that didn’t grow up with similar styles or something.
It is my understanding that Factorio’s art is 3D modeled and rigged, and then 2D animation frames are captured from that so the game doesn’t have to actually render 10,000 inserters every tick.
there’s no style to it
I mean, it depends on how you are defining “style”, but, to avoid being pedantic, I actually think that it does have a style, and a very recognizable and unique style at that. It has a very maximalist, industrial, gritty look to it that I love. Everything is so hyper-detailed in model design, texture, and animation. It all fits a very specific aesthetic. It’s completely fine if that aesthetic is not to your taste, but I think it’s disingenuous to say that it has no style at all.
This ia exactly on point. I have never played Factorio but can recognize it from any screenshot from its style.
Graphics. I hate old games.
I hate old games.
Is 2020 considered old…?. I understand that the game was available for some time prior to that, but during that period Factorio was in early access. 1.0 came out in 2020, and I am treating that as the full release, and everything prior to that is beta testing for development.
I meant old looking graphics too. Factorio definitely has it.
Man I really don’t get this viewpoint at all…
Well everyone has their own viewpoint and opinions.
That is understandable
Even as someone who doesn’t usually play the genre it’s a fantastic game
Reading the room is a skill, not a burden… Keep your opinion, we also have our own. No wonder YouTube got rid of the down vote button and other social platforms don’t really have one. Both sides pretty much want to suppress each other. No matter how much I like factorio, I don’t think many people who do play it care about is looks and the people who also play mindustry also don’t care how “terrible” it looks when we consider your standards as the measurement…
You done goofed your reasoning. You rolled a nat 1 on charisma and intelligence check. Rip bozo
It’s also on Steam for a couple of bucks if you want a simple way to support the dev!
That gives 30% to Steam though. Better use Itch.io as linked on the github page.
Income from Steam is what ultimately made gaming on Linux viable. And to do that, they made significant open source contributions.
So I’ll keep giving them money of course.
And it has a ton of features like cloud save which I really wanted after losing my save once distro hoping. The 30% cut is justified imo(you don’t have to agree to it, it’s just my opinion).
Java? Sorry OP I only download open source software developed with Rust /s
Rust
C better. /s (probably)
Assembly is the only REAL gaming language! Look at Roller Coaster Tycoon!
I wouldn’t call the game ‘extremely high difficulty’, it even has some easier levels early on (at least when I played it a couple of years ago). I’m not a regular tower-defense or sim game player and I was able to complete Serpulo. It can be a challenging puzzle at times, but it’s not a game I’d feel a need to warn people about difficulty-wise.
Disclaimer: this game may be addictive for some individuals.
Seconding (although I have a tendency to marathon the campaign of any game I think is excellent). No need for predatory tricks like loots, this is just a damn fun game.
It’s very weird for a FOSS enthusiast not to advertise one of the best open-source games of all time so here I am trying to make it spoken about again.
IIRC I found it in a ‘top 100 FOSS games’ list because it was one of the first which wasn’t an open-sourced cloning of an existing game. No disrespect for clones and adaptations at all, but it’s extra special to see original softwares so good that even people who don’t care about FOSSness would use them.
IMO the last few levels are complete horseshit, difficulty wise. You get sent massive waves that are undefendable unless you are sending a lot of shit and defending by attacking. Heck, i had like 10 sectors for minding and sending shit and still it wasnt enough. Maybe ill come back to this game someday and finally finish it.
it even has some easier levels early on
Yes but that’s the thing. The difficulty increase is probably one of the highest in the game industry and all levels except for the first ones are quite hard. Also this is not just from my experience. I read an article about it somewhere in the past.
but it’s extra special to see original softwares so good that even people who don’t care about FOSSness would use them.
I looked into Mindustry after seeing it on a pretty big gaming YouTube channel (Real Civil Engineer) and there was quite a discussion about it so I would say it’s a very successful indie title in general. That’s also why it’s a perfect advertiser of today’s FOSS (alongside with YouTube downloaders lol).
The game has a high skill ceiling and there is a fuck ton to learn but none of that is necessary. The game gets progressively hard as most do and there are some difficult levels (impact was one iirc) but it is by no means industry standard breaking, dark soul type game of tower defence. And the second planet erekir was surprisingly easy but I was already familiar with the game at that point so might be harder for new players but still fairly easy to play through (compared to serpulo).
Don’t be averted by the disclaimer if you don’t like difficult games. You might fail a couple times but one you learn how or why you failed, you can easily be prepared the next time. Give it a shot and there is a good chance you might like it. Don’t get on public multiplayer servers without finishing the campaign tho, you might not have a good time till you learn everything. If you really wanna try multiplayer servers, try not to disturb others and listen to what the veterans suggest.
The only thing I can put against dev (not really) is there’s no x-platform sync between clients. Continuing your game on a phone could be a cool feature, even if not from some centralized server they pay for, but from your own google drive or whatever.
environmentalists might not like it for obvious reasons.
Because of the colonization and mining? Didn’t bother me, similarly I don’t like most armies but I can still find a military FPS fun to play.
Definitely interested in trying this one out. Haven’t dove into the FOSS games category yet
Don’t forget the amazing Soundtrack
Gave it a shot this morning, I could see myself missing buses. However, I do really dislike mobile interfaces. My thumb is too wide to reliably click things
it works great on desktop using mouse too
Both controls (and UIs) are pretty different and weird to adjust to. I probably like PC more for rotating objects with a mousewheel is more natural than taps. Both feel bad at controlling your ship traversing the arena imho and I can’t say how it could’be fixed in this overall control scheme.
Thanks. Just picked it up on f-droid. Last update was 14 months ago, so I guess it’s been balanced to perfection.
Unironically, I had to delete this game from my phone because I wasn’t getting work done. This game slaps.
Apparently it was popular in US prisons until it was banned.
https://prisonjournalismproject.org/2024/03/31/popular-video-game-banned-federal-prisons/
From my prison cell in Colorado, I conquered sites on alien planets, used conveyor belts to supply my factories, and organized weapons to defend against enemy attacks. I was playing Mindustry, a world-building game that relies heavily on logistics and strategy.
For less than $2, I could lose myself in my Android tablet at night — then, when I slept, my dreams about the game replaced my usual nightmares. And I wasn’t alone: Inmates talked about the game over meals and at work.
Then came an announcement from officials last July. Mindustry would no longer be on our prison-issued tablets.
“I knew a lot of people would be upset when I read they were taking it away,” one inmate from Nebraska said. “I could walk around the chow hall, my work assignment and other areas — everyone was talking about it.”
According to a statement from a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson, Mindustry was removed because it was “found to jeopardize the safety, security, and orderly operation” of federal prisons.
When Prison Journalism Project asked for specifics on how the game jeopardized safety, security and orderly operation, the spokesperson said the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not discuss specific security practices or internal procedures for security reasons.
The game’s fans here in Federal Correctional Institution at Englewood, a federal prison in Colorado, included a retired colonel for the U.S. Army.
“All they’ve left us with are stripped-down children’s games,” he said.
Another player had one of the most elaborate mining and distribution centers I’ve ever seen, the fruit of many hours of thought — which, of course, is one key to fighting recidivism.
“Whenever I’m feeling upset, I can pick up my tablet,” the player told me. “It calms me down and changes my whole mindset.”
Users have come up with their own explanations for Mindustry’s fate. One theory goes that players had used the game’s drawing pad to sketch dirty pictures or leave secret messages.
Whatever happened, people are disappointed.
“I wanted to buy a tablet,” one person said, “but now that they’ve taken Mindustry I don’t want one.”
Sentiments like that are understandable. We are still without many of the tablet features we were told to expect, including free e-books through Project Gutenberg, video messaging, and a life skills program through Khan Academy.
In a statement, the prison bureau said that games are controlled by a vendor, and that the bureau has “the right to remove any game that it deems inappropriate.”
I miss the game. When I played it, I could stop dwelling on my past or my unknown future. And it encouraged me to be more social with others, especially when we would discuss strategy. My tablet now lies neglected in my locker.
The player who put together the elaborate mining center isn’t shocked that Mindustry is gone.
“It’s not uncommon for the BOP to take away something we like,” he said.
This sucks. :(
I found out about it on Android first but had a hard time with the interface. I put it on my PC and am now fully addicted.
Unofficially the stylus on a Samsung phone is great for this kind of game
I have a Samsung phone with a stylus, how do I get this game on my Android? I have almost no technical aptitude, so if you could be so kind to ELI5?
Install it from the Play Store and go!
Oh, no shit? I thought it was gonna be a third party apk install with extra steps, thank you for the response!
I mean F-droid has it if you prefer that instead
Well not really difficult, after you realize that you can put down buildings while on pause. The first few levels are easy tower defence… Later on you can win every level by building mid tier flying robots (iirc). Still… Great game!
If I want to play a factory game where you need to build defenses I’d go play Factorio and maybe stab myself in the throat a little because that’s about how fun having to deal with enemies in a factory game is.
Mindustry is much closer to the tower defense side of it.
Or maybe the RTS side.
There are even attack modes, where you build up an army to take on a fixed emplacement of enemy units.
