epaga

As far as I understand, the best any AI was able to get to until now was being able to produce blue science which is like level 2 or 3 of a science tree like 10 levels deep.

To me who has maybe put 20-30 hours into Factorio, this is even more impressive stuff than some of the Blender videos I've seen... just mind-boggling.

Thanks! I've been into submarine sims since I was a kid and my dad showed me Silent Service 2. Later I got into Silent Hunter 4 and I started thinking that it would be fun one day to distill the core tactical stuff to just a simple map (so that you could practice the geometry stuff of approaching ships with uncertain data).

That idea bounced around in my head for ages until I decided back in February to give it a shot and make a prototype. It turned out that the prototype was a lot of fun so I kept going :)

While we have you here - I've seen this discussion multiple times - does @dang "do" anything to get your attention, or did you just happen to see it because you were scanning the comments manually, and therefore email is better for letting you know something?

Think not but “Normal Shark” just didn’t have the same ring to it

Two weeks ago, I released the tactical map-based WW2 submarine sim Silent Shark (which I got feedback on from HN for beta test a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180924 ) and it's gone extremely well for a side project - I've had over 100 Steam reviews, 99% of them are positive, and I have sold a few thousand copies so far.

I began working on this game just 6 months ago and have only worked on it in my spare time in evenings and on weekends, instead of playing computer games. I made the early decision to use Codex for 100% of the coding, that has been a phenomenal experience.

The only Image Gen AI I've used has been to clean up 2 old and weathered historical maps I found, to make them readable.

Still have over 25,000 Steam wishlists and growing. I'm super thankful and having a blast.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705650/Silent_Shark/

They very wisely removed the code part and specify you only need to disclose GenAI stuff.

That looks really cool, hadn't heard about that.

But I did grow up with Silent Service II. And it turns out, the subsim niche is bigger than I had thought. Very fun!

Wow, hadn't heard of Sunless Sea till now, what I'm seeing of it looks gorgeous, thanks.

For Silent Shark, the map being kind of the "protagonist" if you will and then having the trays of buttons or instruments on the side was also kind of the idea in my head from the beginning.

Till now at least from sub sim fans I've heard nearly only praise for the design. But to be fair, most of the more famous submarine sims aren't necessarily known for beautiful clean UI anyways, so it's not like there are high expectations I suppose. :)

Thanks! The "pre-pilot training" this is pretty much what the Basic Tutorial is all about, have you tried it?

Thanks so much! A few of those are on my (very long) list already. It's been so great getting so much positive feedback and ideas coming in.

Thanks for trying it out and for the feedback! I used to have the red arrows be pulsating and got feedback that it felt "too much" and kind of out of place in the game... probably need to find a middle ground.

I'd also like to hear what AI smells you are picking up in the game.

The only AI graphics in the game (as described on Steam) are literally just clean-up jobs of existing historical maps. That is it.

This is very much a hand crafted game. The design is my own - what I heavily used AI for was the coding side of things as well as for creating my own tools for myself to design things like ships, instrument dials, shipping lanes, etc.

Nearing the release of my first game ever - Silent Shark, a tactical, map-based WW2 submarine sim releasing this Wednesday on PC, Mac, and Linux! I'm at about 17,000 wishlists on Steam and I'm having such a blast. Very impressed with Steam so far.

I designed Silent Shark to be the sweet spot of minimalism meeting realism of dials and procedures (like a simulated Torpedo Data Computer) that scratches my simmer geek itch without being impossible to write the game myself.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705650/Silent_Shark/

Browser demo: https://silentshark.app/alpha

Such a beautiful tribute. You get such a sense of his urgency at really wanting as many as possible to understand how precious and wonderful this woman was to him.

Thanks so much! It's been an absolute blast to create and tweak.

Continue work on my map-based WW2 Pacific submarine sim Silent Shark https://silentshark.app - I just added lifeguarding missions and am going to do my first ever "developer broadcast" on Steam tonight for the Steam Next Fest and hoping I don't screw things up...

I've been pleasantly surprised at the community beginning to get excited about the game.

If you look at the trajectory of your stance, do you think you might reach "Uh-oh this is doing just as good a job as I can do in a much shorter time?" within the next year? I feel like that's what happened to pure coding for me, something I never ever thought would be possible.

The unreliability is something that seems like it might be a temporary early stage.

Yes indeed - ARCore on Android, ARKit on iPhone - AR optimizations are crazy good.

Hey! Thanks for recommending this!! That’s my app. :) pushing the tracking work off to the phone is helpful for freeing up resources on the computer.

My teenage son has held multiple LAN parties this past year at our house. They are far from dead, just maybe not quite as widespread as they used to be when I was his age.

If you join our Discord and ping me there, I can add you to TestFlight for beta testing the App Store version!

Thanks so much for the kind words!

> How long did it take you?

It's taken about 3 months of my spare time (some evenings and a few weekend afternoons) so far.

> Is any of it vibe-coded?

I actually started the project back in February as an experiment to train myself in prompting and to see how far I could get using Codex and letting it do literally all the coding for me. It turned out, I could go all the way. I have not touched a single line of code myself (I have only tweaked some CSS from time to time). This project has led me to realizing my 20+ years of professional experience in coding are clearly worth far less than they were just a couple years ago...

> As you already stated, the browser version is a Vite/TypeScript app, but what programming language is the actual game in?

The actual game is written in TypeScript. For the Windows/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck/iOS/iPadOS/Android builds I'm using Electron to package it (which has surprised me for how well it's working even though I always kind of hated Electron...)

Found the setting and fixed that.

Optimized to webp. Thanks again!

Whoops thank you! Will optimize soon.

Note that the periscope has an expand button to make the view bigger (though if you are on your phone there’s not much more for it grow)

Primarily because I always loved those pieces growing up, it was my first real exposure to classical music. :)

(And another reason is that it was a simple way to get some stirring music without needing to find a way to write my own.)

Loved this idea, so I put it in the game. Check it out and tell me what you think. :)

Thanks! I noticed that, too and will be getting it set straight. Still learning the Steamworks ropes, it's a colossal administrative tool.

I super appreciate this feedback and don't at all take it as overly negative.

I have gone back and forth on whether to describe how to use the tools or instead to explain goals. I get what you're saying and will give this more thought.

(And the fact remains that with this many tools, it's simply really challenging to explain it in a clear and elegant way on a small device.)

Once you "get it" and know how everything works, then I think it can work well...but for something this complex, the issue is definitely going to be onboarding.