[HN Gopher] Mindustry: Open-source automation tower defense game
___________________________________________________________________
Mindustry: Open-source automation tower defense game
Author : 0x000042
Score : 461 points
Date : 2023-12-22 09:32 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mindustrygame.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (mindustrygame.github.io)
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| Does it make sense to publish Deb packages for this game?
|
| Also this commit:
| https://github.com/Anuken/Mindustry/commit/5548e727501793479...
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| While I agree that commit message could benefit from
| punctuation for readability, the change diff itself seems quite
| reasonable.
| vultour wrote:
| It's 6 words long, there's no point in punctuation.
| ta8645 wrote:
| why punctuate your nine word post
| thejohnconway wrote:
| It's 6 words long no punctuation
|
| It's 6 words long? No, Punctuation!
| qwertox wrote:
| Mirrors exactly my feelings on Android development.
| WA wrote:
| Mindustry 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| > I don't want to build or direct troops in a Factorio game.
|
| You won't like upcoming Industrial Annihilation then
| probably.
| criley2 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| These 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.
| mft_ wrote:
| Me too - I've almost finished my second play through Serpulo,
| but Erekir didn't click with me at all.
|
| --
|
| My one observation/criticism is that as you progress through
| the game, it shifts through different stages, making the game
| very different to play:
|
| Early - essentially start from nothing (or very little) on
| each map, balance mining and infrastructure development while
| simultaneously protecting yourself
|
| Mid - usually not feasible to start from nothing, but taking
| resources with you to a new map often makes winning very easy
|
| Late - you absolutely have to rely on massive external
| resources to stand a chance, meaning you have to spend a lot
| of time developing the infrastructure to ship resources to
| wherever you're playing next. (Also, the code that 'ships'
| resources between sectors seems unreliable and maybe buggy.)
|
| I really enjoy the challenge of balancing within 'early'; mid
| is a lot duller, as is the infrastructure development.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| That's not because you didn't know about it that it is a "new
| trend"
|
| https://github.com/Poussinou/FLOSS-Games-on-Steam
|
| 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://github.com/aseprite/aseprite
| caslon wrote:
| Aseprite isn't open source.
| imhoguy wrote:
| That is actually fair idea. I am going to try it with an
| Android app - paid in G Play Store, free in FDroid.
| moehm wrote:
| DAVx5 operates under the same principle and they seem to have
| success with it.
|
| https://www.davx5.com/
| genewitch wrote:
| wow, thanks for that, i didn't know you could build it
| yourself. I have a nextcloud and was irked that i had to
| shell out cash for something i had considered non-
| essential, syncing calendars.
|
| Now i am going to try it out for free and buy it if it
| works without issue, awesome.
| mksybr wrote:
| It's available on F-Droid.
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/at.bitfire.davdroid/
| axus wrote:
| It might have been free on Play Store a few years ago when I
| tried it, maybe just very cheap. I was looking for a fun game
| on my Amazon tablet after installing Play Store, and Mindustry
| delivered.
| szundi wrote:
| Buying on steam is a donation basically? Why is it not?
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Because of the cut steam takes I guess. And fixed price, and
| a middleman, and depends on a central platform, etc
| genewitch wrote:
| available (nearly) anywhere, built in support forums,
| refund capability, and until a couple of years ago being
| able to use bitcoin to pay (buy steam gift cards with
| bitcoin). family sharing - where another computer can play
| games you've bought if it's on the same network, is also a
| nice feature. I know it doesn't matter here because the
| game is open source (or whatever), but in the general sense
| it's reduced my spending on games. When my kid wants to
| play a steam game i either do work or play a game on xbox
| for windows, gog, battlenet, whatever. As i type he's
| playing BeamNG on his computer via my steam login on my
| computer.
|
| Also, i am a bit biased. I'm part of the steam class
| action, and potentially will receive $500 or more from
| valve due to their "cut".
| hajile wrote:
| Mindustry has other ways to donate directly if you choose.
| The dev obviously thinks paying steam a cut is still worth
| it in increased sales and marketing.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Plus 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.
| bloopernova wrote:
| If someone has played both this and Factorio, could you possibly
| compare the 2 games? Thank you!
| laserbeam wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| Mindustry is more arcade and tower defense, with scenarios
| instead of an infinite map and a meta progression between
| scenarios where you unlock tech.
| edent wrote:
| Mindustry 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-
| 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 wrote:
| After 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.
| hajile wrote:
| Mindustry encourages compact designs due to limited space in
| levels where factorio has infinite space that encourages
| sprawling designs. In that context, the all-side output is
| critical for Mindustry's compact layouts.
|
| I find Mindustry layouts a lot less tedious compared to
| inserters everywhere and I greatly prefer the Mindustry
| conveyor flow controls.
|
| I do wish Mindustry added another transportation layer where
| physical transport between sectors was required rather than
| generic space launches. It would give a much more cohesive
| feeling to the various levels.
| Izkata wrote:
| > 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.
|
| The armored and plastanium conveyors prevent this.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The difference is what the primary focus of the game is, I
| think.
|
| Mindustry is a tower defense game that uses factory style base
| building as added spice.
|
| Factorio is a base building game that adds some tower defense
| elements as added spice.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Looks quite nice, and brownie points for Java.
| dash2 wrote:
| I would love to see a video of the game, perhaps that would be a
| good idea for the home page.
| ptspts wrote:
| YouTube has thousands of Mindustry gameplay videos.
| janfoeh wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I just think it's a good idea for a game's website to have a
| video of the gameplay.
| mdaniel wrote:
| You 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/
| ritzaco wrote:
| Plenty of previous discussion at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32422522 (Mindustry - Open-
| Source Game, 135 comments)
|
| Great game, though a bit addictive.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Thanks 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 wrote:
| And here I am, a new player of Factorio and wishing I stuck
| to my prevention. On another note my factory is growing!
| nikitoci wrote:
| Do _not_ install Space Exploration mode! Save yourself 400
| hours.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Wait for the official Space DLC and all the 2.0 QoL
| improvements next year instead!
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| Hmm, I had to google this mod [1]. Seems really cool, but
| it also does sound a whole lot like the factorio
| expansion [2], so what is going on here?
|
| (I been eagerly awaiting the factorio expansion for a
| while now!)
|
| 1: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/space-exploration
|
| 2: https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/factorio-expansion-
| space-...
| Brybry wrote:
| They hired the mod creator (as an artist) and, from the
| Factorio Friday Facts blog posts[1], the expansion has
| some inspiration from the space mod but is not the same.
|
| [1] https://www.factorio.com/blog/
| shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote:
| Oh, that is amazing! Thanks for pointing me to the blog!
| bombcar wrote:
| If you like Factorio and are at all interested in game
| design I can highly recommend every one of those blog
| posts.
|
| It's amazing how time and time again a they describe a
| feature and you're like wow this is perfect and then
| later they're like "here's how to fix all the problems
| you don't even notice".
| dalkvist wrote:
| The mod is older, and they hired the modder to work on
| the expansion. From the blog posts the expansion is a lot
| closer to vanilla then the complex mods.
| sunbum wrote:
| The factorio team hired the person behind the space
| exploration mod to integrate it into factorio.
| Baldbvrhunter wrote:
| Earendel was employed by Wube in February 5, 2021
|
| https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-365
| bashinator wrote:
| Don't look at Dyson Sphere Program.
| mcv wrote:
| A very long time ago, my dad prepared me for this risk by
| buying Civilization just before my high school final exam. I
| graduated with 268% on Emperor.
| swyx wrote:
| and how were your high school grades?
| onionisafruit wrote:
| It's funny how saying a game is addictive makes many people
| want to try it, but people like you and me take it as a
| warning. For me it's because I succumb to addictions more
| easily than most.
| dvaun wrote:
| All through lessons learned. It's difficult to quit playing
| in the initial years, but as the time passes it becomes
| easier.
| polivier wrote:
| Mindustry 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 wrote:
| Sounds 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.
| Pay08 wrote:
| You have the difficulty sliders and the death world preset
| and an entire enemies tag on https://mods.factorio.com. What
| more do you want?
| CivBase wrote:
| Mods are great, but they generally lack cohesion. I agree
| with OP. I wish that instead of passive upgrades and only a
| couple tower/ammo variants, the game had a deeper tower
| defense aspect.
|
| It'd be nice to have more enemy and tower variants, with
| certain types of towers working better against certain
| types of enemies - or towers that debuff enemies instead of
| hurting them. Maybe there could be structures that attract
| nearby enemies so it'd be easier to direct where attacks
| hit.
|
| I think stuff like that would keep the tower defense stuff
| from loosing relevancy in the late game while staying fun.
| dento wrote:
| I should suggest warptorio here:
| https://mods.factorio.com/mod/warptorio2
| Filligree wrote:
| You should try Warp Drive Machine:
| https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Warp-Drive-Machine
| matkoniecz wrote:
| for me Factorio combat was overall boring and just
| drudgery, and just adding unfun pressure.
| Filligree wrote:
| Some mods change biter behaviour to make them smarter,
| such as Rampant. Others change the entire gameplay loop,
| like Warp Drive Machine. The mod ecosystem is huge, and
| it's far too early to claim you know for sure it'll be
| boring.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Try Rampant?
| ajuc wrote:
| It makes you optimize for different things which is why I
| prefer it to Factorio even if the tech and crafting tree is
| less developed.
| simonmysun wrote:
| Its 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 wrote:
| Though open servers with team modes had huge griefer problems
| when I tried it.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Had no idea it was OSS! Regardless, I have 0 regrets paying for
| the game, absolutely amazing one.
| simplify wrote:
| Slightly 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.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| Game 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!
| hajile wrote:
| Web games used to suck, but wasm + webgpu seems like a
| great combination for reasonable performance while also
| allowing indie devs a way to avoid forking over 15-30% of
| their profits to middlemen.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > and yet mindustry uses Java and made it work
|
| I'm pretty sure the game I've spent the most hours playing
| over the last few years is written in java - Slay the spire.
|
| Minecraft was originally Java too I think.
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| The Bedrock edition of Minecraft (XBox, Microsoft store) is
| in C++. The original is still built with Java and called
| the Java Edition (unless I missed some big news the past
| few years)
| Hortinstein wrote:
| I just dove into this the last few months working through a
| Udemy course on building a vampire survivors clone in Godot
| 4....highly recommend (here is the author talking about it
| https://youtu.be/Yd-sndQnWIo?si=yWU9WJ2roSVlMzDE). I was amazed
| by the tooling and had a blast doing it. I'm primarily a
| backend dev and this scratched a different itch. There appear
| to be some RTS courses but I can't vouch for them. I would find
| one that looks interesting and dive in. I typed out all the
| code and did the steps as he did and feel like I learned a ton.
| I am still looking to learn more about multiplayer in Godot 4,
| but I found a few YouTube videos and it doesn't look super
| complicated, especially if you are not concerned off the bat
| about cheaters. Additionally I have been following this project
| (Godot 4 MMO), the code is organized pretty well:
| https://jdungeon.org/ but very early in development
| ctippett wrote:
| I'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.
| arkameatys wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Just 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 wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| It'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/
| zachromorp wrote:
| they what???? That sounds like legal racket to me. US prison
| industry is disgusting.
| junon wrote:
| Mindustry 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 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| Also on Flathub: https://flathub.org/en-
| GB/apps/com.github.Anuken.Mindustry
| majora2007 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Apple and open source are odd bedfellows
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Mindustry - Open-Source Game_ -
| 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 - Jan 2021 (6
| comments)
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(page generated 2023-12-22 23:00 UTC)