I love factory simulation games (think Factorio, Satisfactory, Banished, DSP, ...) and one thing that I was always missing was a game with better simulation of raw material mining. Most simulation games have you just place a "mine" on a resource and that's it.
I wanted to manage an open pit mine myself. Have excavators that mine ore and trucks move it for processing, but as they do, the shape of the terrain changes, leaving deep holes behind. Maybe even compromising your factory as the mining operation expands.
And as it sometimes go, when you want something and that does not exist, you try to make it, and that was my case here. Together with a fried we attempted to make such game. It's called Captain of Industry in case anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1594320/Captain_of_Indust...
This gave me the cool idea of a kind of recursive/fractal game where there is the main game you can play by itself but the devs keep it open for people to slot in sub games for the bits they've simplified.
So if Factorio did this you could play as normal, or play the fractal version where you can go in and control the mine or anything else. Maybe there'd even be sub parts in the mine like repairing machinery or something. The full range of macro-micromanaging would be pretty interesting.
That's cool! I was actually thinking of something similar, a game mode where you could take a control over a vehicle, like an excavator, and just have fun with it in the game, mine, dump, call trucks, etc.
This could be even cooler in multiplayer where many people could be controlling different parts of the factory, different vehicles, etc. But this sounds like a little too much work to get it "right".
After the first two paragraphs I was just about to recommend a game I found recently called Captain of Industry! cool to see a dev in here. best of luck with it!
Oxygen not Included is sorta kinda like this. It's a 2D, from the side colony management game where you have to survive on an asteroid. You have to manage oxygen production, get rid of carbon dioxide and other unbreathable gasses, find water, grow food, keep your base from getting too hot (or too cold) because thermodynamics is a thing in this game.
Mining is just "go mine here" but your colonists can only hold a certain amount of materials so retrieving mined materials can take a while, especially if you're mining far away from your base. Plus you have to worry about the materials being hot, or being affected by germs. You can technically mine out the entire asteroid, but I've never gotten close to that because something always goes wrong and everyone dies. There's only a limited amount of resources after all.
Oh, that game has been on my wishlist for a while. Looking forward to giving it a try! I've been a big fan of Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program (though didn't care much for Satisfactory), as well as colony sims like Banished, Rimworld, and Oxygen Not Included. Looks like Captain of Industry combines aspects of both genres.
Thank you! That trailer is actually nearly 1 year old now, it's from the pre-alpha stage of the game. Unfortunately, we had no time to update the trailer with all the new things. We are way to busy with all the release preparations. Last time it took us around 10 days (2 people full time) to make it.
Thanks! We use custom engine written in C# for simulation and Unity 3D for rendering. The game simulation can run without Unity.
Our "team" is tiny, it's just two of us. We've been working on it past 6 years as a hobby project over the weekends. Last year we decided to quit our tech jobs and focus on this full-time. We work with freelancers who do 3D art and music for us.
This looks fun and interesting. How much does it reflect real world processes? After playing this, would I have a better working understanding of mining, refining, and logistics?
While being more realistic than other games, I'd say it is not realistic enough to simulate real open-pit mining. You would not recommend to plan real mining operations based on the results from the game.
For example, the way how terrain collapses during mining is balanced to make a fun game rather than trying to be super realistic. We don't take into account weather effects (esp. rain). Also, in reality, hard rock needs to be blasted, but we don't have this feature (yet). Refilling of vehicles is mostly automatic, given that they have fuel available somewhere reachable. Etc...
On the other had, similar to other sim games, you will certainly need to think and plan your mine/factory well in order to be successful.
I wanted to manage an open pit mine myself. Have excavators that mine ore and trucks move it for processing, but as they do, the shape of the terrain changes, leaving deep holes behind. Maybe even compromising your factory as the mining operation expands.
And as it sometimes go, when you want something and that does not exist, you try to make it, and that was my case here. Together with a fried we attempted to make such game. It's called Captain of Industry in case anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1594320/Captain_of_Indust...