EDIT: I'm noticing a lot of people in the comments blaming the testers or just commenting "skill issue" and I think I am partly to blame for this. The testers simply provided honest, valuable feedback and I believe the vast majority of it was useful. They are not stupid and were all selected through an application process. As a software developer, my job is to write software that will provide value to the user and I can't just write off all negative feedback as "skill issue" and "haters hating". The feedback I received from this process was extremely useful and has made the product better. The feedback was integrated into the game without sacrificing depth and the gameplay was not changed significantly. It just communicates to the player more clearly and is more polished. ORIGINAL COMMENT: If I survive the creation of this DLC, I promise I'll make a train DLC. For legal reasons this is not a real promise. Thanks for watching everyone! Without this channel's sponsors, none of these projects would be possible. To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/AngeTheGreat . You’ll also get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

I gotta be honest, I'm 99% here for Engine Sim but seeing how much you care about quality in the DLC gives me a lot of confidence that you'll do Engine Sim right.

the idea of a steam engine rage game is hilarious

At this point I think I've helped inflict more psychic damage than my patreon will pay for, my bad

The handover from AI to player can have its own storyline of some seniors at a workplace guiding your way while slowly stepping back

Making a game itself, is relatively easy - figuring out what is pleasing to the players, is by far the hardest part.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="790">13:10</a> When accounting for power generation, the higher amounts of power demands need to be weighted heavier. Under-producing power isn't an option, so the price has to lean towards the maximum, not the mean.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="146">2:26</a> as someone who worked on nuclear power plants I kinda love this. It is incredibly hard work and we follow extremely strict SOPs set out by physicists for a reason. Heh while you didn’t set out to build a rage game. I think the difficulty is inherent to the subject matter and I like that your initial builds did not shy away from it.

you took adverse feedback, made the changes, and didn't once sound angry. absolute legend! 11/10 game dev, can't wait for engine simulator to release!

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="240">4:00</a> I just want to tell you that I look forward to every video and they really do make me happy :)

it was fun being a tester even though my boiler kept popping

That cable snapping event needs a lot of sparks lying all over the screen, with the cables continuing to spark as long as they are broken to really sell that something is not right.

I don't think you should worry about making a steam train simulator. To all the people who really want that, check out the in development game Century of Steam, which is a 3d narrow gauge railroading game that simulates realistic locomotive firing, operation, and railroad management. Give Ange some breathing room, let him finish this up and get to engine simulator.

If they hated your game, they would be outraged at the turbofan test cell simulator I built years ago while working for Lockheed and Rolls-Royce at Stennis Space Center. I'm a former turbofan test engineer. Back in 2010 I designed and built a 6 screen stimulation, including a custom throttle, that simulated the testing of large jet engines. Specifically the Trent 9000, 1000, and XWB. The simulator had failures to test the crews reaction to problems as well as a playback of a real jet on our test stand that was synced to the simulated jet engine run condition. It was used to allow training of test crews without risk of damaging a real jet.

Testing this game was a blast Ange! Thank you for giving us the opportunity to be a part of this cool project.

We watch you for you. Whatever you make I'll watch.

Honestly, at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="251">4:11</a>, I think you might be misenvisioning what it is that a good chunk of people look forward to hearing about from you. I'd reckon a quarter or so of the people who've wishlisted the SES DLC on Steam originated from KZfaq, stopping by on Steam primarily to support you and only secondarily because they want the DLC. And let's not forget that Patreon is a paid service. As is, there are undoubtedly plenty of people who would join the Patreon (and therefore have desires more aligned with the "Patreon" category on the diagram) if they could more comfortably afford it, but remain only within the "KZfaq" and/or "Steam" category in practice. These are just two of the forces at play and there are plenty of other forces and counterforces I could list off, but the point is that you might want to reconsider what it really is that the different groups of people are really looking forward to. Especially your following on KZfaq; it's common knowledge that just making videos doesn't cut it on this platform. There may even still be viewers whose only interest was 2D engine simulator and are holding out hope that the 3D version will be a cut-and-paste replacement for it! You do seem to have a good grip on the way you handle the different groups in practice, though. This video does a good job addressing a lot of points people might want to bring up on many different fronts, and paints a positive image of the progress made on the DLC. I suspect there'll be a lot of ES fans that won't watch it and several that'll click away halfway through, but for those who watch it in its entirety, I think they'll agree that your work on the DLC has been entirely justified and be satisfied with the video too. Also, at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="780">13:00</a>: in general, \frac{ \int g(f(t)) dt }{ \int 1 dt } eq g( \frac{ \int f(t) dt }{ \int 1 dt } ) for continuous real-valued functions f, g defined on certain real intervals (where the integrals are taken over specific time intervals), right?

As someone who has developed software for years myself, I find one of the harhest parts to be how the majority of people simply do not have the prerequisite knowledge necessary to understand how much time and effort it takes to actually develop high-quality software. This is, of course, not their fault -- I can't expect everyone to know the details of software development. But it is one of those pain points every dev has to deal with, particularly solo/indie devs. Kudos to you for working through that and making a product up to your standards, while also taking harsh criticisms to heart and making big changes!

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="610">10:10</a> is that control theory sneaking in? Imagine a DLC for the DLC where you need to discover the plant transfer function, and tune a PID controller for the engine, maybe extend it to a MIMO problem :)

Ange remember, we all love you (at least the patrons do)

At <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="780">13:00</a>: The average-value operator does not (in general) commute with a nonlinear function. This could be "fixed" by having price-by-demand simply be a linear function, but that would probably be boring. Instead, an effective but approximate solution would be to sample demand at several points during the day, take the price at those points, and average those samples. As long as demand isn't too spiky and the price-by-demand curve is smooth, that should be close enough to the true value.

The thing about the throttle is that your AI system is basically exactly how real life steam engines controlled their throttles and were able to maintain extremely consistent RPMs. Real life steam engines in industrial settings used a centrifugal govenor, where the output wheel was linked to a vertical rotating shaft with two balls. As the wheel sped up the balls would swing further out and close the throttle and when the wheel slowed down it the balls would fall inwards and open up the throttle valve, you can find schematics for it in one of James Watt's historical patents. Basically a mechanical feedback system that was remarkably effective, in fact so effective that steam engines make for some of the most accurate mechanical clocks. Perhaps you should just add the centrifugal govenor as either a difficulty setting or an upgrade, you could include it along with other historical upgrades to the steam engine like a double acting piston, firetube boilers and compound expansion. Also a consequence of the centrifugal govenor is that historical steam engines were able to maintain a consistent RPM by varying their wattage.

l love how this "quick tech demo'esk side project" became a full game release with story, quests, etc

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="990">16:30</a> I study computer svience and I got second hand anxiety from watching this video. I can't even imagine how stressful it is to undertake such a massive project ❤

I’m excited for the dlc

"instead of maximizing population maximized profit" capitalism by definition lmao

Something important I learned doing data warehousing of grid telemetry, was that you do not use fancy interpolation, even linear, when translating between energy and power. Nominally you receive the kWh value (for the whole hour)-the total actual energy-so you directly have the average kW over that hour. Treat everything as interval values, so you preserve your integrated values. That is, use rectangular interpolation (i.e. don't interpolate at all). No midpoint values, etc.

yer AI gizmos might be handy later if you ever implement automatic transmissions or EFI in engine simulator, those are both effectively black boxes trying to optimize something by flipping levers based on some engine condition parameters

Glad I got to test this, it was fun being a pain in your neck! (sorry)

It's honestly incredible how much you accomplish in such a short timeframe. You don't really see people interacting with communities of this scale while single-handedly writing a massive project, editing videos about said project, and doing the same thing concurrently with another even larger project. How do you find time in your day to sleep lol.

Small idea/suggestion: The AI can be incorporated into the narrative as a senior engineer that training the PLAYER, with the player being a novice, so until the player is experienced enough he will handle most of the tasks(inputs). Then the senior slowly delegates more and more responsibility to the player until he is fully capable.

Three things ive understood after developing my apps: 1) You cannot make eveyone happy, no matter what you do, it will make some happy and some upset, but the hardest thing is figuring out which choice is the correct/best one. You dont know how a feature is gonna impact the whole userbase. 2) People don't like to explore (anymore?), whenever you think "yep this should be clear enough" or "i mean people just need to click some buttons to figure out what happens", no they won't, always keep a group of users (experts and beginners of your program, variety is a must) to ask for feedback BEFORE (and After) implementing a feature, this will save a ton of headaches 3) making your userbase happy is stressful xD people demand, request, get angry, I've had a feature i wanted to implement for a year in my app for which I'll have to pretty much change half of the codebase for, I've been delaying working on it simply because i can't get myself to start, people demand it, and it pushes me away even more, feedback loop of stress and guilt. Do what you think is the best for your mental health, that's the most important thing

Thanks for the update!

I was introduced to your channel via the OG engine simulator videos, but I really just watch for the problem solving aspects and technical challenges you tackle. You could make any project or video about game design, physics design, or anything programming related and I'd still watch it. It's just interesting to watch someone deconstruct and tackle programming challenges and you have a unique style of doing so that I haven't seen anywhere on KZfaq.

You keep going. It’s insane to me the level of commitment and passion (though I suspect you might not like working on this as much as you did previously lol) you have for this. Nobody is perfect, but you’re doing pretty dang great

I see that you included titles in the letters from NPCs. Are you planning to include an option to change title (Mr. / Ms. / Mrs. / Mx.) and such in game?

a) I don't remember if I found you before the first Engine Sim video, but I've very much enjoyed your progression from Cereal Adventures till today b) Having a feel for how your mind works via how you present your process, I am fascinated by your experience with game dev c) The crossover of economics and culture apparent even in your small sample size of user experiences is, to me, illuminating all on its own So... good job, thank you, and I look forward to future learnin'. =)

I always think of the quote "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad" - Shigeru Miyamoto

You are a rare find as a game dev, thank you for taking the time to make things right and taking the time to listen to the community, that means a lot! Even if the community can sometimes be harsh and less than helpful! I appreciate all of your hard work!

This is very good. I can see where the frustrations come from and you have very well thought out solutions. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="254">4:14</a> I wouldn't take the suggestions about the alternative DLC ideas as a bad thing. That they don't care about what you're doing and wish you'd refocus on something they find interesting, as I feel was implied here. It could just as easily mean people are excited enough about your current project that they want to see you roll that momentum into something more when you're done. Also with locomotives being the most glamorous of real-world applications for steam technology probably ever I'd say the suggestion was inevitable. Also also, not to overwhelm you with even more suggestions, but the only other applications for steam engines I can think of with any specificity are as drainage pumps for mines (not very glamorous) and on boats, like paddle steamers, ocean liners, or military vessels, which might make for an interesting challenge with the swaying of the boat and rapidly changing power demands.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="775">12:55</a> The reason taking an average doesnt work is because you need to root mean square. The average of a sine wave is its DC offset. RMS gives you the effective power delivered

I love the ideas and progress of the DLC, although I have a few ideas/suggestions in mind if you have not already had them in mind. I feel like if you had to perform maintenance (i.e maintenance costs on the steam engine or the power generator) could bring more realism and events to the game, and possibly having some upgrades like upgrading the boiler to withstand more pressure, upgrading the power generator/steam engine to output more/higher values of power to the city allowing demand to go high. I also have in mind that you can expand to manage a state/province, giving players a bit more challenge.

Honestly, I got into watching your vids by the Gen1 Engine Simulator videos I found while randomly hitting youtube. Now? Well, I'm here for the science lessons, and I'm waiting for the Steam Engine DLC. I know that it's going to be an excellent piece of work and I will definitely enjoy it. Keep up the good work and ignore the people who can't criticise constructively!

I am just interested in anything you do. Your focus is superhuman. This shows you have a great attitude to match. Well done. (PS: the old timey letters could be clearer, use bold font and lighter background for more contrast)

I just turned 14 and I’m always looking up to you and it’s my dream to make stuff like you

It seems you have the correct goals for this project and you are figuring it out the best you can, adapating your concepts, methods, priorities... As long you keep on this road I don't mind to wait for the release of this DLC and other engine sim updates or videos you also have going. These updates showing your dev process are priceless.

Even though I'm mostly here for engine simulator, I'm always just excited when another one of your video's come out because of the educational aspect of them all! Thanks for making such great content.

Thanks Ange, love a well detailed update that speaks to us like we're competent humans. Cannot wait for the DLC to be polished and released. Super hype for Engine Simulator to be finished as well.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="416">6:56</a> These points are amazing considering there are literal books trying to help people overcome this mistake. Profit First comes to mind which the tests might want to read lol

Hello, first timer here, this video has been recommended to me. It looks like a good project, and a great presentation too. Just one thing I've found is that it's really weird from what you've said: "One of the main objectives of the game is to increase the town's population", but I haven't seen a single number or graph that directly measures it, other than achievements. It's not that odd that the players keep maximizing profits when the big numbers on the center of the screen are about money, not the town's healthiness.

The Editing and Logical progression is outstanding. having never played the game, the video makes me want to try it out

completely unrelated but this video made me realize that if i want to find my childhood unknown game i must have to recreate it as best as my memory allows to then ask what game the original one is.

Nice progress! Very interesting

Ain't no way, I just randomly though "Lets check if Ange has posted a new video, it's been a month now" and here I am, just 1 hour after you posted it.

You didn't mention it, so I don't know if it's something you thought about but couldn't figure out the feasibility of, but when you don't want to do a tutorial yet want to fix the learning curve, one of the easiest and most intuitive methods is to adjust when players have access to features (similar to AI but less overwhelming). One example: to teach players to deal with expenses, a simple way would've been simply to disable most of the economy at first, only keeping expenses. Anyway, I know it's unlikely to be something you'd want to revisit, so good luck working on Engine Simulator!

Cant wait for the DLC, ive been waiting for ages for it

I want the steep learning curve and no spoon-feeding. KSP frustrated the shit out of me but it was soooo rewarding when I conquered things, because it was just me vs a game mechanic. I feel like story modes in general detract from that, so if it's appropriate to add a sandbox mode with zero help I would definitely try that option first.

You can save space by changing the °C/°F to just what the user wants to see of either of those

I’d love to see a completely autonomous mode! Perhaps you could fiddle with the load yourself and see how the program deals with situations.

I hope that we can play the DLC soon

Power demands can not only be introduce as problems but also as repetitive events that happens throughout the game like world cup every 4 years. Further challenges include requiring user have planned outages with scenarios like the engine requiring planned maintenance or inspection that user can put off n number of times before some law enforcement forces them to. This event can coincide with challenges currently in the game such that the difficulty changes in every game run.

Exactly one month before this video was uploaded, I found the game. And only now have I discovered your channel. Only then did everything make sense.

A lesson about how things can look way more intuitive than they actually are when you've built them. Also I find it fascinating that this game about operating a steam engine is getting a storyline. Well, always fun to explore unconventional storytelling lenses!

I think its important to keep in mind feedback isn't creating problems, its identifying them., for example at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="165">2:45</a>, you mention getting the negative feedback wasn't a great experience. The negative feedback you get in playtesting phases, is doing nothing but IDENTIFYING problems and issues that already existed, you just missed them. it FEELS very overwhelming when you start the first round of playtesting, but these issues would either go unresolved and unnoticed if this wasnt done, and you would end up with a complete failure on launch. Playtesting/QC phases only seem to bring up new issues, in reality, they are issues that were there all along, but unidentified. I found keeping this in mind helped to take the sting from some of the playtesters comments

Please find a balance to avoid burn-out. Negative feedback can be crushing. I wish you all the best with whatever you will decide. I admire the effort you put into this and your approach. You really are Great!

I would love to hear more about the music in the end of the video. I love it!!

I gotta say, seeing the simulation of technology progression in the town as time goes by, regardless of the population, changes as the introduction of electric heaters and hotplates, primitive lights and ovens, as they start out a little later in the game around the year they where more common, and they start out power hungry and inefficient, then slowly get better as they evolve similar to how it did in real life, would be kind of an awesome feature if it where to be added/has already been added, and have the power demand change depending on the time of year and ambient temperature and weather, alongside the power demand for evolving communication and detection equipment would also be cool

For the cable snapping events, it feels like there should be a more obvious visual indicator. If it's an impactful event then I feel it might be good for it to be highlighted, possibly with an exclamation mark appearing briefly or some electric?

I look forward to this dlc. i know making stuff like this isnt always easy, but ur doing a great job, keep up the good work!

Incredible what has become out of a "simple" simulation showing the people a principle. Awesome work!

"When given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

Can't wait for the DLC! Great work you've done by now!

You’re so talented, thanks for all of your efforts ❤

Engineer here, the fly wheel is kept constant as the electricity has to be provided within a certain frequency. Every other parameter should be adjusted accordingly.

honestly, the test period seems like a good study on people's intuitive understanding on how to manage large interconnected systems

@<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="769">12:49</a> because during high demand more power is sold at a higher price (and vice versa less power sold at the lower price during low demand).

having worked at a power plant when I was younger, this is my version of city skylines that I'll like to play when it releases

Cool to know that Maisteer is supporting you on Patreon.

What I think would be a neat future update is a game mode where the player can write an AI to control the simulation. I can imagine one approach would be to just use threshold limits to set different control states, but someone else might use a neural network to train an AI. These AIs could use an API and drive the simulation using whatever technique a user wants to use.

Honestly bro, take your time. Don't rush and remember timelines are just suggestions. A great product takes as long as it takes. Predicted and unpredicted changes included. Keep up the good work friend

I've mentioned this on other videos, but it'd be great if it was possible to make a custom steam engine/valve gear, to see if we could make something more efficient ourselves, which could also be carried over to the racing game you're considering making to enable steam cars.

Take you time don't feel stressed I'd rather wait than see a broken rushed game released. Thankyou for aiming strictly to perfection

Just wondering if you can change the title of the engineer from Mr to anything else

Thanks for the video. Really enjoy all your content from raytracer over engine simulator to dlc development!

Do what you want my man, you owe nobody anything. I'm just glad to catch a video every now and then, it's all amazing work I think.

Something I've learned as a game Dev is that a game's mechanics are rarely intuitive, it's the way they are presented that makes them intuitive

will it be done until december this year?

At the end of the day, ultimately what you are putting your effort into is honestly of little concern to me. The reason I continue to come back to your projects and channel has less to do with what specifically you're doing and more to do with how you're doing it. Your meticulous attention to detail and consistently impressive ability to design solutions to issues you encounter is really captivating, and it's clear that you have a great passion for the things you work on and want to do them right. This project didn't gain a large following because what you're designing was something people really wanted, but rather because people enjoy seeing skilled, passionate individuals perform their craft. Just keep doing things the way you enjoy doing them, and I've no doubt that the end products will turn out fine, and your audience will continue to enjoy watching you work your magic.

To be honest.... A) you never intended to make a game people play, per se. B) people are the worst, even in small amounts. ie, beware the vocal minority. The anonymity of the keyboard emboldens the average asshat. and C) other peoples happiness is not your responsibility. These days too many people have a sense of entitlement to having their good feels coddled. They are wrong. Sorry, not sorry. You are not their monkey. You are allowed to have your life, and have time away from the monster you didnt intend to create in the first place. Your efforts are not in vein regardless of the slings and arrows some in the void may cast upon you. I for one would just like to reiterate, from the silent masses, you are doing a great job. Thank you for your works. And we are eagerly awaiting your next release. Keep up the good work, man.😎👍

You're an awesome dev man! You inspire me in my own dev journey! I wish you the best! Good luck!

I love how it started out as a small project and it just keeps growing. Also when will a developer license steam engine to create a steampunk themed racing game?

You know I wish I can hear those words coming from many other devs, but you my friend, you did it, thank you. :)

I feel like everyone in the base game got used to flash boling setups and that played into many finding this mod difficult. Its like a whole diffeent game when you can just setup the engine to flash boil at max output and then not really have to deal with constant adjustments.

How do I sign up to be a tester? I'd love to check this out

Add a way to capture steam output and condense it back to water for recycling. Maybe an upgrade path?

Could be interesting to introduce the concept of grid frequency synchronization. The more imbalance is created and frequency starts deviating from target, the more tomorrow's prices are affected.

Wow those wires are wobbly! 😊

Had no idea this existed. Now I’m going to look into it because it looks cool and you as the dev seem to give a darn.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="785">13:05</a> Looks like you need a full bridge rectifier

it's crazy how much people expect from 1 guy. don't be afraid to take a break.