I feel like Apple makes MacOS really difficult to use with all the unessessary security components. Plus they treat there users like idiots, they hide advanced operations behind keyboard shortcuts. Then there's the need to control the ecosystem.
I don't find the keyboard shortcuts to be inconvenient, or maliciously "hidden". I just recognize that most of the stuff I do on a daily basis is above how most users work with their computers. Besides, it's faster for me to use a keyboard than mouse anyway
Author's latest title has enormous memory leaks in linux through proton (and in macos through crossover) [0]. I hope the author puts effort in non-windows platforms for this one during development, because the first duskers was indeed a great game.
> Author's latest title has enormous memory leaks in linux through proton...
If this is something the dev can reasonably fix by changing their game, then it'd be good for them to do so. Looking at the discussion in the thread, it looks like the dev is actively working to fix this for everyone, and not just the subset of folks that he fixed it for.
However, if this doesn't happen on Windows, I'd argue that it's a bug that needs to be reported against and fixed in Wine/Proton/Crossover.
Maybe. But also imo it happened because the author was not testing proton/crossover at all until the beta was released, and even then only later that did people started reporting it. Developing in one platform and then post-release fixing bugs in others that the game is not actually meant to be played is probably not easy.
The bug is still there, disabling assisted moves helps a lot and it triggers less but it still happens if you are unlucky.
Just to note that the author seems in general very nice and helpful, and one can choose what platforms they want to support, I just wish we could get native builds for more platforms like with duskers 1, which had native macos and linux, or at very least to have wine supported so that there is less of windows monopoly in games.
Doom and Quake had drop-down command consoles too that let the user change the game's state -- I've included such features in some of my GUI, realtime engine games too. but I would never promote any as a "command line" game
It's been a while since I played, but I've picked it back up a few times, let's see how well I can explain it.
Duskers is at its core a puzzle game. It could be executed just as well with an ASCII rogue/nethack style UI.
At its core, you have a few different drones that have some basic capabilities, and you can outfit them with a few additional capabilities (modules) each if you find components. You choose derelict space hulks to salvage, and once you enter them, some rooms/doors will be locked, or unpowered. You have to choose what rooms to go to to unlock and power other rooms. Some rooms may have unknown in them, which may attack you at some point when you're in the room, or if you leave the door open move to other rooms. Some drones can detect movement, some can't (IIRC). Sometimes you need to herd those lifeforms between rooms by remotely opening and closing different doors. The drones look for scrap in rooms to gather, which is used to build modules.
The rooms are all numbered, the doors are all numbered the drones are all numbered. You control the drones and parts of the ship you have access to through command line options, which have shorthand equivalents. e.g. (the below is mostly from google/gemini since I didn't want to go look them all up to remember)
navigate 1 r2 — Moves drone 1 to room 2.
navigate all r1 — Sends all active drones back to room 1 (the docking bay).
move 3 r4 — Uses the shorthand move instead of typing out navigate.
d12 — Toggles (opens or closes) door 12.
a2 — Toggles airlock 2.
close d1 d2 — Explicitly closes doors 1 and 2.
close all — Closes every single powered door on the ship immediately.
close r3 — Closes all doors attached to room 3.
gather — Tells the active drone to harvest nearby scrap metal.
gather all — Orders the drone to systematically harvest all scrap in its current room.
generator — Connects a drone to a power inlet to restore power to a room's grid.
interface — Connects a drone to a powered terminal to extract ship logs or systems.
tow 2 — Forces drone 2 to attach to or detach from a salvageable object (like an upgrade or broken drone).
stealth — Actives the stealth utility to move through rooms undetected by infestations.
You can string multiple commands together sequentially by separating them with a semicolon (;). Each drone operates its queue in parallel.
navigate 1 r3; gather all; navigate 1 r1 — Drone 1 goes to room 3, sucks up all the scrap, and drives back to safety.
navigate 2 r4; tow 2; navigate 2 r1 — Tells drone 2 to go to room 4, hook up a towable item, and pull it back to the airlock.
Wow! I would not have expected to hear about this game again. The first game was a lot of fun, definitely room to flesh out the game play loop but had great ideas.
Title is not misleading, you're just misinterpreting what they mean by command line. It's not a terminal game (in that you don't play it on your terminal and it's not limited to ASCII), it's a game where all the actions are carried out by typing out the commands for what actions you want to happen in a simulated terminal in the game.
I have another comment on this post which goes into more detail about what those commands look like if that's interesting to you at all.
I found the original game to be quite fun. It's mostly about solving logical puzzled about how to safely navigate the wrecks, and given you have very limited signals about what's going on, can be stressful and engrossing.
So the trailer for 2.0 is exactly what I was thinking of for continuation of this kind of game. I was missing a lot that would have made it deep like a backstory. I was thinking it would be great to tell that back story through the logs you find on derelict ships.
Im really glad this appears as if it's going to happen. Duskers was a great game even in its limited story driven context.
Duskers is absolutely amazing - huge recommendation to anybody that hasn't played it. But it comes with one huge downside. In the game you play a drone commander who's guiding drones exploring various derelicts and other locations after some catastrophic event, to try to figure out what happened. But the frustrating part is that there is no answer - there's a number of various explanations that you explore in the game, but no final resolution.
The dev explained this was an intentional choice to leave it sort of open-ended and up to the player, but I think he just didn't want to commit to any single answer. Even more interesting/replayable would've been the potential for him to randomly pick one of the causes (AI, biological virus, etc) at the start of each game, and concluding that path leads to a distinct ending. Realllly hope the sequel has a more satisfactory conclusion.
crtasm | a day ago
lantry | a day ago
trinsic2 | 16 hours ago
SOLAR_FIELDS | 16 hours ago
wafflemaker | a day ago
I guess I might try again with the game, but asking here I could get moderate spoilers without a complete spoiler.
chaostheory | 18 hours ago
derektank | 17 hours ago
oidar | 23 hours ago
LoganDark | 18 hours ago
hmry | 17 hours ago
Last time I tried it, you needed a mac if you wanted to:
- use AoT compilation (IL2CPP) instead of JIT
- use any native libraries (or use any assets that depend on native libraries)
- sign your executable
And that was before Apple Silicon, I would be surprised if it's gotten any easier
trinsic2 | 16 hours ago
LoganDark | 15 hours ago
robin_reala | 12 hours ago
LoganDark | 12 hours ago
azhenley | 23 hours ago
raffael_de | 23 hours ago
tibbon | 23 hours ago
freehorse | 20 hours ago
[0] https://steamcommunity.com/app/1883920/discussions/0/6897422...
simoncion | 19 hours ago
If this is something the dev can reasonably fix by changing their game, then it'd be good for them to do so. Looking at the discussion in the thread, it looks like the dev is actively working to fix this for everyone, and not just the subset of folks that he fixed it for.
However, if this doesn't happen on Windows, I'd argue that it's a bug that needs to be reported against and fixed in Wine/Proton/Crossover.
freehorse | 13 hours ago
The bug is still there, disabling assisted moves helps a lot and it triggers less but it still happens if you are unlucky.
Just to note that the author seems in general very nice and helpful, and one can choose what platforms they want to support, I just wish we could get native builds for more platforms like with duskers 1, which had native macos and linux, or at very least to have wine supported so that there is less of windows monopoly in games.
none_to_remain | 19 hours ago
I even found some shell constructs to work beyond what the game documented/ explained to me
syngrog66 | 18 hours ago
itishappy | 18 hours ago
chaostheory | 18 hours ago
psawaya | 23 hours ago
michalpleban | 22 hours ago
pferde | 22 hours ago
cmiles74 | 22 hours ago
https://store.steampowered.com/app/254320/Duskers/
oh_my_goodness | 20 hours ago
LoganDark | 18 hours ago
kbenson | 16 hours ago
Duskers is at its core a puzzle game. It could be executed just as well with an ASCII rogue/nethack style UI.
At its core, you have a few different drones that have some basic capabilities, and you can outfit them with a few additional capabilities (modules) each if you find components. You choose derelict space hulks to salvage, and once you enter them, some rooms/doors will be locked, or unpowered. You have to choose what rooms to go to to unlock and power other rooms. Some rooms may have unknown in them, which may attack you at some point when you're in the room, or if you leave the door open move to other rooms. Some drones can detect movement, some can't (IIRC). Sometimes you need to herd those lifeforms between rooms by remotely opening and closing different doors. The drones look for scrap in rooms to gather, which is used to build modules.
The rooms are all numbered, the doors are all numbered the drones are all numbered. You control the drones and parts of the ship you have access to through command line options, which have shorthand equivalents. e.g. (the below is mostly from google/gemini since I didn't want to go look them all up to remember)
navigate 1 r2 — Moves drone 1 to room 2.
navigate all r1 — Sends all active drones back to room 1 (the docking bay).
move 3 r4 — Uses the shorthand move instead of typing out navigate.
d12 — Toggles (opens or closes) door 12.
a2 — Toggles airlock 2.
close d1 d2 — Explicitly closes doors 1 and 2.
close all — Closes every single powered door on the ship immediately.
close r3 — Closes all doors attached to room 3.
gather — Tells the active drone to harvest nearby scrap metal.
gather all — Orders the drone to systematically harvest all scrap in its current room.
generator — Connects a drone to a power inlet to restore power to a room's grid.
interface — Connects a drone to a powered terminal to extract ship logs or systems.
tow 2 — Forces drone 2 to attach to or detach from a salvageable object (like an upgrade or broken drone).
stealth — Actives the stealth utility to move through rooms undetected by infestations.
You can string multiple commands together sequentially by separating them with a semicolon (;). Each drone operates its queue in parallel.
navigate 1 r3; gather all; navigate 1 r1 — Drone 1 goes to room 3, sucks up all the scrap, and drives back to safety.
navigate 2 r4; tow 2; navigate 2 r1 — Tells drone 2 to go to room 4, hook up a towable item, and pull it back to the airlock.
brador | 15 hours ago
yehoshuapw | 12 hours ago
PeterStuer | 12 hours ago
yoyohello13 | 22 hours ago
syngrog66 | 19 hours ago
title is misleading if not abusive of our time
kbenson | 15 hours ago
I have another comment on this post which goes into more detail about what those commands look like if that's interesting to you at all.
I found the original game to be quite fun. It's mostly about solving logical puzzled about how to safely navigate the wrecks, and given you have very limited signals about what's going on, can be stressful and engrossing.
trinsic2 | 16 hours ago
Im really glad this appears as if it's going to happen. Duskers was a great game even in its limited story driven context.
somenameforme | 13 hours ago
The dev explained this was an intentional choice to leave it sort of open-ended and up to the player, but I think he just didn't want to commit to any single answer. Even more interesting/replayable would've been the potential for him to randomly pick one of the causes (AI, biological virus, etc) at the start of each game, and concluding that path leads to a distinct ending. Realllly hope the sequel has a more satisfactory conclusion.
TheSkyHasEyes | 6 hours ago