Playdate Game Zero Zero: Perfect Stop

by adrianhon • 2 years ago

175 50 2 years ago

RajT88• 2 years ago

Seems quite a lot like Densha de Go! I am sure it is inspired by the series.

hbridges6• 2 years ago

I love Densha de Go. DDG Final is one of my top 10 fav games of all time. When I got a Playdate, I had a vision of using the crank as a train's master controller and I was compelled to see it through...

aquova• 2 years ago

I've been following development of a 3D racing game for the Playdate - https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@2DArray/113070310047102734. The console is presented as being 2D-centric, but I'm curious to see what cream-of-the-crop graphical titles come out for the system within the next few years, it feels like it's really gaining steam.

nosrepa4• 2 years ago

Do check out Secret Agent, Diora, and Snow! as well.

danpalmer• 2 years ago

I can't find any of these, are they Play Date games?

omoikane3• 2 years ago

Development log here:

https://devforum.play.date/t/zero-zero-perfect-stop-train-si...

Looks like the game was pseudo-3D up until 2023, but sometime before 2024-05-19 they switched to a video-based approach.

syntaxing• 2 years ago

What does pseudo 3D vs video based approach mean for these games?

throwaway0665• 2 years ago

You draw the 2D projection of 3D objects manually instead of drawing 3D geometry and the hardware draws the 2D projection to the screen. The other is the gameplay is a video of a 3D scene that has been prerendered on a more powerful machine.

nosrepa4• 2 years ago

Been following this in the Playdate Squad discord. While it's not my type of game, it definitely looks great.

chaostheory• 2 years ago

There are a lot of nice indie surprises on the Playdate. I was not disappointed by it. There’s still new titles on the way too

batiudrami• 2 years ago

It’s definitely more a curio than a competitor to, for example, the Switch, and the cost to entry is pretty high but I like mine a lot.

TylerJaacks• 2 years ago

immediate buy for me

hi_hi2• 2 years ago

Many, many years ago (20+ eek) I worked on a 3D simulator for the New York Subway (even though we were based near London, UK). They were upgrading it from the legacy video based system to an interactive 3D sim.

There was something deeply fulfilling about having the legacy videos running side by side with the realtime 3D view and having them almost perfectly in sync.

We were running on inhouse designed and built, industrialised graphics cards, using 3DFX chips. It was a magical time to be involved with the cutting edge of 3D graphics as the industry tipped from Silicon Graphics and Evans & Sutherland "big iron" to consumer hardware.

lxgr• 2 years ago

Was this for internal training purposes, or was it ever released publicly?

teqsun• 2 years ago

I was also interested, but according to MTA Train Operators the computer that runs it is often out of service, and some who did felt it required a very exact placement:

https://old.reddit.com/r/nycrail/comments/1ezw72n/does_mta_h...

jonhohle• 2 years ago

Sega CD used this technique a lot to fake 3D environments. Silo here is a great example of a game that looks like it could be a real time 3D game, but it cleverly interweaves FMV with sprites.

hbridges6• 2 years ago

Do you mean Slipheed? Because that game is insane

steezeburger• 2 years ago

Was curious and looked it up. I think everyone's auto correct is a bit hardcore this evening. It's Silpheed

hbridges6• 2 years ago

Hi everybody. I'm Hunter, the developer of the game. I saw an uptick in sales over the past few hours and managed to trace it back here.

So pleasantly surprised to see Zero Zero on HN! Thank you so much for the support and I hope all you Playdate owners out there enjoy the game!!

infotainment• 2 years ago

Great job, I’m glad someone finally made a Densha-De-Go-like! Such a great gameplay concept!

Question: is the route accurate to a real train, or is it fictional?

hbridges6• 2 years ago

It's loosely based on a 6-station stretch of the Fuji Kyuukou line in Yamanashi. Not sure my environment art really did the real life area justice, but that's how I derived the stations and spacing between them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujikyuko_Line

rob74• 2 years ago

Interestingly enough, until a few decades ago cranks were used to control the acceleration and (electric) braking in trams, electric locomotives etc. (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrschalter#/media/Datei:Gmun...). The rotation axis was vertical and not horizontal, and the feel and clicking noise of all the contacts opening and closing while you turn the crank would be lost, but still a Playdate would be great to simulate driving such a "classic" tram.

WhereIsTheTruth• 2 years ago

Congrats, always great to see stuff built for handheld consoles

I'm surprised at the file size though, you'd think having a device with such a low res and without colors, you'd be able to shrink down assets more

Comparing to a Densha de Go rom from n64, the difference is huge and yet it had colors and 2x the res

Wowfunhappy• 2 years ago

The PlayDate game is larger because it's using prerendered video.

M95D4• 2 years ago

Hi.

I saw that there are scoreboards on the website. Does this mean that the game includes some form of user tracking? Does the website (play.date) know how often a user plays, when, for how long, how good he/she is at it, etc.? Is there a unique user ID or device ID that they can pair with past&future aquisitions in the shop?

I don't own that game and I probably never will. I'm just asking this to educate myself about what's possible in terms of invasion of privacy by using a low power console such as this one.

Thanks.

nosrepa4• 2 years ago

I'll answer just in case you're actually interested in having a conversation. All of the scoreboard info can be found in the API docs:

https://help.play.date/catalog-developer/scoreboard-api/

Don't want scoreboards? Don't connect to wifi. It baffles me that someone would be paranoid about this.

npinsker• 2 years ago

Don't have a Playdate, but I'm really enjoying the soundtrack (https://hunty.bandcamp.com/album/zero-zero-perfect-stop-orig...). The instruments for the departure melodies are perfect -- they sound just like the Tokyo metro!

PixelForg• 2 years ago

I think I found my new ringtone :)

Animats• 2 years ago

Aw.

Check out BVE and OpenBVE, the train simulators. Exactly the same problem - stop precisely at the stations and keep to schedule. Subways and railroads in Japan, the US, and Korea are modeled in great detail.

smusamashah• 2 years ago

This immediately reminded of Cab Ride for Pico-8 which was shared here on HN once https://powersaurus.itch.io/cab-ride

jaderobbins1• 2 years ago

Well, that was some time I'll never get back. What a fun little game.

SahAssar• 2 years ago

Techmoan has made some videos on similar games on dedicated consoles, really enjoyed those.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-ZBPWhhbQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VzT2e8rvY0

Playdate Game Zero Zero: Perfect Stop

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