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<title>Democracy 4 comes to consoles!</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/04/24/democracy-4-comes-to-consoles/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/04/24/democracy-4-comes-to-consoles/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Apr 2024 13:33:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[democracy 4]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6685</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Hello party members! It is with great pleasure that we announce that Democracy 4 will be coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles on 5th June 2024. With the help of our partners at Auroch Digital, Democracy 4: Console Edition has been built the from the ground-up with controller play in-mind to bring thatContinue Reading... Democracy 4 comes to consoles!<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/04/24/democracy-4-comes-to-consoles/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
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Hello party members!
It is with great pleasure that we announce that Democracy 4 will be coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles on 5th June 2024. With the help of our partners at Auroch Digital, Democracy 4: Console Edition has been built the from the ground-up with controller play in-mind to bring that feeling of Democracy 4 that we all know and love to home consoles.
Democracy 4: Console Edition is available to pre-order and wishlist via the following links:
Nintendo Switch – Coming Soon
PlayStation – <a href="https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP5595-CUSA44561_00-0098238017880105">https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP5595-CUSA44561_00-0098238017880105</a>
Xbox – <a href="https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/democracy-4-console-edition/9N84BGD6VZ8K/0017">https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/democracy-4-console-edition/9N84BGD6VZ8K/0017</a>
In Democracy 4: Console Edition, you will:
 Choose to lead one of the following countries: USA, UK, Japan, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Italy, or South Korea
Select cabinet ministers that align with your vision for the future of the country
Introduce new laws or tweak existing ones to carry out your plans for change
Deal with random events that can either increase or decrease your favourability with the public
Lay out your manifesto as election time approaches and aim to deliver a campaign that will take you to victory!
Auroch Digital are no strangers to porting PC titles over to home consoles, as they have done with titles such as The Colonists, Megaquarium, and Ogre, as well as developing their own titles such as Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Mars Horizon, and Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator.
Having the chance to bring Democracy 4 to home consoles was something which intrigued the series’ creator, Cliff Harris. Cliff says: “As the developer behind Democracy 4, I’m genuinely thrilled about its upcoming release on consoles through the work of Auroch Digital. It’s been a long journey focusing on the game’s development for PC, and seeing it expand to a wider audience on consoles feels incredibly rewarding. The prospect of reaching more players and allowing them to experience the intricacies of political simulation on different platforms is both exciting and gratifying.”
Porting Democracy 4 over to home consoles is something which excites Auroch Digital’s Studio Director, Tom Rawlings. Tom says: “Bringing the game Democracy 4 to console has been a personal mission of mine – not only it is a great strategy game that deserves to have more opportunity to be played, but it is on a topic of central importance to people too. So, I was really pleased when
Positech Games were open to working together to make this happen. The team have worked hard to make it possible, so do check the game out, run a country, and try not to get assassinated!”
Democracy 4: Console Edition is available to pre-order and wishlist on PlayStation and Xbox consoles now, with the Nintendo Switch version available to pre-order and wishlist in the near future. The game will be released on 5th June 2024.
For more information visit: <a href="https://www.aurochdigital.com/democracy-4-console-edition">https://www.aurochdigital.com/democracy-4-console-edition</a>
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<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Sanding the woodwork</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/04/23/sanding-the-woodwork/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/04/23/sanding-the-woodwork/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 23 Apr 2024 15:43:30 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[personal development]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6679</guid>
<description><![CDATA[For eight years I worked in a boatyard. Thats not the start of a novel, or a poem, I really did, which might seem weird if you know me as a software developer or game designer. But its true! It was mostly part-time, but multiple days a week, and it was crushingly hard work inContinue Reading... Sanding the woodwork<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/04/23/sanding-the-woodwork/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
For eight years I worked in a boatyard. 
Thats not the start of a novel, or a poem, I really did, which might seem weird if you know me as a software developer or game designer. But its true! It was mostly part-time, but multiple days a week, and it was crushingly hard work in ways I wont even begin to list here. This is a post about motivation, creativity and getting stuff done. Like a lot of my blog posts it will seem on a tangent until I attempt to bring it all together at the end. So stay tuned :D.
Almost all of the boats we worked on were clinker-built Edwardian Thames Skiffs. Basically 20-30 foot wooden rowing boats. The details don’t matter, but one of the most common jobs was to sand the woodwork for the whole boat, and give it a nice new coat of varnish. This was the easiest job we did, but also at the same time it was the most boring. Apart from anything, it was also very incompatible with the job I had the other 50% of the time which was part musician/session guitarist/guitar teacher. If you have played electric guitar you will know you get very helpful toughened callouses on every left hand finger. They are essential. They are also very easy to totally rip to shreds with sandpaper. I was constantly tying my fingers up with masking tape to prevent this…
Anyway…
One day a fellow worker at the boatyard decided to give me his top tip on how to approach the task of sanding a skiff. This job would take maybe 2 days. I listened with interest as he said “You start off by doing all the really awkward bastard bits that are annoying, and then when you finish them, you realize that the job is done.” He paused. “Because they are all fucking awful bastard bits”. This was funny, but funnier still because I actually thought at the start he was giving me practical advice. Working in a boatyard is grim. We milked any humor there was.
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="512" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6681" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-1.png 800w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-1-680x435.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-1-768x492.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Me sculling(not rowing!) one of the boats we worked on</figcaption></figure></div>
The point of this anecdote is to try and convey how boring, and hard and more than anything unsatisfying this job was. A wooden boat that has had every surface properly and smoothly sanded in preparation for a coat of varnish is not a massively satisfying thing. Its not like stripping dirt away to reveal the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, its not something that passers-by stop to gawp at and exclaim ‘well thats some decent thorough sanding work my good man!”. Nope nobody gives a fuck. Why did I keep doing this for maybe 16 hours? Because I needed the money to buy food.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">£2.50 an hour</h2>
Yes, I’m old, and its probably better paid now. But anyway, its a very very long boring day, and there is NO satisfaction from the actual work whatsoever. It did not require any brainpower whatsoever. I did it for eight years. Thats a long time. Also, if you think that you would mostly be on twitter or having a coffee break: no. No mobile phones then, and 2 allotted tea breaks at 10.30 and 3.30PM. Apart from that, you better be fucking working or you’d be yelled at and maybe have sharp things thrown at you with great force.
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
Ok, I get it, this sounds like a four yorkshireman sketch, and a typical boomer ‘in my day’ whine about how work was harder in my day etc. But actually its totally not that. Its about understanding that some parts of the best jobs in the world are also like sanding down the woodwork.
</blockquote>
When your WHOLE JOB is doing tedious unexciting unfulfilling drudge work, you kind of just accept it and get to fucking work. In a way, this is EASIER than many creative and fulfilling/rewarding jobs. In a creative job (like game development), there is a ton of really cool shit. When I made <a href="https://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/">Gratuitous Space Battles</a>, I spent a lot of actual work time stepping through space battle clips from Star Wars, deciding on the colors of laser beams, and designing futuristic space weaponry. It was awesome. But in-between all that cool shit, there was also stuff like coding a UI to save/load ship deployments. Coding a system to adjust the UI to fit at different screen resolutions. There was code to handle different fonts for each language. There was code to handle online challenges and error handling from PHP and SQL. This was the woodwork-sanding stuff.
When you can choose to do the cool shit, or sand the woodwork, almost everyone does the cool shit, and just leaves a bit pile of sanding to do ‘at some point’. When you run out of cool shit you are then faced with a huge ton of tedious crap you have to do in order to finish the project.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center">Don’t do this</h2>
Take my sarcastic boatbuilder buddy’s advice. Sand the fucking woodwork. When you start work, when you are motivated, when you are excited, do some of the grunt work. Code the error handling, optimize the rendering. Check the game runs on min-spec. Do the multi-language support. Do the steam API implementation. Do the options menu. Do the level editor. Do the modding support. Do the stuff you know you wont want to do later. This is the way. Then when you feel your motivation flagging, go decide what color the laser beams should be.
]]></content:encoded>
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<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Designing a system of orders for units in a war game</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/03/24/designing-a-system-of-orders-for-units-in-a-war-game/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/03/24/designing-a-system-of-orders-for-units-in-a-war-game/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sun, 24 Mar 2024 14:07:41 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[game design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gratuitous space battles]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6672</guid>
<description><![CDATA[So… I am sort of working on a game as a hobby. It may never be released. But anyway, lets pretend its a Napoleonic war game.(its not). That allows me to at least talk in non vague terms. I am stuck slightly in the way I am designing a core part of the game. ImagineContinue Reading... Designing a system of orders for units in a war game<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/03/24/designing-a-system-of-orders-for-units-in-a-war-game/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
So… I am sort of working on a game as a hobby. It may never be released. But anyway, lets pretend its a Napoleonic war game.(its not). That allows me to at least talk in non vague terms. I am stuck slightly in the way I am designing a core part of the game.
Imagine a game where you have to place down a large number of units, on a map, and give them orders. The game then plays out the resulting battle against a pre-placed AI enemy. These days the kids call that an autobattler, but AFAIK I made the very first one (<a href="https://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html">Gratuitous Space Battles</a>), so I didn’t have a name of it back then. Anyway…
The goals in the design for such a game are actually quite complex. The system needs to be intuitive, so it can be played easily by a fairly casual gamer, but also provide depth where possible, must ensure that the way things play out goes as expected by the player (they feel like they had real control over events), and must result in a visual outcome that looks appropriately cinematic, and not just like a bunch of idiots in a bar room brawl. (This is my #1 critique of all the total war games, that seem to descend into this). These goals are actually quite complex and conflicting, and I have spent a lot of time and code trying to reconcile them.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Formations</h2>
One of the clearest places where stuff falls apart is when it comes to formations. If you have a long line of units, and declare them to be a formation, then you are expecting them all to operate as one. My solution for this was to make all the units but one the ‘dumb followers’ of this one independent formation ‘leader’, which would be free to care about other orders. If the leader moves forward, everyone in the line also moves forward. Sounds simple enough to design & code right?
Nope.
Firstly, the leader may die. In that case we need a new leader, so the system has to hold an ‘election’ to pick the most appropriate replacement. Initially I chose the largest unit at the time of election, but you then encounter issues where the lead ‘unit’ may weaken down to 1% health, but is still the leader. Ideally there are periodic elections to ensure ‘leadership’ is tied to current strength, but this needs to take into account units healing and not result in leadership ping-ponging etc. Also in my game the ‘strongest’ unit does not necessarily visually make sense for deciding who leads and who follows. Just picking a leader is complicated as it is.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6673" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1024x576.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-680x383.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-768x432.png 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1536x864.png 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.png 1600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Its amazing what good condition the grass is in after a thousand soldiers have cartwheeled around on it to form patterns.</figcaption></figure>
Secondly, how is the formation maintained? A line of units that represents a column in the Y axis looks good at the start of battle, but is the formational-consistency based on the initial x/y offset or does the line ‘wheel’ around the leader? If the leader turns to the left are we now doing a wheel adjustment? and if so, shouldn’t the leader be the unit in the middle, not the strongest?
Thirdly how do we handle gaps? If half the formation is destroyed, does our line now close ranks to form a thinner line? a shorter line? or do we just ignore the holes and continue as a depleted sparse formation? What would the player expect, and what looks coolest?
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Engagement Range</h2>
This is the one that has just stumped me and made me write this blog post. For example, lets presume that your unit is not in a formation, but it has an ideal range to engage the enemy, due to its weapons, of 800 meters. How do we take into account this engagement range (and maybe a minimum range of half this?) when deciding where on the battlefield we need to be. So for example, a unit of cannons is looking all over the battlefield, thinking ‘where is the place I should head to now?’. How does it decide where to go?
The first system I have coded looks ahead and slightly to each side, and evaluates every square it could move to and gives them a score. For each square, it looks at all the units, in all the nearby squares to this potential target site, and counts up the values of all the potential targets for each square. There is then some minor tweaking to penalize far-off squares, and a hellishly complicated system of ‘reserving’ and ‘occupying’ squares so that the units don’t all end up stacked on top of each other. All of this code is written, and to some extent it seems to all work but…
…you then get the Total War bar-room brawl situation because it turns out that with this algorithm the ideal place for every unit is to be slap bang in the middle of the battle where it can shoot at absolutely everyone. Hence the big furball of messy collision in the middle of the map.
My first thought is that this is just something needing a minor tweak. If units heavily prioritized locations where enemy units were within a certain percentage of the engagement range (in this case say between 600-800m) and actually penalized places where enemies were within that range (say under 600), then you would get the long range units more sensibly placing themselves at a nice aesthetically pleasing distance where they could shoot at each other in a classic war movie style.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="458" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6674" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1-680x304.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-1-768x344.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">I can throw a banana further than this. WTF is their engagement range set to?</figcaption></figure>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Bigger Question</h2>
However, I am starting to wonder if that is all a load of bollocks.
There are three different scenarios under discussion here. The military reality of what makes sense in a real war to win a battle. The movie version, where the goal is to look cool, and the game version where the goal is to be fun, and intuitive and satisfying to tinker with as well as watch. I have definitely been starting from a real military position, which is at the total other end of the spectrum in terms of where I need to be (a fun game!).
One of the primary drivers of the code I have written so far is that it is supposed to seem like it makes sense for military units to do this. But as a game, I kind of don’t really care. Games are not vaguely concerned with the inconvenient truth of military history. We want things to feel fun, even if that means the choices make little sense. It might be TRUE that a line of 10 gatling guns on a hill could obliterate an entire roman legion, but after seeing it once, is it still fun? Not really. What wargames like this focus on is a sort of block-puzzle game, where carefully mixing and matching and positioning units ‘unlocks’ a solution, which is a complex feat of ‘combined arms’ resulting in a close victory.
One of the great things about modern gaming is we can make some really cool special effects, and use massively powerful video cards to draw amazing spectacles. That takes a bit of the pressure off of designing a game that is so intricate in the abstract. I used to play a tabletop war game called Starfleet Battles. Its LUDICROUSLY complicated, and a single turn can take an hour with a group of players. The ‘fun’ comes from the complex interactions of highly detailed systems. It has to, because the actual experience is just hours staring at pieces of cardboard on a map, hoping nobody sneezes.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="779" height="550" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6676" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-3.png 779w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-3-680x480.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-3-768x542.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 779px) 100vw, 779px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">I was ludicrously obsessed with these games back when I was young and before electricity was invented.</figcaption></figure>
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Simplification</h2>
I’m not exactly known for simple games. But there are certainly companies that outdo me. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Iron_IV">Hearts Of Iron</a> games are just way beyond me, in terms of the amount of stuff to keep track of, and <a href="https://www.eveonline.com/">Eve-Online</a> has become a game seemingly more involved than life itself. These games also have 100+ developers working full time, and this game is a hobby project I am spending an hour or so a day on, so its not going to go in that direction…
…and genuinely I am starting to consider the idea that my game should more resemble a simple puzzle game more than a complex uber war simulator. The amount of variables will still be high, and the outcome very pleasing. I think the cool ‘fun’ element of games like this is ‘I tried this… it failed, but was an awesome battle. I’ll try again’. It shouldn’t involve multiple hours of tweaking individual units decimal points in the AI decision making. Maybe the whole army is always just ONE formation, and it just moves right at the enemy as a single cohesive pattern? Maybe all the complex route-planning AI is utter bollocks? There are definitely a ton of much simpler games out there that seem to do this. I wonder if thats what a ‘roguelike deckbuilder’ game is? (I am sick of the term, but still don’t really understand what it means tbh).
Anyway, it might all be academic, as I might get bored and make something else. But I might not :D.
]]></content:encoded>
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<slash:comments>7</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Emotional game design</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/02/21/emotional-game-design/</link>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 21 Feb 2024 20:36:36 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[game design]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6666</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It might seem weird for a self-diagnosed autistic game dev to talk about emotions in game design, but that would be incorrect. Its not like I don’t have emotions, in fact I have way too many of them, way too unpredictably! Like Vulcans. Anyway, this is a topic that I think doesn’t get enough attentionContinue Reading... Emotional game design<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/02/21/emotional-game-design/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
It might seem weird for a self-diagnosed autistic game dev to talk about emotions in game design, but that would be incorrect. Its not like I don’t have emotions, in fact I have way too many of them, way too unpredictably! Like Vulcans. Anyway, this is a topic that I think doesn’t get enough attention when discussing game design, so I thought I would have a go at it.
ALL ENTERTAINMENT IS EMOTION
Not quite the classic ‘always emotion is the future’ yoda catchphrase, but close enough. For a very long time I have been aware that all entertainment is about emotion. It seems to be what we need as humans. We want to trigger positive emotions, and have controlled release of safe amounts of negative ones. We eat cakes to get the happy feels, we go on rollercoasters to get a safe dose of fear. True of all music, all books, all movies. Some make you cry, some laugh, some scream with fear. Time spend trying to be entertained that is not accompanied with an emotional release likely means the creator of that piece of entertainment has failed.
When you get quite into learning how to create entertainment in a field, you can very rapidly descend into very technical analysis and very clinical and seemingly unemotional advice regarding how best to do that thing. Novelists read about foreshadowing and ‘show don’t tell’, filmmakers learn about color-grading and dolly-zooms, and game designers learn about ‘player verbs’ and ‘design pillars’. To some extent, its all necessary, as you do need to know the basic building blocks of how most pieces of entertainment are made, but I do fear that people get so stuck into the weeds of the technical aspects of game design that they forget the core aim.
Normally at this point in an article like this, the writer would go for the classic phrase, perhaps in large bold type;
<h3 class="wp-block-heading">FIND THE FUN</h3>
But Actually I think that is bollocks.
The problem with ‘find the fun’, is that it assumes that the game’s purpose can be summed up as ‘fun’. Games are apparently ‘fun’ and ‘fun’ is the most important thing. When assessing a game, people often ask their friends ‘is my game fun?’ because its assumed that this is the purpose. Maybe not. Is chess ‘fun’? its arguably a game that teaches you how to wage war. Is watching <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler%27s_List">Schindler’s list</a> fun? I definitely hope not. Is ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption">The Shawshank Redemption</a>‘ fun? Is reading <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina">Anna Karenina</a> fun? Is listening to ‘<a href="https://youtu.be/9qERcmKx-50?si=O3LXfy0FR1UCedTl">Raining Blood’ by Slayer</a> fun?
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="456" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-2-1024x456.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6669" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-2-1024x456.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-2-680x302.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-2-768x342.png 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-2.png 1414w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
Games are no better or worse or more worthy or less worthy than any other form of entertainment. Its fine to make playing a game stressful, or harrowing, or to make a game that makes someone cry, or furious. If you make a game about the holocaust, it SHOULD make the player furious. Making a game that gives people nightmares is a perfectly reasonable decision. We don’t criticize other media for a lack of ‘fun’ by default, and we should treat games no differently.
BUT
A game will fail if it does not generate an emotion. That emotion can include a sense of ‘flow’ which is basically the emotional state that combines relaxation with satisfaction. I am currently playing ‘Regency Solitaire 2’ by Grey Alien Games. It makes me feel relaxed, and also gives me slight happiness or sadness boosts depending how the cards fall. The game is crafted, from its art to its sound effects to its music to convey a non-threatening, relaxing and familiar mood, and it does it well. No surprise that the game’s creator, Jake Birkett is a very calm almost zen-like guy.
Far too many words are written in academic circles about game design, which focus on the mechanics. People say things like ‘Primary Ludic Structure’ and are not laughed out of the room. There are lots of diagrams, and lots of spreadsheets, and numbers, and lots of advice on how to BOOST PLAYER ENGAGEMENT and how to design TIGHT GAMEPLAY LOOPS. I feel a lot of this stuff is misplaced.
If you have the time, seek out the introduction to ‘<a href="https://youtu.be/dTOlZqnIbvU?si=z5SqAz16UGVFVX3A">the trilogy suite</a>‘ by Yngwie Malmsteen, and also the first guitar notes in ‘<a href="https://youtu.be/CiXNIjGX1hY?si=PLOxfw-OtWktk7ky&t=137">shine on you crazy diamond</a>‘ by Pink Floyd. I’m a guitar player, so these are natural choices for me to make a point. Yngwie packs about a thousand times (at least) as many notes into a minute of music as Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour. Both of the approaches ‘work’ and have become classics, not because of what notes they pick, or what the time signature is, or what chords they are played over. They both work because holy-fucking shit they are emotional-as-fuck, but in wildly different ways,
Yngwie’s guitar is super-fast, super-accomplished, and incredibly showy. Its a testosterone-fueled display of ability, the equivalent of standing naked on a pedestal and yelling proudly I AM DEFINITELY FUCKING HERE. By contrast, David Gilmour uses a tiny handful of notes. Subtle bends, very clear tone. Its both powerful and sad. It sounds like someone expressing grief, or huge emotional conflict, but unable to express themselves openly. Its the guitar version of sobbing in anguish.
Now you can just google for the notes of both those pieces of music, and given 20,000 hours practice, you can probably play them. Youtube is littered with people, often about fifteen years old, annoyingly, who can do just that. Here is one:
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Yngwie J. Malmsteen - Trilogy Suite Op:5 (Cover)" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YRVCK0l3d_I?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>
But the point is that ITS NOT ABOUT TECHNIQUE. The aim is of course to be something fresh and new, and special in the way that the original composers of those pieces of music are. How do they do that? How can you create something like that? Will cliff get back to discussing games soon? The thing is, both pieces of music are definitely hugely emotional, and personal and they come from the very sincere, very confident, very intimate desire for their creators to broadcast their emotional energy at the world. If you watch an interview with those two guitarists, you will immediately know who wrote each piece. Trilogy suite is not ‘written by’ Malmsteen, it IS Malmsteen. Shine on you crazy diamond IS Dave Gilmour. They didn’t try to put together popular pop songs by studying what was popular, or catchy. They just transferred their emotions from their heart to the world directly and unashamedly through their music. These musicians did not ‘pick hot genres’. Yngwie couldn’t play country and western if you put a gun to his head. Dave Gilmour couldn’t write a kpop song for a billion dollars.
…Yeah but games?
This is why I think we have a lot of soulless, uninspiring, even bad big AAA games now. When a game costs $400 million to make, then there is ZERO chance you let a single individual call ALL the shots. Everyone has to weigh in. The next big mega-franchise is not the distilled emotion of anybody. Its just a focus-group-designed and committee-approved venn diagram of core market segments. It lacks soul. If you are trying to make a decent piece of entertainment, you need to avoid becoming this!
I’m not a good game designer by traditional measures. I suck at balance, I suck at introducing mechanics to the player in a nice way. I have very little sense of what fits together in terms of clashing art styles. I have not played a whole bunch of classic games that are often referenced in game design circles. I do somehow manage to keep making games that sell lots and lots of copies though, and I think its because my games, even though they seem like they are not, are extremely emotional and passionate.
<a href="https://positech.co.uk/democracy4/">Democracy</a> is far too complex a game. It does not slowly introduce concepts to the player. It is unforgiving. It has death-spirals and virtuous circles. Some levels are too hard, some are too easy. At first glance, its an impenetrable nightmare of overwhelming complexity. THATS THE POINT. The game is designed to mimic, as closely as practical, how it would feel if you actually did become president. Thats a job that *is* overwhelming. Often unfair, sometimes impossible to win. Some countries must seem like they are on stupid difficulty settings. The thing is, it encapsulates how I feel about politics and economics, and how complexity is fundamental to the experience. As a designer, I LOVE the complexity. The player often feels like everything is insanely interconnected, and that they are barely managing to put out fires and hope for the best, with all their hopes and dreams dashed to ashes the day after an election victory. That feeling of it all being a bit of a nightmare, is not a game design flaw. Its the point.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="512" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-1024x512.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6667" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-1024x512.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-680x340.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-768x384.png 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image.png 1133w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
<a href="https://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/index.html">Gratuitous Space Battles</a> is also too complex. And too big. There are too many ships, and ship modules, and its all too complicated due to the staggering amount of combinations. Its ludicrous. It is, at its heart, totally and utterly gratuitous. It is not a serious game, its one that should awaken the 13 year old boy who has seen star-wars a hundred times in grown adults. The point of the game is not to carefully strategize your way to victory. The point is to amass a ton of ships with different color lasers, watch them explode and then shout FUCK YES at the monitor as an adolescent expression of energy. Its puberty with lasers.
Maybe you like one of those games, maybe not, but when they ‘work’ they work really well because they are PURE. They are what one person (me!) wants the game to feel like. Not ‘play’ like, but FEEL. There is no POINT to games but to make you feel, or help you feel. Thats what entertainment is for. I’d rather my game’s angered people than just left them emotionless and untouched.
The most successful game I published by another designer was <a href="https://www.bigpharmagame.com/index.html">Big Pharma</a>. The designer was young, chirpy, happy, upbeat and optimistic. His personality was not mine. He liked games by nintendo. I had only ever played one (a star wars one on gamecube). I thought the art style for the game was too simple, too flat, too symbolic. I thought the simple way in which the gameplay elements clicked into neat place was unrealistic, felt too easy, felt too ‘resolved’. The player could feel happy, and content and satisfied. This was not me. But I let Tim make the game he wanted to make. Its a Tim Wicksteed game. You can tell. Playing that game does not feel like a game I made. It’s also a very popular game, and did very well. I could have waded in there with my strong opinions and insisted on a less cute look, a more industrial feel, and changed the mechanics, but I deliberately let Tim make the game a Tim game.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="990" height="344" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6668" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-1.png 990w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-1-680x236.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/image-1-768x267.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 990px) 100vw, 990px" /></figure>
…of course I then got all of my ARGH about how I would have made it out of my system by doing my take on the factory-sim idea, which is called <a href="https://positech.co.uk/productionline/">Production Line</a> :D.
Anyway. This is my way of trying to convey that you can NEVER put too much of YOUR emotion into your game, and you should NEVER let other people try to mitigate, or dilute the emotional content of it. If people say ‘this part of the game is too depressing’ or ‘its a bit fatalistic’ or ‘I hated seeing this character die’, then you should think VERY carefully whether or not to listen. Also, right from the very start, you should know what emotion your game primarily conveys. It doesn’t have to be a positive emotion, its fine to make a sad game, a stressful or harrowing game, or even a game that makes you angry about injustice.
Just be very careful of the game-design equivalent of having produced Schindler’s list, and then someone pipes up and says ‘couldn’t it be a bit more upbeat’? All entertainment should be driven by the emotional force of a single creator. Anything else risks becoming mediocre.
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<title>Is it harder to sell games on steam in 2023?</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/24/is-it-harder-to-sell-games-on-steam-in-2023/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/24/is-it-harder-to-sell-games-on-steam-in-2023/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 24 Jan 2024 20:52:35 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[business]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6660</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I had a chat today with a very knowledgeable fellow indie game dev. He asserts that it is way harder for a game dev to sell a game on steam in 2023 than it was in the past. My gut feeling was that he was wrong, but who needs guts when you have data andContinue Reading... Is it harder to sell games on steam in 2023?<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/24/is-it-harder-to-sell-games-on-steam-in-2023/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
I had a chat today with a very knowledgeable fellow indie game dev. He asserts that it is way harder for a game dev to sell a game on steam in 2023 than it was in the past. My gut feeling was that he was wrong, but who needs guts when you have data and analysis? lets find out.
I dug around to find out what I could. There are various sites listing the number of games on steam, but the most interesting data I found was listing the games released on steam, but also breaking down the more recent years into games that have certain community features enabled, and games that did not. Steam requires a certain amount of sales and interest in a game before you can do things like have trading cards. I suspect this is a good proxy for what games are serious commercial releases as compared to student games, hobby games, and the sort of games that are made part-time on a low budget. The question I am interested in was whether or not there is more ‘genuine competition’ for full time indie game devs now. With this is mind, I think its far to ignore games that don’t meet the trading card threshold.
This required some stats mangling by me, because it took a while for steam to realize it needed to introduce this measure, so unless you fade-in the effect of the threshold sensibly, there would be a sudden peak and then dip. I did my best, and ended up with a chart that looks like this, for games released:
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="776" height="464" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6661" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-4.png 776w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-4-680x407.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-4-768x459.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 776px) 100vw, 776px" /></figure>
This goes from 2006 to 2023. I’m too useless on a laptop with office365 to get the horizontal axis right :D. This definitely shows a huge jump in the number of games, but this is clearly not the whole story. Steam launched just in English, with just valves own games. It took a while to add ANY new games, and in that time the number of users shot up. People might not remember but I recall how much everyone HATED steam initially. People really resented having to install it.
Over time, obviously steam has become huge, and more global. I dug out some stats that gave me the peak concurrent users for each year. Not perfect, but an interesting proxy for steam usage, and must be vaguely related to how many active users the platform had… Anyway, adding that to my chart allows me to then calculate the ratio of peak concurrent users to games released, which gave me a new chart:
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="724" height="456" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6662" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-5.png 724w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-5-680x428.png 680w" sizes="(max-width: 724px) 100vw, 724px" /></figure>
I think this is more interesting. That peak is around 2012, and the low point to the right is 2017-2019. This data is far from perfect, because obviously people can continue to play games from previous years, and the accumulation of games is definitely a factor. However, I would argue that the tendency for people to buy games released a few years ago is also good news for developers, as it means your game will have a long tail and continue to generate revenue.
So a very rough hacky analysis suggests that peak-time to release a game on steam may have been 2012. It got a fair bit harder since then, but has been getting easier for the last few years. Obviously this is only a tiny bit of the picture though, as there is so much more to consider.
Steam sales changed a few years ago, due to laws regarding refunds. Because steam was forced to offer a refund in the event that a recently purchased game was suddenly cheaper, the whole concept of flash-sales and one-day spikes during steam sales became history. Gone are the days where you would have your game 90% off just for one day. That may have influenced how gamers value and buy games. I do wonder if the average price of ‘professional’ games has gone up since those days? Gamers like the refund policy, but it also made steam sales more muted, and more predictable, with less crazy discounting.
I do think its VASTLY easier to make games now. There is Unity and Unreal. There is also Twitch, Twitter and YouTube. Streaming is a huge promotional opportunity for game devs, Steam now has reviews, and video uploads, and trading cards and achievements. These have not been around for ever! Plus steam supports a ton of languages, payment providers and currencies. The available market for your PC indie game is now colossal. Big hits are now HUGE hits, because there are just so many more people available to see your game if it is good. I do not have concrete data for just how much money the first 100 indie games on steam made, but I’d wager its not much by modern standards.
I’m guessing Factorio made a LOT more than Rag Doll Kung Fu. Ditto Dyson Sphere Program, Prison Architect and RimWorld. It may seem insane that there was a time when just releasing a game on steam got you front page coverage for DAYS, but there actually were not that many people seeing that page! For one thing, not everyone had broadband, and certainly not uncapped broadband.
On balance, I think making a game in 2024 is hilariously easier than making a game in 2008, because of the tech, the price of tools, the ubiquity of tutorials and communities. When I started, I had to buy physical books about C++ and game engines. I followed the blogs of every indie game dev online, because there were really not that many of us.
The flip-side is that it is much harder to get noticed as a developer in 2024. I accept that. But this is just a change, not a deterioration. All that time you save not having to work out how to code a particle system in 2024 needs to be put into promoting your game to people. Its the same amount of hours for the same reward, you just have to work differently. Maybe. YMMV.
Some food for thought: 14.43% of Steam users are from the United States. There are more than 30 million Steam users in China. If you are making a puzzle-platform game or visual novel, and its only in English, then yes, you might struggle a bit. I find that ‘indie dev twitter’ (which I mostly ignore because its all identity politics), is overwhelmingly made up of US or UK game devs making a small unity game in English. They generalize massively from that experience, but I don’t think its the whole story.
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<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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<title>Gratuitous Space Shooty Game is now on steam</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/11/gratuitous-space-shooty-game-is-now-on-steam/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/11/gratuitous-space-shooty-game-is-now-on-steam/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Jan 2024 11:32:54 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[gratuitous space battles]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6653</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Bit of a low-profile sudden launch, because its only a little fun hobby game. But I do think its rather good, and it is also super, super cheap, especially with a launch discount. So go grab a copy :D Its fab. Try to beat it on WTF difficulty level.]]></description>
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Bit of a low-profile sudden launch, because its only a little fun hobby game. But I do think its rather good, and it is also super, super cheap, especially with a launch discount. So go grab a copy :D Its fab. Try to beat it on WTF difficulty level.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="562" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-3-1024x562.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6655" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-3-1024x562.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-3-680x373.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-3-768x422.png 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-3-1536x843.png 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-3.png 1914w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://store.steampowered.com/widget/2763030/" frameborder="0" width="646" height="190"></iframe>
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<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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<title>A productivity boost for everything you are trying to do</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/09/a-productivity-boost-for-everything-you-are-trying-to-do/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/09/a-productivity-boost-for-everything-you-are-trying-to-do/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 09 Jan 2024 22:22:47 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[personal development]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6646</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A million years ago, my ambition was to be as good a guitarist as Richie Kotzen, in his pre-poison, shred days. I thought he was super cool. I then started guitar lessons with the teacher who, at the time, was considered the best heavy metal guitar teacher in the country. His name was shaun baxter.Continue Reading... A productivity boost for everything you are trying to do<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2024/01/09/a-productivity-boost-for-everything-you-are-trying-to-do/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
A million years ago, my ambition was to be as good a guitarist as Richie Kotzen, in his pre-poison, shred days. I thought he was super cool. I then started guitar lessons with the teacher who, at the time, was considered the best heavy metal guitar teacher in the country. His name was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm8IWQHarZo1wYklEuuHorQ">shaun baxter</a>. It was a 3 hours trip each way with a guitar, walking, getting a bus, then 2 trains, then walking, then the reverse. The lessons were expensive. I was very determined. I learned lots of things, and one of them is broadly applicable to everything you might ever want to learn, improve at, or get done. I will share it with you for FREE. How amazing.
Firstly Shaun exposed me to how amazing yngwie malmsteen was as a guitarist. He could play some malmsteen stuff at the full tempo. This blew me away, although nothing in the universe is as insane as the way <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Impellitteri">Chris Impellitteri</a> plays… but anyway the main thing is that yngwie played guitar very very very fast. I had reached my limit and couldn’t get any faster.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="900" height="506" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6647" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image.png 900w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-680x382.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-768x432.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px" /></figure>
It doesn’t matter if you hate heavy metal, or know nothing of guitar playing. The thing I’m about to share IS relevant. There are a lot of things you need to do to play fast metal guitar, and its very hard, and involves a crazy crazy amount of practice. However, one thing I was taught, totally changed the way I approached practicing. Until learning this trick, I would practice guitar scales at the fastest speed I could manage and still hit all the notes cleanly and in time. Lets call this 120 bpm (beats per minute). I would go through all the scales, in every key, to a metronome, for hours at 120 bpm. I would then try to do the same at 122 bpm, and struggle, and so on…for hours. and days and months.
Lets say my target was 200 bpm. The thing is… 200 bpm is NOT a faster version of 120 bpm. Its a totally different fucking universe. This is crucial. There are lots of things you can ‘get away with’ at a slower speed, that will totally fuck you up at high speed. At 120bpm you can flail your 4th finger about a bit. You can not have your left hand positioned correctly, and you can move your right hand wrist too much. These are all flaws, but they are flaws that can be excused at 120bpm.
Hopefully you can see where I am going?
Because those flaws are structural, you will never get beyond 120 bpm. It feels like you maybe *could* if you just tried harder. But you are fundamentally fucked. You will never get to 200. Never, because playing at that speed has zero room for error. This is absolutely transformative. You need to work out all the things that are stopping you getting better, and the only way to do that is to leap forward in time.
YES I AM DIVULGING THE SECRET OF TIME TRAVEL HERE IN A BLOG.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="529" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-1.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6648" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-1.png 800w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-1-680x450.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-1-768x508.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>
In order to work out what is going to screw you up at the faster rate, you have to imagine life at the faster rate. The only way to leap forward to that rate (or level of skill or commitment) is to completely jettison quality, temporarily. So what I learned with shaun was that to learn to play at 200bpm, I had to EXPERIENCE the reality. In other words I had to set the metronome to 200 bpm and just play at that speed, and finish all the notes on time, even if it sounded like a complete train wreck, and was stressful as fuck.
After the initial speed-bump of going “wtf? this is impossible, I cannot do this”, you eventually get the hang of making 600 notes a minute (triplets) more-or-less in time. Its a cacophony of errors, but you manage it. Its a mess, and you are fumbling everything, and it feels pointless…. and yet…
Doing this massively highlights everything you are doing wrong. You simply cannot wave that finger around if it needs to be somewhere else in a tenth of a second. You cannot be making exaggerated wrist movements with the guitar pick because your right hand will shake itself to pieces at that speed. All of the bullshit you got away with at a lower rate is suddenly staggeringly, blindingly obvious. 
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-2-1024x768.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6649" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-2-1024x768.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-2-680x510.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-2-768x576.png 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-2-1536x1152.png 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/image-2.png 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
And then when you set the metronome back to 130 bpm, it feels fucking easy. You are totally in control, to the extent that you are able to work on all that stuff you now know was holding you back. Oh and was that a typo? NO. 130 bpm now feels trivial, whereas previously 122 bpm felt impossible. It helps massively to stretch your ambition. You will NEVER achieve a goal, if you cannot ever picture yourself being able to do it, and have no *feel* for what its like to be at that goal.
So thats great, but how the hell does that help me ship an indie game / write a book / learn spanish or whatever?
This is a universal technique! It works for everything. If you are trying to force yourself to walk 6km a day, try walking 18km one day. The next day will feel hilariously easy. If you are trying to write 100 lines of code every day, write 1,000 one day. The important thing is to set the higher goal WAY WAY HIGHER than the progress you want to make. You will find this works for everything. Writing 1,000 lines of code a day requires dedication, no distractions, a comfortable office chair, possibly complete silence, maybe a coffee machine in your office… who knows! but the point is, you will not know what optimisations and efficiencies you need to make until you push the process to its limits. Maybe you CAN walk 5km a day in your normal footwear, but walking 18km is agony unless you get new trainers/sneakers? Ok, cool, you are now in agony, but you have learned one thing that was holding you back.
 Sometimes, it means a completely new approach entirely. The ‘marginal’ improvement approach might be fundamentally flawed. Trying to put a man on the moon by building bigger and bigger trampolines will not work. It always seems like the trampoline could be just a bit bigger… but until you try to get 5 miles high, you wont realize you need a bloody rocket.
There are a TON of reasons why some people seem to struggle to ever make progress in what they do. Some people mistake ‘putting the hours in’ with the much more important ‘deliberate practice’. Some people are experts at inventing justifications and excuses for why they fail their goals. Some people psychologically do not have enough self belief to ‘allow’ themselves to achieve their goals, and my god there are a lot of books that you can read on these topics as a displacement activity from actually getting stuff done…
…but I do think that this technique is especially under-utilised. When you try it, you realize what a game changer it is. You have no idea what prevents you 10x-ing your achievements, because you never think beyond 1.1x-ing the way you do things now. Another way to think about it is to treat your goals as something done in a factory. It doesnt matter how quickly you run around and slave away making stuff in a workshop, if you never realize that the ONLY way to make 1,000 widgets an hour is going to be a conveyor-belt production line with division of labor, then you will waste a ton of effort (and shoe-leather) sprinting between different bits of equipment. Only by envisaging the final rate of production and TRYING it, will you ever really have a chance of achieving it.
Good Luck :D
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<title>Solar farm 4th site visit: Substations!</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/12/05/solar-farm-4th-site-visit-substations/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/12/05/solar-farm-4th-site-visit-substations/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 05 Dec 2023 13:03:42 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[solar]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6639</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Its been a long time since my last visit to the site, and work stalled for ages due to arguments and analysis regarding earthing. Finally at LONG LAST, that was agreed upon, and we could recommence work. I went up there with a friend yesterday in pretty bad wet weather to see what progress thereContinue Reading... Solar farm 4th site visit: Substations!<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/12/05/solar-farm-4th-site-visit-substations/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
Its been a long time since my <a href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/07/19/solar-farm-3rd-site-visit-during-construction/">last visit to the site</a>, and work stalled for ages due to arguments and analysis regarding earthing. Finally at LONG LAST, that was agreed upon, and we could recommence work. I went up there with a friend yesterday in pretty bad wet weather to see what progress there had been. Hopefully this is the start of the final leg of getting the farm finished and connected. When I was last there, most (85%?) of the panels and frames were installed, and most of the inverters, but that was it. This time there was some more stuff done.
The most obvious progress on that day was that the DNO (distribution network operator) people were actually on site installing their substation which includes a transformer. There will eventually be two substations, one for the DNO and one for the site, which will contain the meter and ‘switchgear’. The substation is kind of built on site, out of 4 wall panels and a roof. Here are some cool pics:
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="473" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog1-1024x473.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-6640" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog1-1024x473.jpg 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog1-680x314.jpg 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog1-768x355.jpg 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog1-1536x710.jpg 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog1.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
Thats the roof being lowered onto the DNO substation, which contains their transformer and other stuff,
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="429" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog2-1024x429.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-6641" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog2-1024x429.jpg 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog2-680x285.jpg 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog2-768x322.jpg 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog2-1536x643.jpg 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog2.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
A shot taken from my drone (in high winds!) showing the location of stuff. The hole at the bottom of the image, filled with stones is the base for the site substation, which will be built any day now, with our switchgear, and eventually meter. This is where all the underground AC cables from each inverter will meet.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog3-1024x768.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-6642" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog3-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog3-680x510.jpg 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog3.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
Another drone shot of some of the panels. It was windy and I wasn’t able to get a nice clear image of all of them. The gaps between them in the middle here are where the overhead high voltage cable goes. Once that cable comes down, those gaps will be filled with more panels so there will be nice long uninterrupted lines. Those dotted white lines are actually deposits of snow that have slid off the panels a few days earlier.
We also have a lot of ditches. There are ditches that have been dug for a new underground high voltage line (we queried why this had to be underground, as it costs us WAY more, but were basically just told we had no choice… grrr.), and there are lots of ditches (a ridiculous amount it seemed to me…) for the earthing for the site. The earthing as been a huge, monumental pain in the ass.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="473" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog5-1024x473.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-6643" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog5-1024x473.jpg 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog5-680x314.jpg 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog5-768x355.jpg 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog5-1536x710.jpg 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/blog5.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
So in a sense, this looks like good news right? Not really. There are two huge problems still standing between me and this ever getting finished. The first one is an eight week delay that is being insisted upon before the power can be BRIEFLY cut off to 4 houses so we can remove the overhead line. This is beyond insane, and there is ZERO (I checked) legislative need for this, but as with anything relating to a DNO, you have zero choice. (private monopolies suck). That 8 week delay has not even started yet, because it is, itself being delayed because of lawyers. Yes. Lawyers. FFS.
But the SECOND big problem and nightmare is importing energy. We need (In theory) energy supplied TO the site in order to power the CCTV at night, and I suspect to also actually run the meter itself. This sounds trivial but ALL of the big six energy companies I talked to were incompetent, clueless buffoons who couldn’t even understand what I was asking for. The few clued-up energy companies who did offer a quote to supply energy are quoting a standing charge of £55 a day. Yes thats pounds, not pence. The actual energy usage will be under £50p a day. Yes, I have checked. Yes, this is absolutely totally and utterly insane. There are other charges added too which mean the bill would be about £28,000 a year to run 4 CCTV cameras.
Now you might ask “how the fuck can the standing charge for a business at location X be over a hundred times more than the standing charge for a house at X?”. You might also ask why the fuck the DNO can not provide the power. You might also ask why the fucking fuck we cannot use the power we generated ON SITE and use a tiny backup battery to ‘buffer’ some of it. These are all valid questions, and its driving me insane. Let me explain a bit…
There are two types of electricity meter. A standard domestic one, and whats called half-hourly meters. These are for big businesses and stuff like my farm. They have a different system of standing charges, which are calculated on something called a line-loss factor (LLF). Basically companies stuff power into a line, and meter whats taken out, and note the difference. Remote locations will have high LLFs, as a significant amount of power is lost in transmission (also theft).
In a remote location, a high LLF will mean a high standing charge. Initially we were quoted £186 PER DAY. Now its down to £55 a day, because we had to remind them it was now LV not HV. No, they had not even made that change in their database. Anyway, this is irrelevant, because the whole idea of a LLF affecting a STANDING charge is nuts. I don’t care if 50% of the power on that line is wasted, thats fine, bill me PER UNIT OF POWER 50% higher, I understand. And also…I don’t care because I’ll be importing a trivial, trivial amount of power… but thats not how the UK energy pricing system works. Its for some boneheaded, stupid, illogical and insane reason being placed as a lump sum on the standing charge.
This is beyond stupid. If the LLF is 50% (stupidly high example), and I place an aluminum smelting plant in the Scottish highlands, then I will laugh at your £50/day charge as I demand 10MWH of power every day and you have to stick 20MWH on the line for me to get it. As a large, wasteful, remote high energy consumer, I laugh all the way to the bank. But a tiny, energy efficient company in exactly the same location will pay between 50 and 100x as much for their energy as they should. Absolutely bonkers, insane crazy nonsense. And nobody in the industry gives a damn, or shows any enthusiasm to change it.
Welcome to reason #349 why your UK energy bills are so high, but you can expect the daily mail to blame it on wind turbines or something…
Anyway… there is progress. Its super slow, and unbelievably frustrating and is driving me mad, but there is small progress. One day when all this is done I will celebrate by drinking so much alcohol and eating so many cakes I pass out.
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<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
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<title>Gratuitous Space Shooty Game released!!!</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/11/29/gratuitous-space-shooty-game-released/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/11/29/gratuitous-space-shooty-game-released/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 29 Nov 2023 12:35:36 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[game design]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gratuitous space battles]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[programming]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6633</guid>
<description><![CDATA[And you probably thought I wasn’t still making games right? After the long and intense development of Democracy 4, which is a HUGE sprawling game with a LOT of code, and a ton of content, and is now in about 10 languages and has 3 expansion packs… it was nice to be able to makeContinue Reading... Gratuitous Space Shooty Game released!!!<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/11/29/gratuitous-space-shooty-game-released/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
And you probably thought I wasn’t still making games right?
After the long and intense development of <a href="https://www.positech.co.uk/democracy4/">Democracy 4</a>, which is a HUGE sprawling game with a LOT of code, and a ton of content, and is now in about 10 languages and has 3 expansion packs… it was nice to be able to make something small, and simple, and not at all commercial or serious. With that in mind I started messing around making a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders">space-invaders</a> style vertical shooter, using the art assets I have from an older game of mine: <a href="https://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/">Gratuitous Space Battles</a>.
GSB is pretty old now, but TBH the spaceship graphics for it still look incredibly good to my eyes. I generally think its very wasteful that the games industry hires so many people to make music, SFX and graphics, and then makes a single game with them, never to be re-used in any way. Frankly a spaceship is a spaceship, whether its used in an RTS or a shooter or a turn based grand strategy game.
I know some people worry that gamers will bombard you with abuse for daring to use the same artwork in another game, because they will feel ‘cheated’. This strikes me as utter nonsense. Sensible re-use of assets just makes sense. As a general principle I hate waste, and I love efficiency. Also, not doing something because a tiny, tiny percentage of vocal gamers may complain about it is definitely a losing strategy in gamedev. There are always people who complain about any choice you will make.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="562" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-5-1024x562.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6636" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-5-1024x562.png 1024w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-5-680x373.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-5-768x422.png 768w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-5-1536x843.png 1536w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-5.png 1914w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>
After working on this game for a bit, and initially thinking it was a little throwaway thing I’d probably keep to myself, I started to really enjoy its development. I have never made a vertical shooter, but I loved <a href="https://www.myabandonware.com/game/star-monkey-f7x">Star Monkey</a>, which is very old, and I am old enough to remember the first space invaders arcade cabinets as a kid, as well as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxian">Galaxian</a> (far superior imho) and then <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(video_game)">Phoenix</a> and the rest. I also spent a lot of time playing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrosmash">Astrosmash</a> on our intellivision console as a kid.
<a href="https://cliffski.itch.io/gratuitousshootygame">Gratuitous Space Shooty Game</a> is a bit of a mashup of a lot of those shooters, with some extra ideas that occurred during development. My wife playtested it a lot, and HATED the asteroids, so I added a repulsor beam to keep them away from you. Once implemented, it became a very cool new gameplay mechanic, as it allowed you to ‘balance’ attacking ships above you to get some extra shots in before they leave the screen.
During development I experimented with a bunch of ideas, and after a lot of playtesting, I’m happy with what I chose to do. The fact that you can accidentally shoot ship bonuses gives the player an incentive to keep moving and not risk a volley destroying a bonus. Penalizing you for every ship that escapes, INCLUDING the left-right ‘saucer’ ships also adds to the challenge. Making it so that the best power-ups are only dropped by those ships was also a good move from a design POV. Adding friendly ships you have to avoid is an evil mechanic, but its still in there!
<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Gratuitous Space Shooty Game Trailer!" width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hkGO9OVKNIY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>
In the end I went with 25 levels, and the levels get slightly longer as you go along. I don’t do any adaptive difficulty stuff, although I considered it. I do offer 3 difficulty levels from the start though. The top one is seriously hard. In-between levels you get to spend your cash, earned from shooting aliens and collecting bonuses (and a cool 10% bonus if nobody escapes) on upgrades for your ship.
Right now the game is only on itch, for $3 with a suggestion of $5 if you want to. It will not be a big financial success :D. Because I was doing it for fun, its currently windows only, and fixed aspect ratio of 1920×1080, or scaled to fit fullscreen. Windowed option literally went in the day before release :D. Its English only for now. I may try a google-translate for the limited text at some future point if I do an update to it.
So there you go, its another game by me! the first non-strategy one for a long time. I’m quite proud of it. Its a fun short laptop-friendly game you can play in lunch hour or multiple coffee breaks. If you like the look of it, get a copy!
<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/2208255?linkback=true" width="552" height="167"><a href="https://cliffski.itch.io/gratuitousshootygame">Gratuitous Space Shooty Game by cliffski</a></iframe>
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<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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<title>Tesla model Y performance after 1 year. My review</title>
<link>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/11/25/tesla-model-y-performance-after-1-year-my-review/</link>
<comments>https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/11/25/tesla-model-y-performance-after-1-year-my-review/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[cliffski]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Sat, 25 Nov 2023 15:25:41 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=6630</guid>
<description><![CDATA[So tomorrow marks 1 year to the day that I picked up my Tesla model Y. Previously I was driving a 2015 black model S 85D, which was still excellent, still had decent range, and which I resold for about half what I bought it for 7 years earlier. I was pretty happy doing that.Continue Reading... Tesla model Y performance after 1 year. My review<a class="btn btn-secondary continue-reading" href="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2023/11/25/tesla-model-y-performance-after-1-year-my-review/">Continue Reading...</a>]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[
So tomorrow marks 1 year to the day that I picked up my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_Y">Tesla model Y</a>. Previously I was driving a 2015 black model S 85D, which was still excellent, still had decent range, and which I resold for about half what I bought it for 7 years earlier. I was pretty happy doing that. I used webuyanycar which isn’t the best way to sell, but I hate dealing with people and wanted a zero-stress quick sale. FWIW I bought the model Y cash, not lease, and I had to wait a YEAR to get it. Damn you crazy foreign people and your driving on the wrong side of the road!
Specs wise, I basically picked the ‘go ahead and take my money’ version, because I chose red, performance, and Full-Self Driving. FSD gets you nothing but traffic light recognition in the UK for now, but I expect to keep the car 5 years and wanted to lock in FSD for £10k as I expect it to offer more soon.
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="865" height="546" src="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-6631" srcset="https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-4.png 865w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-4-680x429.png 680w, https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/image-4-768x485.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" /></figure>
Here are my general impressions after a year of driving. No massive road trips beyond some 5-600 mile round trips to my solar farm, and only driven in the UK. I live in a rural location in England, lots of narrow roads, dirt tracks etc.
The Good Stuff
It feels MUCH better put together than my model S. The S had panel gaps, because it was an early Tesla, and it was to be honest a little rattly. The new one feels chunkier, sturdier, and feels pretty solid and indestructible. This was a Shanghai built one FWIW. The finish is excellent, the panel gaps non existent. It feels very much like one they made after they have already made a million+ identical ones. Very sturdy. Its also much quieter inside. It has stiff, sporty suspension. Both suspension and noise are apparently even better with newer ones.
Its FAST. Like insanely fast. Its really tricky driving a car like this in 20mph zones. Its like riding a chariot. Its overkill, but its fun. I’d probably be more shocked at the speed if I hadn’t already owned the model S. 
The software/UI/infotainment is fantastic. None of the bugs and quirks and failures I experienced in my model S before I upgraded the screen. It feels really slick and easy to use.
The charging is insane amazeballs fast. I actively do not want a car that charges faster than this. This is the ideal rate for me to grab a coffee and a pastry before getting back in the car. People who obsess about charge speeds must have excellent bladders and incredibly tight schedules. Seriously, this is definitely fast enough. Its a fixed problem now!
The sound system is superb. Really quite shockingly good, especially for bass. I noticed this immediately on the very first day. I’ve never heard better in-car sound.
The Bad Stuff
No ultrasonic sensors. This is dumb as hell. It uses ‘tesla vision’ parking assist, which is currently rubbish. It may well get better over time, but right now its inferior to my old model S. Working parking sensors are essential for a big car in the tight parking spaces and lanes in the UK. OTOH reversing is trivial, thanks to 3 rear facing camera views on a huge screen.
Its too fast. Its really major overkill. I should have got the much cheaper long range one. Its so fast that even just lightly tapping the accelerator, I often think cars around me at traffic lights have stalled or not noticed the lights change. Its mad. As someone who is not into ‘track days’, I definitely went too far on this choice. If I had to buy a new one, I’d pick long range.
The Rest
A lot of the other thoughts I have on the car are just personal preference stuff. I nearly got a model 3, but wanted the latest model, so went with the Y. (The new model 3 has come out during my first year of ownership). I do like sitting higher up, but the car is an SUV crossover so its still a bit big for me tbh. The luggage space is absolutely huge, and not something I ever really will need. YMMV, esp if you have kids or dogs or take sports equipment places.
Style wise, I adore it. I love the minimalist interior, although some people hate it. I am totally onboard with the high tech, simple design. Other modern cars now feel hilariously fussy and ridiculous to me inside. One not-obvious benefit is the Y interior is trivial to clean. Cars with 627 buttons on the dashboard must be a nightmare.
In general, I give the car 9/10. I would make it a 10 if the park assist stuff worked better. I would also prefer the auto-wipers to be more reliable than they are, but this is a trivial niggle. I cant think of anything else the car needs. TBH I cannot imagine needing another car, unless it has some amazeballs undreamt of feature. Overall I’m massively happy with it.
Would I recommend it to people? Absolutely if you think the price/specs/size is what you want. As a family sized sporty EV it is unbeatable. The tech is amazing, build quality excellent. Its probably overkill unless you love fast cars and have the cash to spare, and a lot of people would probably see their money better spent on a Nissan leaf or MG4. For people with kids/pets who road trip and need luggage space, its perfect, although for 95% of people the performance option is going to be totally unnecessary, and the model 3 is still cheaper, and almost as good, sacrificing just space.
If you are thinking of getting one, pester me on twitter for a referral code that gets you some freebies! @cliffski.
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