Genuine question to you as someone who's been building in this space, what would you want / need to play a game as a programmer?

An API? An SDK? An in-game editor? Tutorials? Or is this more a "I want a factorio-like"?

I've been building economic engines and simulations for the last few years now and over the last 3 months in my off time I've been getting increasingly in the weeds about how to design a game that fits this

I've specifically been exploring using a voxel game as a base (think minecraft-like) however because I'm deeply interested in minion management / design I've been looking at how to create a programming / play experience that actually is fun and makes sense

What I'm trying to understand is what is the fun overlap between these

I have some opinions / ideas of my own and what I've been trying to do, however I'd be really interested in what other people are looking for to see where the overlap is and whether it fits the shape of what I'm building and whether I want to really commit the time to prototyping some things to see if there is interest to support this type of playstyle

Just to be super clear, what I've built so far specifically is targeting multiplayer

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anonymous908213 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There is some prior art of this nature, such as screeps, that you might find useful as reference material (if you aren't already aware of it).

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Folcon 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I am thank you, however the reason I'm engaging here is that what's being asked for from what I can see is a very different experience to screeps, for example screeps is top down much more programmer designed and has specific affordances and design to create the automated experience via being a developer

The reason I'm comparing it to factorio is because that game though still top down is designed specifically with a player in mind automating their labor and then slowly taking on a complex logistics game as they go and doing so fully in the game, the play is in laying out structures within the game

Satisfactory for example has different choices that lead to different gameplay as it's first person 3d, the play is in setting up and managing logistical structures and hitting production targets

That is interesting, however for my tastes both of these are a little too static an experience for what I want to build

I'm still working out the details of what I'm putting together, but I have a decent high level idea of what my goals are =)

What I want to know is, if people play this kind of game, what are they looking for / wanting?

What's a good "MVP" or minimal gameloop that would feel satisfying?

I want to quickly work out if I can serve either the gameplay desire or the gameplay fantasy or if it is just too hard to provide a fun experience for this kind of play in which case I should table this and focus on what I'm currently doing

However I'm still engaging with this because I would like to create a fun playspace here I just don't know what other programmers would want especially in the context of what the GP was asking, which is a mix of manual intervention and programming / automation

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anonymous908213 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I can't speak for all programmers, but as a game developer myself, my take is: your very job as a game developer, above all, is to find the fun. This is especially prudent if you're making a game for other programmers. If I already had a solid idea in my head for what would be an amazingly fun programming-oriented game, I would... program it myself. I don't have such a concept in mind. I believe finding those concepts is something you have to find out by tinkering with ideas, building prototypes, working out the implementation details and seeing what you yourself enjoy.

	▲	Folcon 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't disagree with any of that =) It's what I've been doing, I'm asking what I'm asking to see if it surfaces anything that I've been missing / not thinking about and trying to work out what people would see as table stakes In the same way that I know that playtesting reveals flaws and gaps in my design and thinking, this is a earlier version of that process that has in my experience helped me when building non-game related things It may very much be the case that this is not the kind of thing that I should do when focused on building a game, but I don't think it hurts to ask