alt Hacker NewsShow HN: A terminal-native idle factory game, written in Rust with ratatui
Hey HN readers!
I'm snipedbywifi (https://gitlab.com/snipedbywifi), and i've been working on terminactory. Please try it out if you'd like to play a cozy factory game while waiting for long agent tasks to finish!
The game is a factory game (overused niche, i know xD), but runs in your terminal. Reason i built it? glad you asked: So basically, it started off with me wanting a terminal-native factory game. Me and the modern 5.5 claude models made a base for the game that I liked, and then i went ham adding features / fixing some minor flaws (like adding claude code hooks so you recieve "telegrams" [the agent's responses], so you can review progress directly in-game). (yes, I had heavy AI assistance, disclaimer!!!)
Right now, the game has basic factory features you'd expect from a game like this (build stuff, delete stuff, measure how much you're earning, basic selection tools), along with a few more.. "unexpected" features. This includes a fake in-game browser that has a wiki, fake forums, some fun bits of lore, some more lore, a LOT more lore, and a research graph that shows how many items or how much RP (research points) you'd need to unlock something, and some more QOL features.
If anyone actually has this issue / want of a terminal-based game that runs alongside your agents so you don't doomscroll, do you have any suggestions, or additional ideas I could add?
It's hosted on GitLab, soo, that's one additional thing i'd like to mention
Thanks for reading!! snipedbywifi
(p.s. first HN post lol) (p.s. p.s. there's a lot of hidden lore in the game, so.. lore-divers? you might like it?)
Comments
> It is made to sit in a split next to your AI agents. They can send you short messages that show up in the game, so you can play while they work.
> Agent messages
> Your AI agents can message you inside the game. A message costs the agent only the words in it, and nothing prints on success. Messages wait while the game is closed.
It's kinda amazing how the ancient "local mail" technology keeps getting reinvented, you know, and reintegrated inside the gameplay? NetHack had its its "mail demon" since... (googles) version 1.0.2, in April 1985 — the creature would spawn in the game, deliver you a scroll of mail, and vanish. And apparently, it's still in use nowadays? "On public servers such as nethack.alt.org, a user may observe other users' games and communicate with them by sending mail."
It's an interesting game, I love the hacker-like look to it. But is the only value proposition here that it runs in a terminal?
To me, it could be interesting for ~10 minutes, and I'd then prefer playing a game like Factorio.
So, Claude wrote it. You worked on shit.
Why are forums part of the repo? Or could you explain any single file in a room without internet access?
[1] https://gitlab.com/snipedbywifi/terminactory/-/wikis/Guide:%...
Lovely, a rate limit.
If you vibe code at least have the guts to also provide the harness and prompts. To make the whole “effort” at least somehow reproducible.
Nice! I wonder if you could have an option to use the icons available in Nerd Fonts in addition to plain ascii?
If it runs fast and low resource, it could be a nice testbed for agent architectures. I'm thinking old-school planners, genetic programming, ML techniques, etc.
Especially integrating planners or logic-based approaches with ML models. The old architectures for StarCraft were great at building and micro-managing units but terrible at assessing or adapting to enemy strategy. Hybrid architectures can address that.
Games like yours, esp different styles or requirements, can be used to prove how well the techniques generalize.
Pretty neat looking! I'll need to try it out on Monday ;)
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Why every factory game is about mining/smelting iron and copper? Aren't there more intersting industrial processes?