I thought it might be fun to make a little game out of asking Fermi problems and trying to work out solutions to others'.

What is a Fermi problem?

A Fermi problem is (to quote wikipedia ):

an estimation problem designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation, and such a problem is usually a back-of-the-envelope calculation. The estimation technique is named after physicist Enrico Fermi as he was known for his ability to make good approximate calculations with little or no actual data. Fermi problems typically involve making justified guesses about quantities and their variance or lower and upper bounds.

Basically, these are questions that would be very difficult to calculate exactly without looking up the answer. The goal is to arrive at a good estimate by making justified assumptions. As such, looking up facts and statistics should be minimized or outright avoided (e.g., if the question is "What is the mass of the water in Lake Michigan?", you shouldn't look up Lake Michigan's volume to aid your answer. This should be estimated from things you know off the top of your head).

The way this thread works

1. If you have a Fermi problem, post it as a top level comment.
2. If you have a solution to an already posted Fermi problem, post it as a reply to that comment. Be sure to post your reasoning and thought process.

Fermi problems can be fun to come up with, and fun to answer. Examples of Fermi problems might include:

• How many piano tuners are there in Chicago? (this one is apparently one that Fermi came up with himself)

• How many keystrokes occur worldwide, daily?

• What is the mass of the water in Lake Michigan?

• How many cars are there in New York City on a given day?

• How many blades of grass are there on the National Mall?

• How many eggs are consumed in the US each day?

Since many of these have no definitive answer, it is not always possible to score the 'correctness' of an answer. Nonetheless, others can judge when an answer makes reasonable assumptions, so feel free reply to answers with suggestions of which assumptions can be refined or further justified.

I presume a lot of you might have noticed the discourse surrounding Sekiro and the notion that games like Sekiro could benefit from having a complementary "easy mode". The discourse is hot, and the takes are flying left and right but I'm curious to what the people of Tildes think about it.

Background

There's been some talk on ~ before, and it seems like there are quite a few people who are either interested in, learning, or working in game development, so I thought this could be a fun programming challenge.

This one is fairly open-ended: make a game in 1 hour. Any game, any engine, don't worry about art or sound or anything.

Doing is the best way to learn. Most people's first project is something overly ambitious, and when they find that it's more difficult than they thought, they can get discouraged, or even give up entirely. This is why the 1 hour limit is important: it forces you to finish something, even if it's small. When you're done, you can come out of it saying you made a game, and you learned from it.

Chances are the game might not be fun, look bad, be buggy, etc. But don't worry about that, everyone's game will have problems, and if you do create something really fun or innovative, congratulations, you have a prototype that you can expand on later!

"Rules"

Like I said before, these "rules" are pretty simple: make a game in (approximately) 1 hour. You can use any tools you want. If you use external assets (art, sound), it's probably best you use something you have the rights to (see resources). If you're completely new to game development/programming, your goal could even be to finish a tutorial.

If you're the kind of person who tends to get carried away with these things, you might want to post a comment saying you're starting, then another one once you've finished your game.

Please share your finished game, I'm sure everyone would love to try them! If your game is web-based, it can be hosted for free on Github Pages or Itch.io. If downloadable, it can be hosted for free on Google Drive, Mega, Dropbox, Itch.io, etc.

Resources

Engines

If you're a beginner, a good engine to start with is LÖVE. It's very simple, and uses Lua, which is very easy to learn.

If you're familiar with another language, you could use a library to make it in that language. Some examples:

C++: SFML, SDL, Allegro

Javascript: kontra, Phaser, pixi.js

Python: pygame

Rust: Piston, ggez, Amethyst

If you want something more complex, consider Godot, Unity, or Unreal.

You can also try something visual like Construct, Clickteam Fusion, or GDevelop

Art

For such a short time constraint, I'd suggest you use your own "programmer art": just use some basic shapes. Your primary focus should be gameplay.

If you think you have time to find something, try looking on OpenGameArt.

Sound

You can make simple sound effects very quickly with sfxr (or in this case, a web port of sfxr called jsfxr).

Alex Bruce gave a pair of talks at GDC 2014 on the development process of Antichamber (trailer)

In the first talk he talked about the journey from Unreal mod to full game, presenting at game festivals, networking, the grueling work of getting the game to market, and the lessons he learned along the way:

Antichamber: An Overnight Success, Seven Years In The Making

In the second talk he went over the iterative design process, and how he tweaked things based on how people interacted with the game (spoilers):

Antichamber: Three Years of Hardcore Iteration

I've been trying to get back into game dev recently and I'd love to work with someone if you're up for it. I'm also down to join existing hobbyist projects, although I have a thing I'm currently building at the moment.

• I'm based in SF; I'm willing to work remotely with someone, but would definitely prefer someone in the area.
• I'm a software developer with 6ish years of experience programming, a CS degree and just starting an out-of-college job.
• I've built some small games in the past, mostly in Unity.
• I've got a reasonable amount of UI/UX experience but I'm by no means a professional and none of it is all that game-related.
• I can do some pixel art though I'm by no means an expert.

If you make games for fun and are looking for a partner, feel free to send me a PM or just reply to this.

Similarly, I'd like to also suggest a Tildes ~LFG (looking for group) or other meeting-ish area.