Sometimes I make video games
Counterpoint: if people feel like they can’t talk about these things then they’ll never talk about them and the condition often worsens.
I also feel pretty powerless to help in a meaningful way. But I’m not going to shun someone who’s struggling either
I’ve done a couple tours myself, it’s no picnic
I feel it’s one of those jobs that everyone should do at some point in their life. That or customer / food service. Either exposes you to some of the rudest, most entitled people, and if everyone had that exposure I feel there’d be more empathy to go around
I tell you though, hearing people yell at your mom all day is great motivation to stay in school to find a better job
I was the kid, mom was working in a call center
I learned that people suck, and I still hate talking on the phone.
I also learned sudoku because you have to do something between calls.
I believe this is indicating that it’s using the Python syntax highlighting.
Which is still a failure, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think that AI truly knows the difference between one language and another anyway
That’s crazy, how can somebody not know what brand of laptop they…
HOLY SHIT ME TOO
I don’t know, I guess I must have forgot
I would rather be misinformed than disinformed. Either way you have a chance to learn and grow, but at least with misinformation you can come by it honestly. Disinformation is far more grave of an issue
They say ignorance is bliss, so I’d probably be happier to know a little. Unfortunately, I already know more than a little and it’s not easy to unlearn, so I guess I’m cursed with awareness now
However, if you only know a little then you’re more susceptible to (dis/mis)information. That can have a tremendously negative impact on your quality of life - although I suppose you might not be aware of it
The world would be a better place if we all knew more about it. The only reason why knowledge is cursed is because with knowledge we see how unfairly a few humans treat each other
Oh my gosh, I was not prepared for that.
As if CSS didn’t give me enough reasons to cry.
But it’s still got to be responsive for all devices, although flexbox is disabled
When I get to hell they’re going to make me work on the front end.
It’s all going to be inline HTML and Inspect Element isn’t available in their browser
The caption is mislabeled, but don’t worry, I’ve got your back:
Left: Biology majors looking at Computer Science majors all day
Right: Bugs looking at bugs all day
Some produce does surprisingly well at room temperature. Potatoes, onions, and gourds can last for months if stored properly. We keep our tomatoes on the counter and they’ve lasted for weeks at a time. As a general rule, if it’s found on a shelf rather than a cooler in a grocery store, it’ll be good for at least several days outside the fridge.
Everything I need to make rice or noodles is shelf stable. Pasta’s probably your friend here too.
Beans can be kept dried or canned. Dried is far cheaper, but can be more labour intensive for cooking. So if I’m just making something for myself, canned is a good choice too.
Lots of seafood is pretty good canned. Fish and crackers is something of a lazy/comfort food for me.
I had some fridge trouble in the recent past, and it was super lame. Good luck, and I hope you get a replacement soon
You know, that’s not a bad idea. I only have to make one meal, but I get more variety in my food each day.
I bet it’s easy to get going to, you only need a few friends / family / neighbours to get started
When I learned it, one of the core tenets was that you build a prototype and then iterate off of it. I guess that’s what I’m referring to
Every organization I’ve worked for has a different bastardization of it, so your mileage may vary
Hey, I’m also a software developer, and I dabble in game dev.
You eat an elephant one bite at a time. You’re probably already familiar with Agile, and that’s a good way to organize your project. Start small, get one thing working, and then you can iteratively add features.
If you’re interested in game design, you may want to do some reading on the subject. The Onion model for game design is highly effective. You start with a core feature, finish that feature, then add new layers by adding new features. You complete each feature before you start on the next, and this way you always have a working game. It’s fairly similar to Vertical Slices in Agile development.
As far as choosing an engine, I’ll make it easy for you and just recommend Godot. It’s FOSS and widely used in particular by solo devs. I’ve also dabbled with Unity and Unreal, which will be the other major free (but proprietary) options. Unity has less ramp-up time than Unreal, but it also has a history of screwing with its users. You’re probably familiar with vendor-lock, and that’s what you’ll be getting into if you try either of those.
You may already have the skills to build your own engine. Don’t. You’ll pull your hair out on all the edge cases and abstractions, and an off-the-shelf engine already has that figured out for you.
As far as learning to use the software, I guess that depends on your learning style. There’s books, videos, and official documentation on the web for whatever engine you decide to use. I’d recommend you use the same approach as learning any other new stack or library. For me, that often means going to the documentation’s Getting Started page and just playing around.
As you mentioned, tutorial hell is real. Don’t get me wrong, tutorials are a great way to learn the engine’s features that you aren’t already aware of. But don’t be afraid to go off-script and just play around. Sooner or later you’ll have to make your own sausage anyway.
Since you already know how to code, you’ve got a huge leg up on most beginners. The hardest part about making games is creating assets and scripting features. As far as assets go, you can certainly make them yourself, or you can outsource that work with third-party assets. While you’re learning, I’ll recommend Kenney - they’re highly regarded in the game dev community, and all of their assets are CC0 licensed so you’re free to use them even without attribution.
Good luck!
I’m surprised and relieved to hear such a salient take.
It’s not really surprising that if the big names in gaming spend an enormous amount of budget on a game that it’s not automatically going to be a hit. After all, a large chunk of that time and money is spent on further monetizing the game. The more monetization features they work on, the less attractive a game becomes to the player. It feels like that should just be common sense, I’m surprised a bunch of business majors never learned that they need a good product.
Like, honestly, a game isn’t going to automatically generate enormous profit just because a lot of money has been spent on it. It also has to be a decent game in its own right.
This is something that indie gamers have been saying probably as long as there’s been indie gaming. Maybe it will carry more weight when a suit says it. But then, he’s a former executive, so maybe it won’t have as much impact as it should.
Time for an anecdote:
I can think of two Blizzard games that I really enjoyed until they had a 2.0 release. Both used the 2.0 as an opportunity to change their monetization model in favour of squeezing more cash from players. They’re Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch.
Heroes of the Storm was free, but had a cash shop where you could buy cosmetics. Each cosmetic was listed for individual purchase. There were bundles, but if you really wanted just a single skin you could buy it for about $5-$15. That’s not an unreasonable price and I was happy to support a free game by buying the occasional skin for my favourite heroes.
When Heroes of the Storm had their 2.0 rework, they changed the cosmetic shop to be based entirely on lootboxes. You could no longer get the things you specifically wanted and had to rely on random chance. You could of course get more lootboxes by throwing more money at the game, but you’d have to buy way more lootboxes for a chance to get the thing you wanted. That turned me and a lot of players off of the game, and it wasn’t long after 2.0 that Blizzard stopped active development and put the game in maintenance mode.
Funny enough, Overwatch did the opposite, but it was still a step towards greed and super frustrating. In the original release, you had a lootbox based economy and a cosmetic shop where you could spend currency earned from the lootboxes to buy skins. Lootboxes were available for free as you played, but also available for purchase. You could ultimately get whatever you wanted just by playing the game enough.
When Overwatch 2 came out, the model switched to free-to-play and battlepasses. The free stuff you could get was limited to something like half the battlepass cosmetics (you can buy the pass to unlock more), and the cosmetic shop became a cash shop with insane valuation of skins. I think the average skin is like $30, and often they’re only available in bundles where you have to spend even more to also get skins that you might not care about.
In an attempt to reach more market, Overwatch 2 was released on Steam. This was the first (and I think only?) platform that Overwatch got released to where users can leave reviews on the game. It has a 20% recommendation rate, which is categorized as “Mostly Negative” and makes it one of the worst releases of all time on Steam. And this is for a game that you can play for free - it costs you nothing and people are trying to warn you not to waste your time.
The reworks between Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch are both examples of studios taking a beloved game in its own right, and lobotomizing it to make it more profitable. Never forget what they’ve taken from us.
I think the only game that’s given me a hard time with linux is Call of Duty
And that’s not to say that you couldn’t get it to work, it was just more than one click to set up so I couldn’t be bothered.
Honestly, probably better of without CoD anyway
I have a cat that plays fetch.
It sounds cute, and it is - until he’s bringing you q-tips he dug out of the trash to play with.
Geez, that’s lame. Use an ad blocker
3 hours of debugging can save you 30 minutes of reading the documentation
I suppose people will always do what they think is easiest