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mozz @lemmy.sdf.org
Posts 2
Comments 1
Is there any demand left for 'game systems developers'? As in, people knowledgeable on Win32 or POSIX API, PE/ELF, Compilers and Interpreters, etc, when it concerns games exclusively? (+UNIX engine?)
  • "Where there's muck, there's brass"

    In general, if you can do the more difficult aspects, then you'll be more in demand (both because people need them done, and because it'll serve as a badge that yes you know what you're doing in a general sense).

    In games specifically, it's more likely that you'd find yourself doing optimization, or the low levels of porting a game from one system to another, as opposed to writing an engine from scratch. If it were me, I would probably get involved in some existing project and try to write a new low-level system (e.g. a Gaussian splatting renderer for Unity or something) as opposed to just reinventing a new engine of my own. But absolutely, if you're skilled with the deeper systems aspects as opposed to just using the existing tools, it'll help you generally speaking.

  • Fort Douaumont, before and after the Battle of Verdun, WW1, 1915-1916
  • The "battle" of Verdun lasted 10 months; it was less of a battle in the usual sense of a single let's-fight-and-loser-runs-away event, and more like an open-air industrial blender made of shrapnel and bullets into which a continuous stream of mostly innocent people were ordered to walk over a long, long period of time.

    The Somme was similar, but worse because it was bigger. All war is hell, but World War 1 was much, much worse.

  • FAA Orders Grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft Following Alaska Airlines Incident
  • Yeah. Normally there's a swiss cheese model where multiple failures had to line up together to make a problem. MCAS was the only non-flight-crew-related problem I've ever heard of where it was just one thing. One thing failed, the plane flew itself inexorably into the ground, everyone's dead, the end.

    And, engineers involved tried to raise the alarm that it was a problem.

  • Anyone GameDev? Realized today that it has never been easier for 1 or few people can now rapidly deploy a quality demo, one of the few upsides this wide variety generative art tools
  • So do you see the problem as genart not producing consistent enough things for it to work (at least from models built and manicured anonymously).

    Not exactly - that might be a problem yes, but mostly I'm saying that being able to save the time you'd need to spend making art assets has already been possible for quite a while because you could download models by the thousands from free sites and they were perfectly good. Second Wind actually just recently made a video about making a game based on free assets ("asset flip" games), and in their latest video they said a bunch of people actually were really interested in the crappy-on-purpose quick game they talked about making, because it looked kind of good.

    The core thing that has to be there is the dopamine loop that makes playing the game fun, and the investment of genuine heart (for lack of a better word) that makes it a real and satisfying experience. It's a lot harder than it would seem like, and a lot of times if you dig into the development process behind really good games they had this super-obsessive focus on polishing the experience to the point where it was tight and enjoyable and real, because that doesn't happen on its own and it's really not that easy to do. Hollow Knight's player sprite is more or less unchanged from the original Newgrounds game; I'm sure it was just sketched out pretty quickly, but having the asset didn't take away from having to do all the back-breaking work that came after that to get the game as good as it was. Lethal Company might as well be an "asset flip game" visually; it just kind of doesn't matter for that particular game to how much fun it winds up being.

    Again I'm not saying AI won't help. I'm just saying the level of effort that comes after the art assets exist is still kind of backbreaking if you want the game to be good.

    Personally I like to think of most games even 3d and 2d-- what would a text based client look like, would it be a terminal with commands or options presented in order, etc. Because thats the part of the game that matters most.

    In my envisioning, it was a Discord bot with slash commands for the verbs, so you have some guidance as to what's possible and not, but then you have some linguistic leeway for what comes after the verb. They used to make text-based games (type a command, get some text as the answer) and some were real classics.

    I'm not trying at all to dissuade you from the 3d game you were talking about making, just mentioning since your post reminded me of it.

  • FAA Orders Grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft Following Alaska Airlines Incident
  • The whole history of the decision-making that led to the MCAS system made it clear to anyone who's ever worked in an engineering organization that more failures were coming. The engineers saying "This is a problem, don't do it this way" and the management saying "STFU, I'm in charge, do as I say" never, ever leads anywhere good.

  • News bot
  • Yeah, I'm sorta inclined to agree; I looked at how it works out in practice and it's definitely a little obnoxious. I disabled it for now.

    It's tough because I'd like for it to be accessible both from the big instances like lemmy.world, and from the instances like beehaw that have defederated the big instances. So that tends to imply that a good home for it would be on one of the little instances. But, it's not gonna sit well on the little instances if it's making a firehose (relatively speaking) and overwhelming their local feeds.

    IDK; I'll ask around and see if I can find a good home for it. Absent some person coming in and saying "yes ruining the local feed is ok" I'm gonna conclude that that's not SDF though.

  • 'We have no rights.' Frustrated with California wage laws, Moonstone Bistro in Redding cuts lunch service
  • (From memory, so there might be tiny mistakes in the language:)

    "If we could climb the highest steeple
    and then look down on all the people,
    and shoot the ones not wholly good,
    as we, like noble shooters, should,
    Why then there'd be an only worry:
    Who'd be left to bury
    Us?"
        -Walt Kelly

  • Self-host personal Mastodon instance and Plex server
  • Sounds like it'd work great. You might want to use something like DigitalOcean instead of your home machine, for a couple different reasons. DigitalOcean is cheap for this type of application (like on the order of, IDK, $5-10 a month or something).

    Also, fair warning, the current generation of Fediverse software is a pain in the ass to install, even before you get into issues of upgrading it, staying on top of security of the server, etc etc. But sure, it's doable if you're savvy and willing to invest some small time into it.

  • Lauren Boebert rages over USA Boxing’s trans policy even though she clearly doesn’t understand it
  • I mean, it's working for her so far. What else is she qualified to make six figures at, let alone while not having to behave professionally or do any work?

    If she believed in hell, I think she'd have some reservations, but as it is I think she's probably pleased as punch about the result.

  • Peaceful protestors light candles in front of riot police during the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia, 1989
  • "Turned on the news in November '89
    I could not move, I could not speak
    Something was burning up in my eyes
    Something wet ran down my cheek
    All those laughing faces, all those tears of joy
    All those warm embraces of men and women, girls and boys
    Sisters and brothers dancing, all singing freedom's song
    God, if only I could be there to shake your hands and sing along"
    -John Kay, "The Wall"

    Bro snuck across the Berlin Wall with his family when he was 5 years old and you got shot dead if they caught you trying to get across. He came to America, grew up and started a rock and roll band, and then as an adult got to watch the wall fall on television and wrote a song about it.

    People who got born here don't know what they have.