@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

mogwai_poet

@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social

Sandwich Imagineer at Twinbeard. Made Frog Fractions. May or may not have already made Frog Fractions 2. He/him.

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mogwai_poet, to random
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I've been playing Infinity Island, by Luca Redwood, the You Must Build A Boat guy. It's themed as one of those collect-the-animals F2P games, but it's structured more like a clicker, with a half dozen different currencies that interact via a half dozen different upgrade interfaces. I've been playing for several days but some of the most basic stuff is still mysterious to me, to the point that I feel like it must be on purpose? Like it feels overcomplicated past the point of satire.

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

Instead of clicking, the core mechanic is a claw game where you launch the claw into various biomes to collect themed items. Sometimes when you're retrieving an eyepatch from the pirate dimension or whatever, it says "inventory full," which implies there's an inventory interface I haven't found. This is plausible because it took me days to figure out that you can swipe left to get to the screen where you send your collectible animals on adventures like "Fight cavities" or "Learn to ride a bike."

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

I'll regularly get messages like "such and such an 'upgrade' added to the 'shop.'" There are half a dozen of these shops, each with a different set of upgrades, but none of them are called "shop" or "upgrades," which I think means I haven't found the upgrade shop yet? Except that if I look at the list of achievements, I have purchased ~90 upgrades. Obviously the move is to revisit the achievement interface after every action to see if the thing I just did is buying an upgrade from the shop.

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

I have a quest called "Get a correct answer in Inquizity," which is like a quiz show that one of the shopkeepers runs. It asks you multiple choice questions like "what is the price of a [any of over a thousand collectible items]." After you answer, you get to scroll through a multiple-page list of all the game state multipliers that go into the currently correct answer. I have gotten an answer right but the quest systems claims I haven't, so maybe it knows that I was just guessing?

jmac, to Steamdeck
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

Invited to play some Left 4 Dead with friends last night. Complex nostalgia: I was back in Boston the last time I played it. That was on Xbox 360, and I’m unsurprised to see that it plays great on today.

It’s as fun as ever, with very minor mechanical nits. The aspects that felt most dated were philosophical.

First, the easiest skill level is called "Easy”, and beyond it being Rather Hard Actually, a modern game would pick a less dismissive description for it. 🧵

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@jmac My sense of it is that games didn't change and the culture didn't change -- you did. The vast majority of video games are still built around violence as the default (or only) form of interaction. We had our moment (e.g. Spec Ops The Line) where we floated the idea that violence isn't something to celebrate and in my experience players are sick of the conversation now.

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

You may have seen the Balatro Discourse, which consists of people looking at a screenshot of code that it straightforward and getting angry that it's not more complicated.

I'd just like to posit here that a straightforward solution is an excellent default and you should have a really solid argument for the advantages of a complicated solution before you choose it.

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@jmac Extremely plausible

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@Nifflas Yeah, if I saw this code in a project I was working on I would definitely look for a possible refactor. But there isn't an obviously correct fix just looking at that screen shot.

And that code, as it is? Pretty readable. Pretty obvious what it does and how to make changes.

TomF, to random
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Computers like the ZX Spectrum had each 8x8 block have 1 bit per pixel, and that 1 bit selects between two colours chosen by an 8-bit attribute. For the Spectrum the attribute had 3 bits for colour 0, 3 bits for colour 1, 1 bit to make them bright, and a completely pointless "flash" attribute.

But what if you had twice as many bits?

Well, you'd have four colours per pixel to choose from, and a 16-bit attribute chunk. So 16/4 = 4 bits per colour. Same as the Speecy. Buuuut....

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@TomF Imagine, with just a few tweaks, it could've had the CGA 16 color palette

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

One of the touted advantages of the internet was that it made available the global range of options. No longer are you limited to talking to the person next to you on the bus, etc.

Now global everything is the norm, and the exciting thing would be the ability to filter for locally sourced stuff. Like, if I go to a hotel concierge and ask for some good local podcasts, he's probably going to say "Um, This American Life? Joe Rogan?" No, dude. I mean podcasts recorded in this neighborhood.

Nifflas, to random
@Nifflas@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Looking for a lot of words that expresses that something is cool. Like, "Awesome", "Groovy", "Cowabunga". It doesn't matter how made-up or weird, or obscure. I'm gonna need like a hundred of them!

Feel free to suggest any, together with a number indicating the coolness (1 = ok, 3 = Great!, 5 = THAT'S AWESOME, 10 = INFINITY COOL)

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@Nifflas I love this kind of task. A couple weeks ago I did some paid(!) game design consulting work where I just helped brainstorm categories. Just, like, as wide a variety of categories as I could think of.

Harmony Joy Bus Ride
Peachy
Shiny
Bang up
Bang up to the elephant
Corker
Smashing
Fab
Gnarly
Gnar-gnar
Radical
Hellacious
In the pocket
Five-by-five
Beastly
Crushing it
Fetch
Groovy
Legit
Monstrous
Sick
Nanty Narking
Bravo Zulu
High-technical
Five star
Hundo-p
Top marks
Double plus good

jmac, to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

With kindness and sincerity, this video made me feel great empathy towards my nation's food service workers, and also gave me a rising sense of anxiety edging into the threshold of an outright terror of a flavor I have never tasted before. "Easy.”
https://mastodon.social/@hotdogsladies/112254463591200744

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@icecreamjonsey @jmac l knew a guy who would nod while explaining math. I don't think it was deliberate, I think it was a subconscious thing he picked up as a way to get the listener to nod in response, presumably because nodding signals understanding and therefore a successful explanation. Later I found out that the whole math department at UCSD did that.

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

Why is it important for corn to be tall?

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

They told me things might look weird during the eclipse

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

I didn't take any photos but here's my ascii art of the totality: o

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

Caving to public pressure, Best Buy finally admits that amyl nitrate is "essential"

jmac, (edited ) to random
@jmac@masto.nyc avatar

Current state of my piano-learning loadout:

• Samson Carbon 49 MIDI controller (that's the keyboard)
• 2018 iPad running GarageBand
• Sony MDR-7506 wired headphones
• USB hub that binds and powers all the former
• On Stage keyboard stand and bench
• Alfred's Basic Adult All-In-One Course, Book 1

Finally got the hub today; before this I could only run the keyboard off the iPad's battery and not use headphones.

It's starting to become a handsome little low-budget learning nook, now.

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@jmac Do you have a sustain pedal? You definitely want a sustain pedal.

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@jmac The extra limb definitely makes it trickier!

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

The real story of the xd/liblzma attack is that it's considered totally normal in the FOSS community to hurl abuse at people who are maintaining critical public infrastructure in their free time.

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

Terry keeps rolling out the bangers. Finally, he's found his medium.

https://downpour.games/~terry/a-proper-cup-of-tea

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

I don't know who needs to see this but here's a 170 page document about how to tell where in Mongolia you are when you're playing Geoguessr

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W_QK69BXMHUZXI5VdNH93_aLhTd9SQzNYhRLrh_-ZVA/edit

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

Thinking further on what Picotron is for. My initial concern was that Pico-8's constraints are very well-tuned, and you can't make a better Pico-8 by relaxing the constraints.

Picotron isn't trying to be a better Pico-8. If Pico-8 is a fun cozy way to make games, Picotron is a fun cozy way to use a computer. I don't know if you've noticed, but computers suck now. (Mostly because developers and platform owners have figured out more effective ways to make money than making their users happy.)

jeffgerstmann, to random
@jeffgerstmann@mastodon.social avatar

OK, I guess you could follow my Threads account from here now, if you wanted to do that? I don't know if you want to do that. I mean I don't want to do that.

mogwai_poet,
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

@jeffgerstmann I was telling someone how to find me on Mastodon earlier and two search results came up and I was like "what's that second result??" and it turned out to be my Twitter account that someone decided to mirror. I can't see it myself, presumably because mastodon.social has blocked that server.

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

You haven't lived until a couple you know makes an album together to process their breakup and you get to hear them singing backup on each other's diss tracks

mogwai_poet, to random
@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social avatar

On the way to GDC. Here's what the top half of my face looks like today

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