@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

TomF

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place

Graphics coder and HW architect, currently at Rec Room, previously at Muckyfoot, RAD Game Tools, Valve, Oculus and Intel.

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

"I don't think I have the energy to work on any projects, I think I'm just gonna write some ideas down"

(several hours later)

"I worked out a nice way to join vertex strips of arbitrary sizes without floating point math. It turns out you can just force them to correlate via a common denominator."

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@aeva What if the common denominator is a power of two? :-)

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@aeva Oh, you're joining LOD meshes with no T-junctions. Got it.

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

i have just now found out that what i really should have been doing with my life is be a freelance tech documentation writer

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@eniko I have a couple of friends who do this. It IS a fun job, but it's very inconsistent - companies either want three more of you, or they have nothing for you to do.

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

Finally finished The Good Place. What a masterwork! The density of jokes, the forwards and backwards references, the stuff you have to pause to spot - all so delicious.

Almost none of it is quotable without gigantic spoilers. Amazing.

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

Discovered today that the Windows Snipping Tool does video (and audio) recording now. Works great - does a screen subrect, captures the mouse, can pause and resume. When did this happen? Super useful.

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

in the games industry you can make a hit like kerbal space program and still have your entire shit shut down and everyone go out of work

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@eniko KSP2 was a troubled project. I forget if it was handed between 4 different companies, or if it was the same company with 4 different names, or a combo. Not happy, either way.

None of this excuses the corporate shenanigans.

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

I find it frustratingly ironic that C# doesn't have the C # operator.

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

Proving that Immediate Mode GUIs aren’t significant battery hogs. Computers are really fast!

MacBook M1 Idle: 3.5 watts

Dear ImGui: 7.5
ImPlot: 8.9
EGUI: 8.2
Rerun: 11.1

Spotify: 5.8
VSCode: 7.0
YouTube: 11.5
Facebook: 8.7

Compiling: 50.0

Full blog post: https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/proving-immediate-mode-guis-are-performant/

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@Doomed_Daniel @forrestthewoods Makes me think you could write an interposer library that exposes a retained-mode GUI, but then internally displays it using an immediate mode.

Rather pointless, except to enable direct apples-to-apples comparisons like this. I assume it would be slightly more power-hungry because you fundamentally added code in the middle, but maybe by only a few %

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

Huh. I discuss electric vehicles with people quite a bit, and a lot of them would like to avoid Tesla for many reasons (build quality, El*n) but it's so hard to get away from the goodness of the amazing charging network.

And now that's gone. Seems like a poor decision. Oh well.

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

I really think my employers should be able to get compensation from Microsoft for the NUMBER OF TIMES THEY UPDATE WINDOWS LOSING ALL MY CURRENT DEBUGGING STATE AND FUCKING MY DAY UP.

Ranty shout over but Jeez Louise it'll take me a good hour to just get all the tools setup in the right way this morning SIGH.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@neilhenning Unfortunately their incentive is to do it MORE often, so they train you not to rely on retained state. I am certainly at that stage. It's like the 1990s all over again - gotta hit "save" on everything before you go to bed.

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

I don't agree with punishing companies who happen to be in Israel. But I see no other way to stop this bullshit than to use every lever that exists. And the government of Israel won't listen to screaming people. But they will listen to screaming companies.

Are boycotts a form of economic terrorism? Abso-fucking-lutely. But companies aren't people. So this is how it is.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@atomicpoet But the capitalists do. And they pay the army.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Just opened my ThinkPad and for the second time in three days the act of closing the laptop to sleep it, then opening it again had caused Ubuntu to hardlock. This time I got a very brief small printout about "amd ring 0 error", then it went back to a black screen and I had to hold down the power button again.

I thought getting a ThinkPad, getting AMD cpu/gpu and picking the Linux distro Lenovo lists as supported would mean I got a minimally functioning computer but I guess not.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@mcc I just fucking hate laptops. They ride the edge of HW all the time, and all their power saving gizmos work the instant they ship, and then not at all, because oh my gods the bullshit they pull to make it work...

c0de517e, to random
@c0de517e@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Going through the required "training" yet again thinking - you can't make this non-cringe or fun, the only way to make it better is to make it shorter. But, assuming people aren't morons, I went to check... and yes, by law there is a minimum duration (1h) these have to be.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@c0de517e Is that the one where they show an almost exact recreation of Bush groping Merkel and then say "yeah never ever do this".

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

i really like the weight and feel and accuracy of logitech G pro mouse but jesus fucking christ why dont they make these in a way where the left click doesn't die every 1-1.5 years?

EDIT: tbh this is one of the rare occasions that i wouldn't mind suggestions for alternatives. just, don't recommend shit that is significantly heavier or a different form factor from a bog standard office mouse, thats why i like the G pro

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@eniko I just buy the cheapest wired Logitech mouse. Costs about $15. Then when it dies, who cares?

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@eniko Time to lift heavy things and put them down again.

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

been doing a thing where when i get up from my desk i set a timer and kinda walk in circles for 5 minutes for my (mental) health. seems to work ok. nothing earth shattering but better than just sitting immobile at my desk all day

(please don't come at me with the "you need to do way more than that" that always crops up whenever someone who doesnt exercise tries to add a small bit of it into their routine cause it doesnt meet some supposed daily quota for maximum health benefits)

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@eniko Life hack - drink waaaaay more water. Not because you need the hydration (that's new-age wellness nonsense). But it makes you need to pee more often. Good luck ignoring that timer.

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

A bit of rain at lunch time, but the afternoon turned into a lovely day to go vroom with friends. Now if my car will just stop disassembling itself mid race...

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

There are four cars in this picture - the pace car, pole position, second, and third (me). Three of us agree about which way the track goes. Pole... he's done his own research.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

This is all happening at about 30mph - nobody was in any danger - he just looks like a total muppet. Me and blue were both giggling like children at the shit we were going to give him after the race.

SirTapTap, to random
@SirTapTap@mastodon.social avatar

Wondering if Zelda is too extra of a first name. Might go with Robin for the more gender neutral but at a deeper level Zelda kinda works there too (the old link confusion)

As for last name... No idea, just not anything Even close to my bio family

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@SirTapTap Zelda is a bit much for anyone honestly. If you want to be vidjagame but nominally ambiguous to those not in the know, how about... Samus? :-)

danluu, to random
@danluu@mastodon.social avatar

How long before formal methods are widely use in software engineering?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/102809124

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@rygorous @danluu Hardware design is so much simpler than SW, but also far less tolerant of mistakes and much more expensive to fix. And formal methods there are still sparse and somewhat experimental. Because even there it's usually not worth the bang for the buck.

TechConnectify, to random
@TechConnectify@mas.to avatar

I don't know who needs to hear this (that's a lie: ~80% of drivers) but when you're in a turn lane or an exit only lane, you should still signal to confirm to those around you that you are aware of the lane you're in and where it's about to go.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@wonka @TechConnectify @admin Varies by US state, but e.g. in Washington passing on the right is advised against, but not technically illegal. What IS illegal is loitering in the left lanes. Which means that if you CAN pass on the right, the other person is breaking the law!

This law is almost universally unknown, and never enforced. Which drives me nuts.

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@TechConnectify Oh this one? Yeah it's terrible wording.

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....

TomF,
@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

@floooh That would have been smarter. The blink on the Speccy was hard-coded in the ULA and the counter took up a surprising number of gates!

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