ghosttownoli

@ghosttownoli@mastodon.gamedev.place

Gameplay code person
and Co-founder of Ghost Town Games (Creators of the Bafta Award winning Overcooked series) based out of Manchester.

Also ex-Frontier Developments (Kinect and AR stuff mainly)

The Fediverse needs to become to be more accessible, more diverse and less technocratic, but it's the best we have right now and I'm not going back to for-profit algorithms and billionaires.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

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

Unity, serious talk! If you only expose the thing via a generic method and I need to get the thing without using generics, I will use reflection and do shenanigans.

I don't want to, but I will!

ghosttownoli,

@Nifflas true facts nothing is safe, we are ungovernable

ghosttownoli, to random

Pawns in Dragons Dogma 2 give me the ick. I can't be the only one

ghosttownoli,

yeah 100% I also hate that they refer to the players as "masters", super gross

eoinoneill, to godot
@eoinoneill@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Compiling code late at night at the hotel bar the day before GDC expo hall opens. 🍹 🤓 ⏳

ghosttownoli,

@eoinoneill I feel your pain, been there. I wish you best of luck and bug free times demoing your work

ghosttownoli, to ai

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/

"Air Canada essentially argued that "the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions," a court order said."

We should try this next time anyone finds a bug on an NPC.

"Sorry man take it up with Orc_391a"

ghosttownoli, to gamedev

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/jan/31/stalker-2-heart-of-chernobyl-interview-ukraine-war-gsc-game-world
Absolutely incredible article about the development of Stalker 2 in ukraine despite the war. Just can't imagine what that must be like having a bunch of developers leave for the frontlines, the lead designer killed in Bakhmut. Good on them though for still paying wages and evacuate families and such. Such difficult times

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

After fixing a bug, If I comment out my debugging code, the issue stays fixed. If I delete my debugging code, the bug comes back. My code base is littered with commented out debugging code that I'm afraid to delete.

ghosttownoli,

@grumpygamer this 100%

ghosttownoli,

@Coelacanth @maegul I agree with the need for this and I think there has to be a way of doing it given mastodon's non profit motives, something we can configure, something that works with recommendations and can turn off if we want unlike other platforms that see algorithms as the centre of their business model. Whether mastodon eventually does or it has to be done by an offshoot/successor I don't know

glassbottommeg, to random
@glassbottommeg@peoplemaking.games avatar

Alan Wake is neat, but the difficulty balancing sucks balls.

I'm sorry, the first boss took HOW many shots? "Oh it's fine we lock you in a procedural labyrinth and keep hiding ammo in it" isn't the solution to bullet sponges, fuckin hell.

Anyways, easy mode engaged, fuck that.

ghosttownoli,

@glassbottommeg 100% it's a really weird difficulty spike

ghosttownoli, to gamedev

So often when programming i find myself reaching for words that don't exist in english. Like I want a word that means cosmetic or decorative but can include sound or animations or rumble, like non-mechanical or like non-essential-to-gameplay or like sort-of-polish-and-sort-of-feedback.

Right now i just say cosmetic and pretend it means what i want it to mean

ghosttownoli,

@Nifflas yeah like a really common pattern for me now is to have generic components that do logical and mechanical things and get reused and components the are called like <Specific-thing>CosmeticsComponent that does all the stuff that is visual/audio/feedback. This helps a lot with network code too because the cosmetics component can be completely local and basically stateless

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Get ready!

ghosttownoli,

@futurebird this is weirdly satisfying content

eclectech, to UKpolitics
@eclectech@things.uk avatar

I keep hearing the Tories defending the defeat at yesterday's by-elections as being due to low turnout.

Having a look at the numbers they do have a point, actual Labour numbers went up slightly in one since the last election, and down slightly in one, BUT the critical point here is this:

Tory voters aren't bothering to turn up to vote.

I would like to wholeheartedly support this lack of action on their part.

Keep it up.

ghosttownoli,

@eclectech it's a weird defence on their part because this is pretty much how all electoral swings have worked ever.

Nifflas, (edited ) to random
@Nifflas@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Best superpower? Forget about children's screams and Argent Energy. The new source of energy for the future is...

ghosttownoli,

@Nifflas starts chanting long-er days! long-er days! sleep in every morning! stay up every night!

ghosttownoli, to unity

Unity settling on the policy they should have started with: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-kills-runtime-fee-for-personal-users-offers-rev-share-for-others
I.e. not changing anything for games already shipped or on old versions of the engine. Fees capped at either a 2.5% revenue share or the per-install fee.

Probably a weaker version of fees than they would have been able to ask for two weeks ago if they had just not tried to break contract and thought through basic questions developers were always going to ask...

ghosttownoli,

A lot of people aren't going to trust them now, plus there is a question of basic competency over this whole thing. Not to mention if this actually plugs the hole in their finances so we'll have to see how stable everything is going forward

But purely policy-wise this is now reasonable and mostly makes sense
https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee

ghosttownoli,

@glaskows because we need some way of paying for the tools to get better and unity aren't turning a profit and have been cutting staff. I don't mind paying more for new tools I mind paying more for tools I already bought years ago. 2.5% is half what unreal costs even if that was what we're paying which we probably aren't as the runtime install cost is lower if you're selling copies and not f2p

ghosttownoli,

@glaskows different people are going to make different judgements, but for our studio I'd prefer unity to invest more in engine improvements and cost more ( in an actually fair way, that is proportional to who can pay ) than continue to fall apart. I'm still not convinced that will happen but this was never an argument about the money for a lot of people, it was about trust and competency

ghosttownoli, to unity

The irony of Unity's position is now they really really need to make money off already released games 🔥 😐 🔥

ghosttownoli, to unity

"All determinations, calculations of installs, and revenue related to the Unity Runtime Fee will be made by Unity in its sole discretion."

so unity is just going to decide what your installs are...
oh and also

"The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.”"

so they're redefining what the word install means while they're at it
source: https://unity.com/runtime-fee

ghosttownoli,

@livingcoder yeah there is atleast a revenue threshold so that atleast you are safe from I think

ghosttownoli, to unity

This unity pricing thing smacks of break glass in case of emergency behaviour and leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Not to mention retroactively applying this to released titles which is deeply poor form and feels like desperation.

So my main concern right now is what is even going on at Unity at the moment because if this engine dies on it's feet there are bunch of developers mid project who are going to be pretty stuck

ghosttownoli, to gamedev

I don't really understand the take I've seen around after Baulder's Gate 3 that it's bad for the industry because it is so big and polished. They took a long time to make a big polished game, sure, there are plenty of small punkier games out there though the industry doesn't just have one standard we all automatically adopt anytime anyone does anything

ghosttownoli, to mastodon

I wish lemmy stuff displayed better on the mastodon webapp. I have no idea how it should look but it's kind of impentrable as viewed from the way mastodon displays information and feels like it needs some sugar coating.

Not the highest priority issue but just a thought

Nifflas, (edited ) to random
@Nifflas@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Best superpower? Do you remember the 90s when Kubrick did a CGI enhanced version of 2001 and it became the only commercially available version of the movie.

Good news, I'll go back in time and undo it when the poll is over! But, you'll have to pick another franchise to be enhanced with CGI instead. I'll make it happen in the past.

ghosttownoli,

@Nifflas oh i never doubt the ultimate power of the superpowers. Gotta respect the system here, not my first rodeo

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