@kojack@mastodon.gamedev.place
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kojack

@kojack@mastodon.gamedev.place

22 years as a games programming lecturer.
Oculus community moderator.
Languages: primarily C++, lot of C#, plus Lua and Ruby. But used MANY over the last 38 years.

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aeva, to random
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I need to get my mind off the bad. Anything good going on tonight for anyone? Feel free to share things your excited about or happy about or just cool stuff you've come across recently

kojack,
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@aeva I had gimbap (korean version of sushi) for the first time last night. It was good.
Mmmm, spinach, carrot and bulgogi beef gimbap.

aras, to random
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0x2B or 43

kojack,
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@aras Or 053.

demofox, to random
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My son got a 3d printer for his bday. The wall plug was bad so I am using my bench power supply. The print is going well so far though!

image/jpeg

kojack,
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@demofox Have it in the car and make it print 3d maps of where you are using GPS and OpenStreetMap data.
Maybe a bit inconvenient for real time navigation. :)

kojack, to random
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I heard a noise from outside of my bedroom.
"I wonder if that's the possum coming back?"

Nope. 8+ feet long python going for a wander. :(

I'm now watching it while waiting for a snake wrangler to arrive.

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

I wish usb cables were labeled with their speed and power rating.
I bought some new cables the other day and I've printed labels for them like:

  • USB2 3A 60W
  • USB3.2 Gen1 5A 100W PD
  • USB3.2 Gen2 12V 3A
    Otherwise I'll never remember which is which.

It was easier when you just needed to remember white, black and blue USB sockets/plugs. Then that got all fucked up.

(The Raspberry Pi 5 requires a 5A supply and cable to run at full performance)

kojack,
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@sinbad Although we did have to deal with 9 pin, 25 pin and null modem cables. :)

kojack,
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@rubenwardy It didn't matter as much in the past, but we're now pumping up to a hundred watts through USB to charge laptops or fast charge phones.

Especially with newer USB-C cables, the cable can be part of the negotiation of voltage and current, it can contain an e-marker chip.

There's been issues with cheap cables (like from aliexpress) melting because they can't handle what they are rated for.

kojack,
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@sinbad Been a LONG time since I used a null modem. I used to use them for Amiga to Amiga multiplayer in Falcon. :)

Ah, the days of huge ports. 25 pin RS232, SCART, Centronics, PATA IDE, whatever the hell the floppy cable was called.

eniko, to random
@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar

Have they put AI in guns yet

kojack,
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@eniko Or do you mean ChatGPT? :)
How long before people jail break it by telling it it is a prop gun in a movie if it refuses to shoot at someone non-threatening?

sinbad, to random
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I finally got my mining setup to work in Elite Dangerous (by buying a better refinery with more bins, and learning not to direct collector drones but just let them get on with it) and immediately made about 1.6 million credits in 2 runs, which compared to the 30k or so I was making at a time before via trading was very exciting.

kojack,
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@sinbad Rule one: Never log out of the game while in an asteroid field if you have cargo.
It's pretty much 100% chance when you log in that if you are in an asteroid field a pirate ship will spawn near you and scan your cargo.

I've logged in, found my control mappings messed up and almost lost my Anaconda to a pirate before I rebound enough to either fight back or run away.

kojack,
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@sinbad I'd sometimes get lazy when my inventory was half full but I was tired of mining, so just log out in the field. Pirates within seconds every time I come back, even if I'm not near a hotspot or resource zone. If my controls aren't messed up (damn you ED) my first instinct when logging in is deploy hardpoints and watch the scanner. :)

kojack, to random
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I'm just not vibing with Darksiders 3 at the moment. I like the characters, the story, the graphics, but not the combat.
So I installed Darksiders Genesis.
DS1 is a metroidvania thing. Collect special items that unlock the ability to explore previous areas.
DS2 has a Diablo loot mechanic, you collect tons of random stat weapons and keep the ones you like.
DS3 goes the souls-like route, gather souls, use them to level up or buy stuff, enemies respawn, etc.
DSG is an overhead dual stick shooter.

kojack,
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I'm so used to games telling you something like "Are you sure you want to quit? Unsaved progress will be lost".

Darksiders Genesis says "Quick game and return to desktop? Progress will be saved".
I like that.
(If I wanted to exit without saving, I'd hit alt-f4)

kojack,
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Think Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.

I've finished DS1 and 2 many times. Love them.
I've finished DS3 once.
I got 2 hours into Darksiders Genesis and stopped.
Now I'm back, 1 hour in and enjoying it.

DSG is designed for two player coop (local or network). But it has single player too, where you can toggle between two characters with different abilities: War (sword, close combat) and Strife (guns).

kojack,
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One issue with DSG: I'm about 53min in. I've collected a heap of souls (over 4600) and boatman coins. But so far they serve no purpose.
I know they are used as currency with Vulgrim (like all the DS games). But going an hour collecting stuff without being shown its purpose seems like a game design flaw. Players might not care about collecting everything possible if they don't see a use, maybe think its just a score.

kojack,
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Similarly, I had to google for what the little purple boxes are that I've collected tons of.
They have no visible effect on any of the hud or stat screen. There's no message or anything.
Turns out they are ammo for Strife.
If you have War active, they do nothing.
But if you are Strife, they are ammo for your secondary guns. For the first half an hour you only have an infinite ammo gun (well, pair of guns), so all the ammo pickups do nothing.

kojack, to random
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So Unity seems untrustworthy with all this TOS changing and conflicting communications. But you know what else makes me not trust a company/product? Having a price of "Contact Us". I'm looking at you Unigine!

The free version of Unigine looks really cool. I watched a tutorial on it, seems pretty good. But the non free versions are listed as "Contact Us".

My standard assumption for "Contact Us" products is they are trying to milk customers for every dollar they can, not having a fixed price.

kojack, to random
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Oh fun.
I got back from the Post Acute Care Service (they change the vacuum pump dressing on my back twice a week), got out of the car and dropped my Note 8 phone on the concrete, shattering the screen.
:(

25 years of owning mobile phones, never using screen protectors or cases (I dislike both), this is the first time I've even scratched one.

Now do I get the glass replaced (screen seems ok underneath), or buy a new phone? The Note 8 is a bit old now.

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

ok so it only took me two months of having a new laptop to realize this but I just realized tonight that I finally have a decent portable to use with the realsense camera I got like three years ago and then stuffed into a drawer. Which is to say, that I remembered that I have a 3D camera, and yes

kojack,
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@aeva I've never had a realsense. But I've got a Kinect 1, Kinect 2 and Zed Mini. 3D scanning is fun.

I've got a 2D LIDAR too, one day I need to mount it on a tilt motor thingy so I can scan a room with it, not just a plane.

kojack, to random
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Just an average day for suburban Australia, having to break up a fight between two Eastern Water Dragons.

The one on the left is a newcomer, the one on the right is defending its territory (my yard) where its lived for a couple of years.

kojack, to random
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I have an urge to do some OpenStreetMap mapping. I'll just start up JOSM...
Why won't it open? Oh, Windows is blocking it because it considers Java insecure.
Ok, added an exception for JOSM. No, now my Java is out of date.
Now oracle webstart is considered bad so I need an open source alternative.

Actually, I feel like watching TV instead. Damn you Java.

kojack, to random
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WTF? Every time I open the Lua operators doc website Vivaldi crashes.

kojack, to random
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"We're going to use slack now"
Nobody posts there and we forget about it.

"We're going to use this different slack now"
I'm the only one that joins it.

I spend 1 trimester working with a class run by another campus:
"We use this slack"
Yet another one, don't go back after the trimester.

Made our own brisbane discord, games students engage far better.

"The entire college nation wide is moving to slack for everything, you must use slack"
I join. So far mostly staff posting memes.

kojack, to random
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So... Horizon Forbidden West.
The steam forums have people complaining about performance. Like 20fps on a 4090.
I'm on a 2080ti. No idea what the fps is, it feels fine to me.

But this is another game that every 10min or so my gfx card resets both monitor outputs. The game screen goes black and I have to alt-tab out/in of the game to restore it.

Dragon's Dogma 1 does it every couple of minutes, so I wonder if DD2 will as well?

Only some games do it, most don't.

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

Going through some of my old project screenshots...

Someone on the Ogre3D forum asked how to render a large city map with lots of street lights.
I made a shader that could do a huge number of lights for the cost of 9 lights, under certain constraints. Street lights tend to be spread apart, not a lot of overlap.

Pic1: test mesh with 64 random lights
Pic2: 4096 dynamic lights at 918fps
Pic3: car with headlights (a moving street light) driving on the map

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image/jpeg

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