peterdrake

peterdrake, 9 months ago to ubuntu

#Ubuntu is surprisingly unresponsive compared to Windows. Launching programs can take 5-10 seconds (with no indication that anything is happening). Resizing a window sometimes resizes the frame and then takes a second to fill in the contents. Even the internet seems slow to respond.

Some of this might be due to the fact that Ubuntu is running off a physical hard drive while Windows was running off an SSD, but that doesn't seem sufficient to explain it.

I would have expected to get more performance without Microsoft constantly uploading data. Does this match anyone else's experience? Any ideas?

#linux

peterdrake, 11 months ago to gamedev

Capitalization in C# / Unity is an infuriating minefield.

Microsoft and Unity offer slightly different standards and then don't consistently follow them.

There is no entry for "capitalization" in the index for the 1000-page C# 10 in a Nutshell. There is some advice under "identifiers", but it differs from what is given by the previous two sources.

Many sources want to capitalize private and public fields differently. Why would you do that?!

Unity adds spaces and changes the capitalization when displaying class and field names.

If you refactor a name, Unity bloats your code with a FormerlySerializedAs attribute.

#GameDev #unity #unity3d #csharp

peterdrake, 9 months ago to ubuntu

My fresh Ubuntu install says I need some updates. Okay, but there are some problems.

First, it tells me to close the snap-store to update it, but the snap-store is not open.

1/

#ubuntu #linux #TheDualbootening

peterdrake, 8 months ago to gamedev

GameDev problem: the music in our WebGL game on itch.io won't start until the user clicks in the window. Unity claims this is a browser limitation (no autoplay):

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/webgl-audio.html

... but the user has already clicked to load and launch the game, so it seems there should be no reason to require another click. I know I've seen WebGL games on itch that don't have this problem.

Does anyone know a workaround?

#GameDev #GameJam #unity #unity3d #itch #audio #sound #music #WebGL

peterdrake, 9 months ago to linux

Getting GitHub authentication working on Ubuntu was a rabbit hole, but I came out the other side. TLDR: Use ssh, not https.

Along the way, I found out why the usual cut and paste keys don't work in the terminal and how to get around that:

https://itsfoss.com/copy-paste-linux-terminal/

#linux #ubuntu

peterdrake, 10 months ago to unity

It's a common practice in Unity to start the name of a scene, prefab, etc. with an underscore so it will be listed first in the project window.

This is because things are sorted lexicographically and underscores come before letters in ASCII, right?

Well, no.

https://www.asciitable.com/

So what the heck is Unity using to sort things? Did they ... did they really add the underscore as a special case?

#unity #unity3d #GameDev #FacePalm #UXFail

peterdrake, 9 months ago to gamedev

After over two years of work, our second earthquake game (Cascadia 9.1) is finished!

It will disappear for a few months in the fall so we can run experiments on its effectiveness as a teaching tool, but you can play it on the web now:

https://peterdrake.itch.io/cascadia-91-internal-test
itch.io

Two important notes:

1. It asks you for a code at the beginning. Enter 1 if you want your character to live in an apartment, 2 for a house.

2. At the end, there's a message about scrolling down to complete the survey; ignore that.

If you find any game-breaking bugs, please let me know!

#GameDev #unity #unity3d #pdx #portland #earthquake #disaster #preparedness

peterdrake, 7 months ago to security

What's your favorite password manager? I'm looking for something that:

• Automatically syncs across Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android

• Does not use a font that makes I, l, 1, and | indistinguishable.

My current manager fails on both counts.

#PasswordManager #security

peterdrake, 11 months ago to gamedev

It's been noted that desktop games are good at exploration: the player's primary activity is wandering around the virtual world.

VR is not good at this because you can't really walk more than a few feet before running into an IRL wall. VR is good at manipulating objects.

Question: what player activities are well-supported by mobile games?

#GameDev #GameDesign

peterdrake, 10 months ago to unity

Tired of waiting for Unity to reload script assemblies every time you run your game? You can turn that off:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/DomainReloading.html

#unity #unity3d #GameDev

peterdrake, 10 months ago to random

A perfectly normal breakfast table juxtaposition.

peterdrake, 8 months ago to ubuntu

I'm underwhelmed by the stability of #Ubuntu. Things generally work, but:

It's a coin toss if it will recognize the wifi card on a particular bootup.

Sometimes it works when I tell it to restart; sometimes it just hangs.

Unity crashes disturbingly often. It pops up a bug report form, and after I fill in all the details, it informs me that it can't send the report.

peterdrake, 1 year ago to random

This (accidental, temporary) blocking also hit me. It even cut me off from my spouse! (Fortunately, she's right across the breakfast table.)

Is there any way to reconnect (or even enumerate) these severed connections? Nobody on either end was notified.

@trinsec @freemo @stux
QT: https://qoto.org/@trinsec/110264801634018839

peterdrake, 4 months ago to physics

Physics problem: Harmonia Station spins to generate gravity. If the rings are a mile in diameter, how fast (in RPMs) does it have to spin to generate 1g?

#physics #SavageWorlds #TheLastParsec #SpaceStation

peterdrake, 10 months ago to unity

Fun tidbits from the docs on MonoBehaviour:

"This class doesn't support the null-conditional operator (?.) and the null-coalescing operator (??)."

There is a cryptic note that "There is a checkbox for enabling or disabling MonoBehaviour in the Unity Editor. It disables functions when unticked. If none of these functions are present in the script, the Unity Editor does not display the checkbox. The functions are:

Start()
Update()
FixedUpdate()
LateUpdate()
OnGUI()
OnDisable()
OnEnable()"

It does not say where this checkbox is, nor why you would want to do this.

#unity #unity3d #GameDev

peterdrake, 1 month ago to random

Here's an example where, when I click on it to find the context, I don't see the preceding toot, even though one of the people mention is a mutual follower with me.

Is this just a #qoto problem? @freemo
QT: https://mastodon.social/@Sevoris/112168806000560840

peterdrake, 1 year ago to random

Animal-related hashtag puns that are not empty:

#moosetodon
#masTOADon

What else ya got?

#Hashtag #HashTagGames

peterdrake, 9 months ago to Java

#Java starts the names of primitive types with lower-case letters and all others with upper-case letters.

#Csharp could do that.

Or, reasonably, it could use capitalization to distinguish between value types (like ints and structs) and reference types (like classes).

But no. C# uses this to indicate whether a type is predefined. So string and object, unlike all other classes, start with lower-case letters.

Worse, string and object are actually aliases for System.String and System.Object, respectively.

Why would you add aliases to make things less consistent?

#SyntacticBroccoli

peterdrake, 5 months ago to politics

Ranked choice is 'the hot reform' in democracy. Here's what you should know about it

https://text.npr.org/1214199019

#politics #voting #uspol #orpol #RankedChoice

peterdrake, 5 months ago to unity

Every Unity GameObject has an associated transform, which comprises three vectors: position, rotation, and scale.

If you want to change the rotation, you use the Rotate method.

If you want to know what the rotation is, you'd think you'd access the rotation field. There is such a field, but it's not the one you want. You need to use eulerAngles.

🤦‍♂️

#unity #unity3d #GameDev #naming

Behind the scenes, rotation is actually a Quaternion. I understand there are reasons for this, but displaying it in the Inspector as Rotation (with three components), and setting it using Rotate (with a Vector3 and an angle) made me expect that rotation would be a Vector3.

peterdrake, 10 months ago to random

How do you classify yourselves?

D&D class
Hogwarts house
Astrological sign
Myers-Briggs type
Blood type
Muppet
Pizza topping
Programming language
Britannica volume

peterdrake, 9 months ago to animals

#Violet the watchdog is ever vigilant. #DogsOfMastodon #EsperantoEelhound

peterdrake, 4 months ago to unity

So you're looking at this (very short) page in the Unity manual. Off to the right of this screenshot, there's a great big right arrow to take you to the next page as you're reading the manual. Where do you think that arrow takes you?

#unity #unity3d #GameDev

peterdrake, 7 months ago to linux

Printed from Linux ... and it worked the first time! #linux

Character from Star Trek Lower Decks: "Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal."

peterdrake, 1 month ago to android

Our 7-year-old Samsung phones have served us well, but it's coming up on time to replace them. Any suggestions for a bloatware-free Android option?

(Preemption: we've been somewhat radicalized here, but we also need to play with others, so Linux phones are not an option.)

#phone #AskFedi #asktodon #android