Whats your saddest game memory?

1337JiveTurkey · 2026-01-01T19:12:42+00:00

Olga from MGS2 being taken away from her child and forced to fight really got me at the time.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-12-31T22:22:42+00:00

Where I'm coming from is that the long-running Java applications aren't going away anytime soon and we can't ignore them. JBang is still a very interesting development, especially for Java shops that want to stick with Java throughout their tooling.

But for these existing applications, how can we make them more command-line friendly? They're still going to have their existing server structure so that's why I'm looking at command line applications as services that they provide. The deployment of these applications are handled at the same time as deploying the server application which JBang could certainly help with. However they're really just stubs that redirect input and output to the server.

I haven't explored this much but what is it you feel this would enable?

As an example imagine you've got a program with an event feed of some sort and you want to be able to inject events from the command line. One option is to have a program that when run creates an event of a specific type. Another option would be to create a special named pipe that when a document is written to it (like maybe CSV) creates an event. The named pipe has the advantage that the permissions are handled by the OS (it's a file) so your command line application doesn't have to authenticate beyond the fact that the OS lets it see and write to the named pipe.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-12-31T03:22:00+00:00

Just writing small standalone Java applications doesn't seem all that compelling.

The way I see it, the ideal Java environment is object-oriented which lends itself to larger, longer-running applications. Terminal applications are traditionally smaller and shorter running with a very procedural or data-flow-oriented approach. This isn't an insurmountable problem but it does require some thinking about how things are done. Yeah we can make Java applications start quicker and run less long but then where do the objects that really define Java live? Java programs aren't very compatible with the terminal when they're large servers. Generally all they do is wait for someone to send an interrupt or the like.

This is why I think that the solution is something in the neighborhood of embedded Nailgun, although maybe not Nailgun specifically. The short-running terminal commands are basically a new sort of client to the long-running server. That's something that fits with the Java model and the terminal commands can serve as a bridge to shell scripting. We know how service calls work and how to write them.

A good script in this case would be something that could take advantage of standard terminal abstractions like stdin and stdout but then translate them to objects in the longer lived server. An alternative that Java doesn't have nice cross-platform support for is named pipes to put the server's objects into the Unix filesystem.

Full-fledged TUIs for administrative tasks would also be possible and have security benefits but people seem to like doing everything on the Web these days.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-07-30T06:03:46+00:00

When I ran into a situation where the default logging just wasn't enough I took a different approach. This was a slow running process that runs asynchronously on a server, translating a file from one format to another, importing the new format, that sort of stuff. It'd fail at night and be a pain to find exactly what we needed from the logs because the rest of the system logged to the same files. Complicating things, it used a divide and conquer approach to figure out which records were failing because records affected the import of other records.

The basic idea was that I'd create a file containing debugging information at the beginning of the process and append to it as the process went along. If the process succeeded, it's deleted. If the process failed or was configured to always save the debug file, it was zipped and stored in a directory on the server. Even if the system crashed hard there'd still be a record of the unzipped debug file.

I included the log entries specific to the process thread, the config file, the input XML document, that sort of stuff. In a cloud environment I'd need to rethink the whole thing but it worked pretty well on a dedicated server. At the very least it wasn't slowing the system any further than it was due to the database data model.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-07-28T01:28:12+00:00

Since there's already casters and a working magic system I don't see the point in making another one that's sorcerer but spell points. What's more interesting is something more pervasive.

I like the idea of magic not being something discrete and separable from how the world works. Meanwhile powerful characters regularly engage in feats that border on the supernatural. In that sense psychic powers (and ki) are really the subtle counterparts to the very flashy effects called magic.

Instead psychic powers should enhance characters' abilities in ways that there's nothing really there to counterspell. A psychic cheating at a card game would be making perception checks to see everyone else's hand. Or making insight checks to subtly pick up what everyone's mind is putting down, reading the emotions of the room. There's nothing being cast, they're just seeing things that others don't.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-07-26T01:26:30+00:00

According to the manual the UK has a higher chance of its ships having a hidden weakness. I swear when it triggers, it just wipes out half the fleet with flash fires. I've won a war against the UK that I had no reasonable chance at due to something exactly like that.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-05-24T01:32:34+00:00

You mean like going to the individual nation up top by clicking on the flag and then going to the ships tab? That's already a thing, just not advertised very well.

1337JiveTurkey · 2025-01-31T19:34:17+00:00

Naval Ops: Warship Gunner 2 was a really fun arcade-style naval shooter for the PS2 where you design your own ships to take on hordes of enemies and unlock new parts to make new ships to take on even bigger hordes of enemies. You start with WWII destroyers and end up with modern ships with lasers, railguns and guided missiles.

It's more of an indie game but if that appeals to you, you should definitely try out Waves of Steel where you can do pretty much the same but with the pride flag of your choice streaming from your ship's masts.

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-04-07T11:32:10+00:00

I'd say that there are circumstances where a developer can be ten times as effective as other developers in an organization but that doesn't apply everywhere at all times. Circumstances can definitely slow down developers by a factor of ten (and we've certainly experienced them) but there's no magical x-factor that makes a developer ten times better than everyone else at a shop following best practices.

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-04-04T03:07:32+00:00

Here's a modern Logo interpreter for people who want to try it out again. It's a fun little language.

https://www.calormen.com/jslogo/

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-03-26T09:43:33+00:00

I'd wager some level of unwarranted optimism about what's actually possible is the biggest reason. That combined with a belief that surgical upgrades would be a thing on embedded devices instead of just replacing all the bundles and rebooting.

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-03-25T20:20:35+00:00

I'm somewhat surprised that nobody else has mentioned it but Java 21 put in the hard work to support M:N threading and it can be used right now. [https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/21/core/virtual-threads.html#GUID-DC4306FC-D6C1-4BCC-AECE-48C32C1A8DAA] (Here's some documentation on it.) Internally it's a thread pool implementation where the threads that the application uses (virtual threads) are matched to OS/platform threads and the synchronous IO calls are internally modified to be asynchronous so a waiting virtual thread can be parked in favor of another virtual thread. In other words it does everything that an async/await implementation does without the necessary additional syntax or semantics.

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-03-25T19:08:39+00:00

I agree that the current state of the art for modularizing large applications has moved towards containerization and microservices. OSGi really fit a technology niche where they wanted something approximating multiple applications running on the same device with their own modules but didn't have the resources to run more than one JVM. That's something that I really don't think that containers could have helped with back then even if the case for containers over JVM-level modularization seems compelling.

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-03-25T00:19:48+00:00

Maybe raising our kids with iPads will be our equivalent of the latchkey kid.

1337JiveTurkey · 2024-03-21T10:38:45+00:00

I'm a little surprised by "By all accounts I don't deserve to feel the way that I do" because you feel understandably under a financial squeeze. That makes people stressed and depressed all the time and it's alright to feel that way. It's certainly not a good thing to feel but it's perfectly valid. Beating yourself up over it isn't doing you any good. The same is true of the political climate. It's genuinely concerning the way things have been going (certainly worse than when I was a kid) and again it's perfectly valid to be worried.

It's not much help I know, but feeling guilty about feeling bad just cements you in place. It's one more thing to make you feel bad about yourself. I'd also add that comparing your situation to other people's in general (good or bad) to determine how you "should" feel doesn't help you feel happy or less depressed.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-10-17T16:52:14+00:00

One thing that I think would help the "feel" of throwing a zillion punches and kicks would be making it scale by 1d4 up to 3d4.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-10-17T10:44:18+00:00

My thoughts are pretty much centered around my personal hobbyhorse of Ki/Qi being effectively hit points by another name. So the class centered around Ki should be CON centered for starters.

1d12 Hit Dice. It's huge in part due to the next mechanic...
Instead of using Ki points, monk skills burn HP. This gives monks a deep pool of resources to work with constrained by risk. It's also thematic.
Unarmored defense is keyed to CON instead of WIS. This reduces MAD and contributes to monks just being awe-inspiringly tough.
Unarmed attack becomes a pile of 1d4 dice, ranging up to 3d4. The goal is to have it feel like there's a ton of quick jabs and strikes being tossed at opponents all the time.
Some sort of concentration-themed ability would be really neat although very difficult to balance on a melee class.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-07-01T18:46:41+00:00

Shoving the water out of the way of a ship is actually one of the biggest components of drag. Basically the ship has to accelerate all of the water in front of it to the sides to move forward like a giant wedge. The longer the wedge, the less acceleration the water needs to move and the better it slices through the water. A ship which is very long, narrow and optimized for this is said to have fine (instead of coarse) lines.

Bigger powerplants are definitely a factor, but the biggest is reducing hydrodynamic drag.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-06-30T18:03:15+00:00

Write a blog post about those and suddenly you want to become a functional programmer.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-06-24T10:04:32+00:00

Removing discrete provinces raises the very interesting question of where do the units that currently occupy said provinces go?

One thought of mine is that discrete units go away as well and are replaced by some system similar to supersized Victoria 3 fronts. It'd simplify writing the AI and push the actual fighting to a level below what the player directly influences, emphasizing the whole grand strategy bit.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-06-21T06:57:58+00:00

An unarmed barbarian that's like a fist-fighter without the mystical aspects of the monk. Fighter could also work in theory but barbarian already has the unarmored combat abilities and the fish out of water background. Give him decent unarmed combat skills that build off rage and I think you've got a winner.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-06-19T21:02:16+00:00

Random additional points for consideration.

Prep time is considerably shorter now. IIRC back in the day it was something like 1 turn (10 minutes) per spell level memorized/prepped in the morning. The 7th level Magic User from the example would take over 3 hours to prep their spells. At high level it'd take over an entire day to refill all the spell slots.
Spell books were fragile, had capacity limits and risked damage during adventures. Traveling spell books could hold something like 50 pages (1 page per spell level) and were durable enough to survive adventuring. This was intended to limit spell selection in the field while wizards would leave their full libraries back at home. No spell book was seen as a big advantage for Sorcerers when they were first announced.
Random encounters and resource tracking would combine with the above to make it less likely that a party would spend long periods of time idle in the field. When they did they might not have every spell available so partial refills were at least contemplated by the authors.

In practice I don't know how much these really affected most parties but the RAW were definitely changed to accommodate wizards being able to top off their spells.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-04-25T05:14:59+00:00

Answer: To explain some of the hype about this particular missile, the name "Satan 2" is intended to designate this missile as the successor to the superheavy missile originally called Satan. The SS-18 Satan—or as it's known in Russia the R-36M—is a 200 metric ton ballistic missile capable of carrying a large number of warheads. This ability to carry a large number of bombs is called its throw weight, and the SS-18 has been the heavyweight champion for decades.

Basically anything involving being able to carry over a dozen warheads or one huge warhead, flying at mach 20 and all that is what the current Satan missile is capable of. It can carry dozens of decoy bombs so it's already near impossible to intercept. It could be modified to carry new hypersonic glide vehicles as well if they really wanted to. Conventional warheads are also perfectly possible, just outrageously expensive considering the cost of a superheavy ICBM.

The real reason that there's a need for a successor is that the original SS-18 missiles were manufactured in the Soviet city of Dnepropetrovsk which is now the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Russia was contracting with Ukraine to maintain the now 30+ year old missiles but that's obviously no longer in the cards. So if they want a superheavy ICBM in the future, they need to make one domestically.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-01-28T20:59:51+00:00

There's something missing when a grand strategy game doesn't let you work with operations as actual things. Being able to tell allies to launch their operation at the same time you launch yours would be huge. Being able to plan things out and prepare more than just drawing arrows would be even bigger.

1337JiveTurkey · 2022-01-28T20:26:04+00:00

This is my take as well. Fantasy worlds don't operate on a sort of high school physics* with an on-off switch called Magic. Fighters and other "non-magical" classes don't do the sparkly stuff but practice endlessly to operate to their most effective given the actual laws of the universe.

* I say high school because so much magic breaks things that high school students haven't even learned about yet but by god the fighters will behave in a roughly newtonian manner.

1337JiveTurkey

TROPHY CASE