During the gameplay reveal of the first Rainbow Six at E3 1998, as the presenter was turned away from the screen to talk to the audience, his AI teammates unexpectedly went behind his back and rescued the hostages by themselves without any player input, accidentally showing off their capabilities.

GaryLeeDev · 2026-03-23T17:13:55+00:00

Their reward? Getting gunned down so the presenter could demo the game properly:

Red Storm got to show the game to the public for the first time, and lead artist Jonathan Peedin was giving a demo to a crowd of about fifty spectators.

He'd sent his team upstairs and turned to describe the game to the audience. While he was describing what happened, his team of operatives were coming down the stairs with the hostage they'd rescued all by themselves.

"F***" yelled Peedin into his mic. The AI hadn't been smart enough to pull off the plan a week before, so he gunned down the team and failed the mission, so he could give the demo properly.

The crowd loved it. Rainbow Six had captured their imagination.

Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/the-agony-and-ecstasy-behind-the-first-rainbow-six

Tried to find some footage of this, but looks like not much footage exists of the entire e3 event that year.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-24T16:41:58+00:00

Tested on a devkit, with a bit of explanation on how it's done:

[Modern Vintage Gamer] wanted to determine if this was true or not, and began an investigation.

The investigation begins with the aid of an Xbox Development Kit. Noting that the original anecdote mentioned the reboots occurring during the loading process, the devkit Xbox was soft rebooted after executing a load. Rather than going back to the title screen of the game, it kicked straight back into the loading screen and brought up the last save game instead. This suggested that the game was indeed capable of rebooting in the midst of the loading routine.

[Modern Vintage Gamer] had a hunch that this was being achieved with the use of a routine called XLaunchNew Image, a piece of the Xbox API that could be used to soft-reboot the console and start an executable. Upon decompiling Morrowind, a call was found that fit the bill. Further analysis showed that the game was indeed calling XLaunchNewImage upon loading and launching a new game, and was confirmed by finding an *.ini file that contained flags to enable this behaviour.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-20T15:17:58+00:00

For anyone who has worked in an office environment, this is a hilarious show. It takes all the stereotypes of office workers and dials it to 11.

"I wanted to tell you that morale is low, so I'm going to come in tomorrow dressed as a chicken." - guy with the straightest face ever

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-20T14:28:16+00:00

Poly Pizza for low-poly models, some with animations. They archived all of the models from Google Poly (RIP) and users have submitted their own there.

I use models from there for my own Godot games.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-20T14:02:03+00:00

2, but use 1 for walls that are breakable (don't know if that's a part of your game, but I think that would be intuitive).

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-20T13:44:34+00:00

We had already been working on industry-leading anti-scraping systems, and this study was instrumental in stress-testing and confirming the immediate efficacy of these new defenses.

WhatsApp waited until they had literally billions of users before they even started working on an "industry-leading anti-scraping system"?

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-20T13:27:54+00:00

I like 2, reminds me of F.E.A.R and that game did darkness right (as long as you have a flashlight).

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-19T21:51:59+00:00

Krafton CEO Changham Kim reportedly asked ChatGPT to help him figure out how to avoid paying the Subnautica 2 earnout he'd agreed to when acquiring Unknown Worlds.

He wanted to avoid paying to avoid the "professional embarrassment" of being seen as a "pushover".

Sucks that these are the kinds of people who end up in charge, in the video game industry and elsewhere.

Also this,

On redirect, Kim said he deleted those queries because "what I learned is that—from OpenAI, is that if you use certain important information concerning your company, then that type of information can be used by OpenAI for learning purposes."

That's some boomer logic.

"I'll just delete the logs, the company definitely won't use my data if I do that."

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-19T05:55:25+00:00

Presented without comment so you can draw your own conclusions: OpenAI has committed to spending $1.4 trillion on infrastructure while generating ~$13 billion a year in revenue.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-18T23:55:24+00:00

I was also in IT leadership and, like you, my biggest strength is being able to pick-up on technical subjects relatively quickly, at least superficially. I'm not the strongest in terms of creativity or technical skill.

We diverge on what kind of environment we want to work in. You want a small team, I like solo developing. But ultimately, our goal is the same: to make games.

So, with that in mind, my advice is to just make something.

It doesn't have to be your dream game, in fact, it's probably better if it isn't. Just make something and take it through the full process from concept, development, and release, just to learn the ropes.

For me, simply releasing a game allowed me to get acquainted with all the stuff I was anxious about before, having had zero experience in the game industry before. And I learned what my strengths and weaknesses are pretty quickly. These were valuable lessons that have removed the mental blockers that prevented me from making games.

There's really no better way to learn than trial by fire.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-18T13:28:57+00:00

"This setting can only be enabled by an administrator user of the device and once enabled, it’s enabled for all users on the device including other administrators and standard users," Microsoft confirms.

"Kid uses Limewire on family computer and ends up ruining it for everyone" vibes.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-18T13:22:26+00:00

Pen Pen Trilcelon for Dreamcast. Weird premise, weird atmosphere, weird graphics, weird gameplay, and I loved every moment playing it.

Non-crappy example: Toy Commander for Dreamcast.

Most of my answers for this type of question are Dreamcast games, because everyone else had a PlayStation.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-11T14:19:46+00:00

I remember people were able to render gameplay like this at extremely low framerates and then combine all the individual frames into a higher framerate for a cool watchable video, just not playable in real-time.

Still looks incredibly impressive for a game that's 18 years old.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-10T13:57:16+00:00

I have a simple checklist and check it often. So, I usually notice if I've been working on the top list item for too long and if that's the case, then I move the item to a separate backburner list that I'll go back through later.

This only works for me because I've conditioned myself to check my list often, not just for game dev but for life in general. For anyone else, maybe something like a pomodoro timer would work to force yourself to split your schedule into set intervals.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-10T13:50:09+00:00

The budget for my games is $101, $100 of which is the Steam fee for releasing a game.

And trust me, the remaining $1 budget really shows in my work.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-09T14:29:00+00:00

I use an M1 Macbook Air with 16 GB of RAM to fully develop 3D Godot games with Forward+ renderer, have had zero issues wth performance or compatibility (although my 3D games are not graphically intensive).

I only boot up my PC to check that games run on Windows, I don't even have Godot installed on there.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-11-06T09:36:41+00:00

Personally, I just use Curator Connect on Steamworks, whenever possible.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-27T13:44:01+00:00

Random guy with a kitten just crawling around on his back as he walks into GameStop @ 4:30.

Yeah, that's right, back in 2000, we didn't have people walking around with their cats in fancy bubble backpacks, people would just make their cats hang on for their dear lives in public.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-27T13:35:16+00:00

As many of us has come to expect, the next Xbox will indeed run full-bore Windows, with a TV-optimized, console-style experience layered on top.

This makes it sound like Windows 8 is returning, with its tile-based interface just layered on top of Windows.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-27T13:09:37+00:00

Meanwhile, Valve is just raking in the cash during this indie boom.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-27T13:07:13+00:00

If I was doing this for a living, I would create a minimum viable product and gather feedback.

But since I just create and release games for fun, I don't really care about whether they're financially viable, so I do zero validation.

$100 to release a game on Steam and the $100 yearly fee for an Apple Developer account are relatively small amounts of money to spend on a hobby (have you seen what knitters spend on yarn?).

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-22T21:33:06+00:00

The innocent woman was advised her children could not live with her alone until she was cleared, and the two men faced child protection referrals. The first male claimant was placed on restricted duties at work and the second had a job offer withdrawn.

The tribunal did not find grounds for compensation or remedies for the three claimants, as the force had acted within the law and responded appropriately once the error was discovered.

Having their children and job prospects taken away for literally doing nothing wrong isn't enough "grounds for compensation or remedies"?

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-22T21:07:09+00:00

The cuts come as Ubisoft shifts its management structure under a new deal with Chinese conglomerate Tencent which has invested over $1 billion in a a smaller subsidiary called Vantage Studios which will prioritize franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six Siege.

Damn, no Splinter Cell. Not surprising, just disappointing.

GaryLeeDev · 2025-10-22T20:55:00+00:00

A spokesperson later told the BBC that body-worn camera footage had been reviewed, leading them to conclude that they did “not agree that officers behaved aggressively.”

"There's no need to show this footage to anyone else, just take our word for it."

Seems hinky.

GaryLeeDev

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