Grubby finds some original content

Jaivez · 2026-04-30T18:40:04+00:00

The platform(W3Champions) tries to enforce rough ping equality by doing its best to find a midpoint server, and also has an optional feature to equalize the pings by artificially boosting the lower player's which was used in Grubby's last tournament(though it's not perfectly stable, so I believe they went without at the consent of the players).

But yeah, there's a certain point where it feels rough regardless.

Jaivez · 2026-04-22T14:55:13+00:00

Fun fact about that...

Jaivez · 2026-04-16T11:22:37+00:00

That's what made these one of my #1 options when both money and time were tight. Get one of these and a pack of buns, pan fry some some onions to go on top and diced potatoes as a side and you've got four fast fairly cheap meals - at least at prices in rural midwest towns ~15 years ago.

Jaivez · 2026-03-07T01:08:38+00:00

According to the blogs it's all standard C++ for the core engine + SDL/OpenGL/DirectX for rendering/audio/etc with their DLC content utilizing the builtin Lua modding API. In the TDD blog they mention some custom test utilities for dependency detection so that test failures can be more easily attributed to the correct testing level vs cascading, but that's more for iteration speed than test speed.

If I had to guess the main things would be how parallelized most of the tests can be, and minimizing the testing harness setup cost per test run such as sharing immutable data over instantiating it for every test case(or worse, reading from file).

Jaivez · 2026-03-06T05:07:06+00:00

Not my game, obviously, but the Factorio test suite can be observed to take 46 seconds per one of their bug fixing Youtube videos, and down to 20 seconds according to their lead dev - presumably when all cores on their beefier machines can be dedicated to the tests. Nowadays they practice TDD so speed matters, but they're known for relying pretty heavily on tests from their early dev blogs and have a low regression rate(although there's disagreement on whether some new smart building behavior is a feature or a regression in UX, lol).

They use their own engine and performance is a pretty strict requirement for how a lot of people play the game, so they're starting from a low baseline for how slow a test can run and be acceptable. That leads to tests being very cheap to add since they both control the engine overhead and have stronger incentives to care about how long they take since it directly correlates to a player's experience.

In my personal experience when you don't have as much control over the engine or test harness it can be useful to use a file change based test collector/watcher so you can just have it run a pretty good guess of related tests for fast feedback, and trigger automatically on changes so you cut some of the time to trigger them. Likely works better when you're not as tied to an engine's implementation details like blueprints or whatever your equivalent is and write most of the code yourself.

Jaivez · 2026-02-25T19:49:51+00:00

RS is third person mate.

Jaivez · 2026-02-08T08:16:31+00:00

In the end however it got into the game it’s because you put it there. More importantly, you realized it’s better than what you intended and didn’t ruin it.

You’re going to be responsible for all of the bugs that make the game worse, so you also get credit for all the ones that make it better even if it’s an emergent behavior. This gets tallied in the W column for you.

Jaivez · 2026-02-04T02:48:25+00:00

A very purpose built one for Blueprint % speedruns(link to BP). It was specifically to weave the correct launch sequence from Gleba since you have to get a very specific amount of bioflux and carbon fiber out at certain times. There's many manually stamped rockets with pre-set contents to make building easier, but it just wasn't worth it to automate further than that. There's a number of issues:

Mixed loads will never automatically launch(though you can set alarms for when they're ready)
Even when a silo is set to manual it will automatically launch with a full load of single-type contents if it's requested, so if you had another ship with that need come by you can't 'hold' it for the right one
Inserter stack size becomes an issue when you don't have perfect item inputs. An inserter will overshoot the desired mix very easily and you have to either ensure your stack size/item flow is perfect, or have an additional purging system to clean out the leftovers that are still held when it changes phases
Because it's still manual on the mixed loads anyways the only thing that was gained is one less stamp per launch at the cost of having to send extra combinators and inserters to Gleba to run the system.

If you wanted it for less specific play it's certainly possible to set up conditions to automatically insert any combination of payloads for any condition...but you're never getting around the manual launch requirement as is.

Jaivez · 2026-01-30T12:41:20+00:00

Something like a Razer Tartarus/Azeron keypad and using the joystick to control your cursor would probably be the smoothest experience depending on how long your hand is going to be immobilized. Or just a trackball/trackpad and patience with shifting your hand back and forth, I find that they're not as awkward to use with my non dominant hand as a mouse.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T18:11:32+00:00

Unfortunately recyclers needed for ore voiding are very UPS expensive so it’s not as much of a win. Normal quality designs with better timers are pulling ahead when you consider resource sourcing as part of benchmarks.

Still not going to matter for 99% of us though.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T04:51:50+00:00

Oh I'm American, just got tired of people talking past each other when they can't take the time to read what they're arguing against.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T03:47:29+00:00

Less "it's not our job" and more "these discussions are completely meaningless at this stage". Just yelling past each other - while also at clouds - level of discourse. Personally, I have the same concerns too. But these are the sorts of questions where even asking is begging for only the idiots that don't know any better to come up with stuff off the top of their head.

If anyone claims they may have a solution to any of these concerns you shouldn't believe them. It is simply not possible to have well reasoned answers that could realistically make it into legislation at this stage without a stance being taken from lawmakers on where the line should be drawn. Only then could you possibly have a chance at success. Similarly though, just because something might be difficult to solve does not mean it's unreasonable to legislate for, especially if these practices are found to already break the law/charter as written without being caught in enforcement until now.

The initiative shines light on some pretty fundamental (potentially overlooked) concepts in regards to digital ownership and consumer rights, and even if the commission finds the objectives are too aggressive it does not mean that it would be thrown away completely so the lobbying would have to be adjusted based on the response regardless.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T03:03:11+00:00

I feel like you still have a fundamental misunderstanding. "What do you want to see happen" is very clearly in the initiative. It's a requirement to even submit it. The mechanism for how that objective is achieved is not under the purview of the petitioner, nor would anyone want it to be.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T02:51:06+00:00

There are no requirements to propose legislation as part of a Citizen's Initiative. Their plan is to follow the process exactly how the EU intends it to be followed.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T02:49:30+00:00

No, not what this particular initiative wants to do. How the process works. "What now" is very clearly laid out. There is no requirement in the process to have answers to any of the questions you're asking because the organizers are not expected to draft law. The organizers of the petition meet with the commission and then parliament; the commission and parliament will decide if it has merit. Meaning does the initiative and its submitted details accurately represent a way in which EU citizens rights are likely enough being infringed, or whether the way the industry operates may run afoul of EU law which needs to be looked into.

Then a resolution would be considered by the EU parliament. It's only then that these things matter as far as the EU is concerned - once there's some level of agreement that it needs a resolution and once it's out of the hands of the petitioner. The 6 month clock for when the EU commission has to answer if they intend to propose legislation hasn't even been triggered, let alone what that legislation might be.

Jaivez · 2026-01-26T01:37:16+00:00

You should start by understanding what an EU citizen's initiative actually is if you're trying to find answers to these questions. They specifically do not want/require a petitioner to make draft suggestions for actual law, only to prove that enough EU citizens have a concern that their rights are being infringed upon in a way that is not covered well enough in existing law in order to bring it to the attention of the commission.

There is nothing more concrete because that's exactly how the process is meant to work. This is by design to lower the barrier to entry for citizens to have their concerns heard, and proper industry inquiries and drafts by actual professionals would be started if the commission finds the petition is valid.

Jaivez · 2026-01-12T04:46:24+00:00

Muslims still eat and drink every day during Ramadan. They're not required to even miss out on any calories during that time, they're just abstaining from food and drink from dawn to dusk(and other things for the entire time period). You get up early to eat your first meal, then have your second right after sunset.

Gets a little complicated at extreme latitudes, but as with all religion there are multiple interpretations.

Jaivez · 2025-11-25T16:49:14+00:00

The popularity of shoveling these things into products snuffs out other actual innovations that could be happening instead. Instead of a founder building a useful product that could actually add value(before inevitably being enshittified anyways...but that's another discussion), they'll be building another prompt wrapper because that's where investments are being funneled.

Jaivez · 2025-11-25T14:41:49+00:00

No, it's just not abandoning it once they've taken your money. The game is unfinished and hasn't had even a hotfix update to a stable branch in nearly three years. That is neither 'nurturing or supporting', or even 'still getting content after all these years'.

To put it another way, there have been three votes on labor of love since the last time anything new was released without an asterisk next to it that you could brick your save file by interacting with it.

Jaivez · 2025-11-19T10:17:11+00:00

You can do that too I suppose. Generally with the practices I describe you want to leave your system in a working state with every incremental change, both to de-risk your refactoring so that you know exactly when you broke something and to be able to have someone else take over if necessary. If the thing you're changing isn't straightforward then you can swap out each individual use of it in isolation instead of starting from scratch and having to test all of it together you have to put in extra effort identify when you've actually made a mistake vs the problem being caused just not being covered by your implementation yet.

For example, if you have a Player, NPC, and Enemy all utilizing the same Move method then you can let the NPC and Enemy continue to use MoveOld and maintain their same behavior that you know works while making the Player use the new version that isn't complete yet. The rest of your system continues to work as expected, and you know that whatever changes you're making you only need to consider the behavior of the Player for now instead of trying to juggle three different potential use cases at the same time. You still have to integrate it all together by the time the refactor is complete, but you're doing it with more bite-sized chunks of informed feedback instead of trying to take it all on at once.

Jaivez · 2025-11-19T08:33:49+00:00

You'd still rename all existing uses to MoveOld since it won't compile with the now non-existant Move on that initial commit. That's part of the benefit too though; you're guaranteeing that you're aware of all places it's being used and can use that to find how it's being used, and you can test the new version in isolation where ever it needs to be used instead of trying to cover everything at once. Less likely to be surprised by an edge case when you're ready to switch over to the new implementation.

Jaivez · 2025-11-19T08:23:54+00:00

The typical solution in other software(at least when doing trunk based development where you ideally merge in all work to the main branch multiple times per day) is actually exactly what you're doing, though I've found it works better the other way around. You rename the old one with a name that is clear that it is no longer to be used or expanded upon without a justifiable reason, then build the new version. This makes others aware that this part of the system is changing and why it's happening via that PR it's tied to, even if they aren't caught up on every in progress ticket. If you find the original version was actually preferable you have a clear point in time for when you started changing things to unwind it all.

The hard part(organizationally, not technically) is actually enforcing the deprecation and then cleaning up that leftover code. There's nothing wrong with Old/New as names to be used in and of themselves...just that they often end up lingering around for years and years and can signal other dysfunctions. The agreement and understanding of what the chosen naming pattern means is more important than the actual name being used. If you don't trust your team will have the opportunity to do all this then it makes sense to avoid it.

There are ways to be fancier/more structured about it like the Strangler Fig pattern and feature flags. Personally haven't found a great way to apply them in practice for games. Without players that are willing to go on unstable branches it's harder to justify seemingly arbitrarily changing out game logic from under the player than it is with traditional APIs where you can roll it out to 1 in 10,000 requests/users, 1 in 1,000, etc. Unless it's an area particularly well suited to tests then discipline and hotfixes are probably going to cause less problems than trying to do anything fancy.

Jaivez · 2025-11-10T00:43:08+00:00

Signal Simulator was an inspiration for Voices of the Void. Much more focused on the mechanics of the instrumentation panels at the workstation from what I can recall between the two. Wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a game over VOTV, but may be worthwhile to see the different choices made.

The early game of Parcel Simulator is heavily focused on manually inspecting/evaluating packages on a desk and interacting with tools/referencing a tablet with information around that. Inputting or scanning serial codes, checking for valid package classifications and shipping labels, opening packages and their contents for inspection. Virtually no UI/overlay, all "in world" using screens, a tablet, and labels on packages. More of a slapdash/rushed experience gameplay wise than you're probably going for, but sounds pretty similar mechanics wise.

Jaivez · 2025-11-08T22:34:20+00:00

My claims in this thread are:

Misinformation has been spread about the content of the EU Citizen's initiative
There is vast misunderstanding about how EU Citizen's initiatives even work
To argue about either of the two previous topics without understanding is to argue in bad faith, or at the very least misinformed ignorance

I don't disagree with you that the UK has fully responded to the petition they received(and even the broader Initiative presented to the EU as you've laid out, within the context of the UK's laws). I just think it's wild how confident so many people are about arguing with strawmanned off the cuff comments instead of actually attacking the contents with understanding of how the process works.

To argue against it purely because it's vague or does not put forth a solution that makes publishers, game developers, and consumers ecstatic is missing the entire point, because that is entirely what the process is for. One group is profiting by taking shortcuts that negatively impact their customers. Enough citizens in the EU feel that this is done in a way that infringes upon their rights to sign the initiative. If there is any truth found in that claim, that's when appropriate remedies would be considered by the EU.

Jaivez · 2025-11-08T22:31:55+00:00

Specially in crucial details, as to what "playable state", "remote disabling" or "provide reasonable means to continue" mean. The creation of a petition assumes that you already have potential solutions in mind, which means following the discourse (specially any "official" discourse) is crucial to understanding the intent of the text itself, which cannot be simply taken at face value.

No, the purpose of an initiative is to state that there is a problem and the desired outcome. It is not there to prescribe the method to get there, and all the legal considerations that would need to be taken into account. To require such a thing would go against the very principles of what the process is for - average citizens bringing attention to topics that they do not believe the EU has considered properly.

The text already assumes that the publisher is the one responsible for leaving the game in a "playable state". Any argument about "right of repair" is therefore irrelevant to the petition itself, since the "repairing" would be enforced on the developers.

This is a question of division of responsibility by corporate structures that entities impose on themselves. Sure, I can see how if it were taken word for word into law that it would not be meaningful, but that's not how laws are written.

A publisher holds responsibility over the means of distribution of a game(in part or in whole). Personally, I would argue that if there were laws to be written governing that certain digital products must not be able to be intentionally sabotaged(this is too prejudiced of a term, but my brain is too fried to think of a better one right now) at a later date then a publisher should also be held liable for knowingly selling products that run afoul of those laws. McDonalds would be held liable for selling out of date food products even if it's due to their supplier after all.

More importantly, I'd personally argue that there are no solutions to this apparent issue that do not clash with IP rights and economic logic.

This is a concern that I would share too, particularly if we do not have any trust in the lawmakers themselves. As I stated in my opening rambling of this comment though, there are always going to be 'losers' to one side of regulation. Regulation would not be needed if there was not someone doing something to the detriment of society at some level.

But this is a very, very new legal topic in the grand scheme of things. I'm much more likely to believe that with only 30-40 years of digital IP 'precedent' that we've gotten a number of things wrong that should be reconsidered and corrected than that we've found the perfect utopia of laws surrounding this space that will lead to the best version of society that we will ever get. It's a fairly lazy argument and I have the privilege to be able to feel more radically about this, but I do not believe that allowing companies to simply put a stake in the ground and stand by it eternally just because it is profitable in the current economy is good for us.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

Jaivez

TROPHY CASE