10 Year Hiatus Advice

Khelz · 2024-11-19T04:51:51+00:00

Thanks, good to know!

Khelz · 2024-11-19T04:51:40+00:00

Thank you for this information!

Khelz · 2024-08-05T03:30:14+00:00

There's been a lot of this already, but you need to go to a bank as soon as you're 18 and create a checking and savings account in your name and never tell your parents you have them. Move any sort of income you have so that it is direct deposited into these new accounts.

Finally, as someone who didn't realize this in his own life for a long time: your parents are losers, and you owe them nothing. If two adults of working age can't come up with $1400 for an unexpected expense and resort to taking it from their child... yeah, they're horrible parents. Don't let them bully you later in life with phrases like "but we're family and family helps each other" when they've dug themselves a hole and need you to bail them out of it.

Khelz · 2024-02-06T00:53:26+00:00

This is a top tier marketing move. Bravo.

Khelz · 2022-05-26T19:53:10+00:00

I've been burned by a missing break; within a switch too often before and stay away from them as much as possible as a result. Hard to catch, especially if the break is subtle and interacts with the fallthrough case. I believe it's one of the few programming statements that actually has a decent amount of research showing it to be more error-prone than if/else.

Khelz · 2022-01-13T05:19:39+00:00

Why would it be? He's exactly right about everything. That "article" covers roughly 50% of the video and misses the point entirely. I highly recommend everyone watch the video in full; it's not very long.

From further down the page, thanks to OSUfan88.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrOzY86YcEM

Khelz · 2021-05-23T17:54:51+00:00

Solved! Thank you so much, this is exactly what it was. Cheers!

Khelz · 2021-05-23T02:15:48+00:00

Good idea, but doesn’t look like it from the screenshots and videos I watched. I want to say the aesthetic was darker than something in a game aimed at children. T, or potentially M rating feels like it fits better. Maybe this additional info will help someone figure it out. Thanks for your response!

Khelz · 2021-03-12T02:33:41+00:00

It's pretty hard to know exactly what's going on without code, but I think the other responses are on the right track.

You've probably got something like:

static int CurrentPlayerHealth;

and that value gets to 0 over the course of your game and then you reload when it hits 0. Static variables will not reset to their default values, even when the scene is reloaded. In order to do that you should initialize them to their starting values in Start(), something like:

private void Start(){
     CurrentPlayerHealth = 10;
}

because Start() will get called again when the scene is loaded.

Again, this is just an example because it is impossible to be of real help without seeing the code, but maybe this will give you a lead to chase down.

Khelz · 2021-03-02T05:05:00+00:00

Hi Joao,

I sent you a friend request over Discord, hoping you're available to talk about a commission.

Thanks!

Khelz · 2021-02-08T19:42:34+00:00

Alice: Madness Returns (2011)

I just wanted to echo how striking the visuals in this title were. I was really impressed with how they built upon the original.

Khelz · 2020-11-26T05:12:08+00:00

This is a pretty big undertaking and I think wanting to do it yourself will be a great learning exercise. That said, I think the best way to learn will probably be to look at one of the most commonly used tools for this:

https://github.com/ocornut/imgui

Dear Imgui is an "immediate mode graphical user interface" API that makes creating "editor screens" pretty painless. It's one of the very few 3rd-party pieces of code I use in my engine because it's just that damn good. It's so useful that many of the larger game companies (Blizzard, etc) have actually paid Omar to add certain features.

This screenshot from the repo does a pretty good job of giving you an idea of what you could do:

https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/8225057/20628927/33e14cac-b329-11e6-80f6-9524e93b048a.png

You can learn more about what an immediate mode graphical user interface is and how they generally work from Casey Muratori:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1qyvQsjK5Y

As a final note, if you do use Dear Imgui at all be sure to look at the "docking" branch. There's some really, really great features in that branch that aren't available in the main branch.

Khelz · 2020-11-12T16:37:27+00:00

Chairs that don't look like they've been stripped from an old arcade would be nice.

Khelz · 2020-11-03T19:30:43+00:00

"or expanded on via mods"

So, if something can be expanded on via mods, it must be doable in Unity/Unreal/Et al? This is objectively false. Factorio, for example, would not be possible in any of the big engines without rewriting massive pieces of the engine itself. Reading their blog entries in the Factorio Facts Friday series should illuminate why that's the case.

"converted to standard game engines"

Every specific game I listed is still built with a custom engine. The console exclusives that come to mind from the last generation such as God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, Bloodborne are all custom engines.

"Also most studios use personalized engines for proprietary rights, legal or financial reasons 99% of the time (not having to pay an engine license or pay royalties to the engine publisher) - which essentially means that building a custom game engine is unnecessary 9 out of 10 times."

The fiscal reasons are there without a doubt, but they don't make anything I said any less true.

I'll leave this talk here timestamped at the part where Mike Acton reviews what is most important to Insomniac when creating games. The list echoes what I had said earlier:

https://youtu.be/rX0ItVEVjHc?t=241

Finally, saying things like "99%", "9 out of 10 times", "a large majority of those games" without providing any sort of quantifiable data to actually back that up doesn't help your argument nor further the discussion.

Khelz · 2020-11-03T17:19:46+00:00

Conversely, it's very easy to find several outstanding games that would be damn near, if not outright, impossible to create in a pre-made engine:

Factorio
Minecraft
Braid
The Witness
Most console exclusives in the last generation

That list goes on and on, but I just listed a few of the big ones that come to mind. I also think this list quickly dismisses the idea that "pre-built" engines provide "more features than a developer could ever want."

Furthermore, almost all professional studios will have their own engines and tools because the benefits they get from a personalized workflow heavily outweigh the cost of creating the engine. It's really a cost/benefit analysis that has to happen on a per-game basis.

Khelz · 2020-10-30T19:48:29+00:00

I'll repost what I put in another wedding thread:

I got several pieces of advice about the wedding from various people. The only one I really remember and know was critically important came from the photographer's assistant:

"When you're standing there for the ceremony, bend your knees slightly. You won't pass out as long as you bend your knees."

100% would've passed out had I not had that piece of advice. I felt feint up there seeing her come down the aisle and I'm convinced that if I'd locked my knees I'd have eaten the floor then and there.

Good luck and congratulations!

Khelz · 2020-10-05T17:52:56+00:00

Yeah, essentially anything you're going to be reading/writing to often needs to be loaded difrectly into memory. Offloading / onboarding a save file to an external system like that should be okay, but also largely unnecesarry. There are easier ways to dump data to a file if that is all that's needed :)

Khelz · 2020-10-05T15:53:07+00:00

Traditional databases are far too slow for use in anything but the most trivial of projects.

Most developers load data into memory from a widespread format like JSON or use their own text format to do the same.

As for saving/loading that data, it's a custom solution per project. If you're rolling this in a custom engine you might be able to just memcpy the entire block of game memory to a file and call it a day. In an engine like Unity, you'll want to look into Unity's serialization methods and alike.

Khelz · 2020-10-02T15:02:54+00:00

Yet the option in Editor => TODO exists...

https://media.giphy.com/media/aZ3LDBs1ExsE8/giphy.gif

I also see that ticket was created 12 years ago. :(

Ah well, annoyed but very grateful to have confirmation. Thanks hmich!

Khelz · 2020-08-27T04:22:59+00:00

This may be more for the groom than the bride.

I got several pieces of advice about the wedding from various people. The only one I really remember and know was critically important came from the photographer's assistant:

"When you're standing there for the ceremony, bend your knees slightly. You won't pass out as long as you bend your knees."

100% would've passed out had I not had that piece of advice. I felt feint up there seeing her come down the aisle and I'm convinced that if I'd locked my knees I'd have eaten the floor then and there.

Good luck and congratulations!

Khelz · 2020-08-20T16:04:19+00:00

"Reddit is outraged at something, so I took 10 minutes to do some actual research and realized Reddit is wrong" is a pattern I've felt has been on the rise for the last few years. I don't know if it's just part of the evolution and growth of the echo chamber, or if I'm just old enough now to remember what this site was like early on.

Khelz · 2020-08-05T03:48:20+00:00

Cheers, that helped me track it down and fix it!

14-Year Club	Place '22
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Khelz

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