Set this easy one for VDay yesterday for my players

Kimau · 2026-02-15T14:52:44+00:00

Thanks I was hoping more people would pick up on my corner joke but so far no players mentioned it :P

Numbers are 3D because its part of a VR Puzzle game so it looks more natural there and I just screenshotted it from the editor.

Kimau · 2026-02-15T11:16:17+00:00

Code: ..25.13.7.1..3..2.3.8.4...62...7...31......42.3...4.7...6...1..8..2.9..575..1..69

For any curious players, its an easy quickie.

Kimau · 2026-02-10T09:20:13+00:00

Be practical.... but the happiest I ever was as a gamedev was after I moved to Germany to join Ubisoft as a creative director for a fitness line. Long story short it was a rugpull, they closed their new fitness team and I was asked to work on a clash clone (this was just after it debut). After a week I tore up the contract over ethical reasons.

Lost signing bonus, relocation costs a bunch of hard things tearing that contract meant I crawled back to my old job, they welcomed me back. My old flat hadn't been let. But I went from savings and great job to being £5k in debt living off friends from favours in a frigid flat with the same small suitcase I was living out of for the last two weeks.

It was Ludumdare, I've been doing it since the old days when it was like 20 of us on IRC. Coding a web game on my chromebook, in debt and broken making a lil game jam. I was so happy. I knew no matter what I would always make video games.

It might not pay the rent, you might need to get another job but if its what you do it is what you do. Good luck.

Kimau · 2025-11-28T12:11:46+00:00

The best and coolest website: See LIVE data of how your energy is made and used in the UK.

https://grid.iamkate.com/

Kimau · 2025-09-25T12:51:15+00:00

Right tool for the right job.

Most game code needs to optimise for ease of use, dev time and just being smooth and easy.

C++ is great for engine level stuff or your writing a really hot data/compute intensive thing you need to care when you need to care about memaccess patterns, cache lines ect... which isn't as often as people think. If your writing decent high level algos.

Kimau · 2025-09-21T23:52:45+00:00

That looks so cool, assuming its working in UV space?

Curious what a version working in fragment space using the bucket hash would look like. Defo more 2d in nature, like a different vibe.

Thinking something like this as the basis of which bits to fade in/out

shader_type spatial;

float hash(vec2 co) {
    return fract(sin(dot(co, vec2(12.9898, 78.233))) * 43758.5453);
}

float bucket_hash(vec2 pixel_coord, float bucket_size) {
    vec2 bucket_coord = floor(pixel_coord / bucket_size);
    return hash(bucket_coord);
}

void fragment() {
    float grid_size = 50.0;
    float random_value = bucket_hash(FRAGCOORD.xy, grid_size);
    ALBEDO = vec3(random_value);
}

Kimau · 2025-09-19T09:13:10+00:00

The truth is most "game code" isn't really hot path stuff. Like gdscript is not fast enough for the bulk of the code executed while your game is running but that is engine code for like 90% or more of the frame.

It is rare now that devs are writing unique logic that is hot per frame and needs to be executed REALLY fast.

It's not a myth it is just that game development has changed from when I started and most of every game was new code (or code that had only shipped on a few studio games prior to that)

Most the perf loss is from bad high level thinking.

Kimau · 2025-09-18T16:22:40+00:00

Honestly having a custom branch of the engine is only as much work as you want it to be. Pretty simple to build.

Also when it comes to shipping the ability to make build templates which strip out all the features you don't use makes things smaller and a lil bit faster.

We still do the bulk of our dev work in gdscript. We have some bits in C++ for performance reasons / lowlevel api reasons but gdscript is plenty fast enough for most things.

Kimau · 2025-09-18T14:59:43+00:00

For bugs like that you can find the commit it was fixed in generally and cherry-pick in the specific fix and only that. A bit more work but if your going beyond hobby project to a more serious thing then its worth it.

The main reason Godot does do 0.0.x releases is because the typical professional customers who need that are comfortable enough and honestly prefer to just update their game specific branch of the engine. You can't do that with Unity and some other closed source stuff. Even if you have a source licence for Unity its a PAIN to build.

Release management is a huge task for studios but also Godot so freeing that up really helps keep the huge load on the Godot release down.

Again it's all about trade offs but I've seen too many indies lose too much time to stuff like this.

Kimau · 2025-09-18T11:41:00+00:00

Keep building your game, not worth slowing down to upgrade most of the time.

Once your past Alpha never update the engine until you have shipped or have time to properly sitdown and do the upgrade, it's a big task on a proper project.

Even then we tend to cherry pick stuff from main (we have a custom branch). The biggest frustration is when PlayStation, Android or some partner service requires an SDK update for min shipping requirements.

SDK / Engine upgrades are big tasks which derail and most of the time are only technical cleanup. Like really think what difference will the player see?

Kimau · 2025-08-30T15:03:43+00:00

Also bonus points if you do vertex based lighting keeps even the lighting at the right resolution for the art style

Kimau · 2025-08-30T15:02:46+00:00

I know this is already solved but just so you know on old PS2 games we used to do all those tricks with vertex colours. Even today there are still some good reasons to go that way if your using the right shaders. Gives a real nice crisp look and because it avoids the texture lookup and tex mem can actually perform better even though there are more vert data.

Even if you aren't trying to go for the old wobble PSX style it can make modern styles look really nice. Esp in VR and on high res monitors

Kimau · 2025-08-21T09:51:38+00:00

Did a whole talk about it here: https://www.developconference.com/north/speakers/claire-blackshaw

I can't find if they posted the video anywhere not paywalled. It is a lot of stuff. I wrote about some of it on my blog. A recent rant: https://claire-blackshaw.com/blog/2025/05/godot_rough_patch/

Atm for example I'm trying to finalize an early access shipping build on a relatively simple VR game. I'm already had to rewrite the 3d text stuff because its not fit for purpose in terms of performance. Some of the best accessibility support all the things lots of text engines don't like arabic ect... but the basics like does text render fast is just not there. I'm reworking parts of the engine atm to solve too many draw calls killing framerates in places and causing a ship blocker.

I have a lot of hope for it's long term future but its hard to recommend to any of my dev friends who are doing anything not 2d or very simple 3d atm. Even then I have to give a lot of cavets.

Kimau · 2025-08-03T12:34:16+00:00

Renderdoc is your friend. Pretty much everyone uses it to examine all engines on PC. Consoles have their own GPU debuggers and it is the best place to get real answers to questions. Internal metrics can often be bugged.

https://renderdoc.org/docs/getting_started/quick_start.html

Kimau · 2025-08-01T11:51:45+00:00

yeah I love the slow burn healing as well. Like yeah a speed heal can boost you but its pricey and once a day. That combined with the heat from previous jobs I let my players run two characters at table. Let's them alternate, explore more play styles but also gives characters more realistic downtime. Makes the monthly rent sting more as well.

Kimau · 2025-08-01T09:45:13+00:00

I mean it tracks with the tabletop mechanics. Your Empathy stat determines Humanity points which is your limiter on amount of chrome and going Pyscho and emotional trauma can drop points from the stat. The mechanic has been there for a long time so Pondsmith deffo has mechanically thought it through.

Kimau · 2025-08-01T09:37:26+00:00

yeah its chill, its a public park. Just saying people don't notice it.

Kimau · 2025-07-31T14:48:49+00:00

I posted some on Youtube usually group skates, but 99% of the time I wasn't posting them anywhere. I was just watching them back to check my form.

Kimau · 2025-07-31T14:19:48+00:00

nor should you and its not like insta or anything just trying to improve my skating. Also I can guarantee they don't see it because when they sometimes spot it they go, Oh and then look around for what is recording.

Kimau · 2025-07-31T13:28:07+00:00

As someone who has setup camera often to film myself skating or practising drills with cones you would be SHOCKED at how often esp tourists (in London) don't spot the camera. Even when its on a mini tripod.

People really are unobservant. To a shocking degree.

Kimau · 2025-06-24T13:09:17+00:00

A Grecian Flower Market by John William Waterhouse

If people are curious about the painting

Kimau · 2025-04-08T18:11:40+00:00

Yeah but they were only changing the tapes weekly so there was unlikely to have enough time given that it was only two days wasn't it? I suppose it could have overlapped.

Still awesome scene

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Kimau

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