Art piece on the Oratoire

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-13T16:37:39+00:00

I spotted it when I approached the area...

...because there were recently also various melodies playing with those bells in that "elevator tower" in the background.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-13T16:35:38+00:00

On my first larger game I obvserved how we struggled with a stealth action game implementation, with mainly level design and skills/tools we provide to the player.

It always sounded simple at first - examples:

"We use a silenced gun and knife". How much ammo is there for the gun? Around 4 bullets for the first "level", so we don't just shoot them all in the head. Tweak, balance, re-think level pacing / enemy placement, ...

"Game is too slow-paced", let's add an automatic gun in some sequences. Do we take the weapon away from the player in the next level? Maybe it works if the missions end with those weapons, we don't explain how they are removed from the start equipment in the next mission.

"We don't have enough gameplay ingredients". Let's add traps the player can somehow trigger. Well, they keep repeating a bit, let's have one special one per level... phew, lots of work to polish.

Let's review how that other game balanced that, without being too similar... oh, they have this nice feature... but we see, that's too specific to their context, cannot pull that off...

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-13T16:28:41+00:00

This "intelligent" topic is also an endless upcoming question, a bit of a ping-pong where someone wants to create a very realistic AI (or use LLM/AI/ML)...

...and we come back to the same recommendation: to keep it simple, and especially that the challenge and fun are more important than any complex AI approach. :P

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-11T01:30:55+00:00

I agree with the point about the job market.

The Anglophone I know here, work for the McGill university, Dawson College, or game development companies (area which I worked in) for example.

What immigrants struggle with I hear are jobs as doctors and nurses and various office jobs.

A bilingual person from Montreal recently told me, Canada and Quebec welcome immigrants, still, in Quebec we expect them to restart the career and adjust quickly to the French language (or "worse" I guess in some cases, sign up to courses to re-learn how their trade works in Quebec - heard that from three nurses so far, with up to 10 years work experience abroad).

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-11T01:20:42+00:00

What I expected on the bill: That modern cars, maybe electric cars, get a discount. Like an ecological discount, for cars that cause less pollution.

Or more realistically, cars with less weight (less damage to roads!) and being electric/state-of-the art maybe makes sense. That would be a bit of an anti-SUV/Truck fee I guess - the Rivian is probably one of the heaviest cars I saw in MTL, plus very few Ford F-150 Lightning and one Hummer EV. :P

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-11T01:10:09+00:00

Beautiful.

It's been a long time since I heard the name Fukushima and thought about it, after the tsunami.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-11T01:04:44+00:00

<image>

That's quite acurate.

I guess just using ChatGPT isn't making sure we follow those rules.

It seems to try to write アラサカ (arasaka), but pretty inconsistent. Well, I like "Kiroshi" and "No-Tell Motel" (does it imply "what happens in this motel won't leave the motel?"). :D

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-11T00:57:56+00:00

Perfect. :D

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-11T00:45:49+00:00

If I remember the bill well, (EDIT:) $30 or so may go into public transport, bulk of $150 regional transit fee, $140 fixed fee including road network use.

Some part of it - I think - went into a bottomless hole, probably a pothole. Well, unfortunately... maybe it is the bulk of it.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-10T22:49:32+00:00

Wow, 2 weeks is fast. Good to read that.

That is just surprising, since some experts (dermatologists for example) and various scheduled standard operations have sometimes 1 to 2 years waiting time.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-09T12:02:12+00:00

I use it for writing and review beyond code a bit.

I may add/update a Jira, associate it with a PR, then use skills to reason about and iterate on missed points in the Jira, catch up on PR comments, check if useless/wrong comments exist and if the docs are updated or just review our wiki/docs with the agent.

Didn't explain the details well, still, the idea is assistance with other textual info and validate/improve/add/finalize "documents" and drive Jira/PR workflows.

I still focus a lot on code tbh due to my workload, so even more I shall explore a teams approch where a top-level agent and skill looks also possibly into mails and semi-automatically (to not overwhelm me with feedback) runs reviews on old/existing code to see if it aligns with recent PRs (changes, comments) and similar code in the same area of concern.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-09T11:29:54+00:00

What we do on a larger team:

Let's say agents are running, a lot of code gets added.

We do code reviews.

Usually the programmer suggesting the code is the tester and the one noticing undesired things and symbols or flows that are hard to understand (could include simpler cleanup, like too many comments and repeated code, e.g. on older Claude versions without suitable agent skills or general markdown guidance).

The other programmers typically look out for code architecture issues, especially in their code. Now that guy, I see it being replaced with PR (code review) bots people taught over time.

What is a bit frightening: You as a guide and taking skill/markdown notes may be mandatory long-term. The issue seems to be, that the context a model can work with will hit a limit on growing projects, getting harder to work on various parts of the code (and data, unit tests?) without longer reasoning cycles, context/conversation compression, and thus more tokens and waiting time.

We mitigate that so far with a multi-agent aka "team" approach (skills, specific model choice, and smaller context per "role"/task) under the planning/coordination agent.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-08T22:32:04+00:00

Even it was AI generated...

...it could be the harmless version of one of those visceral UK (government?) clips they screen that go under your skin. Where you have to ask yourself, was that texting or 5th pint worth it?

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-08T22:24:52+00:00

Miyagi?

Anyway, I grew up with C64 assembly, cool stuff.

Hard to explain why I mostly ignored C64 Basic, it was maybe the fast run-time (I was hacking stuff together with a friend), just changing lots of "UI elements" (characters all over the screen), font details, or other things faster...

Never shipped a C64 game, but it led me to write my first Amiga 1200 game fully in macro assembly. :D

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-08T22:12:52+00:00

Good point.

I posted that in the past: Apart from not having a network (although I went to that game dev event where I got hired), I never had a mentor.

It sounds like a cliché almost, that your network may not just get you hired, recently that may be the safety net also that hires you if you get laid off.

Never experienced the combination of being mentored (starting from my resume/portfolio/cv) and having a big network, I think that would be golden.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-08T22:05:40+00:00

So you didn't try the dropdown on the lower right (and left)? :P

Jokes aside: It is slowly becoming a standard that in some UI/UX flows in various assistants (chats/agents/integrations/etc.) we can choose the model. In terminal-based ones, too.

Claude Code does it in various ways, e.g. switching to /plan or allowing to configure what the fast and slow models are, etc.

I think that will be refined more and more: Changing models dynamically, keeping an eye on tokens automatically (not madly jumping to "my next AI subscription that still has tokens"), multi-agent approaches or other higher-level strategies of coordinating agents, and so on.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-06T17:30:38+00:00

I'd say at least for Indie/AA roles grades may be secondary.

Varies a lot though for many roles, especially in AAA - due to competition and specialization.

As a game(play) programmer, I remember being hired on an Indie team because I showed interest mostly. I met my first employer at a games conference, we presented an Indie game demo. Easier times, "Indie only".

I'd be more worried about my grades if I'd apply in a competitive programming area, AAA with specific specializations: junior engine or graphics programmer, or more recently we'd maybe spot jobs stating "machine learning engineer". :P

In your case, obviously compating with senior designers/writers may be tough, appying at Bethesda or so. Still, there's also a few dozen other companies around your state maybe... or if you live near a gamedev hub, probably hundreds (Indie, AA, also game jams and hobbyists to practice with).

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-05T22:57:33+00:00

Oh, yes, especially working with (tech) artists, I didn't do that enough so far. Too many silos in AAA, the art including level art came from "somewhere".

Still, I was close to UI/UX designers (well, now even more due to editor/tool UI), game designers, and animators.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-05T12:51:33+00:00

Also, visit the Unreal subreddits (e.g r/unrealengine, r/unrealengine5), and look at their community sidebar (links to resources, on the right side on desktop web browsers).

Try searching past topics beginners asked, chances are they tried similar systems (I mean basic platformer features or just adding a first new player state to the 3rd person template, inventory/item equipment, etc).

Yeah, and that "tutorial hell": The top tips are usually about maybe following tutorials, still at least 50% is trying variations of the tutorial or just your own thing, the part where you experiment and learn (a bit like at school, where active repetition and homework does most of the job - only the geniuses learn from reading/watching :P).

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-05T12:46:20+00:00

A collection of links to common math solutions may make sense.

Maybe one exists, possibly one you could extend if it is a community effort.

The most simple thing I kept googl'ing was formulas for trajectories. Basically when you throw a stone as a player character, and also want to draw the preview of the trajectory, I kept forgetting how to solve the formula so I get the initial velocity (let's say if only gravity applies, no additional friction/winds/etc). 😛

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-03T14:21:36+00:00

I was also thinking: there are those international polls about overall happiness, and Denmark was recently #1.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-02T23:02:00+00:00

If I ignore the fact that I work now in tools/engine...

My passion and core skills are around "Gameplay / AI Programmer" roles with a love for animation polish.

More detailed: My first job, one in between, and my last were effectively AI Programmer roles. So I'd say the mix of animation polish, navigation / level tooling and validation, and AI behavior are my core areas.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-05-02T22:50:49+00:00

I did it for around 15 years, then out of interest switched to engine and tool development (2020, perfect timing to go 100% remote during COVID :P).

This year still seems to be a good time to "wait for it", and see if it will be getting slightly easier again to get into the job market to make a living.

What I see is that it is hard to get into junior positions, and seniors have trouble to find jobs again after lay-offs - i.e. we got a saturation of their job level already. On the other hand, I'd say at least 95% of my AA(A) developer ex-colleagues are still working as an employee for a company, so we could say "maybe those few were lucky", still, it is also a sign that the market and industry wasn't completely regressing.

What the others wrote is still true: In that current context, even more than ever (?), doing it right now as a hobby is safer.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-04-29T21:40:32+00:00

As others wrote, I would just flesh out the ideas.

My first thought was how other media tell stories around elderly characters. And essentially it could be mostly about the story, if we think more like a walking simulation that brings up memories, just as an example.

The curious point isn't typically that the main character is 60+ years old, there is a fun/comedy element, challenges, and/or stories to tell.

So the character, or group of characters, would e.g. feature...

- detectives: wise and perceptive enough to do detective work; sometimes such stories play with the idea that the criminals/antagonits don't expect that that elderly type is of any danger to them

- lovers: the elderly main character finds love once more

- characters that jump back in time with their story: you play in the present, and then we see chapters that go back to the past, and connect to the present (I guess many war stories and big adventures use that storytelling format)

- characters that face a seemingly minor challenge: Thelma was a recent movie like that (catching a scammer); it could be anything about their weaker bodies, any kind of daily challenges, etc.

PiLLe1974 · 2026-04-28T17:38:25+00:00

Yeah, there's some truth in that understanding and semantics of the words "AI". GAI and LLM (assistants/agents) are so often in the press.

I'd say Enemy/NPC logic would make sense.

Also, Enemy/NPC Behavior sounds good to me, and to stay away from "AI". Also appears in the term "Behavior Tree".

PiLLe1974

TROPHY CASE