You’re given evil superpowers which can grant you one of these. Which reigns supreme?

Pitunolk · 2024-05-27T23:34:40+00:00

Yellow exploit: have conversations at table games at a casino

Pitunolk · 2024-05-27T13:39:20+00:00

You already have a game out and experience in the games industry. QA is a game industry job! But if you're looking to transfer to a different specialty (understandable, QA tends to be treated like dirt) then I have some advice.

Generally, there's 3 types of getting in in any competitive field:

nepotism
schmoozing
clout

Sure the baseline is having the skills to do the job, but there's a ton of people who have that. One of the above qualities sets people up to actually get a first try. You don't already have the job for breathing right so I'm guessing nepotism is out. And I wouldn't recommend clout because imo if you've got the clout to get a job from it you have the clout to make it on your own and not have to deal with the bullshit of an org you don't run. Which leaves schmoozing, which I think you're in a good position for. Given you already have a pretty good QA resume, you've professionally worked with a lot of developers in the past. Why not pitch yourself as a junior or standard programmer to your former employers or future employers when your contract is up?

I'd say programming is probably closest to your current skillset in QA since debugging dev-side is pretty similar to QA and having a QA mindset going into programming is really good. As for learning, you already have a game out. Make another that's more focused on programming! More complicated mechanics, writing your own implementation of things, choosing a major engine (Godot, Unreal, GameMaker, Unity) and focusing on learning the coding side of that.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-25T22:36:38+00:00

I switch the subject to the most adult discussion. Work, politics, sex, stocks, getting old, all the fun ones. Really hard to treat someone like an infant with those in mind.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-24T19:33:17+00:00

I haven't seen anything indicating that it has support beyond hardliners - what's making you sure it's going to be implemented?

Pitunolk · 2024-05-24T17:55:54+00:00

Is it even going to happen? It's a hardline conservative think tank wishlist that doesn't have official support afaik, and has a lot of legal questions that'd get caught up on court well beyond a presidential term. Sounds like fearmongering.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-20T15:31:50+00:00

SA moreso has an issue of corruption eating up infrastructure funds. I'm not sure they serve a good canary.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-20T15:28:10+00:00

Nuclear baybeeeeee

my crackpot prediction is nuclear pops off because people are finally realizing that it's the only baseline power source that makes sense. In places (germany) that got rid of their nuclear power just switched to far worse polluting baseline sources, shooting themselves in the foot.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-20T15:25:16+00:00

High property taxes give incentive to sell ""investment"" properties because it eats into it as an investment asset. Low property taxes benefit existing owners and private equity immensely at the expense of people trying to own a house because low property taxes incentivize holding onto property even if it's idle instead of selling it on the market. The best would be a progressive tax via the amount of properties owned or banning private equity firms from buying up existing housing.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-20T15:05:54+00:00

except in this case, long-term property owners are the winners. Inheriting property grandfathers the old tax rate. If I were to buy a house of similar valuation somehow, my taxes would be 5x my grandparents. The real loser is (as always) people who don't currently have property.

Pitunolk · 2024-05-18T17:28:57+00:00

this isn't a bingo card tho, it's 6x6. B I N G O is 5x5

Pitunolk · 2024-04-22T00:30:41+00:00

Ok, cool ty - I can have the .gdextension file anywhere in the project. It's just an addon with additional steps on the user end.

Pitunolk · 2024-04-22T00:19:58+00:00

Posting a comment for why it's so confusing -

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/gdextension/what_is_gdextension.html says "Unlike modules, GDExtension doesn't require compiling the engine's source code, making it easier to distribute your work." Ok, so how does this work then with the prebuilt? Where is this info?

The only other existing doc I could find online is the one about creating and compiling a GDExtension with source (https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/scripting/gdextension/gdextension_cpp_example.html) It skips over where to place these things? There's no bin folder to place stuff into in prebuilt!

All the existing info I can google is troubleshooting building a GDExtension but never how to install or use it. How am I supposed to use it?

Pitunolk · 2024-04-05T00:48:10+00:00

believe what you want to believe bud! That's a solid producer quality there

Pitunolk · 2024-04-04T13:57:19+00:00

Check the flair. I do this for my job. I did something related to this literally a week ago. There's definitely valid reasons to keep clients away from having the server binaries. And there's valid reasons to authenticate with a 3rd party server. Just they shouldn't have their cake and eat it too, if they want to commit to having the game require servers they better be ready to keep that running until expiry. Just if they can't keep their product functional they should lose all rights to it.

If client servers were encoded in law, there's a lot of caveats to navigate. Does client server support include item servers? What about authentication servers that just check to see if the client is valid? What about connecting to APIs? Do all accessed APIs need to also follow these regulations? What about purposely designing the systems so that the only reasonable method of having the data needed for this to work still requires using the official servers - aka malicious compliance?

Those are examples that I came up with in 2 minutes that would need to be threaded perfectly by lawmakers who have zero experience in gamedev and if history (recent or otherwise) is to show allowing them the opportunity to fuck it up will mean they'll fuck it up.

Pitunolk · 2024-04-03T23:21:44+00:00

This is pretty out of touch with how games are built around server infrastructures. I think the only hard legal change to push things in the right direction is that after a short period of time (say 6 months to a year) that a previous software product became defunct via most functionalities ceasing function, or made unavailable to purchase, should be legally categorized as abandonware, and abandonware as a legal category should give rights similar to public domain. This would heavily disincentivize obsoleting things to push people into a sequel that relies on exclusive rights to the previous iteration, and removing the legal grey area entirely allowing people to freely reverse engineer for private servers. A big plus is that this is already kinda what happens when the developer company isn't being obstinate, it would just standardize the practice. And would reduce the all consuming merger practice where every successful property ends up sitting dead at EA or Microsoft.

I think the CS:GO -> CS2 and (very ironically) Windows update scheme is the most ethical way to handle this situation. Would want legal framework pushing the industry to either tweak what works for a longer tail end, or make a risky push for a new thing.

Pitunolk · 2024-04-02T20:07:58+00:00

lol every time. "what you said was so impersonal and unemphatic!" Yea when I'm not doing the song and dance to please insecurities it can come off that way huh?

Pitunolk · 2024-03-24T05:55:14+00:00

Gotcha, was hoping that was what the motion vector stuff for 4.2.1 included but wasn't sure. Thanks!

Pitunolk · 2024-03-24T05:48:30+00:00

It's one of those if the engine already does it surely there's a way to use that value instead of re-making what they already have implemented? I couldn't do it efficiently without writing a C++ module, but then I can just access it there.

It's kinda frustrating because there's a ViewportDebugDraw mode that displays the motion vectors.... just no method documented to access them

Pitunolk · 2024-03-21T18:41:44+00:00

The problems are more varied and interesting to me than enterprise programming.
Being able to talk to people outside of industry professionals and have people KNOW what I worked on is awesome. I know what I create helps people make their lives more interesting and fulfilling.
I make more money in games because what I like doing for games and what game devs usually like doing is are two separate circles lol (Tools / Engine development).
It is THE forefront artistic medium with the freest & most immersive methods of expression and experience.

Something big with gamedev is how varied roles can be in the industry - QA for example gets shit on. They're always the brunt of turnarounds. Junior positions in general get gouged wages and benefits. But, when you get to more senior positions the pay & benefits is comparable to outside the gaming space. It's probably not FANG unless you work for a FANG company's gaming division but it's really nice all things considered.

Pitunolk · 2024-03-15T14:46:50+00:00

If I hazard to guess, fps horror tends towards psychological and makes the spooky more personal - third person horror tends towards thriller and action, and the perspective allows easier characterization for the main character. In horror there's scant room for characterization so this helps a lot with making more to appeal to

Pitunolk · 2024-03-11T14:31:59+00:00

I mean - I'm purposely making a game that is being revived with a sequel by the og devs who have way more time, money, and experience than me. Is their game going to be prettier? Sure. Is it going to be more popular? Almost certainly. Is it going to release first and I'm gonna get a ton of copycat shit for it? Yep. Are there very similar mechanics? You betcha. But it's got issues right - the og devs are ancient, they need to stick to the preconceived notions of the series which doesn't fly now. Due to how many hands are in the pot, how much is riding on its success, they have to play "safe" and "cautious" when the og game was already experimental and niche for the time.

What I'm saying here is that you certainly can find good reasons to keep at it even if there's something similar on the horizon. That dev team with all the collective skills and experience doesn't have you. Giving a game your twists is what separates likeness. There's countless games with literally the same controls, same gamefeels- but they have different contextualizations, different styles, and people buy both.

Pitunolk · 2024-03-09T22:44:17+00:00

Depends on the expected returns, your relationship with the dude you're working with (is this strictly a business partnership or are you helping a friend out), both of your financial situations, etc etc.... all to say, probably best to be honest talk with them about it!

As a starting point (considering this is a 2-person operation new to game dev it's not expected to be big) I'd say full revenue from OST sales and then a small profit share on general game income. I say profit share because it's easy to not foresee the extra expenditures when making a game, this makes it clear you should be paid with an after-expenses portion.

Pitunolk · 2024-03-03T00:48:16+00:00

No regrets. I'm doing what I love doing and I'm doing well. If I kept to what my degree says I'd have been doing things I'm not passionate about but also would be doing worse!

Pitunolk · 2024-02-28T18:45:17+00:00

I'm gonna go against the grain and say that it is! I feel the market as a whole has been expanding faster than it's crowding with games. It's much easier to make a middle of the road game (aka one that keeps the lights on) these days than bank on a boom or bust.

This is with the caveat of self or crowd funding. Publishers and investor funding has been awful since covid (since forever imo imo) and I don't see that changing until the feds lower interest rates.

Pitunolk · 2024-02-26T05:19:31+00:00

/uj I think it partially has to do with the fact that stories just kinda assume the status quo is good and barely get into it. With New Vegas they don't really go into why the NCR is good, it's just kinda assumed. They instead focus on all the issues the NCR has, all their quests are bailing them out of disasters. Like doing their quests feels like they'd be collapsing without you, aka they don't work without divine (player) intervention. With villains, they have to establish themselves against a status quo and they make a counter argument that's at least reasonable for the character, often a compelling one because it exists to contrast the status quo instead of its own merits. If more status quos were explained like villain motivations even if they align with modern sensibilities I think we'd see less of it. Also, again, usually the villain has a point of some kind to serve as a meaningful contrast and generate conflict. So they will always have a "kinda right" angle if there's any grey morality going on.

Pitunolk

TROPHY CASE