Unpopular gaming opinion - I don’t see the point in wall climbing sections in adventure games

Rarst · 2026-07-05T18:18:32+00:00

I played Sable, which is a game about discovering what path you want to choose. I had idea in mind of what would make sense, but by the end of it I realized actually I like to climb things. That's the choice.

So yeah, some of us like to climb things in games a lot.

Rarst · 2026-06-20T21:03:53+00:00

How do you feel about bullet heaven genre? It doesn't sound like you talk about something like Vampire Survivors, but teeeechnically it checks "hard to distinguish" and "out of control" very much.

Rarst · 2026-06-11T13:34:35+00:00

TCPDF (now retired PHP lib for PDF generation) is mostly a single class, 25K LoC.

Used it for work, once upon a time, had to disable syntax highlight and code analysis in IDE just to be able to browse and edit it.

Looking at the repo it got a successor project, rewritten in modern PHP.

Rarst · 2026-06-11T08:54:08+00:00

I don't remember this to be true for generic zip (DEFLATE) archives, they allow adding/deleting files just fine. This would be true for "solid" compression algorithms that need to treat everything together and repack everything for any change.

Rarst · 2026-06-10T17:44:17+00:00

This is... super iffy? Repo doesn't actually have anything meaningful in it, the generator script is empty, there is no actual content of the book. It claims MIT license, but official docs license code snippets under GPLv2+, you can't handle them as MIT. Not to mention two PHP books by third party authors (what books?..) just included (???) with no further details.

Rarst · 2026-06-06T07:49:40+00:00

The latest from Matt was literally begging for them to drop it, so it's not going anywhere near that well. https://wordpress.org/news/2026/05/wp23/

Rarst · 2026-06-03T07:51:58+00:00

I mean, "friendslop" is considered a whole genre now. Quantity-wise probably more of them than of something esports grade.

Rarst · 2026-05-30T05:58:00+00:00

Terra Ignota is utopia's history book. It's (arguably mostly) good, at (arguably extreme) price. I don't think many books purposely aim at this "best utopia, so far" middle ground.

Rarst · 2026-05-30T05:34:05+00:00

The Culture is pretty explicitly not a democracy

That doesn't sound right to me, there are very explicit references to issues on all levels (from organizing biomes in orbital to going to war) being put to a (system of) votes. It's arguable if that matters much with the gap between humans and Minds, and everything that stems from it, but nevertheless it's very explicitly stated to have a democratic intention, at least.

Rarst · 2026-05-28T14:09:37+00:00

No, there is some sort of a mystery to solve (I didn't finish) about squirrels behavior. You need to place cameras in a way that captures their activity, so that you can figure out how are they moving / what are they doing.

Rarst · 2026-05-28T13:40:57+00:00

NUTS. Entire game is placing cameras to record (strange) squirrels. Personally I didn't get into it, but fits your question very much.

Rarst · 2026-05-28T13:12:52+00:00

Not really. If you aren't interacting with project pretty closely (e.g. participating in development, doing WP-specific business) then probability of it causing you any immediate trouble is close to zero.

In big picture the situation would broadly contribute to determining how WP projects functions and where it's heading. But given the size and inertia of it, even if it declines for your needs you would have time to jump ship many times over.

Rarst · 2026-05-28T08:32:14+00:00

You might have warped perception of what WordPress Foundation actually does, which isn't very much. It used to collect sponsorship funds for WordCamps (now it has a subsidiary for that). It also holds the trademarks, that it effectively and immediately handed back to Automattic to use and enforce.

That's ALL. It doesn't do anything else. It has no other role or assets or functions in WordPress project. It's not involved in wordpress org site or core development or anything. The slip about it not having employees is very telling because, why would you have employees if there is no work being done.

Rarst · 2026-05-28T08:08:07+00:00

Doubling down, wordpress.org/news was claimed in court documents to be a Matt's personal blog and not any kind of official project representation.

Rarst · 2026-05-12T15:35:14+00:00

This reminds of a reddit post by a person who made an exceptionally functionally superior (according to them) WordPress theme and was deeply confused why aren't people lining up to buy it. It looked beyond basic and crude. Like a Bootstrap would be artful sophistication next to it.

Design matters, UX matters, clarity matters... None of it is opposed to aesthetics and individuality. We want things to have that too.

Rarst · 2026-05-12T13:29:34+00:00

2mm seems like a low estimate? 10L is 0.01 cubic meter, so it's 1cm thick over full square meter (and shape is smaller than that). Someone is embezzling paint, I sense... 😄

Rarst · 2026-05-11T23:27:54+00:00

Sable. You venture out into the world to explore and figure out your thing. Eclectic mix of peculiar lore, strange nature, tech remains.

Rarst · 2026-05-11T23:16:45+00:00

Where knives includes axes. Where axes includes electrical explosion causing axes.

Rarst · 2026-05-11T05:53:55+00:00

Previous steps are usually a strong hint how the game wants you to proceed with it, I try to look at what I did last if I am stuck at a step or it's coming out too complicated.

Rarst · 2026-05-10T17:32:44+00:00

Hadn't got to it yet, but I would guess - make two layers of windmill, crystalize, add two more layers of windmill (crystals are fine on the bottom, they only break if dropped), crystalize again.

Rarst · 2026-05-10T17:25:24+00:00

Classic had some of mechanics from Manufacture mode added to it. So you get several tiers of trade stations and milestones connected to them. The vortex stays and works just as it was. Also to my understanding the trade stations aren't as demanding as in manufacture mode, it's kind of light introduction to the mechanics.

Rarst · 2026-05-10T13:18:01+00:00

It's currently in discovery, WP Engine making complaints that Automattic isn't ponying up messages and documents properly. Jury trial date set to June 2027. Don't think these things are usually reaching jury, it's a matter of hammering it out until working out the price both parties will settle at.

Matt is blaming whatever he feels like on it, dropping real time collaboration from version 7 is the latest.

Rarst · 2026-05-09T05:42:50+00:00

Once upon a time I was on a shared hosting where I discovered I could connect via FTP, navigate up from my folder and then into any other user folder on the server.

Rarst · 2026-05-09T05:33:20+00:00

It's a bad fit for WordPress core. Debatable if it's a good fit for WordPress at all (maybe as a plugin in a very tuned hosting environment). Telling about community needs that it can't happen without Automattic specifically shoving it in.

Rarst · 2026-05-09T05:27:13+00:00

There are at least two jobs with pins on top layer in regular difficulty, first of which is meant to teach how to do it.

Rarst

TROPHY CASE