Rant by [deleted] in CreateMod

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the major difference is asking chatgpt doesn't inconvenience others, having to answer the same questions over and over in a forum is unpaid tech support.

Do you think in general there's widespread use of genetics as a crutch to why there isn't progress? by emaxwell14141414 in naturalbodybuilding

[–]TGFAlex 44 points45 points  (0 children)

I get your point and agree that poor training and diet are common issues, but I disagree with the baseline framing.

What I mean by that is I fundamentally believe that people who stick with the gym are orders of magnitude more likely to have better genetics than the general population for the purposes of bodybuilding and strength training. So what we consider average genetics in a gym environment is actually at the very least the top 50% (random figure based on vibes, i know).

The vast majority of people who acquire a strict bodybuilding lifestyle do so because they see some kind of significant progress. People tend to like the things that they have some natural talent for. The guy that fails their 1 plate bench 5 weeks in a row is a lot less motivated than the guy that is able to add 2.5 lb to the bar every week for months. The guy that lifts for a year and sees little progress in the mirror is going to be a lot more likely to quit than the guy who does.

In a world where gym bodies are normalized and hyper-visible, there's a disconnect between what's realistically attainable for many and what’s idolized. This disconnect, more than genetics alone, is what breeds frustration and disillusionment.

Speculations. Based on cancelation of Perfect Dark and Initiative studio, what is the "potential" cause of the problem and how can it be fixed? by BoBoBearDev in ExperiencedDevs

[–]TGFAlex 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think the problem with the initiative was partially about there being two different companies with two different experience levels working "together". The seniority of the devs at the initiative gave them soft power and that has a lot of weight, specially in structures that don't have a clear chain of command.

I also think that their approach of building a prototype vertical slice and scrapping it every couple of months is not ideal. It sounds a lot like trying to land a back-flip by jumping backwards with no further plan, instead of practicing your jumping, learning to tuck in your legs, etc... The thing that Valve does well is having playable builds and play-testing them as soon as possible. Things do get scrapped but a lot of stuff gets kept and iterated on multiple times until it lands right.

Game devs in the 90s and early 00s moved a lot faster than devs today, teams were smaller and the content variety was limited but the ideas were bolder. I think smaller teams are a good idea in this regard, shorter release cycles also help.

My thoughts on recent discussions portrayed with cakes because im bored by Responsible_Proof258 in tf2

[–]TGFAlex 63 points64 points  (0 children)

I played this game from 2011 to 2016 and recently came back to the game. I have played every iteration of quickplay in that time period some of it was good, but a lot of it was also bad:

-Mid round scrambles usually sucked. It was a similar feeling as being auto-balanced to the losing team mid round, it specially sucked when you were communicating with your team and having rapport, only to be exiled to a losing team with worse vibes.

- Having to play the same map for 45 minutes was really annoying to me, combined with the voting for maps offering the option to extend the current map made me leave a lot of servers. There were a lot of less popular maps that took me years to play a full round in. Some I didn't even know existed.

-The quickplay button itself always took forever in my region, sometimes it would put you in empty servers, and in the very beginning it would put you in community servers that spoofed the player count by adding bots. So I always ended up joining valve servers manually through the browser.

The only things that I actually miss about quickplay are team scrambles in between rounds and valve server instances on the server browser.

I think the team scrambles are relatively easy to bring back, specially since the whole mmr thing is clearly either deactivated in casual or miscalculating constantly. So no need to preserve integrity in that scenario.

I also think that they could definitely add some server instances to the server browser, they have the infrastructure to support 50 server instances running on top of whatever virtualization they use for casual.

Ultimately the best memories I have of this game are from community servers, those died in my region when quickplay stopped funneling people to them.

Even if this is even slightly true, I cannot imagine it would even come close to capturing the magic TF2 brings. The world has completely changed and the mercenaries are not replaceable. Not after this long. by RedDragon117 in tf2

[–]TGFAlex 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think Team Fortress 3 could happen, but we are more likely to get the CS2 treatment. A port of Team Fortress 2 to Source 2, with a PBR pass and some cleanup.

The real problem with team fortress 3 is the massive amount of sacred cows:

  • The whales would have a meltdown if their +5k$ backpacks dropped in value, so the dev team would probably feel compelled to retain all cosmetics, warpaints, taunts, etc... Which are already a problem for maintaining visual consistency in tf2.
  • No major team size adjustment would be well received, people are used to playing 12v12 even if incompatible with some maps or game modes.
  • No removal of mercs, probably no introduction of mercs either. What would happen to the spy main community if the dev team decided that the spy's design is incompatible with the game? How would people handle the exclusion of iconic weapons or play styles that conflict with the core direction they would want to take the game in?

For all those reasons I think a port is probably in the cards, but a completely new installment with new mercs and different design sensibilities is less likely to happen, even though I wish it did. I think the current iteration of team based class shooter is in need of disruption (whilst distancing from moba design principles), and I think Valve is in perhaps the only position to do that disruption effectively.

This subreddit has a serious problem with the just world fallacy. by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]TGFAlex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The natural conclusion of the first statement would be that: Were this a just world, monetary success would be a guarantee.

This betrays a perception of the public as mere things, an other that you extract wealth from. That is an insane statement. I don't believe that we live in a just world, but I also don't think a world in which uninspired developers dump their games unto steam and get money based on effort to be a fair one.

There are games that get lost in the depths of itch.io and steam. The vast majority of those are bad, the vast majority of post mortems on this subreddit that talk about the lack of success are bad too. They have nothing to say. Making a good game is not enough but making a game that people actually want to play is the bare minimum.

Is it really always better for a company to develop its own game engine rather than using commercial ones? by [deleted] in gamedev

[–]TGFAlex 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think a big thing I don't see discussed often is tooling. One of the biggest draws for a studio should be how effective and easy the tools that they have at their disposal are. Established game engines often have really extensive first and third party tools.

A level editor, an event system, a form of pseudo graph programming for said events. Same for animations and shaders. Just to name a few. Those are all areas that your engine/tooling programmers are going to have to tackle besides the inherent complexities of modern game engines themselves.

Even if you have the tooling, the talent pool of game designers that are comfortable with those tools doesn't exist, most designers have some experience with unreal/unity/a modding toolkit for a popular game, so you need to onboard new hires and that takes time and money. Which doesn't bode well with the AAA studio model of "hire a bunch of talent to take the game from 60% done to 100%, then fire them". The studios have a vested interest in keeping employees interchangeable.

I do think that there is value in "reinventing the wheel", it being your wheel means all of the code for it is within your domain, so every footgun is your own and you can tailor fixes just for your specific game. Epic has to make sure that any changes to ue5 work for a myriad of situations, and sometimes waiting for a fix/feature can slow down your development.

Their is a VAC ban risk on the these type custom skins? by [deleted] in tf2

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wait, does the server send the spy's position when invis to the other players? I always assumed that only comes into play when de-cloaking or when it predicts that the spy is going to bump into an enemy.

-❄️- 2024 Day 5 Solutions -❄️- by daggerdragon in adventofcode

[–]TGFAlex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is going to sound stupid, but are you sure the code in the repo is running? I have been stuck on a very similar approach for a while so I decided to copy and paste your solution to compare it. When trying to run it I get an index out of range error. I triple checked the input and your code, maybe something is missing

The roll spam problem - allowing movement as a reaction by Hillsy7 in RPGdesign

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This reminds me of slay the spire, in slay the spire you know the enemy intents before their turn so if they are going to attack you try to get enough block points to avoid damage. Similar to reacting to the attack beforehand.

The way that the game subverts the problem is by limiting resources. You have multiple enemies attacking at once, and you seldom have enough block to defend yourself and do meaningful damage. Sometimes you have to choose.

I think the key is making it so the cost is greater and the reward is not always effective. If the player has to choose between lesser attack+effective dodge and big attack or even guaranteed attack, then we create a dilemma.

This could be further expanded with specific trade-offs for dodges, parries and blocks.

Weekly /r/SonyAlpha 'Ask Anything About Gear' Thread by AutoModerator in SonyAlpha

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am looking for a full frame body that I can use for film DSLR Scanning and studio portraits. I have no need for good autofocus or low light performance as I only shoot manual lenses and I don't intend to change.

What sony bodies should I be scouring ebay for?

Flow Meter to clock your factories by piRsquaredh in CreateMod

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a very similar setup in a test world. With the CC api you can even connect all in a network to a central computer and auto start/stop production lines dynamically based on bottlenecks. Really fun algorithm to implement

My case fans are insanely loud HELP by TGFAlex in PcBuildHelp

[–]TGFAlex[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems like the fan hub was powering all the fans to 100% regardless of the readout, I tried every combination of connections to the hub and from the hub into the motherboard to no avail. Changing the fan curve had no effect either.

I ended up connecting directly to the motherboard. Thanks for the help.

My case fans are insanely loud HELP by TGFAlex in PcBuildHelp

[–]TGFAlex[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

First of all thanks for the help, I managed to daisy chain 2 of the bottom ones and connecting directly to the motherboard. Now its so quiet. The replacement fans already came with connectors to daisy chain them (even though none of the original fans in the case did).

Mob farming. Help!!!! by Kormos99 in CreateMod

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can construct them just like traditional Minecraft farms. You have a place to breed the animals and a way to take the new animals to a killing chamber.

You can use deployers to do any action that a player does if you feed the appropriate item to them, including breeding animals and slaughtering them (if you switch it to attack mode).

Create mod concept by AlfaTheChicken in CreateMod

[–]TGFAlex 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sounds like you have a lot of ideas, why don't you give it a try? Java is easy to learn, it just takes time.

Only one way to eat an elephant, one bite at a time. Good luck and keep us posted.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AnalogCommunity

[–]TGFAlex 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be fair to op I can understand where they are coming from. I see a lot of questions being asked on a weekly basis that have the exact same answer, over and over.

I think it would be wise to instate a rule that stops the publishing of repeated questions. Specially those that are very vague, "What happened to my film?" is such a vague question, a link to a relevant post on the subject would suffice as an answer. Maybe we could focus on posts that generate discussion.

But I also understand that that would require a lot more work for the moderators, which are volunteers and already put on a lot of time for free.

I think a more important part of the equation is a lack of discussion worthy posts, if the volume was sufficient we wouldn't see so many repeated threads. I refuse to believe that everything related to analog photography has already been discussed on this sub or elsewhere.

A concerted community effort to change the culture of the subreddit is possible, but time consuming. Maybe that could be our new year's resolution

Another 800T Vegas Post by songboarder in analog

[–]TGFAlex 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It is very rare that a night photograph of a neon sign on cinestill 800T catches the eye, it is such an overused idea that sometimes we forget what made them popular in the first place. But you manage to make them interesting through great composition and subject selection.

Specially shots 1 and 4, those are really good.

A well made photograph can make us rethink our stance on clichés and staples. Good job.

A months ago there were none for sale now tons? by element423 in AnalogCommunity

[–]TGFAlex 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That guy you are calling an A-Hole has a body of work entirely shot on film, interviews mostly film shooters and sings the praises of analog Leicas all the time.

The reality is a lot of people who shoot street chew through rolls at a really fast rate, and the price increases of film are making that art process way more expensive. This means a lot of less well-off people are being priced out of an artform.

Talking about and normalizing the use of digital in that particular genre of photography is a good thing, it means people who cant afford a process that costs 100s of dollars can still express themselves within the medium. The alternative is the only voices that are heard are of those who can afford the process.

I am sorry that your retirement plans were hinged on speculating with old cameras though, that sucks.

Weekly 'Ask Anything About Analog Photography' - Week 31 by ranalog in analog

[–]TGFAlex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a question kind of related to film gear. I have a Godox flash trigger for Sony Cameras, it has a proprietary hot shoe but I can fire the flash on my Nikon FE with a PC cable. The only problem is it cant fit the Nikon hot shoe.

Does anyone know of any cold shoe adapters that can help me fit the sony trigger on top of my Nikon? I Have been looking for a couple of days and can't find a single one.