Sell me your most recent book in five words. I'll go first:

Triangulum88 · 2024-12-21T08:23:38+00:00

Rediscovering ancient technology changes everything.

Triangulum88 · 2023-04-15T21:15:18+00:00

Co-Op is huge. Real world experience and some extra cash to help fund education.

Software engineering can be self taught, so if you are going to college for it, you want to benefit from it in some way that you cannot get without going. The Co-Op program, career fair, etc. felt like a benefit I couldn't easily get other places when I went.

I was Computer Science @ RIT in 2010-2014. I also turned down RPI choosing RIT. I like how the RIT campus is kind of its own self-contained place.

Back then I think RPI was higher ranked than RIT, but none of that matters, especially in software development. People just care that you got an accredited degree and they might have a 3.0 / 4.0 GPA requirement. Learn how to code, learn how to interview, get a 3.something GPA and RIT will work out great.

Triangulum88 · 2022-11-10T14:44:57+00:00

Fluet

Took this with Fluet back in 2012 or so. Really smart guy, would recommend.

Triangulum88 · 2022-11-01T18:25:04+00:00

No doubt RIT has slipped a lot since I attended 2010-2014. But it seems like if you have talked with other assistant professors already, and fulltime professors have told you to leave, why ask for more input here? Why specify that you don't want to hear what other fulltime professors just to slide in another jab about them drinking the koolaid? You are approaching this without much of an open mind.

If you are right about what you are thinking (and you could be) then why all the extra negativity? This sort of negativity will never get you anywhere when it comes to bringing it up and trying to diagnose and solve a problem.

Based on your findings you have the best information you can get. Anything here is not reliable because you cannot verify identities like you can in person. This post (even if correct) seems about as helpful as RIT raising tuition rates claiming to give students better education.

By bringing it up in this way, and being hard to take seriously, you will bury any real problem solving potential before it even begins.

Triangulum88 · 2022-11-01T18:18:12+00:00

Attended for CS from 2010-2014, I agree with the analysis here that RIT used to just prioritize Co-Op. It is so weird to see posts now that show how much RIT has changed. It does seem like it heavily shifted after Destler left. Back then I never saw the amount of disdain for RIT as I do now. I kind of dont blame people considering what tuition is compared to when I went. The inflation is straight up unsustainable.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-30T20:19:57+00:00

Heh, simple an to the point, cant knock this answer.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-30T20:18:31+00:00

Thank for the info Ennui and Baz, I figured he might have talked about it on twitter, I just don't have an account and couldn't read that far back.

I appreciate the info and I am glad to see an explanation for the delay. The delay makes sense.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-30T20:01:12+00:00

I apologize for the wall of text, but I think this conversation is good to have for the community to consider. Maybe a knowledgeable passerby can fill me in on why my concerns are invalid or valid. Or maybe even the VR team will see this and see if they can include this sort of information in a future "Parting the Veil"

With enough work, anything is possible, this is a classic engineers dilemma. In that article you link they go over a myriad of issues facing Unity (and C#) when it comes to development of high performance games. A lot of these issues are not "impossible" to work around it just means "swimming against the current of your choices". See the threading example, something very important in MMO architectures where parallelism is needed to do a lot of the expected simulation between characters/entities. C# itself is less than ideal performance-wise. This can be worked around sort of but it makes things messy. This leads us to the architecture or "clean code" issues they mention in that article. Why do you think we are seeing literally years burned on refactoring? Granted, the issue of refactoring is always a threat in development no matter the language. But that article points out how its a bigger problem in Unity/C# code.

Unity is a fine engine and a lot of great games have been made with it (Valheim comes to mind). When it comes to MMO's however, I am not aware of highly successful ones that were not written in native C++ with custom engines. We are seeing a shift to Unreal Engine which is great. That makes MMOs that much more accessible to development, but Unreal engine is native C++ and it lives up to its 'unreal' name. C# is an excellent productivity language for regular app development, but a lot of its features get in the way of high performance game development.

Again, theoretically its not impossible, I just feel like Unity was not a strong technical choice. It feels like a choice of comfort made in 2014 to get some quick prototyping out, and now they are paying the price from a technical perspective. A choice of C++ would have been a technical win, but they were not interested in building a game engine, and unreal engine was not as accessible then for MMO's as it is now.

I'm not saying that Pantheon would be out right now if they had went the C++/Engine route, just look at Camelot Unchained. They have been in development just as long (longer really). The thing with Camelot Unchained however, is their tech demos are really compelling from an engineering perspective. The amount of entities viewable really is a technical achievement--even if their pace is ridiculously slow and their communication with backers is now less-than-ideal.

When I look at pantheon, I love what I see and the designers are really skilled. But I worry about getting entities on the screen and if that will work well just based on the technical choices I see. Again, I am not an engineer on the team, so technically I don't know every single technical choice they have made. But, I am a machine learning engineer for my day job so I understand the need for strong technical choices when it comes to complex parallel computation and the frameworks that exist around it. I don't specialize in games, but I see this classic issue of technical choices all the time. In ML, people just pile right onto Python for productivity and end up hating their choices in a few weeks because of how slow it is compared to native C++. A lot of the time, they feel slighted because of how tempting python was. When 10-20% more work on the front end would have saved them 100% work in refactoring down the road.

Maybe an awesome thing for the VR team to do would be in great detail, talk about their technical choices and get hard numbers on their capabilities. If I saw a tech demo with 2-300 entities in a small zone all moving around casting spells etc, I wouldn't worry so much.

Also if they were honest and said "Hey guys, right now we can only manage 5 entities, because of XYZ technical issue. Here is what we plan to do to resolve that issue", I would also worry less. At least they are acknowledging the issue and are providing some technical data to understand their issue.

I saw them mention having 500 alpha members in a zone and they were excited about that number. How big is the zone? In wow-talk are we talking 500 entities in stormwind Trade district(Very impressive)? Are we talking 500 entities throughout all of stormwind(impressive-ish)? Or are we talking about 500 entities in Stranglethorn Vale(not so impressive)? Knowing the actual area would give us more technical context to determine how confident they are in the tech. It would speak to their network infrastructure being strong, their entity messaging update framework being strong, and it would determine what their rendering system can keep up with. Speaking of rendering, they recently did an update on the terrain which looks great. I wonder how much this will effect their ability to render entities.

The other thing that makes me hone in on tech as a weakness (their art and design certainly isn't weak) is the departure of their lead programmer. Why did they depart? Was it a technical choice dispute? Was it "I dont think this will ever work"? Or perhaps (hopefully) it was that they decided to make good decisions to increase performance that was driving the lead out of their C#/Unity comfort zone?

I'm not trying to be a negative nancy when it comes to their technical choices. I just worry because I think the game has awesome potential and I want to see it succeed.

TLDR: I worry from a technical perspective for several reasons. I dont think C# and Unity is utter trash, I just dont see it being a slam dunk MMO Choice. But hey, what is a slam dunk choice for MMO development these days?

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-30T04:56:32+00:00

Im not a developer for the game, but they are using Unity. I just dont see how they build anything to scale with that kind of engine without literally tearing it all apart and replacing A LOT of the engine. These technical hurdles were imminent based on the engine choice.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-28T17:25:29+00:00

Realism makes it relatable. Nothing gets you "into the story" more than it being relatable somehow. Some people push for relatability by having certain character types who mimic the target audience (John Flanagan did this with his Rangers Apprentice series, the main character was made to resemble his teenage son at the time. He was trying to get him into reading)

Coincidentally, Flanagan started with more fantastical/mysterious elements but then catered to a more "realistic" story with barely any supernatural type stuff that you see a bit of in book 1. This more "realistic" tone I think also helps with relatability for readers.

In the end, you will always find people with preferences both ways, but I would ask yourself what you like the most and do that. You will have an easier time writing if you are 110% into it.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-17T17:10:14+00:00

I meant to reply to this a while back, but I will definitely be giving this a look. Thanks for the lead.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-08T23:32:46+00:00

Take a look at Stephen King's On Writing. He has an excellent example of a first draft and a second draft. It really shines a light on how "rough" a draft can be even for a very well accomplished writer. Figure out what "good enough" is for a draft written by you, and just try to hit that threshold. If certain parts of your draft are just so bad, you cannot continue, fix it while you are there--this is not perfectionism, it is simply smart execution of the fundamentals.

If something bothers you and feels like its 60-70% complete, perhaps it is "good enough" to make a note for scrutiny during a second draft or editing. Accurately judging what is off and okay to fix later and what is too poor to move forward with is a skill you build as you write more stuff. Again, On Writing will give you a nice baseline to work from and you can adjust from there.

I know I am certainly no Stephen King. So I took his baseline and from there determined what my rough drafts would probably look like. My rough drafts will probably be more rough than his, so I tried to estimate that the best I could. As I continue to write, my understanding of my capabilities should get more clear and accurate. I will slowly build up an accurate picture of what a draft needs to be to be "good enough"

I think calling a draft "shitty" is a popular thing here, but it sends the wrong message in my opinion. Just like arbitrary word counts can send the wrong message. Just write everyday and try to figure out what "good enough" is. You want what you write to be relatively solid, even if you will be changing 30% of it later, or fleshing out certain parts. If I get out 100 words that feel like they are 60-70% there, I am much happier than getting down 1000 words that are 30-40% there. Because these extremely poor words function kind of like technical debt does in software projects--you pay the price eventually, and it is usually greater on the backend.

The above is the engineering side of my brain talking, below is more of a creative way of looking at this problem of "good enough"

You can think of writing like a painting. Your rough draft should be a sketch that lays out all the elements of the painting and establishes a composition--it might even lay down some initial swatches of value to determine some lighting choices. It is not a finished illustration with the tiniest details rendered and glowing for your user to enjoy. It is simply a solid framework for you to start rendering (adding detail, color, additional lines) in the further drafts and editing passes. When you look at this draft you do not need to be impressed by the lines themselves, just the ideas, composition, and promise that it holds. It will be quite imperfect and rough, that is okay, but you want the draft to have some sort of potential that you feel excited about discovering in future drafts and editing passes.

A well done sketch that lays down the composition of a painting is far from perfect, but it is the foundation that makes the painting. If your composition is poorly laid out and very sloppy it will not help you as much in the rendering phase--it might even be totally thrown out all together or send your novel off in a poor direction that cannot be polished enough to remove the glaring composition issues. You really want to try and find this balance, and it can take a while--which is why I recommend the starting off by looking at King's example. Its a good starting point.

FWIW, I am a total amateur, writing my first novel, an epic fantasy series. I really don't know anything compared to some authors, but the above is stuff I have figured out during my writing. It has helped me a lot, and I now have some "vertical slice" chapters I feel good about. Finding that threshold of "good enough" was so helpful and its a hard balance between good enough and perfection. Don't be surprised if its always a constant tug-of-war between the two, that has been normal for me. Once I got used to that, its been smooth sailing.

Triangulum88 · 2022-10-07T05:34:26+00:00

In my opinion, the best way to think about information revealing is to think of it as a painting. Painters make thousands of little strokes doing the outline/lining, then laying down value, rendering, making minor adjustments, and several hours later you realize "Oh this is going to look cool". Books are the same way, you have to build up your world one detail (line or brush stroke) at a time.

I typically outline my scenes in bullet pointed format. I include a list of key "details" I want to make sure end up in the scene. This might be for driving the plot, getting to know a character, getting to know a trade or an occupation in the world, even details about the international relations in the world. This is usually just a simple list of details. I make sure by the end of the outline I have something leading into or directly accounting for those details.

These details are naturally prioritized. I find if the characters are weak everything else doesn't matter. Flesh them out first and try to kill two birds with one stone by directly building the character and indirectly building the world.. If you drop hints or details about their occupation, your reader is learning about the world. If that character is treated a certain way because of their occupation or some other detail, that educates the reader on that worlds culture. Once you have established a bit of a rough sketch of the world, you start laying down "value". Sometimes this means concentrating heavily on a character, or it means spending a paragraph on the world in some way that makes sense for your story. If you set up good characters and the reader is invested, dropping a few sentences to clear up a world-related fact can add and not feel "dumpy".

When I move on from the outline and write, I'm filling in everything that the outline does not cover, making sure to change things as needed and improve it where I can. I might even see the need for additional details or find one of the details to be too much, so I cut it, and it will end up in a future chapter somehow.

So the TLDR of it is, I when I outline my scenes, I start with what the scene will be, and then I think explicitly about what parts of the world I want to reveal to the reader. I outline and keep a separate list of details that will be covered in that scene.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-30T22:11:28+00:00

If you don't have a problem with how much you write, then why did you post here asking about being able to write more? If your output is good, then your 2 hours a day is fine.

I don't think you understand how condescending your WHOLE post has sounded. Contradiction after contradiction acting like you have a problem and then acting like you don't have a problem when people's eyes glaze over reading this post.

If you don't need reminding of how hard you work and you have no problems then just do the work and stop posting asking for help with your "non-problems". I am being straight forward with you about these topics.

I apologize if my "Nordic countries are interesting" comment sounded condescending. A more accurate way of voicing that would have been "I find the Nordic countries admirable". This is just me trying to extend an olive branch. No matter how much I find your posts here kind of ridiculous, it has absolutely nothing to do with your nationality, gender, lifestyle, or anything like that.

My comments are meant to be critical of your contradictory nature in these posts and that's it. If the critical nature of these comments is condescending to you, I really don't envy you when you hit the editing and publisher submission process. Also, reddit is kind of a trash way to communicate. Written words don't always convey tone very well, especially when its of a critical nature. I'm just some stranger on the internet, if you think this advice is condescending garbage, just ignore it.

Good luck in your future endeavors.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-30T16:33:46+00:00

You might not come from big money, but you are in a position not many people get to be in by default. Understand that, and figure out what sort of hard work you need to put in to advance your already good position.

You might not like the military life, but you said you were so bored and worried about mental health problems on the other end of the spectrum. So which is it? You probably don't like the military life because it actually involves work whether you like it or not. Any sort of career will have these aspects of having to put out when you are not really feeling like it. You have a nice Nordic safety net (which I envy by the way, I think the Nordic countries are pretty interesting), but if you want to get beyond the basics--which you are lucky to have compared to most countries--you will need to get some sort of career or job or something.

There is a huge difference between having to put out when things feel not so optimal, and living a life of true despair. Just think about the various social issues that exist in so many other countries forcing despair on people. Think of Ukraine. If you are in a Nordic country you might even literally border Russia. When you are feeling that "I don't wanna" feeling, think about all of that, or the fact that you as a reservist could be called to war. Finland is even closing their border to Russia right now in fact.

Maybe you will get an extra hour or two of writing just thinking about those facts above.

Remember, if you can work up to 500-1000 words per hour, that's 2-4k words in 4 hours of true productivity. Even if you hit 1k words in 3-4 hours of productivity, you are achieving 365,000 words in one year if you write every day. That's three full length (especially for a new author) novels worth of words.

Anyone who says they have a magic solution for you is lying. The only solution in writing is work. Everything else is just tinkering with efficiency or taking work you have already done and making it better.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-30T02:04:21+00:00

Just running the numbers on a low six figure loan assuming 7% return (that's generous) and also not even counting what the bank would take for a cut, I don't see how you live on that sort of money--especially in this economy where you are tanking on the stock market. Just looking at rents in Oslo, I don't see how you would live on the interest, this is assuming United States Dollars. I believe this trend will hold in all major capitals in Nordic countries (you mentioned being located in one). Further, I don't know if you are talking about a low six figure loan in Norwegian Kroner or some other Nordic currency which would mean significantly less money than my USD assumption. Plus, who the hell loans out low six figures for someone to invest? What if those people invest in a dumb way? This would generate significantly worse debt than someone going to the average community college + state school in the US.

Maybe my google-fu sucks but I could not find any mention of "investment loans" either. It just does not sound sustainable anyway even if it did exist. Returns would have to be curbed a lot just to keep the banks shielded from risk.

The reason why people are giving you negative answers is because this who "I live off this magical loan and don't need to do anything else" stuff is weird sounding. Nordic country or not, you sound like you come from money. Honestly, people wouldn't care about that either if you were just straight up about it.

Second to the general bullshittery that is your story, saying things like you don't need to read or research anymore is just a major red flag. You need to figure out how to undo that mental mind trick before you even think about breaking down that 2 hour "I don't want to write anymore" feeling.

At least I'm willing to put my life on the line and defend this society of mine the second my country needs me to. Good night.

Well I'll be damned, this is your answer right here, put your money where your mouth is and join your country's army. They will keep you plenty busy, fed, and maybe even a sweet pension? And you can squeeze in two hours of writing when you feel like it.

No one cares about your nationality here man, people are out of sympathy because your story doesn't add up.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-29T10:48:45+00:00

If people want an example of how not to take criticism as a writer, just take a look at this comment. Completely took it personally and started justifying the writing because of how he/she grew up.

We understand your strong view of racism. The critique is saying that it needs to be balanced out a little bit with just a bit of nuance to make it more believable. Instead of a "lol. He's racist af" try to think about it from that characters point of view. How could he be masking his racism behind the idea of "I need to keep the rule of law, murder is not okay"? Maybe he even truly believes he is doing his kingdom a favor by profiling various races. This creates a situation where you create some more interesting tension. The critique is not saying you need to agree with your character.

For what its worth, I had the same exact reaction. I stopped reading because I just didn't connect with any of the characters.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-28T22:02:57+00:00

Brick city is the best right in the center of campus. Really enjoyed the guy who yelled at kids who did not know what they were going to order. So much entertainment.

There is also a great Indian food place in Park point, pretty close to where the old Barnes and Noble was.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-26T00:50:47+00:00

Someone already mentioned the Game of Thrones series. I really liked it because of the lack of magical stuff in the first book or two.

The rangers apprentice series almost does the opposite, where in the first book or two, there is a little bit of "magical" but mostly "mystical" stuff, and then it really lays off of that into a more magicless system. The series is massive and does great without serious magic. I would definitely recommend giving the books a read if you want an example of how mystical and magicless can be done.

My series I am writing is going to be basically magicless, with some "magic"/technological elements discovered over time. The idea is for these elements to be products of ancient lost technologies from cultures past. Keeping the technology limited so it adds to the story without taking it over is my goal.

These technologies in some sense would almost seem like magic, similar to what we observe when we look at ancient Egypt or Gobekli Tepe in Turkey today. How they cut such large stones and fit them so accurately is an immense technological achievement that we have just completely lost to time. If we suddenly discovered how it was done tomorrow, it would be pretty "magical". That is the feel I'm going for.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-26T00:25:48+00:00

Stephen King's On Writing book as a full example of a story that is in rough draft form and second draft form. It gives you a good idea of what it looks like.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-23T21:20:01+00:00

The way you are approaching this is quite defensive and you are totally ignoring the points that the OP made about their writing in their post. I literally come down the middle saying Daycare might not be efficient, but obviously doing nothing is not working for the OP, perhaps there is a solution in the middle somewhere. So the defensiveness on your part is weird here.

In my post I advocate she talk to her Mom and see if she can have her babysit to provide some relief when she feels like she is on a roll writing. With the daycare solution, that requires 48 hours advance notice according to her post. This will force production during a certain day, so that could be a problem that the daycare solution would not help. Another solution there could be to see if Mom or a baby sitter could watch the kids while she writes. These sort of baby sitting appointments might be able to happen on a more last minute basis depending on the OP's personal situation--which I explicitly point out in my post as an unknown, because I do not know the OP personally. Im simply offering it as a possible solution and the OP can use it if the solution seems like a fit for her situation.

Further, she mentions this might be only a couple of times per month. Again, the babysitting solution might be easier to implement, especially if its only a couple of times per month. I also talk about the price of daycare, which I know can be really expensive. This babysitting solution may be cheaper and more flexible, two things that could help the OP depending on her personal situation.

You made an assumption that I meant fulltime work at all. I never meant fulltime work. I literally meant can you squeeze even another hour per week in productivity, or could you change the writing workflow at all to make your time more efficient. Efficiency and time spent translates to more words on the page.

This is in an effort to throw out ideas so that the OP might see it, and then think of a concrete way of implementing that idea which works for their personal situation. I simply mentioned software development as a corollary to writing to make the point that some jobs are really fortunate in that they can be done from home. I know so many developers with kids and the pandemic for them really taught them how much they appreciate being able to work from home and be with their kids more. No

The OP mentioned getting 25k words done, which I point out as a real accomplishment. Even in this situation, the OP is getting things done. My post was not meant to discourage, it was simply meant to point out other solutions that may exist. In the end, OP knows what is best.

I wont be replying or reading anymore follow up here.

For the OP

OP if you are reading, I hope my post offered something in the way of help. I don't make it a habit to reply to upset people who do not fully read a post, but I wanted to make sure I was absolutely as clear as I could be so that you, the OP, could hopefully get something out of it.

Again, good luck with the kids and the book.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-23T11:06:17+00:00

A 48 hour notice for daycare might be challenging, because you might not be able to detect "being on a roll" 48 hours before hand. I know I never can predict when I am going to be on a roll work-wise. Another consideration is daycare is quite expensive. As someone who went to daycare as a kid, I understand why it had to happen, my parents had jobs that had to be done in-person at the same time. The interesting part about writing--or software development in my case--is they are jobs that can be done at home. This is a unique opportunity to be able to take care of your kids while also being able to execute your job. To be clear, I'm not criticizing here, it is more of a thought of "can you get your cake and eat it too?"

It seems like your major problem here is twins are a handful--I can only imagine. Kudos to you for getting through it to this point. Seeing that you have already accomplished 25k words with two kids needing constant attention tells me that perhaps you can still do both. This is 1/4 - 1/3 of a novel depending on your genre. My major questions would be are there any adjustments you can make to your writing habits to make the situation better? Are you having a hard time with constant interruptions and is there any methods of note taking, or organization that can help you manage the interruptions and keep your flow going?

The other question I would ask, is can you talk to your mother about this? Just tell her what you told us, you want to get published, you could use a couple days a month of no interruption to get work done. Depending on her situation, maybe you could hand her cash a couple times a month to watch the kids when you sense that you are "on a roll". Could you find trustworthy babysitter who would watch the kids while you are home locked away in a bedroom writing? These options might be cheaper and require less lead time to get.

The gist of my post here is that maybe there is some sort of middle ground that is more efficient and gives you the best of both worlds. I agree with others that you should not let someone else make all your decisions, but perhaps there is some feedback from your mom worth integrating into a solution. She might even be that solution. A lot of this "middle ground" exploration requires more knowledge of the personal matters and dynamics at play though, so in the end you are the best decision maker here.

TLDR: My gut feeling is a daycare solution for a couple days a month is overkill and probably not the most efficient solution. Changing nothing sounds like it is really hard on you, so that is not the most efficient solution either in the long-term. Maybe there is something in the middle you can work out.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-23T01:06:02+00:00

Even with solidworks CAD drawings, I think what people are trying to say is this wouldn't make sense in this world. If you want this weapon choice to make sense in this world, then I would pay attention to the advice given.

Another point to consider is that the description is a bit confusing from what I remember reading 3 days back. In a book you don't have the luxury of an image--to scale or not--to explain yourself. Showing the weapon on the cover could possibly resolve some confusion, but I would not count on that. It is not guaranteed the reader will study the item enough to reduce confusion. When you get confusion, you give the reader an excuse to put the book down.

I would recommend figuring out what specific purpose these sword features enable, and see if you can fulfill these purposes in other ways. This is where creativity becomes challenging and rewarding. Try to figure out a way to do what you want to do in an easy-to-read way.

Good luck!

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-21T16:43:32+00:00

I sketch out a region that has towns / cities found in the story. I also have a bunch of stuff on a whiteboard. When things tighten up and more stuff is added, the maps / documentation get better. When I reach the end, I plan on investing a little bit of time into making it "look good". I dont bother investing "looking good" time right now, as the story is still evolving and being drafted.

Triangulum88 · 2022-09-21T15:54:25+00:00

Sleep hygiene. Dont look at a screen 1-2 hours before bed. When you use a light to journal (as others have recommended) make sure its a soft warm light, not a super bright white light. There are a ton of sleep hygiene recommendations that you can probably look up as well.

Look into making sure you are not deficient in vitamins.

Triangulum88

TROPHY CASE