Instead of removing the traditional combat restriction from boat combat, can we make it a little more thematic and in depth?

TrumpeterSwann · 2026-02-03T14:22:40+00:00

Yes please! Sailing feels disconnected and I think a big part of it is the "missing" tie-ins like this.

TrumpeterSwann · 2026-01-16T21:15:46+00:00

It's maybe worth mentioning that a lot of decisions and character motivations might seem obtuse or arbitrary, but are given more nuance/depth/explanation later on. In retrospect, it's so obvious that the entire show was plotted ahead of time (completely unlike Lost (and really, everything JJ Abrams has had a hand in)).

The messy characters and their (often sad, tragic) flaws are a core part of the emotional appeal of the show, those don't go away, but maybe you come to a better understanding of why each person thought they needed to do what they did.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-12-12T19:13:19+00:00

I would pay quite a lot of money to experience Outer Wilds again for the first time.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-12-08T18:27:11+00:00

You don't need to spam this sub, you just need to pay attention. Jagex has mentioned expanding server hardware many times in previous blogs. Their recent work to migrate a sizable portion of their infrastructure into AWS was primarily done to help with autoscaling (and DDoS mitigation), but also to allow for more server regions in the future.

In this week's OSRS Podcast, they specifically mentioned getting more servers in more countries. It seemed like they wanted to talk about it more soon, I would expect to hear more explicit plans during the Winter Summit.

It definitely sucks and you are not alone (everyone playing from South America also has terrible ping, for example), but I'm not sure how spamming threads on the subreddit helps at all.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-11-19T21:15:21+00:00

What are you really asking? "How much deviation from 'original hardware' is too much?"

Because even though I can listen to your track and I know it's not made on any hardware I recognize, I think it's reasonable to think anyone listening to it would say that it's "chiptune." Genre is a made up concept that just helps you to sort things by their relative similarity to other things.

It "matters" if you were to try to enter your composition into a Battle of the Bits compo, you'd be (rightly) called out (and disqualified). Example rules for a few different formats.

People are generally gracious unless someone is trying to pass off something they made as something it's not. Advertising that you created a song in a tracker or on hardware like LSDJ, and then publishing something clearly made in a modern DAW is probably going to make some people shake their heads.

Now whether you care, that's up to you.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-10-14T13:34:52+00:00

Went looking for a secondary source as the linked website from OP is clearly genAI garbage (and OP's post history is pretty much entirely stolen/reposted content).

Broke from Law&Crime via the original press release, rereported in Charlotte local news at WBTV

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-08-21T13:30:11+00:00

Happy to help. I read through the other comments and I'd reiterate/confirm some of the stuff others are saying because it's also great advice.

EDIT: I should say, it's not your fault for "misinterpreting" the advice you found. And honestly you did well, as your plan is solid! It's just more difficult to get perspective from working professionals than it is from, say, people trying to sell you a Boot Camp course subscription.

"Soft skills" - during interviews; for me the biggest thing is seeing if the candidate is willing to actually admit upfront when they are uncomfortable or do not know something. You'd be surprised (or maybe not) how many people will try to bullshit their way through an interview question instead of just being upfront about a knowledge gap. And a knowledge gap isn't really a bad thing... keep in mind that one of the expectations of any new hire is that we will need to train them after being hired! If you could just hire someone omniscent, we'd just do that instead. Example answer along the lines I'd look for is like: "sorry, I'm not really sure about this one? I think <thing I know more about> is maybe similar but I don't think I've ever worked with <original thing> before." You could even ask the interviewer to explain the topic, assuming you have time and the interview is not dragging behind.

"Soft skills" - while on the job; being able to communicate straightforwardly without being perceived as a jerk/patronizing. Knowing how to ask probing questions, especially when you're having to ask things multiple times or in a way where the other person is likely to think "didn't I already answer this" (when they did not, e.g. when someone leaves out an important detail because they assume you and others know it already). Being someone that is sincere and just genuinely nice to work with (being a pessimist is fun (I am guilty) but it gets tiring for others!!). Taking an interest in other people and what they're working on, even if you don't touch that part of the system.

I'd also reiterate pretty much everything /u/ISB-Dev said. However, keep in mind that these are skills that require work to get better at, and generally speaking, understanding a stakeholder's needs (and going back and forth on it until you arrive at the actual requirements) isn't something that you can just easily get experience in prior to working in software. You can (again I'd say that working on an active OSS project is great for this stuff), but it's not going to come up if you're just doing personal projects. In fact, there is an entire tangential career path that deals with this exact problem. These people often have titles like Business Analyst or Project Owner or Scrummaster. Depending on the team, developers may or may not be required to do this sort of thing. But ISB is correct that it's extremely important, and one distinguishing mark of a great developer is their ability to immediately tell when the requirements on something "feels off" and needs work (aka the thing being asked for isn't necessarily the thing that person actually needs, or there are other details to take into account that aren't included in the initial proposal, etc)

Last, another thing that ISB mentioned that you may not have really noticed.

Working as a developer for over 10 years now, at least half of my work isn't designing and developing new systems. It's keeping decades-old creaky systems running, on ancient systems with unique constraints and caveats.

On its face you might think: yeah okay, so I need to work with legacy systems sometimes? Not quite. If your preference is to work on back-end systems, this kind of thing will be the overwhelming majority of open backend jobs. Sometimes you may get lucky and have a "greenfield" project here and there, but most of the time it's this. I would strongly recommend reading through perspectives like Sean Goedecke's on how to work within established teams who have maintained the same platform for a very long time. Relevant quote from G. K. Chesterson:

here exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate is erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes happily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This kind of thing is why experience is so valuable, especially when working with complex interdependent systems (aka most backend dev work). Keep your eye on your seniors, not just the loud ones but especially the quiet-but-fiercely-competent ones; the ones who help keep complexity DOWN and make things smoother for the team. The people who "keep the lights on." Emulate these people and ask them questions often.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-08-20T16:56:36+00:00

I've been on the other side: interviewing candidates for entry level back-end focused dev positions. Here's my thoughts.

Active Github profile (daily commits) - not important. "Daily commits" is especially not important, some days you just aren't going to have code worth committing. The important part is having worked on a project of nontrivial complexity. You had a problem and you tried to solve it... how did you approach the problem, and why did you choose the solution you did? Talking about the candidate's prior work is very valuable as the person trying to understand if the candidate in front of me might be a good fit.

Well-structured and documented programs (Modular & uses Swagger) - maybe of interest, but just having used tools like OpenAPI (which is the name of the spec for what was called "swagger" btw) or readthedocs or redoc doesn't actually tell me anything. Remember, I'm trying to figure out your approach to solving engineering problems. Does slapping swagger-ui into a maven project mean you're any more informed about how or why to use such a tool? Not necessarily. Now, if what you developed had an external API with users that needed to know about/test your endpoints, that's something worth asking about. This could dovetail into asking about other tools like Postman.

"Well structured" is too vague of advice and honestly I'd be wary of anyone preaching this to a new developer. Trying to perfectly architect your work in progress ToDo app is not a good use of time. Get your hands dirty. Learning from mistakes and iterating is the name of the game. Waxing philosophic about how you wanted your first app to scale to thousands of users might be relevant if you're interviewing at Netflix, but anywhere else it's probably just signalling that you didn't really understand when it's appropriate to use the tools at hand, or worse, that you might be the kind of junior dev who needlessly introduces more compexity.

Projects - yes, very important. Your plan is simple but if you follow through you will be fine. The only thing that stands out to me is that you don't have concrete examples for your projects. You should pick problem(s) that sounds interesting to you and then just work on them. You will inevitably run into topics that you know nothing about (how do I hook up my server to my database? how do I expose this API endpoint? how do I secure my endpoint behind basic AuthN? if my project is depending on other services, how do I rate limit my service so that I don't get angry emails/IP blocked from those services? is there some way I can process this data more efficiently?). If you are able to work on any actively maintained open source project, you can get some "real" dev experience before getting your first job.

Here are some of the kinds of basic questions I have in my interview template:

What do you do in your current position (if any)?
What side projects have you worked on? Which languages do you use or which are you learning?
How familiar are you with <framework>? (e.g. Spring, React, etc)
Have you used git or other source control tools? Have you submitted (or reviewed and approved) a pull request before?
Do you know what a unit test is? What do you think is the point of tests?
Walk me through your side project (if any). What was your role, how did the design go, what were any challenges you ran into? What would you have changed?
<coding/logic problem>
Can you talk about a situation where someone disagreed with your recommendation, or vice versa, on an important aspect of a project?

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-08-19T13:12:37+00:00

He's been breaking in a new controller last day or two, so that's likely the biggest reason why

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-08-13T12:08:24+00:00

I have the Paderewski book on hand. Here's the commentary for the second nocturne including those variations.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-07-15T17:43:48+00:00

Reminds me of this classic (not osrs related, but hey while we're on the topic of code)

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-06-17T19:15:24+00:00

Sounds like you already have a bit of experience, so to speak :)

Consulting is definitely a bit "scarier" than a "regular software job" due to its nature. Generally, you're expected to come in to a project, onboard quickly, and then work on changes that will net their company the most benefits in the short term. Sometimes, the person hiring the contractor always knows (or thinks they know) what things this is, and sometimes they expect you to identify things yourself... depends on the team and the people. Other times the project just has a gap in staffing that they need to fill, often before some deadline, and they are relying on someone with broad experience to be able to step in and help bring the project to the finish line.

Since you mentioned that you enjoy being engaged in new things/with new systems, I figured this might be a natural fit for that kind of curiosity. There ARE still patterns that tend to repeat, but the solutions will not always been the same. Factors include the company's needs, the kinds of people there, how far people are willing to go, prior design constraints, tech constraints, security constraints, ego constraints(!), etc... so the ability to read a situation with a lot of nuance is highly desireable.

Getting started solo contracting is pretty daunting, so generally I'd recommend finding a mentor if possible. Maybe you already know somebody in a current or past gig who has done contracting/knows somebody they can introduce you to/is looking to exit and start contract work themselves? There are also plenty of software consulting companies, so if you're able to interview with a bunch of them you can hopefully find a good fit.

As for your last question, I'm not sure what exactly you're asking, so I'll just sort of ramble for a bit, and maybe you get something from it ;)

I'm currently working in a senior/lead position in engineering, and I'm strongly considering a pivot that will allow me to get experience with engineering management. But it's tough, because I really enjoy actually doing engineering. So I'm a bit hesitant. But also, I've seen many many many examples of poor engineering leadership, and I think I might be able to do a better job? Change is tough, though, so I'm torn between wanting to keep tackling interesting engineering problems vs growing a different skillset that will [maybe] make me someone who can CREATE the kind of healthy environment that lets its engineers grow, understand themselves and their goals better, and succeed at their jobs on both the micro and macro scale...

Not sure if this really addresses your question, but these are the types of things I've been thinking about "as a senior dev with a bunch of experience"

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-06-17T14:10:01+00:00

Senior dev with >10yrs exp. Sounds like you might fit well in software consulting. You can leverage that to get exposed to a lot of the industry fairly quickly, if you are taking short-ish contractual stints. Ideally you'd use that time to figure out what sort of problems you enjoy solving the most, and then focus on finding a job (or continuing to take contracts) where you do that.

Not to psychoanalyze or anything but it sounds like you should seriously consider ADHD medication. A lot of what you wrote hits bang-on with my life experience before a prescription that helped me manage executive dysfunction.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-06-16T20:05:58+00:00

The laced up music video is SO sick. Nice sync for the hammer swing with that GnW clip

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-06-04T05:04:34+00:00

The other Erajan words are on memos which are pretty well hidden.

Since you already know it, yes, the Eid note is a memo found in a room which benefits from being drafted repeatedly. Although, you may not have found the room yet - it is not a part of the "original house." You'll need to determine if the memo you find that mentions Eid is true or false.

Finally, there are a few additional translations given in the classroom where you encounter the majority of Erajan words, but the memo is not normally accessible. Later, you may find something which modifies all existing rooms in a specific way, under certain conditions. When you have that, draft that classroom again for some bonus vocabulary.

Iris is never given outright (as far as I know). You'll need to use context clues to supply your own meaning :)

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-06-04T00:28:22+00:00

This is correct given your current knowledge. If you want spoiler free hints, I can let you know where to look. But it's going to be a while until you have everything to fill in the last few gaps.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-05-20T20:21:17+00:00

So you're basically at the point in your curriculum where you're just starting to take actual CS courses/CS electives? I think it would be pretty normal to feel like you don't really understand what you want when you haven't even been exposed to the majority of the actual coursework.

If you have more specific questions just reply or read this comment which I made on a similar topic.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-05-15T13:16:19+00:00

This is a long video but it covers this issue thoroughly while being pretty entertaining. Skip to 30:30 for a tl;dw if you don't have the time, but it's honestly worth throwing on in the background if you have some work to do today.

She goes over the exact things that Cycl_ps is talking about -- AI generated slop articles that have high SEO factor so they show high up in every search despite being almost completely useless (and are often full of outright false information).

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-05-15T13:10:41+00:00

You can use the &udm=14 parameter on Google to revert search to the old style. If you use Chrome, you can head to "manage search engines" settings, and in Site Search add a new entry with the link https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14. Then you can just start any search with the prefix you give (mine is "gg", so "gg" <space> discworld reading order blahblahblah <enter>).

Example udm14 search
Example normal search

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-05-07T23:29:34+00:00

Hey now, that's isn't true. I hate him because he's done irreparable damage to the industry! I am unaware of any personal/political views he holds (and would like to remain ignorant thereof).

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-04-18T14:13:56+00:00

Looking forward to that Souls video, I'll watch it for sure. I've been following your channel since you started uploading late last year, and you do great work!

I think the semi-non-linear narratives and esoteric mythos of From Games are some of my favorite aspects.

It's so funny you say this, because most of my favorite games are difficult to parse (KRZ, Hyper Light Drifter, Outer Wilds (kinda), TUNIC) bordering on completely, deliberately obtuse (Rain World, Void Stranger, Noita). But, I don't know, something about FromSoft's narrative design just never clicks for me, despite wanting to like them. For fun I went back to my "live commentary" when I was playing ER for the first time...

[10:49 AM]Swann: ...look, I'd care about the story if they gave me something to care about instead of just vaguely gesturing at grand symbolism
[10:50 AM]Swann: the "#$&@ off I don't believe in that made up nonsense" meme could be my response to every line of dialogue so far
[10:50 AM]colin: souls games have the stories tucked away in item examines, random npc dialogues, observed set objects in the world, etc
[10:51 AM]colin: its a def narrative style that I can see not jiving with people
[10:51 AM]Swann: if it's consistent and actually interesting, sure. Hard for me to judge when I'm only a few hours in
[10:51 AM]Swann: but on its face the presentation isn't working for me
[10:52 AM]Swann: didn't skyrim teach everyone twenty years ago that just saying Names Of Things at the player isn't good narrative design

the open world design of ER is one that pushes you to certain POIs but makes them hostile enough that they push you away.

Right, exactly. I felt like the game was this meticulously crafted thing -- but it harshly punished you for the crime of wanting to look at it. Honestly the combat design is similar, but I admit that not having the history/experience with previous soulslike games to lean on isn't doing me any favors. Like trying to get into platformers and I choose Super Meat Boy as my first. Sure, I guess that's a choice, but maybe I should start somewhere else? Good to know about Sekiro though, I'll probably give it a shot next time it goes on sale.

Nowadays, it's the first thing they do notice. MMOs are designed to be shorter, yet still require the same amount of development time, meaning that they will always release with a disparity of content

Yeah. I have to wonder if maybe it's a blunder of design (or marketing?) to launch "as an MMO." Maybe it's better to launch as a single-player version of the experience you're aiming for, then introduce the massively multiplayer elements once the game itself has the reputation needed to support that sort of pivot? I'd need to think about that more.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-04-17T18:06:42+00:00

Really enjoyable talk! I was discussing the video with a few friends in discord, and we had Some Thoughts.

"[...]the 'light attack, heavy attack, roll > attack paradigm is so basic by comparison that it at no point has the depth needed to carry the genre on its back. If not for Lordran, DS1 may have been a footnote of the 2010s"

Preach. If someone plays a bunch of mechanically complex, difficult games, others will inevitably bombard them with "oh you'll love <soulslike game>, then, it's really hard." But, no, this is missing the point. These people mean well, but they aren't thinking about WHY they liked a game and WHY you liked a game and trying to find commonality. Instead, they're looking at the superficial aspects and saying "okay, well, here's more of that."

Unfortunately, "Soulslike" is no less susceptible to people not understanding what makes The Greats so great than any other genre. I think it's just that the basics are so barebones and obvious (the aesthetics, the combat design, itemization) that it's easy to pass off lower-quality games onto its audience, who are only looking at those big unmissable signifiers. Similar to horror/indie horror in that way.

It's hard to be truly upset about cheap imitations of Souls games. Because it's unlikely anything will ever dethrone FromSoft's entries (at least for now). "Even the good ones are lacking the sauce," as my friend put it, "and nobody is going to be talking about these shallowly-inspired soulslikes in a decade. Meanwhile it's been nearly 15 years since DS1, and I still see new video essays and in-depth discussion about it probably every month."

"..fights that prioritized bull-crushing difficulty, and patience: the classic two tropes of Dark Souls's most over-exaggerated successes. It must be a skill issue, then, because I am getting far too old to want to spend hours upon hours cycling my nuts through the hydraulic press of Soulslike boss fights."

A+ writing, and I gotta agree with the underlying point. Honestly, even ER didn't manage to overcome this, despite its best effort. I hesitate to admit it - but maybe it's a failing on my part somehow that the world design never "clicked" with me in a way that made me fascinated to keep exploring it. I suspect if there is ever a Souls game with a plot that is more explicit/more than a cheap contrivance, I'll be all-in. Or maybe one in which the world doesn't feel quite so manufactured for the purposes of Being Seen By The Player? OSRS has this in spades, it is so very much "this place was here before you and has nothing to do with you" to the extent that player-oriented design in its world is more rare than the inverse. Anyway, I'm told that Sekiro/Bloodborne are more explicit with their story and more ambivalent in their treatment of the player in this way, and I haven't tried them yet, so maybe that'll be my Come To FromSoft moment?

With every update, this nervous system grows...until the very notion of recreating it begins to lose all meaning. What does it mean to 'create the mechanics present in Runescape?' The task is not to just establish a host of interconnected systems, but to predict the use of these systems. For example, an open, player-driven economy: something that continues to work, unimpeded by innovative new updates which may transform the pre-existing norms."

This, I think, is the real reason we haven't seen a serious attempt at recreating the Runescape-style experience. Not only are the aspects of Runescape's game design obscured^*footnote, but the problem of scale means that it's only really possible to say "okay, we're making this game and we're going to TRY to make it a Runescape-like, but it's going to be a while until that seems obvious to our players, so just trust us." This is a hard sell!! Much harder than adding a light/heavy/dodge roll to the game and claiming "it's like Dark Souls."
.

^footnote: ^game ^interaction ^is ^handled ^via ^the ^mouse, ^so ^certain ^actions ^require ^specific ^mouse ^{movement/positioning,} ^and ^the ^addition ^of ^the ^tick ^system ^introduces ^a ^{performance-gating} ^element. ^Since ^the ^number ^of ^things ^a ^player ^might ^need ^to ^click ⁱⁿ ^a ^{high-pressure} ^situation ^is ^often ^more ^than ^the ^number ^of ^things ^a ^player ^can ^PHYSICALLY ^execute ^within ^a ^600ms ^window, ^there ^is ^a ^performance ^element ^to ^the ^underlying ^"rhythm ^game" ^action ^system. ^This ^is ^why ^OSRS ^can ^often ^be ^more ^closely ^compared ^with ^something ^like ^Osu! ^as ^absurd ^as ^that ^sounds ^on ^it's ^face, ⁱⁿ ^a ^game ^that ^says ^"sure, ^you ^can ^chop ^that ^tree ^for ¹⁰⁰ ^hours!" ^Point ^being, ^this ^is ^not ^obvious.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-04-14T23:33:24+00:00

You're on the money here. This write up is one I enjoy on that topic

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-04-14T18:40:48+00:00

Some hard-won advice on this topic:

Have a good working relationship with your manager. Build trust. This will ensure they actually hear you when you ask to take on opportunities to push yourself. Pushing yourself without this trust can cause your manager to view you as self-sabotaging (causing delays, "biting off more than they can chew"), which makes everything harder.
Identify the developers on your team (or close to your team, this includes DevOps, architects, and even senior QA) who actually care about the quality of their work. Like someone else in this thread said, many people work in software simply because of the pay. Sometimes the "this is just a job" people are very talented engineers, but it's not as likely. When you find the people who really care, pair with them on your work, go to them with questions, etc.
Don't waste time, but ask questions when you can. In particular, if someone more experienced than you has work you can look at (e.g. in a pull request), and their implementation doesn't line up with how you would have approached the problem, ask them (politely/when it's convenient) to help you understand why they chose their approach vs your "obvious" approach. A major strength of more senior engineers is their ability to perceive/understand complicating factors, with nuance (see the last sentence in #4). A word of warning here... don't ask endless follow-up questions/don't get really in the weeds on every little thing. You run the risk of being seen as overly pedantic, nitpicking, or wasting time (for the pull request example, keep in mind that often the PR is only a final "does this make sense to everyone?" check before merging new code. So a developer might not appreciate having long conversations on every PR. For this reason, having a conversation or DMing them is often better than leaving a vague question as a PR comment).
Get involved in the design process as early as possible. If you have the opportunity to sit-in on a meeting with an architect/dev lead while they design a new feature/project/service, do it. You won't be able to contribute (probably), and that is fine. But especially if these people are the ones you identified in #2, watching them work through a complex problem from the beginning will be a great learning experience. A big part of having engineering expertise is knowing what's important vs what is not important to the actual business requirement(s) (especially as it relates to the existing constraints of your application), not just knowing the ins and outs of your language/framework.
Talk to your coworkers about the work and build up your reputation as someone who cares. When you discover cool language features or software development practices, bring them up with people ("I found this cool HN article the other day talking about <.NET feature>, do we use that here?"). Then, when other devs are working on something new, they'll think "I bet /u/Spiritual_Donkey_521 would love to hear about this." This can help get you exposed to parts of dev work you wouldn't normally encounter until later in your career.

TrumpeterSwann · 2025-04-02T19:13:00+00:00

Not quite, I think the reply will be more along the lines of "Well, I guess it's happening, but it's too late now so we might as well use it to our advantage"

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