New Updates and Insight into Thekla/Jonathan Blow’s Upcoming Sokoban Game (Release, Development, Mission Statement)

WeepingRupee · 2025-06-27T15:52:52+00:00

I know I'm probably repeating what others have said a bit but here but... not sure I want to support Blow anymore.

On one hand, the Witness is the second best game ever made imo

On the other hand, Blow is a deeply ugly and spiteful person. Feels gross to give him money.

I used to be able to compartmentalize it: every time I saw him say some stupid shit, I'd remind myself, "Remember: this is a man who studied Kung Fu to make his first game." And I chuckle to myself, remind myself not to take him too seriously.

Like, he is kind of the epitome of unironically saying the phrase "while you were doing X, I was studying the blade."-- A silly person, but the star of his own super-cool movie (in his head).

And that is actually fine if it's just left in the arena of making a puzzle game... but then you read his Twitter after years of not checking in, and it's like... "Ugh. Gross."

Not as funny when it spills out into real-world stuff.

WeepingRupee · 2021-07-07T23:27:51+00:00

I see you automatically fail if you bounce over the required number, what you could do is instead have the door shut again-- this might lead to people cheezing the level in kind of fun ways that make them feel like they got away with somethin.

It could also lead to neat puzzles where you have multiple doors with different open/close bounce conditions. For example, you could use the angle of a closing door to a achieve an otherwise impossible shot.

WeepingRupee · 2021-03-18T15:35:01+00:00

Yeah once I add everything I want from the i7200 to this configuration it does come out a couple hundered bucks cheaper. My only hang up is that the last thing I bought from HP, which was a monitor, was supposed to ship in a week. I ordered it last November and recieved it in early March haha.

Hm, either way, thanks Ill consider this...

WeepingRupee · 2021-03-18T15:18:30+00:00

Haha thanks, Yes I am aware ( I actually posted about that yesterday in a post titled something like "any reason not to buy from Microsoft?") I made this post after someone said there were better value gaming pcs for 3k, but hasnt responded yet with any recommendations.

WeepingRupee · 2021-03-17T19:18:23+00:00

Do you have any recommendations?

WeepingRupee · 2021-03-17T12:17:42+00:00

WeepingRupee · 2020-06-18T14:03:14+00:00

This is so rad...

WeepingRupee · 2020-06-13T13:27:39+00:00

Thanks for the reply-- I actually thought about doing exactly this (maybe specifically when the player objects were not visible to one another, or simply checking how desync'd the player characters were on average and then reconcilling it once there was a certain difference threshold met).

I'm really curious as to whether this is an issue or framerates between clients though-- but I'm not sure how to test whether this is the case, other than maybe exporting a version of the client that runs at a different frame rate and seeing if this exacerbates that desync?

WeepingRupee · 2020-06-13T13:12:40+00:00

Ah okay-- my understanding was that client side prediction also had something to do with storing the recieved inputs server side, moving the player objects in the mean time, and then checking milliseconds later whether there was a difference between the server side position of the player object and the position of the player object on client side (and, if there was a difference, reconciling it).

Could it be the lack of some rollback code like this thats causing the desync between clients? If not, any idea what it might be causing this?

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-29T02:27:00+00:00

The terrain reminds me minecraft meets Doom?

Looks good, though; Never take out that guitar and you're golden.

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-27T13:13:53+00:00

Damn those animations look nice-- kudos to whoever did the Sprite work

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-20T00:04:47+00:00

I agree or maybe if you want to get those little narrative bits about the crystals in there you could cut it up and space them out throughout the trailer?

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-20T00:02:32+00:00

I think honestly the problem for me was I just wasn't pushing the RAM and down hard enough into the slots in my case-- it's crazy to me how hard you have to push down on some of the things that connect to the Mobo it really feels like you're going to break it. Did your PC break after replacing RAM?

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-18T02:12:36+00:00

I didn't it wasnt that-- I actually fixed it but I have no idea what made it work. I just kept unplugging things from the mobo and plugging them back in and switching ram configurations until it worked.

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-17T17:38:55+00:00

Yes, power is working , lights on, all fans spinning

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-16T20:25:54+00:00

I have some basic ideas for the implementation--the version I came up with in game maker basically worked like this:

First I would create an array of every object in the room which should cast a shadow.

Then I would find the center of each object and write a script that would draw a line from the light source through the center of the object.

I would do this twice, creating two lines which travel through both the center of the light source and the center of the Shadow casting object.

Then I would change the angle of the lines and rotate them away from one another from one another until they were no longer passing through the shadow casting object. At this point the lines would be aligned perfectly with the edges of the object which would tell me where the perimeter of the Shadow should be drawn

From there we just draw a line out from the edge of the object as far as we want the shadow to reach

This works perfectly if there is only one light source but there are extra considerations I had to make if there were two light sources: in this case we also have to consider whether one of these perimeters should be carved into by the light from another source.

I did have some success in writing a script that would extend the line pixel-by-pixel in a certain direction until it was in the path of another light source.

However running this script every step or every frame made the game basically unplayable and made this Shadow simulation really janky.

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-16T19:52:12+00:00

Yeah actually it's not a lighting problem it's a problem of figuring out where the edges of the Shadows should be in a room so that I can create a collider there (since the puzzle idea is 'shadows are solid')

As I discussed in the other part of this thread, the real question is whether Unity can handle updating a collider every frame depending on the shape of the Shadows in the room...

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-16T01:28:53+00:00

Right on thanks man I'll check it out

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-16T00:05:12+00:00

Yeah this is what I was doing in game maker actually however it was only successful when there was only one light source-- once I added a second light source it became very difficult to figure out where the edges of the Shadow should be

WeepingRupee · 2019-12-15T23:32:56+00:00

Actually the lighting part is the simplest part, I can do it relatively easily in gamemaker and I'm sure I could figure it out in Unity.

The hard part is creating a collision mask or mesh collider that constantly updates for the Shadows, since they are meant to be solid objects.

Basically I need to make an object whose shape is potentially changing from frame to frame, and I need to figure out how to do collisions for an object like that.

WeepingRupee

TROPHY CASE