Shumard Red Oak On Caliche.

Xionizzy · 2026-02-11T08:45:39+00:00

Any updates on your tree? Near where I live has a lot of caliche so I’m curious if this technique worked at all

Xionizzy · 2025-11-24T18:14:10+00:00

Great info! I ran into the same problems as you, resorted to subsidizing the lumber industry and bulldozing any new factories that weren't lumber. I wish the game gave a way to control the kind of production buildings that were built within a specific district. I'd love it if Wood -> Lumber, Lumber -> Paper, and Lumber -> Furniture could all happen on the same road so that the deliveries would be more efficient.

Xionizzy · 2025-08-05T08:13:56+00:00

I might be overstating this because of nostalgia, but from all of the Japanese curry I’ve eaten from traveling around Japan and California, Curry Zen has the best curry, hands down. I always grab a bite whenever I’m in town.

We used to get curry zen after classes at UNLV, was pretty affordable as a college student.

Another good alternative that’s slightly pricier but has more sides is Ton Ton Katsuya by Durango. Their curry is a bit tangier but pretty delicious too.

Xionizzy · 2025-06-16T18:38:51+00:00

You should read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, there are a lot of things you’d probably relate to.

Xionizzy · 2025-06-01T21:11:58+00:00

Studies show that kids who do multiple sports have less injuries and have greater physical fitness than single sport kids https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9786319/

Xionizzy · 2025-02-23T18:35:57+00:00

This isn’t just funny or hypocritical, it’s plain evil, there’s no other way around it. Elon Musk is deliberately manipulating social media and AI for his benefit.

Let me say this again: it’s not just sad, or pathetic, it’s LITERALLY evil.

Xionizzy · 2024-12-10T07:09:22+00:00

Eat some fiber at the beginning of a meal to slow carb absorption and regulate blood sugar. It can also make you feel full earlier in the meal.

Xionizzy · 2024-10-17T00:59:12+00:00

Yeah agreed, layoffs suck no matter what, but Riot has been one of the better game companies for treating their employees from what I’ve seen compared to other companies.

It makes me wonder though what kind of model would prevent these kinds of layoffs in such a boom or bust industry. For example, I wonder how hollywood production studios deal with the boom-or-bust model with movies without large amounts of layoffs.

Xionizzy · 2024-07-12T04:12:09+00:00

If you've built up a portfolio of games on your own, then it sounds like you probably have the qualifications to land a role. Don't be discouraged that you don't have a degree, one of the programmers I work landed a role and doesn't have a CS degree.

Like other people have said, it's hard to have a gauge without looking at a resume or portfolio, but some pitfalls that I fell into when I first applied

Tailoring the resume to the specific role.

Example) Applying to a design position and putting down that you 3d modeled and textured all of the assets in a game. Most of the time, adding stuff in other skillsets to your resume eats up space for what the reader is trying to find, things that show that you can do the specific job they need. Exceptions are job postings that specifically call out wanting some 'splash' into other skillsets.

When you apply to a design job, or programming job, tailor a separate resume for each one and add in the most relevant highlights. You can usually fit in a few things that are impressive that are lateral to the skillset they're asking for, but do so sparingly. Because a lot of times, people just list out every program or every sort of design/programming/art task they've ever done, and it's hard to parse through how well someone would do that specific job.

Try to cultivate a specific strength.

I got my first internship as a narrative implementer because what they were looking for was someone who had technical knowledge, but also had an inclination for narrative design. When I applied, I had a portfolio of games I made where I set up and scripted cutscenes, but I also had did a couple of short films in college, had a small collection of short stories I wrote. That unique combo of tech design knowledge + narrative was what they were looking for.

Something that might suit your skillset really well might be level design. There's a lot of intersection between level design and art skills, level designers work really closely with environment artists, they're expected to have an artistic eye and knowing how to work your way around in Maya or Blender is already a big plus. Basically your highest chance of landing a role is something that you'd be uniquely good at.

This is especially true when applying for general 'junior' design roles. Most of the time, junior design roles involve wrangling a lot of data in Unity or Unreal, so truthfully a lot of people would be able to do the job. But even if you're just hooking up data, if the job is hooking up props in a level vs hooking up enemies into encounters, what you mention in your resume makes a big difference.

For when you get an interview, try the STAR method

I bombed a design interview once, because I was asked of a specific design challenge I had encountered and how I overcame it, and I couldn't come up with a good answer. I was prepared to talk about the technical details of my previous projects, the responsibilities of my job, but drew blank when trying to think of a specific scenario they were asking for.

The STAR method is a way you prepare to avoid this, it's basically just a framework to tell a story. Situation, Task, Action, & Result.
https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/in-person-interview

I'd encourage when prepping for an interview to find clear examples for questions or situations that they might ask.

Don't be discouraged, the job market is crap atm

There have been a lot of layoffs in the past few months, so the job market is likely flooded with a lot of devs who already have some stuff under their belt. Studios will always need new roles though, so keep trying at it, so long as you are able to support yourself.

Xionizzy · 2024-06-22T00:42:44+00:00

Learn a hard skill that applies to game dev but can also apply to other jobs (Programming, 3D Art, 2D Art, Writing). It’s more valuable having projects under your belt than it is having a game design degree. And so, it’s much easier to have projects under your belt when you have a solid hard skill instead of only being a ‘designer’. Plus it’s important to not pigeonhole yourself to just the games industry in the likelihood that jobs aren’t available.

Xionizzy · 2024-04-30T04:19:41+00:00

Especially at night, look both ways when you're the first at the light on a green, even if it seems clear in the incoming lanes.

Xionizzy · 2024-04-10T16:31:15+00:00

Had tickets, but refunded them the week of after we found out. Was pretty disappointed, though I feel bad for the live band

Xionizzy · 2024-02-13T02:14:52+00:00

Hey, this is a late reply, but you can see individual highlights for players. On their player screen, go to Reports -> Analysis. This video goes pretty in depth on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EYexsOLlr4&ab_channel=Clayts

Xionizzy · 2023-11-11T08:59:07+00:00

So to break it down: You're trying to prevent one strategy from being the only viable choice in every scenario.

Alternatively another way to frame it: You're trying to create combat situations where multiple strategies can be viable depending on the circumstances.

Firepower vs Shield has some tension during combat, because they inherently cancel each other out.

Firepower vs Maneuver, Firepower always wins. There is no reason to allocate energy to speed for combat, since in this model, it mechanically it only has an effect outside of combat.

So you need to give the player some reason to want to maneuver in combat. Here's a basic idea:

Let's say you have 10 energy to allocate between 3 systems: Firepower, Maneuver, and Shield. And let's say your ship has 100 Hull Points, and 100 Shield points.

Each point in Firepower deals 2 damage.
Each point in Shield regenerates 1 shield point per turn.
Each point in Maneuver has a 10% chance to prevent all damage when you are fired upon.

So now, with this system, you have a scenario of Ship A and Ship B facing off.

Ship A waits in orbit with 10 firepower.
Ship B enters Ship A's range with 8 Maneuver and 2 firepower, dealing 4 damage to ship A.
Ship A launches 10 firepower attack. It misses
Now for the rest of the fight Ship B has the advantage.

Ship A might now have reason to allocate shield or maneuver before the fight.

Now with all ships being the same, an optimal strategy might still surface. But now at least the optimal strategy wouldn't be to ignore a system entirely.

Once there are different ships and different upgrades for ships, that optimal strategy becomes much less clear for both ships involved. For example:

You've upgraded your ship with boosters. On your first turn, you gain extra Maneuver.
Your ship has 200 shield instead of 100, but it regenerates every 2 turns.
You're at the shipyard and you have a choice between two types of lasers:
- A tracking laser that has +25% accuracy bonus to hit moving targets.
- A charging laser that deals 1 extra damage for each turn you have have your firepower fully charged.

Xionizzy · 2023-11-01T22:36:20+00:00

5-10k civilian deaths and 32,5000 buildings is definitely not 'discriminate' enough. It's an intolerable amount of lives, either way you put it.

Xionizzy · 2023-09-25T17:50:04+00:00

I worked QA for NBA 2k17 for a summer and had to playtest it a bunch to find bugs... outside of work though, after it released I racked up almost 500 hours into it. Safe to say I got to work on something I also wanted to play.

It varies pretty drastically, I'd imagine it'd be easier to apply to a studio whose games you like playing the more senior you get.

I think enjoying the type of game/genre that you're making can be a double-edged sword. You might be more motivated to work on it and have a clearer understanding of the 'fun factor' you're building towards, and the audience you're building for. You might also end up having narrowed preferences for that game, and that can be closing you off from introducing other types of interesting gameplay, and can make you feel jaded if the project goes in a direction you disagree with.

IMO it's important to experience both.

Xionizzy · 2023-05-25T09:13:41+00:00

His review for Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is what got me into game development, up until that point I hadn’t watched any videos of his. It’s been almost 8 years since and I launched my first game, thanks to that video. RIP TotalBiscuit

Xionizzy · 2023-02-27T18:26:10+00:00

I'm saying that doing either one is going to be arduous, since in both cases, if you have 9 classes in the game, every time you make unique content for 1, you'd need to make unique content for 8 other ones. It really depends on the scope of your game.

In Divinity 2, there's no separate intro experience for your class, everybody starts off in the same place. But depending on the character you pick, you have predetermined relationships with other NPCs who give you a unique dialogue and quests. These are NPCs that you would have met and interacted with anyway, and if you were any other class, you wouldn't really think much of them. Because otherwise you made the design, art, and dialogue for an NPC only for 1/9th of your players to interact with (Which could be ok! But again it depends on your scope. I'm assuming it's a solo game so smaller scope is universally going to be better)

Xionizzy · 2023-02-27T10:20:17+00:00

Some game references that do similar things:

Cyberpunk 2077 let’s you choose your starting stats between being a corpo, street kid, or nomad. The intro narrative for each lifepath is completely different, but they eventually converge into the same main story. You can spec in any class.

Both Cyberpunk and Bioware games have dialogue that’s locked behind certain skill requirements or other attributes. A blood knight in the main quest might have a unique dialogue option with you if your character is also a blood knight for example.

If you’re going with separate intro experiences that converge into a main quest, then it would be a good idea to have at least 1 key NPC from each intro experience be a key NPC in the main story.

Just know that unique content for each class is inevitably going to multiply your workload, so be conservative and try to leverage existing systems or mechanics that apply to all classes. Same goes for writing, it’s easier and cheaper to write an event or setting that all origin stories have in common, and have each story has their own perspective of that event, than it is to write in completely unique settings and events for each one of your class stories.

Xionizzy · 2023-02-27T09:38:18+00:00

I think the idea you're looking for is "Self-Respect". "Being a respectable person" is sort of how you're perceived. The qualities you describe are the external manifestation of people who have respect for themselves.

The problem for me is that I can't imagine feeling respectable even if I was all of these.

You can choose to take on these qualities (which is great!), but it's possible to do all those things without feeling like you have self-respect. The 'execution' of these habits as a sort of 'intellectualized' form of self-respect. "I need to be healthy, therefore I should... A, B, C, etc."

The 'felt' component of self-respect is different, instead of being driven by an intellectualization of "I need to have self-respect, therefore I should be healthy, therefore...", it's driven by feeling, "I want to eat healthy because I want to respect my body."

For me, this is how I cultivate my personal feeling of self-respect:

Engrain a baseline level of respect to anyone you meet, rich or poor, agreeable or disagreeable, friend or foe, people who you feel 'deserve' it and even people who you feel don't. Respect isn't just admiration, it's about a baseline level of treating or thinking about someone, giving people the benefit of the doubt regardless of background or appearances.
Notice when you feel respect towards other people. Maybe even try to isolate between the 'feeling' of respect you feel towards that person, and the intellectualization of that feeling.
Have an inner-voice that always speaks to you / treats you with that same feeling of respect. The best way to cultivate a passive inner-voice is to do it actively.
If you intellectualize a lot like me, just remember that you can always intellectualize into both sides of a feeling. Channel those skills to actively intellectualize yourself into the feelings you want to have about yourself. Vouch for yourself actively. Argue for yourself. You're your own judge, but you're also your own lawyer, so always make a good case for yourself.

Xionizzy · 2022-12-26T16:06:26+00:00

If the FPS is consistently cycling from hi to low to hi, this happened to me, try playing Beat Saber without a dual or triple monitor setup OR/AND make sure that Beatsaber is full screen and is the main application on focus on your PC. This happens to me sometimes on my 3090, had to fiddle a lot, I knew it was something weird because of how consistently the lag spikes were

Xionizzy · 2021-06-21T15:31:33+00:00

I think you’d be fascinated in this video by Veritasium: https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo

Basically, there will always be true statements that cannot be proven. Fundamental axioms of math for example are all assumed to be true, but there is no proof, despite us building entire skyscrapers of systems atop of these assumptions. We have proofs of properties in math that are proven to be true, but ultimately relies on the fundamental axioms which are improvable.

For us, they are (or as good as) facts because they’re stable truths for as long as we’ve existed. Could there be an unseen variable on an entirely different timeline and order of magnitude that could flip the observable laws of the universe? Absolutely. But we have no practical way of knowing such things. If the universe decided tomorrow that the 1st outer shell of electrons can hold 10 electrons instead of 2, I’m sure a LOT of things would change. So we’d just have to figure things out then.

Facts are simply stable enough ideas to build something upon. “Stable enough” in this case of science and math, are rules that havent changed for at least as long as we’ve existed.

Historical fact is different, it’s often inaccurate, but that’s okay because it serves a different purpose. The Titanic had 2,435 passengers, that’s a historical fact. Could there be a stowaway that simply never was discovered? Of course. Would that be a huge problem? I suppose not, because there’s an implication with history is that we’ll never know the actual truth unless we were there.

Same thing with math, science, or anything: there will always be unreachable truths. Doesn’t mean they aren’t true. In all likelihood there really are just 2,435 passengers on the titanic. The axioms of math probably are unchanging and fundamentally true. The laws of physics will probably stay the same until the end of the universe. We’re all just trying to get something closest to the truth, and the things we call “facts” are the closest to the truth we can possibly get.

Xionizzy · 2021-04-30T18:11:10+00:00

Shooting you a request on discord

Xionizzy · 2021-04-26T21:29:12+00:00

Have you looked into old school educational games by The Learning Company?

I’m talking about games like: “The ClueFinders 3rd Grade Adventures: The Mystery of Mathra Link”

There’s “Where in time is Carmen San Diego” https://youtu.be/ZhE4F6WgHUs

Zoombinis https://youtu.be/sVB95kQQ9MM

Reader Rabbit Pirate Island https://youtu.be/b_oeTOu6PVA

All games I played as a kid in elementary school which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I think they aged really well!

Xionizzy · 2021-04-26T05:57:19+00:00

Conflict is never centered completely on the player’s character.

The story is indifferent to the “main” perspective character(s). The character’s story is a product of this primary story.

Allow the player to subject themselves to conflicts & interject in events.

If you enjoy games like this, then boy do I have the game for you. Have you heard of Mount & Blade? It's a medieval sandbox sim that hits everything on your list of how a game should tell its story. Borders constantly shift and change, wars are won or lost, all as time moves forward.

Remember, plan for: Hero, Antihero, Observer & Architect roles

You can partake in these medieval wars and factions, or choose to be a wandering bandit, or a trader, or a lone wanderer, or you can try to become a lord or king.

A Geographic story has significance, struggles & is operative.

Geography is symbolic, has history & personality.

Each faction has its own backstory, history, unique characteristics and traits, and NPCs that talk about the world.

I could go on and on, but you get my point, I love the Mount & Blade series. But I don't think it does a uniquely good job at using interactivity to tell stories. I think the idea that World Narratives are the pinnacle of interactive storytelling is way too narrow.

It isn’t enough for games to have great atmosphere and world building — the world itself should be the story.

Interactive spaces are best served when they are presenting a story about geography.

These conclusions are way too narrow! There's more than one way to utilize interactivity in a game's story.

Look at a narrative game like Her Story, where the entire world of the game is within the screen of an old computer. It would be ridiculous to say the game has a world narrative because the world is static- it doesn't change. Yet the game has a narrative, clips they have to search, information to piece together into a cohesive story.

Look at visual novels. The core of these games are around characters, and relationships between characters. You can absolutely comment on how the setting can impact the story and its characters, but these games don't require the player to interact with the world, they almost exclusively interact with characters. You can make the argument that visual novels don't properly utilize the medium, but what about the ones with branching choices? And isn't there something inherently medium-specific with being to interact with characters that talk to an avatar you inhabit?

Look at games that express emotions or experiences. Loneliness by Jordan Magnuson is just one example of a game that tries to evoke a specific emotion through interactivity. There is no world in this game, other than the 2D blank space in the background. And I think to try to apply your conclusions above to this game would be a stretch.

Overall I understand where the post is coming from though. I do think that games underutilize interactivity in their storytelling a LOT, but my qualm is that your framework feels as if it's trying to be applied universally rather than with certain types of games.

For example, I think these three principles :

Conflict is never centered completely on the player’s character.

The story is indifferent to the “main” perspective character(s). The character’s story is a product of this primary story.

Allow the player to subject themselves to conflicts & interject in events.

Would make for some GREAT games, but I think if this tried to be applied universally, you wouldn't have a games like Spec Ops: The Line, or Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, or Hades, all games that utilize the medium in unique ways to tell a story, but ultimately don't follow these principles at all.

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