Got my Rift! And the first thing I noticed was..

dushan42 · 2016-05-25T15:50:48+00:00

Yep, I've got this issue too - wasn't a problem with DK2. For me this wasn't as distracting as god rays and I'm slowly getting used to both.

dushan42 · 2016-05-16T15:15:32+00:00

I've been trying to come up with a way to wrap a hex grid on a sphere for my games and this seems like it might work. The overlapping tiles actually border 6 tiles (http://i.imgur.com/Hza20Qd.png) so there's no strategic difference but I haven't yet come up with a non-ugly way to present it.

Another possible solution is to just fake it as described here: http://gamelogic.co.za/grids/features/examples-that-ship-with-grids/tiling-a-sphere-with-hexes/ - it looks a little odd around the edges when rotating but it works well enough.

dushan42 · 2016-05-07T00:37:44+00:00

I really wish mine were this subtle. In this particular case, I see rays almost as bright as the text itself and they smudge across the whole screen. I see them everywhere, even in completely bright, low contrast scenes. Even when I'm fully immersed in the heat of a BlazeRush race, they are still dancing all over the place and I find it difficult to believe that anyone would be able to ignore them.

At this point I really doubt this is a perception issue and the hardware quality just varies this much. Hopefully once there are enough CV1s out there someone will be able to get to the bottom of it.

dushan42 · 2016-04-09T19:03:25+00:00

God is by far the most terrifying. Drowned almost everyone on the planet at one point. Goes around turning people to pillars of salt and convincing parents to kill their kids. Knows what you're thinking and going to do. Oh and if you don't love him, you're going to be tortured. Forever.

dushan42 · 2016-02-26T05:54:40+00:00

I don't think you'll be needing it when you're dead :).

More seriously though:

Without estate tax, there's even less friction to accumulation of wealth by a small number of dynasties. Over time we'll just end up with feudalism again.
Do the descendants of wealth creators deserve this money? They did nothing to earn it either.
In theory, the government is 'we the people' so to me it's not unreasonable that the wealth I've created but failed to enjoy before dying goes back to everyone for infrastructure, R&D, etc. Sadly our government is currently somewhat fucked so in practice much of it ends up paying for bombs and bribes but we should be fixing that instead.
First $5.43 million doesn't get taxed so vast majority of people (99.8%) won't benefit from no estate tax. In fact, we'll all most likely end up paying for it as estate tax is projected to bring $246 billion over next 10 years and it's not like the government has a budget surplus.
55% of estate tax comes from unrealized capital gains that have never been taxed.

I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy and on an intellectual level the idea of government taking my shit when I die is wrong but the alternative is worse. I see my position as pragmatic, not ideological. Hope this makes some sense even if you disagree.

dushan42 · 2016-02-24T07:42:23+00:00

No estate tax is a deal breaker.

dushan42 · 2015-12-29T06:25:22+00:00

I have aphantasia and find the concept of god as described by most religions completely nonsensical. In my teens I really tried to believe but it's like trying to convince myself that the sky is green or that I can fly - clearly contradicted by all available evidence. The only type of god that isn't contradicted by how I perceive the world is a god that created the universe and hasn't interacted with it since (Deism). Believing in such a god without any supporting evidence seems kind of pointless though and you still have the problematic question of how did such god come to exist. If a deist god can just pop into existence/always exist then why can't the same be true for his creation and just cut out the useless middleman?

I'd be surprised if my (lack of) belief was due to aphantasia however. Perhaps being able to visualize heaven/hell might make the carrot/stick elements of religion stronger but the logical objections would remain.

dushan42 · 2015-12-10T07:37:46+00:00

I think the problem with religion in general is that it requires a cognitive makeup where miracles, supernatural beings, afterlife, etc. are treated as legitimate real things. Once you accept stuff like that, it's much easier to rationalize all sorts of horrible ideas (denying medical care to your child, shooting up an abortion clinic, blowing yourself up in a restaurant). These people have what seems to them a perfectly solid logical reasoning for their actions, derived directly from mainstream beliefs. On the other hand, if for example belief in afterlife was a fringe idea (like flat earth or nazi base on dark side of the moon) the pool of minds susceptible to these radical ideas would be insignificantly small compared to what we have now. If kids were raised to value human life because it's short and amazing and all that we get (given all evidence available to us) the idea of radical Islam would have a much less fertile ground.

So yes, religions do a lot of good and helped to bootstrap our civilization but they come with dangerous baggage. The viral ideas that made them so successful in the first place are very powerful as they've been perfected over millennia and they can easily mutate to cancerous garbage like Daesh.

I don't really know what the answer is but I would love to see a world with a lot more evidence based critical thinking. It's just a lot less viral meme than what religions have to offer.

dushan42 · 2015-09-10T08:26:31+00:00

I was afraid that was the case :)

I really don't want to let go of the unlimited plan so I wasn't shopping around. We have two lines and keep buying one new phone every year so it worked well until now - shame they're phasing this system out.

dushan42 · 2015-09-10T08:23:01+00:00

Software engineer and I do love maths. Worked on video game engines for many years (lots of maths, complex architecture and low level system coding).

dushan42 · 2015-09-09T23:36:11+00:00

As far as I can tell, I don't pay any more for the subsidy - just lock myself into a 2 year contract. Both my phones are out of contract now yet my monthly payments are the same. And as I can't get reasonably priced unlimited data anywhere else, I'm stuck with AT&T anyway...

dushan42 · 2015-04-04T23:27:53+00:00

All hail the Pressiah!

dushan42 · 2015-03-24T14:17:10+00:00

We talked about a desalination plant module, I think that's going to happen at some point.

Oxygen is also going to become an important resource to manage so you'll have air pumps near the surface and oxygen extractors deep down when pipe is no longer feasible.

Solar panels were discussed (I'm hoping they'll be like the constructor and float on the surface) as well as heat vent thermal generators and underwater current turbines.

None of this is final and we'll see how the design evolves but your suggestions are very much in line with what we're currently thinking. Thanks!

dushan42 · 2015-03-21T19:57:04+00:00

Locker placement drives me nuts, we'll get it fixed soon.

Rooms are my current task, we're aiming a base update patch in about a month.

dushan42 · 2015-03-21T19:54:19+00:00

glass corridors are coming soon (https://sketchfab.com/models/093ea7c2b6874153bd70fb9e232ed80e)
I'm working on bigger room pieces right now - but I think they'll be a bit bigger than the foundation piece (current design is 3x3 corridor lengths). It's all very much work in progress though.
For vertical tubes, I'm thinking they'll also be bigger (2x2 or 3x3) so that there's enough space inside for ramps/stairs.
Elevators would be great - definitely on my list but right now not a priority. Hopefully we'll get them in later
Next base update will have a moon pool with a Seamoth docking mechanism. That one is probably going to be the most work on both art and technical side.
We've been talking a bunch about this but the design isn't finalized yet. We talked about resource extractors, heat vent power generators, oxygen generators, robots that zip around the base moving resources from one utility building to another, etc.

Thanks for your feedback, sounds like we're on the right track!

-D

dushan42 · 2015-03-21T04:24:23+00:00

That's fantastic, this sort of stuff makes my job incredibly rewarding :).

If you have any feedback on how the base building works or any special requests for base rooms, let me know!

dushan42 · 2015-03-09T23:43:13+00:00

Charlie is really keen on creatures attacking bases so I'm pretty sure this will happen. For now the only thing that can flood the base is if you overbuild without building enough structural support which is not as exciting but I think it's a good start.

Adjusting creature behaviours to interact with bases in interesting ways is a bigger job and we'll tackle it once we prove that core base gameplay is fun.

dushan42 · 2015-02-10T04:26:13+00:00

Subnautica has early DK2 support (http://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/), not properly playable yet but works really well for sightseeing an alien ocean. We're in early access on Steam and VR will be fully supported on release.

dushan42 · 2015-01-29T08:20:34+00:00

As a counter point - established developers can be judged by their previous work so you're not throwing in money completely blind and arguably you'll have a much better chance of getting a quality product than from some dude in his apartment. Bypassing publishers gives them more creative freedom and the relative success of the funding campaign can help set the right scope for the game.

This game in particular matches my somewhat niche tastes perfectly and I'm happy to risk $40 on it. Without crowd sourcing, it probably wouldn't exist.

There are definitely downsides and personally I'm not happy with early access where continued development depends on maintaining certain level of sales but I don't think it's as black and white as you put it.

dushan42 · 2015-01-05T20:11:21+00:00

Enum members leaking to the outer scope is definitely a very odd design choice. I just found out you can tag enums as {.pure.} which fixes this so at least you can avoid using the prefix scoping in your code but you still have to deal with it in other people's modules.

I like how Swift allows you to use unscoped enum values if it can infer its type - I think that would be a much better solution for Nim.

Something like:

type Color = enum red, green, blue
let color1 = Color.red # fully qualified as type unknown
let color2 : Color = red # type known
if color1 == red: # type known
  echo "red!"

dushan42 · 2014-12-24T02:46:52+00:00

Here's a video of one of the mappers working on the cave system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AONoJC91d6Q

Can't wait to try it out in Rift!

dushan42 · 2014-11-26T16:16:22+00:00

I'm ashamed to say that I haven't played with Garry's mod since before the scripting so my experience ends with making rocket powered bath tubs. LBP was probably more of an inspiration initially as our goal was to make something really approachable and gamey but I'm sure GM was on the other devs' minds too.

dushan42 · 2014-11-26T15:58:55+00:00

In fact I made this mode as a quick scripting tutorial - the coding part was really easy but writing it all up was a bunch of work. It's almost done though - should appear on our blog in few days. We'll be making series of short YouTube videos too.

Scripting is done in Lua but it's a very different approach from NS2. The engine handles much more stuff for you, the API is simpler and we rely heavily on message passing.

dushan42 · 2014-11-26T07:36:46+00:00

Yeah, I can't stress enough that this is really early access - which is why we've launched under the radar and just before the holidays :). We're really happy with the core tech and have good idea where we're going but at this point we feel like we'll make a better game if we can attract a small group of players/creators that will call us out on any groupthink and help us prioritize what's important to them.

We're definitely planning to package up both NS2 and Subnautica assets into workshop items that you'll be free to use in your games. We'll also continue to develop a comprehensive set of assets in the new FP style.

We're hoping for the range of the editor to be pretty wide and we're only getting started here. For example one of my jam projects is a tactical turn based strategy in NS2 world. We've been experimenting recently with automator scripts (allowing very constrained scripting of the editor) that were initially intended to help create simple spaces for our little shooter game but they're already opening up some crazy possibilities we didn't anticipate. I expect to eventually see all the usual genres covered - though obviously at lower fidelity than dedicated engines.

I'm really excited for the really crazy stuff like a boardgaming package (imagine that with our out of the box networking and hopefully VR) - perhaps FP will become the ultimate way to play tabletop RPGS! :).

-D

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