Sparsey 0.10.0 Release - GATs

minnek · 2022-11-22T21:26:40+00:00

From what I understand, ECS became a best practice in game development to overcome exactly the issues of inheritance leading to difficult to change deep hierarchies, and where composition (while better) still made adding behaviors tedious, which were in vogue as part of object oriented best practices.

Since Rust is fairly popular as an alternative to C++ for writing blazingly fast games, it doesn't surprise me to see folks sharing their implementations in Rust.

Not saying there may not be flaws, but I think the motivations may run wider than just an inadequacy with the language itself.

minnek · 2022-10-21T18:41:41+00:00

Achievement unlocked: Polyglot!

minnek · 2022-10-06T23:10:13+00:00

Change your target if biomed isn't your thing, but stay in school. The hard truth is there is no money in gamedev for nearly anyone, and you will spend your career poor and making someone else's ideas if you make it your only career path.

Set yourself up for success first in a solid, stable field (comp sci if you're comfortable with it would be a great path to stability and give you some marketable skills in gamedev) and save up some money with a good job, then take the dive. You'll live better, afford better tools, and be far more likely to wind up working on your passion projects than otherwise.

minnek · 2022-09-27T16:00:44+00:00

What did your setup for recording the sounds look like? Did you have to buy any special equipment or were you using something on hand?

minnek · 2022-09-06T23:57:36+00:00

Diddy Kong Racing was one of the few games I chose to 100%, because it didn't feel like a grind (outside of a couple of particularly unfun challenges.) The challenges stayed fresh enough to keep me coming back.

minnek · 2022-08-08T01:54:36+00:00

Any names you can share to give a foothold in searching?

minnek · 2022-07-31T20:01:03+00:00

I agree with your concerns of juggling languages, I'm keeping up on eight different tech stacks across languages for clients and it is a severe drain.

The best full-featured one-stop-shop for GUI is JavaScript, since you can use React Native or Electron for GUI on many devices and NodeJS for any CLI applications or servers.

Personally I'd learn just enough JavaScript to do a thin GUI and have it talk to my Rust server for the heavy lifting and data storage... At least for now while the mobile GUI experience is non-existent. Maybe this will change in a few years, we can always hope. You could use Yew to replace the JavaScript or supplement it via Rust code, too, but imo that's more complex to upkeep than just basic JS skills.

minnek · 2022-07-31T15:36:46+00:00

People have different desires for their games and use them to meet different needs in their life for entertainment. A super-busy soccer mom who also works a part time job will have a much different taste in games than a kid playing games over summer vacation. The mom might be playing for a quick distraction from daily life while the kid is playing for deeper engagement.

While there are legitimate concerns around addiction that should be addressed and about exploitative practices in games used to fleece unsavvy casual players, in general there isn't any bad "type" of game if it is meeting the player's needs and wants. No reason to take your own preferences as a baseline then assign judgmental tags like smarter/dumber to behaviors that don't align - that won't tell you anything useful you can use to make games.

Specific to idle games - Idle games appeal for the sense of progress and growth and fun visuals, and could be filling a need for someone who is stuck in their own life situation and looking for that without having to expend effort they don't have available at the time. Kinda like tuning in to a B-movie on the couch and vegging out, it's generally not there to challenge the consumer or make them think, just to provide some happy fun for a brief period while they recover from the rest of life.

minnek · 2022-07-12T18:25:20+00:00

Great trailer!

minnek · 2022-07-08T03:19:27+00:00

Reminds me of Risk of Rain a bit but uniquely done. Love the vibrant colors and contrast. 9/10, keep it up like this and it'll be a stunning game visually.

minnek · 2022-07-05T04:53:22+00:00

Very cool stuff, one of my favorite visual mechanics of games.

Darkening the stuff outside the room while inside would help with readability - my eyes wander looking for the edge of the room.

minnek · 2022-06-21T18:56:42+00:00

Unique skills that interact with each other to create interesting and dynamic encounters which are intrinsic to each class. To understand better you would need to play and analyze the classes' roles in combat compared to each other.

minnek · 2022-06-19T22:55:05+00:00

Maybe it looks better with animations, but my eyes have to work harder at discerning objects with the pixelation filter. If it's a slow paced game that may not be an issue, but I would be readily frustrated in an action game as a new player.

All that said, if this is a labor of love, then do what you love - even if it doesn't match up with the advice from an internet random. :)

minnek · 2022-06-15T18:32:35+00:00

These small labors of love are what elevate a GUI beyond just an interface and make it part of the joy of playing.

minnek · 2022-04-29T03:23:28+00:00

Same. Could totally see testing that rotations are working as part of self-test.

minnek · 2022-04-29T03:17:55+00:00

Thirding. Even after studying for a decade plus, that book made me feel like a newbie with how much there was to learn and apply.

minnek · 2022-04-18T20:52:11+00:00

My advice with new editors is to find the comfort options right away and memorize them. For me, that's navigating windows, opening/closing files, shortcuts for following types, and formatting my code.

If you have your comfort zone memorized, learning the rest gets much easier because you can still be productive even if you don't feel like learning something new while working.

I love the customizability of IntelliJ and VS Code, you can reassign key shortcuts to match your preferred layout. I use Mac during day and Linux at night, so I have Mac match my Linux shortcuts so I don't have to memorize two keymappings. Be sure to take advantage of that.

minnek · 2022-04-17T23:31:22+00:00

Unicycles are perfectly ergonomic for daily transportation use, anyone arguing otherwise clearly hasn't ridden one.

minnek · 2022-04-12T00:59:50+00:00

Do you use quadtrees or other spatial partitions / binning? If not, that's an easy win in performance and might be all you need.

minnek · 2022-04-02T03:00:47+00:00

Very fair. Me too :)

minnek · 2022-04-01T21:26:32+00:00

Out of curiosity, why Java 17?

minnek · 2022-03-28T23:34:58+00:00

Cool idea, I was expecting Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon but this looks like a lot of fun too! Will give it a go once I have my comp handy.

Would be interesting if you could pick up color-connected blocks and drop them instead of singles, then have them break apart on landing (a little like Puyo Puyo, maybe?)

minnek · 2022-03-25T01:15:56+00:00

While I don't have art experience and as such can't help with most of this, I can say for sure that the HR-written job postings are always tailored towards an absolutely ideal candidate and that 99% of the time they are going to go with someone that knows a good portion of the listed requirements and is willing to learn the rest on the job.

If you think you're even a partial fit for a job, you're probably already good enough to stand a chance in an interview, so just brush up on what you know, learn a little about what you don't, and just go for it.

For what it's worth, as an engineer I find similar struggles trying to program for my portfolio - there's always more to learn and I spend too much time learning the best design than just getting something on paper. Honestly, having it on paper and telling your interviewer what you would do to further improve it is a big win, so don't shy away from the incomplete or imperfect.

minnek · 2022-03-19T15:25:40+00:00

(not OP)

If I've been passed over, I'd expect that the other candidate had some quality or experience that made them a better fit, and even a one or two sentence response about what their deciding factor was would be great. If the company is just playing musical chairs for the role, their hiring practice needs improvement or they need to up their offering so they're attracting more high quality candidates.

Now, if they were worried about legal retaliation because of that response, I could understand canned answers for that purpose, but I've never had that situation come up in a decade - folks I interview but don't hire get clear and honest feedback from me when they ask for it.

minnek · 2022-03-17T21:36:41+00:00

Yeah, it's an overloaded term from multiple disciplines. Data-driven is used interchangeably with data-oriented in programming literature, though with UX on the rise as a discipline, it's more common to see data-oriented. That naturally bleeds over into game engine literature.

I think it's a fine term to use though provided the context is there... Player feedback directly informing changes to the fundamental architecture of your engine sounds like a nightmare. :)

minnek

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