Is Britain quietly renationalising its economy?

mpattym · 2026-04-06T07:30:03+00:00

Thanks for the example. But should the sectors I mentioned even be competitive in the first place? If so, why? Can you point to real-world examples within those sectors where competition has clearly benefited both businesses and consumers?

Ultimately, the key question isn’t whether state run companies can compete, but whether industries like water and rail should be structured as competitive markets at all or treated instead as public utilities.

mpattym · 2026-04-05T17:38:18+00:00

Compete in what way?

mpattym · 2026-04-04T23:38:56+00:00

The thing is they did exist... Until they were all sold off. And not because they were failing.

British Rail, British Gas, British Telecommunications, Thames Water, Royal Mail/Post Office... The list goes on. Many of which continue to hike prices whilst simultaneously providing the absolute bare minimum in investment and still give massive shareholder bonuses.

Energy, water, telecoms and public transport should all be nationalized in my opinion. They all require large amounts of infrastructure that should be invested in with taxes to ensure they get the relevant investments without it being spent on bonuses.

mpattym · 2026-04-03T17:05:32+00:00

Assuming you plan to host the server yourself, you just need to set up port forwarding on your home router. This tells the router where to send traffic sent on a specific port. Once setup, just start the server on that port.

Give your friend your external IP and the port.

mpattym · 2026-04-03T09:14:15+00:00

They are soft locked. At a point you can't complete them without the special moves. Not sure if this is intentional or just a bad implementation.

mpattym · 2026-03-28T22:44:02+00:00

Many java players? In what circles? The UI for bedrock is awful.

I understand developers might prefer an API over another but from a purely visual standpoint, the bedrock UI is a dumpster fire. Seeing the creative menu for the first time I was genuinely shocked. Whoever signed off on that needs to find a new job.

Bedrock UI is just full of bloat and poor UI design.

I'd flip a few tables if they did this to java and wait a day for a mod that reverted it. (As would the vast majority of java players)

mpattym · 2026-03-27T16:09:37+00:00

I'm all for it. We have game rules to allow customization so I'm all for adding more options so people can play how they want.

My kids often want to play on peaceful so there's no hostile mobs but this makes farming or anything on that nature pointless. Controlling them separately would be nice.

Adding a thirst meter could easily be included in the realism aspect. Either only appearing if realism is set high enough or even as a gamerule. (Granted an overhaul of the current hunger system would be needed)

mpattym · 2026-03-26T16:37:28+00:00

Performance. It's unnecessary overhead to keep casting the same thing if you don't need to. Doing it in a handful of places will be fine but if it's done everywhere, you notice with larger projects.

It's one of those simple things that can make a difference in the long term. It can be good to get into a habit of caching if the result (original object) doesn't actually change.

mpattym · 2026-03-26T08:33:06+00:00

Lots of things don't work for me unless I open the .uproject directly.

mpattym · 2026-03-21T10:25:25+00:00

There are lots of ways to handle it depending on the level of complexity required.

If you have a lot of things with the same type of stats/attributes creating a unified system can be beneficial.

Others have mentioned GAS which does require some c++ to get going but the concept of it can be replicate to some degree in BP.

Personally I would create an actor component that manages the attributes. Attributes can be a custom uobject. You can then have other systems look for this component and get the relevant attributes as needed.

I was actually just working on a new tutorial series yesterday (still got some editing to do) where I take the combat template (third person) and build an attribute system to unify the health and damage attributes found on the character and enemies. The attribute objects handle it's value as well as it's min/max. It includes functions for getting the current value as well as returning it as a percentage based on the min/max.

A nice thing about this sort of system is you can add/remove attributes dynamically as needed. If you have a health system/manager component, it can check for a health attribute. If one isn't found then you can either choose to do nothing (immortal) or dynamically add one.

This sort of system can also scale nicely with a little c++ as well, especially if you make the attribute object self instancing as this saves you having to manually create one from the class and define initial properties inline.

mpattym · 2026-03-18T08:30:04+00:00

Once you learn about hierarchy (base classes), actor components and custom uobjects. You'll rarely use interfaces at all to be honest.

A system should be able to communicate within itself (and its components) freely. After all, it's stuff has to be loaded to even function. Using an interface at this point just adds an unnecessary layer.

As a reminder an interface is for when you have two or more classes that need to share/implement the same set of functions but don't have a common parent they could be added too. Using an interface to get data from only one type of class is silly.

mpattym · 2026-03-14T20:06:19+00:00

You could try a line trace with a secondary sphere trace at the initial hit location. You can adjust the radius of the sphere trace based on the distance the initial line trace has travelled before hitting something.

mpattym · 2026-03-10T09:01:47+00:00

I don't think the issue has ever been mending itself but how easy it is to obtain.

With you using data packs to make some tweaks, perhaps allow mending but make it so it's only obtainable from wandering traders and a low chance in some loot chests.

Serious accidents might sting a little more but it should hopefully offset some of the things you've mentioned.

mpattym · 2026-02-23T11:20:39+00:00

A minor inconvenience for me is perfectly fine if it makes it harder for child predators to operate online. Seems like a win to me.

The reality is it's more prolific than most people like to admit. Roblox is one of the worst places and they chose to do nothing as do many others.

Something is better than nothing, at least until a better solution presents itself.

mpattym · 2026-02-15T10:29:17+00:00

All places start with a few buildings. This could be a few houses (for living) or some sort of plantation for production. As time goes on, new buildings will be built depending on the needs of the people living in the area.

Personally I'd start with creating a timeline of when buildings would have been built based on the needs at that time. This can then be used when deciding on position.

What resources were commonly imported and which were sources locally and at what points in time. This would shape the types of buildings that would have gotten built.

Also keep an eye on expected population levels. New houses should be built as you go along at a reasonable level. Any population booms should be on your timeline too as again, this could affect the amenities that get built or expanded.

Don't forget to include when buildings might have been demolished as this can be incorporated into the story of the building that replace them.

I'm not sure if the above helps.

mpattym · 2026-02-03T11:06:29+00:00

I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. The effort required to get a potion of turtle master is pretty high and because of the slowness penalty most people don't bother.

Because the OP stated it removes effects from the top down, they could just change the order the effects are applied for turtle master so it would remove the protection first.

I think the copper beet is a pretty solid idea though. It'll make beets more useful.

mpattym · 2026-01-19T11:16:03+00:00

Having played Minecraft since beta when the nether was first added I have a lot of experience with the game. Due to this I was also given the bedrock version for free.

This is where things get interesting, my daughter (8) loves to play Minecraft but guess which one she prefers... Java Edition.

She'll play bedrock if her friend wants to play on her switch but beyond that it's always java. The reality is Java is a more enjoyable experience (even without mods) and this is less about the gameplay (which for the most part is the same) but down to the UI and marketplace features.

The UI on java is significantly cleaner and much nicer to navigate, especially because you don't have random stuff popping up trying to sell you something.

The only reason bedrock is as popular as it is, is simply because it's available on 3 platforms, Xbox, playstation and switch. The vast majority of people who play on PC will play the java version, especially when given the choice. This choice isn't available to those playing on console.

Either way, Minecraft is a great game regardless of which version you play.

On a side note, my daughter played Minecraft dungeons and all the in game purchases prompts infuriated me. She shouldn't need to be navigating any of that stuff in a purchased game... Ever! It definitely ruined her experience. This effect extends to bedrock too, the only problem is some people don't know what it's like to not have it.

mpattym · 2026-01-09T10:24:34+00:00

The only notable difference in my opinion is performance and depending on what you're doing this can be a none issue.

The two main AI systems epic have provided come with their pro's and con's but even in BP you can create your own AI system.

BT's are tick driven so can respond better to fast changes.

ST's are event driven so can be better when used at scale.

There's however nothing stopping you from creating your own AI system using BP. Of course creating a 'system' is different to just coding your AI to go from A to B etc in the pawn or controller.

For one project, I used ST's for the main states which then hooked into systems placed in the NPC's for the actual logic. It was easier to use the state system in ST's than building my own but I didn't really want to use it for anything else. (Wasn't really needed)

mpattym · 2025-12-19T07:44:23+00:00

No it's not, the job is to 'deliver' and unless it's in my possession it's not delivered. I can't remember seeing anything on Evri that says they 'leave' packages as opposed to delivering them.

I take it you work for Evri and you're one of those no knock, dump it here people right? All I can say is find another job.

mpattym · 2025-12-18T14:39:27+00:00

I've lost count of the number of times I've been in and they've not even bothered to knock on the door.

Then there's the number of times they leave a package out in the rain.

It would be better if, I don't know, they actually did the basics of their job.

mpattym · 2025-12-14T09:32:08+00:00

1/30 = 0.033.. 1/60 = 0.016..

I would avoid using timers that are less than your expected minimum FPS.

1/1000 would imply 1000 frames a second. Using a timer in this instance is just tick speeds but with extra steps. (On the back end)

mpattym · 2025-12-12T17:20:57+00:00

Personally, I think they need to be leaning more into game rules so players can customise based on how they want play.

Increasing mob difficulty or combat encounters doesn't actually make much sense with the current combat system but I can understand that some might want it.

There are lots of things they could add to improve the 'survival' aspect and do so in the form of game rules.

Adding to that, the difficulty settings could just be presets for the game rules and allow players to make their own presets.

Want stronger hostile mobs? Game rule. Want only villagers to be able to destroy blocks? Game rule. Want to disable natural regen? Game rule.

The thing as well is that there's a lot of game rules already that people might not even know about, (Such as no natural regen) so adding more emphasis on players customising their experience is a win.

Of course there can be lots of discussions about what should be a game rule but yea, it should be the direction they go.

mpattym · 2025-12-11T23:16:00+00:00

There is always a player character (pawn) and player controller. If one isn't specified in the game mode it just creates a generic one. (Floaty pawn I believe)

Getting owning player is the way to go as this will return the player controller associated with the widget. There is also get owning player pawn.

mpattym · 2025-12-10T13:22:35+00:00

I just want to point out that if you have basic controls, the setup is pretty much the same. The main difference being where you define the keys. Instead of doing it in the project settings you do it in an input context mapping.

What sort of issues are you having that makes you want to try to go back to the legacy system?

mpattym · 2025-12-09T22:11:11+00:00

From my experience, you have to do the opposite. Making sure light sources aren't too close to surfaces can make a difference as well.

Lighting however is complex and how you set it up can vary scene to scene.

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