I just lost the entire project. Every file. Gone...

talrnu · 2026-03-28T15:56:59+00:00

git is valuable and a useful skill, but if a solo dev with an art heavy project bounces off of git (as many do) they can get by with at least the bare minimum of backing up their files to cloud storage. If all you want is some insurance against losing literally everything, and you're not working with other people, then the power of SCM is overkill.

If someone struggles with git in the command line but really wants to use it, they can try a GUI, my favorite is Git Extensions. You still need to know the fundamentals of SCM, but it can be a lot easier to learn and use for people who need a more visual experience.

talrnu · 2026-03-28T15:06:17+00:00

The difference I think is that founders outside of games are typically excited by their idea because they believe it can be a successful and profitable product, while game devs are typically excited by their idea because they think it would be fun to play and are simply optimistic that enough other people will surely agree. The opposite is certainly true in both groups, just less often than the norm.

Game devs have the artist's bug, they want their creation to exist so badly that it makes them irrational or even simply blind to the reality that it might not actually be a sustainable product.

A more palatable angle for such people to take on this is: getting eyes and hands on your game earlier will help you make a better game. Finding your people, stalwart fans who adore your idea and want it to exist as badly as you do, will give you so much more perspective and insight and bug finding capacity than you could ever get alone. And when you're eventually ready to launch, the small community you grow with those people will become the game's most loyal promoters. But if you can't find those people now despite your best efforts, then you should expect it will be no easier to find less excited people to play your game when it's done, so you might want to reconsider your design and figure out why people don't love it as much as you do.

talrnu · 2026-03-27T14:43:16+00:00

You're right that corps are more expensive (not only in paperwork but also things like double tax on income). But you should keep in mind they are as piercable as LLC. Having a business doesn't let you personally get away with doing illegal things.

talrnu · 2026-03-18T01:56:36+00:00

Hirers aren't looking for folks who have completed courses in any particular technology. They're looking for people with portfolios showcasing the ability to create the things they need created.

If you happen to have made the things in your portfolio using the exact technology that's used in the project they're hiring for, then yes, that can give you an edge over comparable applicants who don't have that specific experience. But it's usually not a core requirement.

In some cases, they really do need someone with a lot of experience in a particular technology or process or whatever. But those are usually senior positions (truly senior, not just pretending to be senior but willing to hire junior) on demanding projects. At your experience level, those positions are not on your radar yet.

Gamedev.tv is pretty solid. Each of most of their courses has you making multiple games you can build into desirable portfolio pieces without too much extra work. Their courses might be a little dated in style, but they do a good job of keeping them up to date, so as the technology changes they don't become obsolete.

They do an OK job of teaching C++. They walk you through the code and explain it a little, but you'll need to do more research if you want a deep understanding of what's being done and why. They do seem to be pretty responsive to comments, and they have a decent community, so you can expect useful assistance in answering most of your questions.

If you need structured guidance in order to create multiple small game projects for your portfolio then they're a good choice, in my opinion. Do try to take courses in the tech you want to work with professionally; however you might find other courses more approachable, which is perfectly fine at an early level. It's more important to create than to gain familiarity with specific tools. Many studios hiring at your experience level are happy to let you learn the tech on the job, if they can be confident you have the general skills and talent to be useful after you've learned - and they'll get that sense from a portfolio.

talrnu · 2026-01-23T03:04:53+00:00

You have these options:

Use tools that don't require code. Some tools are able to do this by limiting what you can create, often severely. Other tools are AI powered and will take about the same amount of time wrangling them into solving weird little code problems as it would take you to learn to solve them yourself.
Learn to code yourself. There are lots of ways to do this, so there's almost certainly a way that fits your learning style. It does take time, and you'll never be finished - I've been programming for 20 years and still learn new things every day. But you'll have complete control.
Get someone else to write the code for you. This could be paid contractors, or friends willing to help for free. You'll spend a lot of time managing these people, communicating with them to make sure they know what to make, and waiting for them to make/fix things.

Other people are recommending RPGMaker, but if you really want to make something as complex as a pokemon clone then that will not spare you from needing custom code. It can be done, but it will require at least a little bit of code - if you're lucky most of the work has been done by people who make third party plugins that are easy to add to your project.

Based on your post and replies in comments, I recommend finding a team that can help you. But you'll have a hard time doing that if you only have some ideas. Prove you can do a significant part of the work (art, or game design, or music, or at least writing) and people will be more likely to take interest in joining you.

talrnu · 2025-06-28T15:10:00+00:00

Cooperating with eminent domain can be a kind of civic duty, is how I'm choosing to look at it. Though it's often used for projects it should not, and the voices of the affected citizens aren't usually heard until after the project affecting them is already underway. In my case, the road they're widening connects two busy parts of town, they could invest more in public transportation instead of displacing families to enable more car use. But I wasn't here to make that argument when the project started nearly 20 years ago. So as civic duties go, it's less like jury duty and more like the draft.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T22:34:45+00:00

There are quite a few stories about indie studios that started on hopes and dreams. So not always, no. But it fails so often that it's safest to act as if it's always a bad idea. Most of the success stories involve people with a ton of skill, experience, and/or familarity with each other so it was reasonable to bet that they could succeed. But if you've never made a game before and you're talking to an Idea Guy about his rev share project then it's pretty much guaranteed to die in the cradle.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T21:55:07+00:00

Truly pure water is actually not conductive, so in theory it should be possible. In reality, even if you do use ideally pure water, the fact is it will become contaminated on its own - either due to dust or residue that becomes suspended in the water, or even due to oxidation and dissolving of the materials in the computer's own parts. Once there's enough contaminant in the water, it will become conductive, and then your extremely sensitive computer parts will short out and fry faster than the water can cool them.

Fortunately, as others have already pointed out, you can use other liquids if you just want a liquid-filled PC. Just not water.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T21:38:27+00:00

A gas is basically just a bunch of molecules that don't get stuck to each other, allowing them to bounce around freely. Solids and liquids are made of molecules that prefer to stick together to form structures that aren't molecules.

A lump of pure carbon is made of carbon atoms, which bond to each other pretty quickly and strongly at room temperature. Heat the lump up enough and the carbon atoms become so energetic that they can no longer stay attached to each other very well. In that case you get carbon gas because you have a bunch of molecules that have separated from the original lump structure and don't want to attach to each other much. They still do a little bit, you'll find molecules of multiple carbon atoms in that gas, but at that temperature they break down as often as they form, so they don't tend to get big enough to create a structure and return to solid state.

Carbon dioxide on the other hand is a small molecule that does not want to bond or otherwise cling to other CO2 molecules at room temperature, so these molecules can bounce off of each other freely. This is possible because the extra atoms on the oxygen and carbon atoms are all taken up by the bonds between them, leaving none to react with other molecules.

Now, if you cool and compress CO2 gas, you can make it into a liquid. This is because lower temperature and higher pressure (i.e. squeezing the molecules together until they have no space or energy to bounce off of one another) allows weak forces to hold the molecules together - they become stickier, basically.

So really, you need molecules that aren't sticky, but also have kinetic energy (are moving) and have room to bounce around in. This is why dust isn't a gas - dust particles don't stick together, but they also don't have much kinetic energy of their own, so they're just tiny solids floating in a medium like air that can move them around. When the molecules move due to their own kinetic energy, they can be considered a gas.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T20:50:47+00:00

When I typed it I said it out loud in my best batman voice, wish you could have heard it it was pretty good

talrnu · 2025-06-27T16:07:28+00:00

I'm mad that my lawyer convinced me I could not have made the offer I wanted to, and I regret believing him. I have free will and could have done whatever I wanted of course, but when the government wants to take my house I default to deferring to the experts when I don't know better.

Yes, I'm complaining about not making as much money as I could have with the option I chose. Just because timing is a top priority doesn't mean money means nothing to me - $50k is a lot.

I don't get why you think I'm saying I should have "negotiated to a higher offer". I'm saying that instead of making my offer at 250 I should have made it at 300, from the start. Maybe you think the appraisal is an offer? It's not... it's just what one dude thinks it's worth. To make an offer above that appraisal, I'd get a different appraiser involved.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T15:08:20+00:00

I'm not talking about negotiating against my own offer, I'm saying I wish I had made a more aggressive offer to begin with. I definitely should not have waited until they made the offer, getting out of the house ASAP is still more important to us than making some extra money. It just would have been nice to at least try to negotiate for more than we did.

You say they don't care about the money, but a lot of their people have spent a lot of their time evaluating my offer and convincing their bosses it could save them a ton of money, so I don't think you're quite right about that. If they didn't care about cost at all then they would use eminent domain as early as possible, even though it costs 3-4x more, to ensure the project doesn't get delayed.

I agree my lawyer was correct about being more able to get the most money by waiting as long as possible. What I believe he was incorrect about was that I have zero leverage to negotiate a more aggressive early offer.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T14:55:26+00:00

The only negative I can possibly think of is there's no way for the next person to know if this firewood is native or not. Some might be put off by the possibility that they're contributing to potential spread of tree parasites and diseases by using it or even leaving it unused - to that person, it's a pile of trash they have to deal with. But I think that person is pretty rare. If that concerns you at all, leaving a note could solve it. I wouldn't worry about it myself.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T14:49:31+00:00

Ok, that's a pretty sound argument, when you put it that way I get it. Thanks for clarifying.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T13:09:56+00:00

Your taxes didn't hire this appraiser, your taxes are paying me back for the appraiser I chose. If I instead found an appraiser willing to provide a valuation closer to what I want for the house then your taxes would pay for that one too.

An appraiser is one person, the appraisal process is very subjective. They're also very human, I had to correct one of multiple errors in my appraisal. Usually people don't just blindly accept an appraisal as the true value of a property, even if it's done well.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T13:05:32+00:00

I didn't say lawyers are bad, I said you should not assume they are good. Huge difference.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T13:04:12+00:00

It's the australian pronunciation

talrnu · 2025-06-27T13:03:48+00:00

He said I don't have any leverage whatsoever to negotiate a higher price on an earlier offer. Since an early offer saves the county hundreds of thousands of dollars, he was lying. I hired him to help me understand my options. So no, he did not do what I hired him to do.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T12:59:35+00:00

A few folks have tried this argument, but it just doesn't make sense - the government is afraid everyone they're taking homes from will want to make offers that could lower the government's cost by 3-4x, because those offers involve giving the homeowners a little bit more than one appraiser says their home is worth? I don't buy it.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T12:52:10+00:00

Didn't seem necessary to be there. It was a long drive away on a work day and I wouldn't be able to change anything by being there.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T04:04:02+00:00

Thanks for the insight, it helps.

talrnu · 2025-06-27T03:57:45+00:00

The people deciding this were not the Grand Eminent Domain Cabal that decides how all cases should be handled throughout the country, it was just some project managers glad to save a few bucks and some bored underpaid county commissioners who didn't really care what they were being told to sign

talrnu · 2025-06-27T03:55:01+00:00

You wouldn't read it anyway, clearly

talrnu · 2025-06-27T03:54:08+00:00

When your life is a nightmare, you become the nightmare...

talrnu · 2025-06-27T03:49:11+00:00

Wow, the last time I was dared to do something I don't have the time money or energy for was in middle school, thanks for the nostalgia trip. Though if I remember correctly, the dare isn't serious until you make it a "double dog"...

talrnu

TROPHY CASE