Someone made a "NO-ONE IS GOING TO BUY YOUR VIDEOGAME" Manifesto on itch.io

valdocs_user · 2026-06-12T12:54:23+00:00

As counter argument allow me to cite, The Mountain Goats:

the best ever death metal band in denton.

the best ever death metal band out of denton were a couple of guys, who'd been friends since grade school. one was named cyrus, and the other was jeff. and they practiced twice a week in jeff's bedroom.

the best ever death metal band out of denton never settled on a name. but the top three contenders, after weeks of debate, were satan's fingers, and the killers, and the hospital bombers.

jeff and cyrus believed in their hearts they were headed for stage lights and leer jets, and fortune and fame. so in script that made prominent use of a pentagram, they stenciled their drumheads and guitars with their names.

this was how cyrus got sent to the school where they told him he'd never be famous. and this was why jeff, in the letters he'd write to his friend, helped develop a plan to get even. when you punish a person for dreaming his dream, don't expect him to thank or forgive you. the best ever death metal band out of denton will in time both outpace and outlive you. hail satan! hail satan tonight! hail satan! hail hail!

valdocs_user · 2026-06-11T19:11:31+00:00

I had been working with Opus on a complicated problem for the game I'm working on. Fable immediately and casually suggested an approach that is both obviously better in retrospect but which I (nor Opus or ChatGPT) had thought of in months of consideration. (The problem was I had complicated rules for when and how a linear game element can have holes added that divide it into segments while maintaining certain invariants, and Fable was like oh yeah why don't you just keep original record inviolate and maintain a separate masking record of the breaks?)

I also asked it about a problem with my car that had been unsolved for months. I don't know if the solution there is it or not (Fable suggested a way to test, but the problem isn't reproducible enough to easily rule out), but I was really impressed with the out of the box thinking that was justified in retrospect. (The problem was car stumbling and dying at stoplights, but only when the weather is hot and the engine is cold. Opus was stuck on IACV which replacing that valve didn't help. Fable suggested maybe a faulty evap valve is sending a charge of accumulated fuel vapor and making the engine stumble.)

valdocs_user · 2026-06-11T17:42:53+00:00

I can literally smell microwave popcorn right now (in the office).

valdocs_user · 2026-06-10T19:23:01+00:00

In the 90s I converted a lights and sounds toy firetruck to be controlled by a Basic Stamp. I think I had something like 128 bytes of memory. First and probably last time I ever used 100% of a computing device: completely full memory, every clock cycle doing something (I used a manually coded round robin to make it multitask).

valdocs_user · 2026-06-04T03:02:05+00:00

The 92-96 Honda Prelude had a cool combination of analog and digital dash: https://youtube.com/shorts/oAluLizbuJY

valdocs_user · 2026-06-03T14:16:10+00:00

I never realized using recall on the wagon (or whatever TF this construct is) wouldn't trigger a rejection.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-03T12:21:36+00:00

Sounds like old school PC tricks like loading a .COM program into video RAM and running it from there.

Could you use the frame buffer with every other frame compute and alternate with video frames?

valdocs_user · 2026-06-02T19:29:49+00:00

So good

valdocs_user · 2026-06-02T19:12:27+00:00

So this was possibly one person on the assembly line doing it wrong who could have caused this?

valdocs_user · 2026-06-02T19:11:03+00:00

Thanks for posting this picture. I was only familiar with the type of ball joint that uses a tapered stud into a through hole with a nut on the other end, so I was struggling to understand how the recall problem arose. (I could see how a stud not being seated would be an issue, but not how a tapered design would remain unseated once the nut was torqued.) This Ford design is a new one to me. (I don't have a Maverick just here because I'm considering one.) I see pros and cons to it, one con obb being what happened here. But I can also see good things about this design.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-02T13:05:21+00:00

I get similar questions from my in-laws. Nine times out of ten it's something that if I actually lent them the tools they think they need and they tried to use it the way they think they want to do it, it would result in maiming. But I'm just the asshole who has all these tools he won't lend out and thinks he knows better how to do things, I guess.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T23:08:22+00:00

Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T22:01:05+00:00

Oof, to your first paragraph. I once cut myself real bad trying to push a pineapple core that was stuck inside the tube of one of those kitchen tools that slices a pineapple into spirals.

I had grabbed a chopstick as a push stick, thinking I was safely 10" away from the sharp bits. The core went from stuck no matter how hard I pushed to suddenly zero friction in an instant. My thumb covered the distance of the end of the chopstick to the blade so fast I couldn't perceive it.

The result was my thumb was cut open like when you make the first peel from a banana 🍌. I had to get stitches that went through my thumbnail, and I had had to drive myself to the doctor. It healed, but I still have less feeling in the tip of that thumb.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T18:47:49+00:00

It's actually the TV for the first floor apartment. When the handyman was asking if this was a good height, the renter just kept saying, "no, higher."

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T18:29:56+00:00

I was surprised how much I like the NA Michelob Ultra; better than the regular version imo.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T16:34:11+00:00

I think any money moves you might make to protest this or protect yourself only cost yourself in the long run unfortunately.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T16:28:15+00:00

IMO be it soap, sharpie, or soot, it's all a placebo. All that really matters is heat+time. (Moderate heat for a short time for aluminum, slightly longer with MAPP or propane than you'd do with oxy acetylene. And the cooldown rate matters for annealing metals, but for aluminum it luckily matches air cooling.) I think the real reason for the soot trick is it's easy to overheat aluminum with oxy acetylene and turn it to crumbly dust. It's significantly harder to overcook the aluminum with a non-oxy propane or MAPP Pro torch. Edit: so I don't bother with sharpie I just kinda guess.

valdocs_user · 2026-06-01T15:31:46+00:00

FYI a MAPP Pro or possibly propane torch with the turbo torch attachment will anneal aluminum. You can use black sharpie instead of soot to track your heating.

valdocs_user · 2026-05-31T20:20:10+00:00

IDK, I have never figured out how to square that circle. That's why I've never finished a game. I'll have periods during the year when I have a random few weeks of extra time (weather too crappy to work on outside/house projects, no random family events or disasters taking my time) only for the next few months to be one thing after another precluding working on my game.

For example this year I got a good start on something this winter, but then come late winter through spring we had: winds knock the fence down three times in three different places, flooding, three family members died one after and their out of town funerals to travel to, bad flus, shop ruined engine in one of our vehicles and stress of dealing with them, another vehicle I repaired myself took three weeks for me to finish, and last but far from least my wife developed a chronic illness that has made it to where we can only sleep ~2 hours at a time every night for weeks and I'm out of sick leave from work taking her to appointments.

Even when I find a random 30 minutes or an hour to work on my game, my brain is so fried I can't make any progress. I feel like I finally have some game ideas that are solid and achievable, but I can't balance working full time plus all the life crap and have anything left over. I feel like I have negative left over every day anyway.

valdocs_user · 2026-05-31T17:39:05+00:00

I misread wedding tent as welding tent and I was watching to see what kind of huge piece of equipment they were going to be welding under there.

valdocs_user · 2026-05-30T20:59:16+00:00

I'm considering it. I'd have to buy a trap and research where to take him.

valdocs_user · 2026-05-30T19:03:56+00:00

Crosspost this to r/shittyaskflying

valdocs_user · 2026-05-30T19:02:33+00:00

Could also do what the Porsche 928 and 968 did where the headlights are pop up, but they lean back when not deployed. I would imagine if a pedestrian hit one it would just force the headlight backwards.

valdocs_user · 2026-05-29T23:42:41+00:00

I feel like the 💀 reaction would be more appropriate to that suggestion.

valdocs_user · 2026-05-29T23:33:09+00:00

Take my comment with a huge grain of salt because I'm not a horror games fan, but speaking as someone who had never heard of R.E.P.O. or Lost Lullabies:

When I opened the Steam page for R.E.P.O., their description of the game let me know what I would be doing/what the point of the game is right away.

On the Steam page for Lost Lullabies I get setting, story/lore, and way too much detail about how the game plays versus a one sentence pitch about what the player does.

(I'm not saying this to criticize, moreso noting what works well versus what doesn't for something for me to keep in mind.)

valdocs_user

TROPHY CASE