juanuys

This just published since your comment:

https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-...

There's nothing like having kids and other commitments to sharpen one's focus and make timekeeping a thing of perfection.

I note the older students (40+/50+-year-olds, with families, etc) getting their work in way ahead of schedule whilst actively participating in discourse, moreso (dare I say) than the significantly younger ones in our cohort.

A good place to start: The Art of Game Design By Jesse Schell.

https://www.schellgames.com/art-of-game-design/

> 5.) Creating video games is extremely labour-intensive, which is why there are so few Free and Open Source ones

If you mean free as in "gratis", then there are loads of free games available online.

E.g. https://itch.io/games/free (468,224 results)

...and that's just one site. There are free games on Steam, and free games on aggregator sites like Kongregate and its ilk.

If you mean free as in "libre", then sure, there are fewer games. But, frankly, most game code bases I've seen is a complete mess. Might as well just start your own from scratch ;-)

This has been posted once before in 2018.

I'm genuinely curious to know what everyone's opinion is of Eco. (finance noob here)

> Instead, try approaching people who are speaking in groups of two.

I would advise to check body language first. If the duo are facing each other head-on, don't interject. If they're turned slightly outwards, like they're observing the crowd whilst talking, go for it.

I've had a couple of intense conversations broken up like this by someone standing there awkwardly, but then you also don't want to make them feel bad by telling your conversation partner "I'll finish the story later <turn> Hi!", etc.

They should call it WetaHuman.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman-creator

I wonder if it will feature Chocolatiers [0] as a mini-game...

0. https://www.proudlion.co.uk/product/chocolatiers/6476

Hi Walter, thanks for your time!

Do you play many games nowadays? Which ones?

What do you think is going to be the next big gaming breakthrough? Or the next big genre/theme? (E.g. for economics, it was F2P/IAP, never of which I'm a fan of. Also, city building + survival is really big right now.)

Whenever I hear "fixed point arithmetic", it reminds me of the jittery graphics on PSX.

Can't find a more official source than Reddit, but here goes:

> It's because the position of each polygon's vertex (corner) is only calculated at a very low precision. Once the polygon moves (or the camera) the vertexes will stay at the same point, until they're closer to the next and suddenly "jump" to the new position without transition. Newer graphics hardware could interpolate smoothly here with more in-between states (that's where all the talk about "floating point precision" came from in graphics).

0. https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/bkedc/heres_a_quest...

How about this:

Mum, dad - you know how I always tell you to turn your stuff off and on again?

Well, by turning it off, Facebook also turned off the On Button.

A few things that worked for me:

Try some ideation techniques [0].

Take a long walk.

Carry a sketchbook.

Spend time with folks you normally don't spend time with, outside of your echo chamber.

Unplug, and take naps. Near dream-states always gets me going.

0. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/introd...

Quake: Let's not forget the NIN-composed soundtrack!

> Lastly, the growth in the car market is roughly proportional with the increase in population, while the gaming industry has grown at double digits per year for decades now.

It's not like I'm getting five cheap 2008 Fiestas in a Humble Bundle any time soon :-P

EDIT: I stepped away for a moment and just noticed that you edited your answer. I'll keep my reply intact anyway.

I was in the same boat a few years ago. Been a web dev since 2002. A first step was to start freelancing/contracting (since 2013), so I had shorter engagements that I can move on from after a few months.

With the increased wages, I could afford to take summer holidays off and spend it with my family, and work on passion projects.

That's when I really got into game dev (2015). I made a bunch of small games, a lot of them throw-away/unpublished. I then started learning game design (from books, Coursera), but really thought I'd benefit from doing it with others, so right now I'm half-way through an indie dev masters [0] (Falmouth flexible).

The masters has been great, because it's self-directed learning, and I've built a great network of collaborators. I've just set up a Patreon this week, and will be slowly building up a sustainable indie dev living. (I'm already down to 4 days a week on my usual career.)

I've read so many stories of folks saving up a year or two's runway, only for it to not work out in the end, so I'm trying to be as prepared as possible. I'm learning as much as possible right now about finding repeatable success as a game dev.

I'm 42 this year, and not the youngest in the cohort, but surprisingly also not the oldest. (Got a couple 50+, and a few other 40+).

This is just my story. I sincerely hope you find something that you can fall in love with again. Good luck!

0. https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/study/online/postgraduate/indie-g...

Oops, I just realised you said Javascript. Never mind! :-)

Godot [0] is super intuitive, so I recommend it wholeheartedly. And then you ought to look at the Godot Card Game Framework [1], which I've also used for a uni project.

The author has a couple of examples (check their Github repo), which you can play online [2][3]. Also, join the Discord (check the repo for a link). The community is very friendly and helpful (just be sure to learn Godot first, though).

0. https://godotengine.org/

1. https://github.com/db0/godot-card-game-framework

2. http://fragmentforge.dbzer0.com/

3. http://dreams.dbzer0.com/

Wasn't Bill Gates going to build a new type of reactor [0] before Trump became president and shut down US/China collaboration [1]?

It seems there's some movement from Mr. Gates around nuclear again, but not sure if the Natrium stuff is the same as the TWR (travelling wave reactor) of 5 years ago. [2]

0. https://www.terrapower.com/

1. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25728221/te...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-w...

I came here to say the same thing. Maths ought to be up there with reading + writing as basic/required skills.

> This is the route I'm taking - I'll update with my progress in 5 years or so

Nice one, mate. Good luck. I'm doing the same, so right behind you :)

An alternative: make a short devlog video. Talk about the things you delivered that week, plus a few seconds worth of new demo/gameplay.

One day, there'll be a "prototype" FPS shooter, akin to one of Plato's Forms [1], and the player will choose what the game will look and feel like at launch, and the game engine will apply neural style transfer in real-time.

The paper is visuals-oriented. I'm curious to know if similar research has been done for audio. There are also a bunch of resources out there on procedural generation, so it'd be interesting to see those procgen algos getting more smarts in terms of ML. E.g. a deepnet which can look at your first 5 hand-crafted puzzle levels, and generate the next 20.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

Just this weekend, I read this passage (p.219) in Making Of Prince Of Persia, by Jordan Mechner [1], where his colleague tries to dissuade him from tuition, and rather learning on the job:

Deborah had this to say about NYU: "They say it's a three-year program, but it really takes five years. You can expect to spend $2000 on your first-year film, $10,000 second year, and $20,000 third year. Add that to three years' tuition, and you've spent a hundred thousand dollars. What I would do, if you have the wherewithal - I mean, three years and $100,000 - is spend those three years working for free on every film shoot you can. At the end of it, you'll know how a film gets made; everybody will owe you favors, so you'll have a crew; the equipment rental places and the labs will know you, so they might give you a deal too. Take the $100,000 and make a feature! Then you'll be a filmmaker." She sighed and said: "But no one ever does that. They come around like you're doing, and ask a lot of questions, and I tell them what I just told you, and then they go off and enroll in the program."

1. https://jordanmechner.com/store/the-making-of-prince-of-pers...

I say "my". I mean my daughters'. ahem

I thought I was going to see my Cognitoys Dino on that site...

https://www.wired.com/2015/02/cognitoys-ibm-watson/

I'm in the incredibly privileged position to do this too.

4 day week, at a salary 20% under the market rate. My spare day is spent on doing a part-time masters, or personal projects in-between modules.

Previously, I was a freelancer for 7 years, and would take 3 months off over summer every year to work on personal projects.

I'm lucky that I don't have one of those jobs that requires constant presence, or being on-call, etc. (I build SaaS/backend systems)

A little joke for all of you whose bosses won't let you live your best life:

My boss arrived at work in a brand-new Lamborghini. I said, "Wow, that's an amazing car!" He replied, "If you work hard, put all your hours in, and strive for excellence, I'll get another one next year".