My words to live by...

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++

The last 5 months have been tough.... My boss ( who was a close friend) quit and I become interim department head... Trying to run a team who didn't seem happy I'd taken the reigns.

At the same time my wife's ongoing battle with her anxiety had gotten worse and she really needed my help with everything possible at home..

In March I was confirmed as the HoD but I was still doing 3 to 4 days a week on client delivery, trying to support all presales activities, manage a team of 10 people, travel for work and support my family....😩

It really got to me and I was close to breaking... The worry of not replying to an email ASAP no matter what time of day would eat me up, working late every night... It got too much and I was running on fumes with my weekends just me completely wiped out and useless to the family. 😓

.....But.....

I had a escape last weekend to a 🍻 beer 🍻 festival with friends that I was considering not going too and just losing the money but the wife made me go...

And it broke me even more... So much that its somehow put the pieces back in the right order in my brain and snapped me out of my major rut!

Somehow, sitting with friends, making stupid jokes, drinking way too much and blocking out all the work crap gave my brain the hard reset it needed. 🤟

This week I've come back a different person ( wife's words) work is a breeze, exciting and encouraging.... 👊

I can't get enough of playing silly games with my kids all night

And couldn't feel any more positive about things if I tried.... Set that spark back for my wife too! 😏💏

So.... After that long rant 👀

Tl;Dr - work and life got too much... Close to giving up... Too much beer with good company gave me a hard reset and I feel like a new person.... 👍

Plus the team is now loving the new direction and strategy too 👔

Who says drinking is bad for you? 😂🍻

Been playing a lot of old NES games lately.
Made me think how did they develop and program such amazing games with primitive 80'-90's technologies, assembly/c and no internet.

Now with all the tech we have most games are crap and based on webshit or mobile.

So, today for my SO's father who is already over 70 and wants to try Linux. However, he doesn't want Linux on his main PC for now, rather on the old one so that he can take his time to get familiar, which is a reasonable plan.

But holy crap, what a machine! Intel Core2 Duo 4400, 2 GB DDR2(!) RAM, 250 GB IDE(!) HDD, DVD RW drive. Graphics, sound and LAN integrated on the mobo chipset. It's half a miracle that it doesn't run on steam. The machine had been delivered with Vista and has always been painfully slow.

It doesn't even support booting from USB, but I had prepared a DVD just in case. Surprise: it booted from DVD without issues and with full HW support!

Partitioned and installed, deleted Vista in the process (felt good). I went with the full blown Mint 20 Cinnamon edition because XFCE isn't as beautiful. Also, having XFCE now and then Cinnamon looking different on the other PC would be confusing.

Installation took some time, but worked. Cinnamon's RAM usage is at 750 MB idle, and at 1.1 GB with Firefox started. Once the PC is booted, it runs pretty OK with reduced swappiness and noatime on all file systems, plus unnecessary startup applications disabled. Updates took long, but ran through successfully. Installed LibreOffice and some small games, Firefox got uBlock Origin, Youtube worked OOTB.

That PC somehow had escaped disposal several times - and now has a proper OS for the first time in its miserable existence. It runs so much better than it ever has. Just wow, a "big" Linux desktop from 2020 blows a contemporary Vista out of the water on such an old machine!

OK< been a long time user of Unity.

Tried the latest update as I and others were enthusiastic about creating a joint project of gamers and developers.

As I was building up a started website and we were getting things with Unity ready...BOOM,. They Fuck up the installs.

Not just a minor thing here or there but not finding its own Fucking file locations where it installs shit. You try and say, Hey Unity you fucking twat, install here in this folder.

Boom again, it installs part of it there, and then continues installing shit everywhere else it wants to. Then the assholes at Unity give this Bullshit claim "the bug has been fixed."

Just reinstall.

Fuck you, its never that simple, You have to delete all sorts of fucking files to make sure conflicts from a previous corruption isn't just loaded on top of so it does not fuck up later.

So we did all that from programs, program data, program(x86), AppData Local, Local Low, and Roaming.

For added measure we manually removed all the crap from the registry folders (that was a pain but necessary), and then ran a cleaner to make sure all the left over shit was gone.

Thinking, OK you shit tech MoFo's we are clean and here we go.

HOLY SHIT BALLS, Its fucking worse with the LTS version it recommends and Slow as Fuck with their most recent version which is like 2020 itself, and insane piece of fucking bloated garbage and slower than a brick hard shit without fruit.

So we were going to all go post on the forums, and complain the fix section isn't fixed for shit.

Fuck us running backwards naked through a field of razor grass. Its so overloaded with complaints that they shut down further posts.

What makes this shit worse is we cannot even get the previous fucking versions of the editor before all this to work where our only option is without using the fucking Hub demand is just install 2018.

great if we started coding and testing in that. We cannot get shit where we were at back on track because you cannot fucking backward load an exported saved asset file.

Unity's suggestion? Start over.

Our Suggestion? Stop fucking smoking or using whatever fucking drug you assholes are on, you fucking disabled the gear options so we can resolve shit ourselves, and admit you did that shit and other sneaky piece of shit back stabby, security vulnerable data leak bullshit things to your end users.

Listen to your fucking experienced and long time users and get rid of the Fucking backward stepped hub piece of shit everyone with more brains than whatever piss ant pieces of shit praised that the rest of us have hated from day fucking one!

And while fixing this shit like it should be fucking fixed if you shit head bastards want to continue to exist as a fucking company, overhaul the fucking website or get the fuck out of business with now completely worthless SHIT.

Phew:
Suffice it to say....

We are now considering dealing with the learning curve and post pone our project going with unreal just because of these all around complete fuck ups that herald back to shit games of versions 3.0 and earlier.

!dev

TLDR; younger brother is an unreliable fuck. Learning to be a pathetic trickster. Penny teller cheap ass jester.

Hello folks. Time for a little family story.

This started around mid June.
I was a little tight on money the past few months. I had a broken laptop, that my brother wanted to buy. So I told him that he can have it for 100 bucks. It was a 1k gaming laptop 2 years ago, (i7, gtx 960m, 16gb ddr4). But I didn't know how much it would cost to repair. So I was happy with the price and so was him.

He told me he would pay by the end of June.

Hi didn't pay. He repaired the laptop for free by asking his boss, that used to be my friend (I'll probably tell you guys about that in another rant, best friend, got in a fight, stopped talking, next day my brother asked him for a job).

A month later, mid July, I told him I needed the money.

He literally said:

"I don't care for what you need. I'll pay you when I think it is a relevant expense, now I have money only for buying tools and investing in my career".

He was buying 15 usd pens (not only 1), because he wants to have expensive crap.

That was a bit disgusting, but not shocking. (I'm used to his little brat attitude, he's 26 btw).

I thought to myself. Ok, you want to be a bitch?. Then pay more.

I told him that he appreciated a good that wasn't his and that he should either pay now or agree to a new price. He didn't like that idea, but eventually we agreed to make it 300usd.

And one of the clauses was.

"I shouldn't ask him to pay." 🙄

He would pay when he could. (entitled brat attitude again). Ok. Fine.

It's been a month from that. He teased that he would pay 3 weeks ago. And he didn't. I asked him how was the "not asking for payment clause", because he did the teasing and I wanted to know if that kind of shitty mind games was part of the deal.

So that's the background story for the laptop.

Now time for a dinner story.

We share dinner once or twice a week. And when any one is short in money we keep a tally on who's been paying.

When I have money I just let the tally go in my favor, an buy him dinner whenever he says his short on money.

Note: Here, fries and soda are not part of the price, so the one that is short on money pays the fries and soda.

Today it was not one of those days. (Dinner here is about 15 USD for 2, with fries, and soda, nothing fancy, nor healthy, but an exuse to hang out with my only brother that would not eat a salad even if it was free).

I owed him 10 bucks, and he owed me 1 dinner. I asked him if he's buying dinner today. He said that the tally is even because last meal I didn't pay the chips. 🧐. (That was settled because I didn't pay once, but made up for it later)

Again with his entitled ass shitty attitude.

I just said. I don't want to hear your excuses. Here's your money. I want my laptop tomorrow, I'll sell first thing Monday. And tell me how much did you spend on repairs and parts and I'll pay you.

And now I'm sad. 🙃

Mainly, because is just so fucking boring to deal with a person that counts every penny. I fed him for 10 year while he was having problems, (alcohol and depression), And now he comes with this shitty ass counting pennies attitude, wtf?

I literally felt poorer just by counting the cents that made part of this story. (Really, who the fucks keeps track of chips and soda??? What are we 15yo??)))

It's one thing to be trapped in a 3rd world country where everyone is trying to fuck you. You learn to deal with that shit. And it's ok.

But seeing that your little brother is learning the same cheap trickery is just sad. The same cheap approach to life. The same easy and pathetic mind games is just fucking sad.

I don't even mind the money anymore. I was short on cash 2 months ago, I'm gladly better now. But finding out that he's becoming a little scammer is a bummer.

I just needed to vent. I think I should stop enabling him. And maybe keep some distance, it is fucking depressing to be counting cents to settle an argument. By dealing with that fucktard I end up counting cents just to figure out who's right.

Game Streaming is an absolute waste.

I'm glad to see that quite a lot of people are rightfully skeptical or downright opposed to it. But that didn't stop the major AAA game publishers announcing their own game streaming platforms at E3 this weekend, did it?

I fail to see any unique benefit that can't be solved with traditional hardware (either console or PC)

- Portability? The Nintendo Switch proved that dedicated consoles now have enough power to run great games both at home and on the go.

- Storage? You can get sizable microSD cards for pretty cheap nowadays. So much so that the Switch went back to use flash-based cartridges!

- Library size/price? The problem is even though you're paying a low price for hundreds of games, you don't own them. If any of these companies shut down the platform, all that money you spent is wasted. Plus, this can be solved with backwards compatibility and one-time digital downloads.

- Performance on commodity hardware? This is about the only thing these streaming services have going for it. But unfortunately this only works when you have an Internet connection, so if you have crap Internet or drop off the network, you're screwed. And has it ever occurred to people that maybe playing Doom on your phone is a terrible UX experience and shouldn't be done because it wasn't designed for it?

I just don't get it. Hopefully this whole fad passes soon.

After a few weeks of being insanely busy, I decided to log onto Steam and maybe relax with a few people and play some games. I enjoy playing a few sandbox games and do freelance development for those games (Anywhere from a simple script to a full on server setup) on the side. It just so happened that I had an 'urgent' request from one of my old staff member from an old community I use to own. This staff member decided to run his own community after I sold mine off since I didn't have the passion anymore to deal with the community on a daily basis.

O: Owner (Former staff member/friend)
D: Other Dev

O: Hey, I need urgent help man! Got a few things developed for my server, and now the server won't stay stable and crashes randomly. I really need help, my developer can't figure it out.
Me: Uhm, sure. Just remember, if it's small I'll do it for free since you're an old friend, but if it's a bigger issue or needs a full recode or whatever, you're gonna have to pay. Another option is, I tell you what's wrong and you can have your developer fix it.
O: Sounds good, I'll give you owner access to everything so you can check it out.
Me: Sounds good

*An hour passes by*

O: Sorry it took so long, had to deal with some crap. *Insert credentials, etc*
Me: Ok, give me a few minutes to do some basic tests. What was that new feature or whatever you added?
O: *Explains long feature, and where it's located*
Me: *Begins to review the files* *Internal rage wondering what fucking developer could code such trash* *Tests a few methods, and watches CPU/RAM and an internal graph for usage*
Me: Who coded this module?
O: My developer.
Me: *Calm tone, with a mix of some anger* So, you know what, I'm just gonna do some simple math for ya. You're running 33 ticks a second for the server, with an average of about 40ish players. 33x60 = 1980 cycles a minute, now lets times that by the 40 players on average, you have 79,200 cycles per minute or nearly 4.8 fucking cycles an hour (If you maxed the server at 64 players, it's going to run an amazing fucking 7.6 million cycles an hour, like holy fuck). You're also running a MySQLite query every cycle while transferring useless data to the server, you're clusterfucking the server and overloading it for no fucking reason and that's why you're crashing it. Another question, who the fuck wrote the security of this? I can literally send commands to the server with this insecure method and delete all of your files... If you actually want your fucking server stable and secure, I'm gonna have to recode this entire module to reduce your developer's clusterfuck of 4.8 million cycles to about 400 every hour... it's gonna be $50.
D: *Angered* You're wrong, this is the best way to do it, I did stress testing! *Insert other defensive comments* You're just a shitty developer (This one got me)
Me: *Calm* You're calling me a shitty developer? You're the person that doesn't understand a timer, I get that you're new to this world, but reading the wiki or even using the game's forums would've ripped this code to shreds and you to shreds. You're not even a developer, cause most of this is so disorganized it looks like you copy and pasted it. *Get's angered here and starts some light screaming* You're wasting CPU usage, the game can't use more than 1 physical core, and after a quick test, you're stupid 'amazing' module is using about 40% of the CPU. You need to fucking realize the 40ish average players, use less than this... THEY SHOULD BE MORE INTENSIVE THAN YOUR CODE, NOT THE OPPOSITE.
O: Hey don't be rude to Venom, he's an amazing coder. You're still new, you don't know as much as him. Ok, I'll pay you the money to get it recoded.
Me: Sounds good. *Angered tone* Also you developer boy, learn to listen to feedback and maybe learn to improve your shitty code. Cause you'll never go anywhere if you don't even understand who bad this garbage is, and that you can't even use the fucking wiki for this game. The only fucking way you're gonna improve is to use some of my suggestions.
D: *Leaves call without saying anything*

TL;DR: Shitty developer ran some shitty XP system code for a game nearly 4.8 million times an hour (average) or just above 7.6 million times an hour (if maxed), plus running MySQLite when it could've been done within about like 400 an hour at max. Tried calling me a shitty developer, and got sorta yelled at while I was trying to keep calm.

Still pissed he tried calling me a shitty developer...

Hello world. I'm new here :)
Here we go..

Me: Oh I really need this software but it's Wangblows only..
*Installs wangblows temporarily*
Me: ugh. So much bloatware
*starts uninstalling all shitty games and useless shit in win10*
Me: much better. Let's get coding...
*30min later*
Me: *restarts pc*
Me: why the fuck are all of these apps back? There are even more fucking games and useless crap.
*goes batshit crazy because it's not the first time happening*
Me: fuck this shit
Me: *installs Linux again*
Why the actual fuck do you have to pay for this disgrace called an "operating system" and then you get so much fucking ads and bloatware and..and.. inf cucmfing suofelelchefhdisksls

I have nothing to play recently so I started playing old games.

Today I launched gta vice city on my old pc. Got more than 200 hours in that game during my childhood. Game from 2002 and I laughed when driving a car. It was so natural and fun. Michael Jackson singing Billy Jean and police chasing my ass when I’m trying to find a bribe in the city. That was fun.

For me most of today’s games can’t compete in gameplay mechanics with that game from 20 years ago.
Maybe we have better graphics but gaming fun got worse.

I think it’s cause most of games are made on commercial engines to save money and game studios focus on graphics cause it’s cheaper than paying software developer.

They focus on games to be competitive between players so ai got worse.

Big studio games became generic like movies, they don’t want you to have fun but they want to give you a story around by delivering lots of content in game, achievements, stars but the gameplay itself is bugged and meh.

They don’t focus on things people want to do but they focus on target groups. Most today’s big title games are meh cause they’re made by people who don’t play them.

They don’t play them cause they don’t have time cause of management that changes requirements cause they asked target groups and that would sell. Well if I play a game I’m not interested in story despite some basic stuff to keep the progress forward, if I wanted a big story I would watch a movie or tv show. I play games to explore, feel the world and have fun. I don’t need a linear deep story for that cause I’m in game so give me good gameplay so I can feel the world.

Most of classic game hits didn’t had tons of text and tons of stuff to do but they somehow wanted you to play more. Cause they were competitive between player and computer, the controls felt natural and while progressing you was eaten by the game mechanics more and more not by the story but by amount of stuff you could do as you progress or difficulty increase or enemies behavior change.

Now we’re getting all at once, mostly pointed and with detailed tutorial what you can do. There’s no explanation there’s no discovery what you can and what you can’t do at start. You get all and you decide to throw game away because the moment you launched it you got everything so you spent money just to get stuff you won’t play cause it’s meh and you go back to cs or other looter shooter to kill people cause you’re pissed off that the game was meh.

Well I’m glad I was a kid in 90s and 2000s cause I could enjoy gaming before it was targeted to broader public and become another shallow mass media industry that don’t give a fuck about gameplay cause they want to tell you so many things, they want you to know them cause they’re so important that they forgot that I can read a book and I came to play game to get a different feeling then reading book.

Modern games are like books filled with small stories and nice graphics where you can open it on every page and read a little piece of shitty crap.

Just take this piece and go to toilet so you can wipe your ass with that story and begin other one, look around, puke and go to toilet to take a dump again. I lost my hope to get something fresh or filled with nice gameplay from gaming industry. It’s dead.

It is the time for the proper long personal rant.

Im a fresh student, i started few months ago and the life is going as predicted: badly or even worse...
Before the university i had similar problems but i had them under control (i was able to cope with them and with some dose of "luck" i graduated from high school and managed to get into uni). I thought by leaving the town and starting over i would change myself and give myself a boost to keep going. But things turned out as expected. Currently i waste time everyday playing pc games or if im too stressed to play, i watch yt videos. Few years ago i thought i was addicted, im not. It might be a effect of something greater. I have plans, for countess inventions, projects, personal, for university and others and ALL of them are frozen, stopped, non existant. No motivation. I had few moments when i was motivated but it was short, hours or only minutes. Long term goals dont give me any motivation. They give as much short lived joy, happines as goals in games and other things... (no substance abuse problems, dont worry). I just dont see point of my projects anymore. Im sure that my projects are the only thing that will give me experience and teach me something but... i passed the magic barrier of univercity, all my projects are becoming less and less impressive... TV and other sources show people, briliant people, students, even children that were more succesful than me

if they are better than me why do i even bother? companies care more for them, especialy the prestigious ones, they have all the fame, money, funding, help, gear without question!
of course they hardworked for ther positions, they could had better beggining or worse but only hard work matters right?

As i said. None of my work matters, i worked hard for my whole life, studing, crafting, understanding: programming, multiple launguages, enviorements, proper and most effcient algorithms, electronic circuits, mechanical contraptions. I have knowlege about nearly every machine and i would be able to create nearly everything with just access to those tools and few days worth of practice. (im sort of omnibus, know everything) But because had lived in a small town i didnt have any chances of getting the right equpment. All of my electronical projects are crap. Mechanical projects are made out of scrap. Even when i was in high school, nobody was impressed or if they were they couldnt help me.
Now im at university. My projects are stagnant, mostly because of my mental problems. Even my lifestyle took a big hit. I neglect a lot of things i shouldnt. Of course greg, you should go out with friends! You cant dedicate 100% of your life to science!
I fucking tried. All of them are busy or there are other things that prevent that... So no friends for me. I even tried doing something togheter! Nope, same reasons or in most cases they dont even do anything...
Science clubs? Mostly formal, nobody has time, tools are limited unless you designed you thing before... (i want to learn!, i dont have time to design!), and in addition to that i have to make a recrutment project... => lack of motivation to do shit.

The biggest obstacle is money. Parts require money, you can make your parts but tools are money too. I have enough to live in decent apartment and cook decently as well but not enough to buy shit for projects. (some of them require a lot or knowlege... and nobody is willing to give me the second thing). Ok i found a decent job oppurtunity. C# corporation, very nice location, perfect for me because i have a lot of time, not only i can practice but i can earn for stuff. I have a CV or resume just waiting for my friend to give me the email (long story, we have been to that corp because they had open days and only he has the email to the guy, just a easier way)
But there are issiues with it as well so it is not that easy.

If nobody have noticed im dedicated to the science. Basicly 100% scientist that want to make a world a better place.

I messaged a uni specialist so i hope he will be able to help me.
For long time i have thought that i was normal, parent were neglecting my mental health and i had some situations that didnt have good infuence on me as well. I might have some issiues with my brain as well, 96% of aspargers symptoms match, with other links included. I dont want to say i have it but it is a exciuse for a test. In addition to that i cant CANT stop thinking, i even tried not thinking for few minutes, nope i had to think about something everytime. On top of that my biological timer is flipped. I go to sleep at 5 am and wake up at 5pm (when i dont have lectures).
I prefer working at night, at that time my brain at least works normaly but i dont want to disrupt roommates...
And at the day my brain starts the usual, depression, lack of motivation, other bullshit thing.

I might add something later, that is all for now.

Was playing fallout 4 a couple days ago. About 20 minutes in. The computer just shuts off. Like no power at all. I start up the computer again. Try fallout 4 again. It shuts off at the beginning video. WTF... I try Skyrim wondering if video card is busted. Skyrim runs perfectly fine. I startup Fallout 4 again. It runs. WTF...

Next day I try fallout and bout 20 minutes in power off again. Now I am assuming cooling issue and I am trying to see temps with programs. Cannot really tell.

So today I take apart my laptop and vacuum every cooling orifice out. Vacuum any dust looking crap I can see. There was dust in the fans. All clean. I run a memory test for a couple hours. Memory passes (it was brand new memory, thought maybe flaw in ram). Now I run fallout 4. Runs fine, zero issues for about an hour.

Me to myself: CLEAN YOUR DAMN COMPUTER MORE OFTEN! Okay...

In between I read about Fallout 4 causing system reboots and shutdowns due to loading and heating. Apparently something about Fallout 4 causes this more than other games. Wild... Pretty sure it was thermal shutdown protection going on.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from rant import depression as fuck
from WhiskeyBottle import *
import time

while bottle.contents > 0.0 and time.datetime():
fuck.rant()

Yeah ok, this will be one of a few, but I'll try to keep it short. Damn, whiskey is not helping. Nor various smokables.

So yeah, have you ever had a dream? I consider myself a gamer the whole life, always loved creative worlds, dynamics, mechanics, plots, stuff you could and couldn't do. To the point I promised myself I'd make a game - NAH - I'll be making games in the future. You know, good games, that you come back to. Like Doom. Or those porn games.

Never went to Uni or nothing. Was born in a poor European country with Internet more broken than my soul right now. Years later, after acquiring some good hardware, learning a bunch of languages, Unity, Unreal Engine 4 and experimenting for about 10 years now with small scripts, apps and mini-games I've come to this realization.

I only made one "full" "game" in my life, and that was when I was like 16 in Klik & Play (early Game Maker). And it was shit. It was horrible, horrible shit. It literally makes you want to cry when you play it. It's 16-bit brain cancer. And it's the best I've ever published.

Now I've been through countless prototypes, none of which I've developed any further. I had ideas, plans, even made some more advanced roadmaps and dev cycles. Estimated costs, time, mechanics, gameplay hooks.

I never finish anything.

I get bored. Frustrated sometimes. There's always an improvement, something that "if I'd finish that it would be it! Screw this thing I was working on now, THAT will be worth sacrificing it." It's tiresome. I'm getting old.

And honestly, I don't know how people do it anymore. Trying to compromise those side-projects (they take all my free time which is not much) and work is just... draining. I'm losing hope. Maybe I shouldn't be allowed into the gamedev world after all. Maybe I'll just pump half-assed pieces of crap everybody will hate.

Or worse, nobody will care.

I'm really not sure. When I was 7-8 years old, I liked to view source in IE, then I somehow managed to use Javascript in the browser. First only some dumb opening of windows. And I liked Batch, so I made some files for copying, backup and stuff.

Then I got to PHP during the years from some online tutorial about making dynamic websites. My website was more static than stone, but yeah, I did page loading with PHP! Awful experience anyway, because I had to install Xampp, get it work and other stuff. 11 years old or so. (and I used Xampp only as a fileserver between laptop and desktop later, because.. PHP4... just no.)

As 12 years old or so I experienced my first World of Warcraft (vanilla) on a custom server in an internet cafe and I thought it's a singleplayer game. When I found out that no, I googled how to make my own server (hated multiplayer back then and loved good games with huge storylines). Failed miserably with ManGOS, got something to work with ArcEMU. There I learned some C++ basic stuff, which I hoped would helped me to fix some bugs. When I opened the code I was like: "Suuure." and left it like that. I learned what a MySQL database is, broke it like four times when I forgot WHERE and still rather played with websites i.e. html, css, js and optionally php when I wanted to repair a webpage for the server. With a friend we managed to get the server work via Hamachi, was fun, the server died too soon. Then I got ManGOS to work, but there wasn't really any interest to make a server anymore, just singleplayer for the lore. (big warcraft fan, don't kick me :D )

I think it was when I was 13y.o. I went to Delphi/Pascal course, which I liked a lot from the beginning, even managed to use my code on old Knoppix via Lazarus(Pascal). At this age I really liked thoae Flash games which were still common to see everywhere. So I downloaded .swfs, opened and tried to understand it. Managed to pull some stuff from it and rewrite in Pascal. Nope, never again that crap.

About the same time I got to Flash files I discovered Java. It was kind of popular back then, so I thought let's give it a try. I liked Flash more. Seriously. I've never seen so much repetitiveness and stupid styling of a code. I had either IDE for compiling C++ or Pascal or notepad! You think I wanted my code kicked all over the place in multiple folders and files? No.

So back to Pascal. I made some apps for my old hobby, was quite satisfied with the result (quiz like app), but it still wasn't the thing. And I really thought I'd like to study CS.

I started to love PHP because of phpBB forums I worked on as 15 y.o. I guess. At the same time I think there was an optional subject at school, again with Pascal. I hated the subject, teacher spoke some kind of gibberish I didn't really understand back then at all and now I find it only as a really stupid explanation of loops and strings.

So I started to hate Pascal subject, but not really the lang itself. Still I wanted something simpler and more portable. Then I got to Python as hm, 17y.o. I think and at the same time to C++ with DevC++. That was time when I was still deciding which lang to choose as my main one (still playing with website, database and js).

Then I decided that learning language from some teacher in a class seriously pisses me off and I don't want to experience it again. I choose Python, but still made some little scripts in C++, which is funny, because Python was considered only as a scripting lang back then.

I haven't really find a cross-platform framework for C++, which would: a) be easy to install b) not require VisualStudio PayForMe 20xy c) have nice license if I managed to make something nice and distribute it. I found Unity3D though, so I played with Blender for models, Audacity for music and C# for code. Only beautiful memories with Unity. I still haven't thought I'm a programmer back then.

For Python however I found Kivy and I was playing with it on a phone for about a year. Still I haven't really know what to do back then, so I thought... I like math, numbers, coding, but I want to avoid studying physics. Economics here I go!

Now I'm in my third year at Uni, should be writing thesis, study hard and what I do? Code like never before, contribute, work on a 3D tutorial and play with Blender. Still I don't really think about myself as a programmer, rather hobby-coder.

So, to answer the question: how did I learn to program? Bashing to shit until it behaved like I desired i.e. try-fail learning. I wouldn't choose a different path.

So I bought 2 dvd packed with old rpg games.

I didn’t know my first quest will be to get those games working.

To make my life more miserable I decided to convert those dvd to iso.

First I needed to find computer with dvd because those I use apparently don’t have dvd anymore.

Found one with windows 7 inside.
Yeah first mission complete.

Now just find dvd to iso software and burn those bastards.

I need to update date / time to be able to use internet over https.
Checked.

Started looking for the dvd to iso software. Microsoft answers giving links to bloatware with detailed instructions how to install desired things without crap. The link to download doesn’t work but at least I have the name ImgBurn.
They have website so I click on first mirror and run setup.
First fail they’re linking to bloatware that downloads another bloatware that installs some search plugin for firefox.
Uninstalling search plugin.
1 hour passed by.
Clicking last link. Success.
Now time to click it smart to omit any unwanted software and get only what I want. Reading trough install instructions and checking out not wanted checkboxes is like great quest.
Finally I have what I want and I can backup my dvd.
What a great evening.

Fucking EA Games and their fucking shit mailing system!!
All the sudden they start spamming me emails about their shit games nobody fucking cares about. I proceed to inspect the footer to find an 'unsubscribe' link and there was none, just a 'manage my preferences' link.
So I went there. After waiting a whole minute for a simple page to load (wtf) there is a checkbox saying 'yes please spam my inbox with EA's latest news about their shit games nobody cares about' and it was UNCHECKED.
So I leave it unchecked and click update (thinking it might actually unsubscribe me from this crap) BUT NO! I receive another email saying 'thank you, you stupid moron you just subscribed to our shit and will now receive even more of our useless email about how different the new NFS is and how rubbish the new Star wars game is...
FUCK

This shit is long story of my computer experience over my lifetime.

When I was young I got my first PC with windows it was not so bad. It required safe shut down of it’s fat32 partition. From time to time I needed to reinstall it cause of slow down but I got used to it I was only a gamer.

Time passes and I got more curious about computers and about this linux. Everything worked there but installation of anything was complete madness and none of windows programs worked well, and I wanted to play games and be productive so I sticked with windows.

I bought hp laptop once with nvidia card, it was overheating and got broken. So I bought toshiba and all I told to the seller was I want ATI card. Took me 5 minutes to do it and I was faster then my friend buying pack of cigarettes because I was earning money using computer.

Then I grown up running my small one person programming businesses and I wanted to run and compile every fucking program on this world. I wanted linux shell commands. I wanted package manager, and I wanted my os to be simple because I wasn’t earning money by using my os but by programming. So after getting my paycheck I bought mac. I can run windows and linux on vm if I need it. I try not to steal someones work so I didn’t want to run hackintosh. I am using this mac for some time.

Also I use playstation for gaming. Because I only want to run and play game I am not excited about graphics but gameplay. I think I am pragmatic person.

I can tell you something about my mac.
When I close lid it go sleep when I open it wakes up instantly. I never need to wonder if I want to hibernate or shut down or sleep and drain battery. It is fucking simple.
When I want to run or open something it doesn’t want me to wait but it gives me my intellij or terminal or another browser or whatever I search for. Yeah search is something that works.
Despite it got 8 gigs of ram I can run whatever number of programs I want at the same speed. The speed is not very fast sometimes but it’s constant fast.
I have a keychain so my passwords are in one place I can slow down shared internet speed, I can put my wifi in monitor mode and I don’t need to install some 3rd party software.
And now I updated my mac to high sierra, cause it’s free and I want to play with ios compilation. Before I did it I didn’t even backup whole work. I just used time machine and regular backups. And guess what, it still works at the same speed and all I did was click to run update and cook something to eat.
When I got bored I close the lid, when got idea open lid and code shit, not waiting for fucking wakeup or fucking updates.

I wanted to rant apple products I use but they work, they got fucking updates all along at the same time. And all of updates are optional.

I cannot tell that about all apple products but about products I use.

I think I just got old and started to praise my limited time on this world. Not being excited about new crap. When I buy something I choose wisely. I bought iPhone. I can buy latest iPhone x but I bought iPhone 7 cause it’s from fucking metal. And I know that metal is harder then glass, why the fucking apple forgot about it? I don’t know.
I know that I am clumsy and drop stuff. Dropped my phone at least 100 times and nothing.

I am not a apple fan boy I won’t buy mac with this glowing shit above keyboard that would got me blind at night.
I buy something when I know that it can save my time on this world. I try to buy things that make me productive and don’t break after a year.

So now piece of advise, stop wasting your time, buy and update wisely, wait a week or a month or a year when more people buy shit and buy what’s not broken. And if something’s broken rant this shit so next customer can be smarter.
Cheers

happy rant 😄
just finished our group software project in uni (5 students, a way too complicated game) and just got the highest possible mark of all!!🤩🤩🤩
the project was focused on having a working, bug-free game, so yeah our game was UGLY AS FUCK😅 ... but 99% no bugs😎
best group in years😇
next chapter:
human-computer-interaction(is that the translation for Mensch-Computer-Interaktion?), we'll take our games and bitch about their usability and design😅
by the way i was responsible for the design/ux and did a kinda crap job because of too little time😐😅

Anyone knows of any worthwhile android mobile games to kill the time going to and fro work, when not in the mood to read?

I'm tired of all the "Causal Clicker" or "Freemium" crap that is on the playstore these days...

Some of the best titles that I ever played were:
* Plague.inc - Strategy, infect and wipe out all of humanity kind of game
* Battle of Polytopia - Strategy, 4X game with very well done controls and cute graphics
* Pocket City - Cities: Skylines-esque city builder
* Stardew Valley - Farming-centered RPG

If you don't count meals/toilet breaks/shower then my record would be 15 hours straight (08:00-ish to midnight 24hr clock) for a crap-tier black-white Nonogram/Picross generator that outputs near unsolvable grids because I know sh[BLEEP] on the games' generation algorithm. Yey /s. Petition to open /r/shittyprograms in parallel to /r/shittyrobots to celebrate how shitty my piece of a generator is.

Why is Gnome so bad? Had never bigger problems with Unity but this crap? Tried to use it but:
1. UX is crap, annoying animations everywhere, totally bloated
2. Missing for me important features, wasting space

Solution to these? 1 and half million of plugins. Ok

Part 2:
3. Less FPS in games...like 15 or 20 fps but still
4. When I play game in fullscreen and want to change volume on my keyboard the game gets smaller. Da fak?
5. 120Hz and visible stuttering

Solution to these? Use something else.

How can you tell that your PC is under a heavy load?

When, despite having your high-quality active noise canceling headphones on and playing games, you can still hear what must be your GPU having a heatstroke and having it's fans spin at 100%.

Never knew it can be this loud. Or maybe the headphones are just crap.

!dev

I need some help with advice regarding getting new headphones, as my current ones are quite literally about to fall off my head. Thing is that I have a hard time finding what I want, and even then be able to determine stuff based on reviews.

My current ones are a pair of Turtle Beach Ear Force Z60, which is my first headset to have surround sound. They also sit very comfortably on my head without really pressing on my ears at all, and the audio when playing games is nice and clear. Unfortunately that has now set the bar pretty high when trying to find a new pair.

I tried out a pair of HyperX Cloud II, but I can't configure the settings and the surround sound doesn't seem to work at all (there seems to be a "gap" between one o'clock and three o'clock, so to speak, as well as between nine o'clock and eleven o'clock). I tried listening to a 7.1 audio clip, but the only ones in the right positions were center front and left and right fronts. The left and right sides, and left and right rears were all at the center point. And besides that the audio is unbalanced and just... not quite muffled, but not clear as with the old ones.

Thing is also that I don't know crap about audio stuff, like if it's got to do with me doing something wrong in terms of drivers or hardware or something, or if it's actually got to do with the headphones themselves. I've tried to find info but there's just none to be found, it seems, at least nothing that works. :(

Currently I'm considering trying out another pair from Turtle Beach, but it's so hard to trust the reviews. I mean, like the Z60 has pretty halfassed ratings, but I personally like them a lot. :/

Does anyone have any advice at all? Whether it's recommendations of headphones, or ideas on things I could try on my end to make things work.

AND, side note; I don't care for any comments along the line of "surround sound is bullshit, just stick with stereo, it's better", because 1) I don't agree nor do I care, and 2) it's unconstructive as shit.

I'm thankful for any ideas or advice you guys may have. :/

This is not a rant, but I've searched this for some time now and can't seem to find it so maybe any of you will be able to help me.

A good few years ago, when I was still a 4-5yo I had a Win95/98 (I don't remember which). We used to have this CD that had a bunch of games, like Chucky Egg or Mahjong, or a xmas-related one (where you could bake cookies, serve drinks - there was a red and a yellow one - and more I don't remember), one with a (purple?) dragon (in a dungeon, that was played in levels, but every run was randomly generated, I think), and many more.
The CD was white with black text, and had a yellow-ish/orange-ish grinning face, that looked like a man's, with a few hairs, that was drawn simply, nothing too complex. I also know there was this one game that made the computer/game freeze, and that was in a blue palette?

I played the crap out of that CD with my mom, and she used to play the dragon one for me (until she found out Mahjong), but it all ended when it broke inside the tower and we had it replaced by the WinXP tower we currently have at home (and that's in pieces because me and my brother disassembled it).

I know it's not much, but does any of you remember anything like what I just wrote? It should be from around the 2000s and probably from a gaming magazine.

There needs to be a new (MOOC) class for people like me.

Hi, I'm William. I can't get my head around designing systems. I've read GoF and a few breakdowns of it as well. I find some patterns obvious for my field of interest (game dev, woot!) while I'm reading through the stuff, but have a pretty hard time retaining much of it. I'm aware of the danger of over using patterns, so I don't worry that much about it. I'll look something up when I'm sure I need it.

Still, I'm tired of the tutorial blues. I can watch a few different people write entire games, usually not in the language of choice, but that only helps me so much.

How do I fight scope creep? In the meantime, how can I make things extensible? Scope does need to creep some, after all.

People joke about starting with (visual) BASIC ruining you forever. I don't believe in that crap, but is this just denial? Am I too dumb for this? Not that I'd ever seriously blame a language for that.

I've been a hobbyist for well over 10 years, please don't make me count exactly how long I've been unsuccessful.

I'm baffled by Löve. I think it's the coolest shit I've seen, maybe ever (unless we're counting IPFS).

I think what really prompted this rant, apart from the obvious degradation of my mental health, was my search for an entity component system for Löve/Lua. Hold your replies. I know there's a few of them, and I'm positive that they're fantastic. I'd roll my own, but that requires actual Lua specific knowledge that I just haven't dug all that deep into yet. I can't wrap my head around the ones that exist, even though I can tell their complexity is next to none really.

I have severe tool anxiety, I'm shocked that I've stuck with ZeroBrane Studio as long as I have. It feels good though.

Sorry to use this as "Devs Anonymous", but I think that's how this community helps (me) best.

I feel like I should stop now and just say: Advice? before this gets much deeper/less readable.

Windows is crap! Linux is better but does not support many important programs. And I think, a good system should be usable just fine without using the Terminal.

So would it be possible to create a 4th big system architecture (Open-Source), which supports Windows Apps & Games without being shitty and without harming their laws?