We are making a hardcore dungeon crawler with our little game studio. First time using godot in production, im really excited.

Also have more cat memes.

I’ve pretty bad ADHD (diagnosed) my entire adult life, so focus has been a huge struggle for me forever. Here’s my strategy:
- Noise-canceling headphones blasting chiptunes (Spotify has some, but YouTube has the best selection of old-school video game music) I’m usually way less distracted if I listen to music without lyrics.
- A chair cushion (I actually use one of those ridiculous donut ones, but I put a normal sized pillowcase on it. SO comfortable, even after many hours.)
- THE POMODORO METHOD. 25 minutes hardcore coding/debugging, followed by 5 minute intervals for breaks, like checking fb, etc. (Breaks are totally optional if you’re in the zone tho 💪) It’s a great way to reward your brain for focusing.
- And if all else fails, the looming threat of unemployment is always there to keep you motivated 🙃 (Sad but true— always crosses my mind when I’m starting to fall behind on a task)

In game development feature creep tends to kill games because it's just as much about what's NOT there as what IS there.

Take The Last of Us for example. Would a strategic tower defense segment make sense? No? And if it was a *hugely* popular mechanic at the time of development is there a real chance they would have included such a segment in TLOU? Yes.

Don't just believe me. Go take a look at what happened to the original Fortnite versus the hills-have-eyes inbred offspring that it became all because PUBG and its format were cancerously mega popular at the time.

That's why while developing my game Atom Ranger (now with 100% less multiplayer!), a mix between metro and don't starve, I spent six years *pruning* features. You can click my referral link and get 50% off the opportunity to become an unpaid tester of the pre-prealpha right now, "for hardcore players only!" (Tm)

My game:

We code hard in these cubicles

My style’s nerd-chic, I’m a programmin’ freak

We code hard in these cubicles

Only two hours to your deadline?

Don’t sweat my technique.

Sippin’ morning coffee with that JAVA swirl.

Born to code; my first words were “Hello World”

Since 95, been JAVA codin’ stayin’ proud

Started on floppy disks, now we take it to the cloud.

On my desktop, JAVA’s what’s bobbin’ and weavin’

We got another winning app before I get to OddEven.

Blazin’ code like a forest fire, climbin’ a tree

Setting standards like I Triple E….
Boot it on up, I use the force like Luke,

Got so much love for my homeboy Duke.

GNU Public Licensed, it’s open source,

Stop by my desk when you need a crash course

Written once and my script runs anywhere,

Straight thuggin’, mean muggin’ in my Aeron chair.

All the best lines of code, you know I wrote ‘em

I’ll run you out of town on your dial-up modem.

Cause…
We code hard in these cubicles

Me and my crew code hyphy hardcore

We code hard in these cubicles

It’s been more than 10 years since I’ve seen the 404.

Inheriting a project can make me go beeee-serk

Ain’t got four hours to transfer their Framework.

The cleaners killed the lights, Man, that ain’t nice,

Gonna knock this program out, just like Kimbo Slice

I program all night, just like a champ,

Look alive under this IKEA lamp.

I code HARDER in the midnight hour,

E7 on the vending machine fuels my power.

Ps3 to Smartphones, our code use never ends,

JAVA’s there when I beat you in “Words with Friends”.

My developing skills are so fresh please discuss,

You better step your game up on that C++.

We know better than to use Dot N-E-T,

Even Dan Brown can’t code as hard as me.

You know JAVA’s gettin’ bigger, that’s a promise not a threat,

Let me code it on your brain

We code hard in these cubicles,

it’s the core component…of what we implement.

We code hard in these cubicles,
Straight to your JAVA Runtime Environment.

We code hard in these cubicles,
Keep the syntax light and the algorithm tight.

We code hard in these cubicles,

Gotta use JAVA if it’s gonna run right.

We code hard in these cubicles

JAVA keeps adapting, you know it’s built to last.

We code hard in these cubicles,

Robust and secure, so our swag’s on blast

CODE HARD

Wrote this on another thread but wanted to do a full post on it.

What is a game?

I like to distinguish between 1. entertainment, 2. games, 3. fun.

both ideally are 'fun' (conveying a sense of immersion, flow, or pleasure).

a game is distinct (usually) from entertainment by the presence of interaction, but certain minimalists games have so little decision making, practice, or interaction-learning that in practice they're closer to entertainment.

theres also the issue of "interesting" interaction vs uninteresting ones. While in broad terms, it really comes down to the individual, in aggregate we can (usefully) say some things, by the utility, are either games or not. For example if having interaction were sufficient to make something a game, then light switches could become a game.

now supposed you added multiple switches and you had to hit a sequence to open a door. Now thats a sort of "game". So we see games are toys with goals.

Now what is a toy?

There are two varieties of toy: impromptu toys and intentional toys.

An impromptu toy is anything NOT intended primarily, by design, to induce pleasure or entertainment when interacted with. We'll call these "devices" or "toys" with a lowercase t.

"Toys", made with the intent of entertainment (primarily or secondarily) we'll label with an uppercase T.

Now whether something is used with the intent behind its own design (witness people using dildos, sex toys, as slapstick and gag items lol), or whether the designer achieves their intent with the toy or item is another matter entirely.

But what about more atmospheric games? What about idle games? Or clickers?

Take clickers. In the degenerate case of a single button and a number that increases, whats the difference between a clicker and a calculator? One is a device (calculator) turned into an impromptu toy and then a game by the user's intent and goal (larger number). The second, is a game proper, by the designers intent. In the degenerate case of a badly designed game it devolves into a really shitty calculator.

Likewise in the case of atmospheric games, in the degenerate case, they become mere cinematic entertainment with a glorified pause/play button.

Now while we could get into the definition of *play*, I'll only briefly get into it because there are a number of broad definitions. "Play" is loosely: freely structured (or structured) interaction with some sort of pleasure as either the primary or secondary object, with or without a goal, thats it. And by this definition you can play with a toy, you can play a game, you can play with a lightswitch, hell you can play with yourself.

This of course leaves out goals, the idea of "interesting decisions" or decision making, and a variety of other important elements.

But what makes a good game?

A lot of elements go into making a good game, and it's not a stretch to say that a good game is a totality of factors. At the core of all "good" games is a focus on mechanics, aesthetics, story, and technology. So we can already see that what makes a good game is less of an either-or-categorization and more like a rating or scale across categories of design elements.
Broadly, while aesthetics and atmosphere might be more important in games like Journey (2012) by Thatonegamecompany, for players of games like Rimworld the mechanics and interactions are going to be more important.

In fact going a little deeper, mechanics are usually (but not always) equivalent to interactions. And we see this dichtonomy arise when looking at games like Journey vs say, Dwarf Fortress. But, as an aside, is it possible to have atmospheric games that are also highly interactive or have a strong focus on mechanics? This is often what "realistic" (as opposed to *immersive*) games try to accomplish in design. Done poorly they instead lead to player frusteration, which depending on player type may or may not be pleasureable (witness 'hardcore' games whos difficulty and focus on do-overs is the fun the game is designed for, like roguelikes, and we'll get to that in a moment), but without the proper player base, leads to breaking player flow and immersion. One example of a badly designed game in the roguelike genre would be Early Access Stoneshard, where difficulty was more related to luck and chance than player skill or planning. A large part of this was because of a poorly designed stealth system, where picking off a single enemy alerted *all enemies* nearbye, who would then *stay* alerted until you changed maps, negating tactics that roguelike players enjoy and are used to resorting to. This is an important case worth examining because it shows how minor designer choices in mechanical design can radically alter the final quality of the game. Some games instead chose the cheaper route of managing player *perceptions* with a pregame note: Darkest Dungeons and Amnesia TDD are just two I can think of.

void *sbrk(int);
in C.
Because I love to play hardcore with the memory.
(•_•)
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)

I lost the enthusiasm I had for just programming languages mostly functional languages. I see my peers who were already in the game. I came late, did all the functional hardcore bullshit and become a top pro and now lost interest.

Now its until and unless I don't see something working end to end nicely, go fuck your shit. But regardless fuck OOP

Been working on redoing my desktop lately. Currently the specs are:
-FX-8350
-Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P motherboard with a broken USB 3.0 header lmao
-GTX 660 (Gonna upgrade to an RX 580 at some point, I don't do any hardcore gaming so I know I don't need a top of the line GPU)
-Crucial BX500 240gb SSD
-WD 500gb HDD (gonna upgrade to a bigger one eventually)
-Some like $60 Dynex PSU I bought a while ago, waiting on my Corsair RM650x to come in

At this very moment, it's running Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Once I get to a point where I'm happier with the build, I'll switch it over to Linux and start ricing. It has Windows right now cause I'm just using it for some games and when I last fucked with the hardware, it was the middle of the night so I didn't want to spend too much time setting up a Linux distro the way I want it and everything right then, just putting that off for later (especially cause I use Arch btw)

I have been playing some Half Life 2 lately. I forgot how fucking fun that game is.

Aside from my PC, my birthday was technically yesterday (it's about 2:30AM as of writing this, and I've been up for a while, so I still consider it today). Now I'm 2 years away from being able to legally drink (and smoke since the law change, although I still do both anyways).

I'm gonna stop rambling. Life is fairly decent right now. Not too much to "rant" about except for shit with my roommates, but I won't bore everyone with that