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Ben Britten

@benbritten.bsky.social

Previously worked on many, many games; gamedev for nearly 20 years. I am old. I post random 3d printing stuff and sometimes bunnies. He/Him. Australia. Also birds apparently.

1,103 Followers  |  1,697 Following  |  580 Posts  |  Joined: 20.09.2023
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Posts by Ben Britten (@benbritten.bsky.social)

A code snippet that reads:

/**
 * Validates a tarball buffer
 * @param {Uint8Array} _tarballBuffer - The tarball buffer to validate
 * @returns {boolean} True if valid tarball
 */
export function validateTarball(_tarballBuffer: Uint8Array): boolean {
  // Basic validation - could be extended
  return true
}

A code snippet that reads: /** * Validates a tarball buffer * @param {Uint8Array} _tarballBuffer - The tarball buffer to validate * @returns {boolean} True if valid tarball */ export function validateTarball(_tarballBuffer: Uint8Array): boolean { // Basic validation - could be extended return true }

some of the best slop i've seen. i love the comment in the function body especially

04.03.2026 23:09 — 👍 17    🔁 2    💬 5    📌 0
Preview
EQUIP Canberra Games - Screen Canberra

EQUIP Canberra Games on March 18 is going to be great!

🎟️ Check out the newly announced Program and grab your tickets: loom.ly/1n6ylVQ

Speakers include: @merryh.bsky.social @gameconsulting.bsky.social @classicceri.bsky.social @deanw.xyz and more!

#ScreenCanberra #EQUIPCanberraGames #EQUIP2026

05.03.2026 07:44 — 👍 6    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 1

We use Google Sheets and just use the API to pull down the sheets as tsv (or your format of choice) and parse that at runtime or pre parse it and convert to json or whatever for runtime.

04.03.2026 11:07 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Post image

We are excited to announce that PRO JANK FOOTY will be at DAY OF THE DEVS in San Francisco this week 🏆
 
David, Dario, and Cam will be at the free event on March 8 from 3-8pm.
 
Time to see what the Americans think of real FOOTY!

04.03.2026 05:28 — 👍 16    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 3

So you use AI to write code, which takes longer and is buggier, then you don't understand how to fix it, so you use AI to fix it, which takes longer and is buggier, which needs to be fixed, so you use AI which takes longer and is buggier....
Turns out more code faster has never been the bottleneck

04.03.2026 07:05 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I am somewhat lucky in that the games I generally play all seem to work fine on steam deck (or Mac, which is my dev machine)
But yeah, giving up windows means that some games are simply not playable.

04.03.2026 05:47 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

hard pass.

Was only using windows for games and have fully moved to steam deck for that. Will fire up a windows VM on my linux desktops when I need to do platform testing but otherwise: nope.

04.03.2026 05:39 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

In May '25, a beloved Australian games website was sold off. It went dark then, a month later, rose from the dead but stuffed full of gambling links and AI authors.

It wasn't the first time, or the last time, this exact thing had happened. And it's still happening.

My months-long investigation 👇

02.03.2026 21:10 — 👍 455    🔁 201    💬 7    📌 5

SOME GENERAL TIPS FOR STEAM GAME DEMOS
(from someone who has played so many of them)

Note: These tips also apply to games in general! They're good tips!

27.02.2026 03:35 — 👍 215    🔁 70    💬 4    📌 11
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Issue 101 – Bought and paid for Bitcoin is down 50%, several prominent industry figures have been uncovered in the Epstein files, Trump’s facing a probe into his family’s $500M deal with the UAE, and crypto super PACs spend their fi...

Newsletter: Bitcoin is down 50%, several prominent industry figures have been uncovered in the Epstein files, Trump’s facing a probe into his family’s $500M deal with the UAE, and crypto super PACs spend their first $6 million in the midterms.

www.citationneeded.news/issue-101/

26.02.2026 22:01 — 👍 338    🔁 103    💬 1    📌 9
Vulkan releases game engine tutorial

Vulkan releases game engine tutorial

The Vulkan Working Group has published, Building a Simple Game Engine, a new in-depth tutorial for developers ready to move beyond the basics and into professional-grade engine development.

Learn more: www.khronos.org/blog/new-vul...
#vulkan #tutorial #programming #gpu #gameengine

25.02.2026 14:34 — 👍 244    🔁 37    💬 10    📌 5

hmmm..
bsky.app/profile/benb...

26.02.2026 02:07 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

The Mighty Milkshake Ducks

25.02.2026 02:29 — 👍 2061    🔁 411    💬 16    📌 17

PSA Outer Wilds is 50% off on Steam till Thursday! This is the biggest discount it's ever gotten; usually sales max at 40%.
store.steampowered.com/app/753640/O...

23.02.2026 20:37 — 👍 377    🔁 267    💬 6    📌 41

A modern hero.

Every vox pop should try to segue into how late stage capitalism is breaking everything.

23.02.2026 22:00 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I lost about 75% of followers in my transition from Twitter to Bluesky, my engagement is up by 20% average, and more importantly, I have don't hate myself for being complicit in supporting yet another evil oligarch that helped elect a narcissist fascist to the White House.

23.02.2026 03:25 — 👍 653    🔁 36    💬 10    📌 0

I was thinking of popping along, seems like it may be a good event :)

23.02.2026 02:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Thinking about going to the EQUIP games event in Canberra on March 18 – would anyone be interested in chatting @frostygamesfest.com or anything else while I am there? 🤔

22.02.2026 21:55 — 👍 6    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

This is exactly right. The Onion quietly left Twitter a month ago and... our weekly subscribers went up. It's because we're doing well here, on Instagram and on YouTube.

As a business, being on Twitter is somewhere between useless or detrimental, unless you're selling boner pills.

23.02.2026 01:51 — 👍 29445    🔁 4985    💬 333    📌 124
22.02.2026 05:19 — 👍 251    🔁 59    💬 2    📌 2

and fair enough too, your jank IS part of your charm!

22.02.2026 02:07 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

also, maybe the jank is part of the charm 🐎

22.02.2026 02:05 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I mean, maybe, but quadrupeds are notoriously hard to get right.

22.02.2026 02:01 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

turns out that rigging quadruped animations is actually really really hard 😬

21.02.2026 23:15 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Dear game industry: I’m going to hold your hand as I say this, but

No-one. Wants. Your AI. Bullshit.

Nobody.

There is no audience for it. Stop it.

21.02.2026 18:16 — 👍 133    🔁 26    💬 4    📌 0

Most 20 year olds can tell me how many 'r's are in strawberry.

21.02.2026 20:45 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I am honestly super anxious about GDC and game devs travelling there. I am not going (ever again?). But I know many who are heading over there reluctantly.
I guess if you are going, make sure that someone is expecting you and can contact your lawyer or whatever.
This sucks and I hate it.

21.02.2026 20:37 — 👍 8    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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It's the quote that makes it.

20.02.2026 14:22 — 👍 673    🔁 226    💬 5    📌 20

To be fair to GenAI, it is not _useless_ like NFTs, it is more akin IMHO to the metaverse. It has its use cases, but the actual usability of the tech is around 0.001% of what is being sold.
The bullshit hype train pump and dump cash grab is 100% analogous to NFTs tho.

20.02.2026 22:03 — 👍 7    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0
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The Left Doesn't Hate Technology, We Hate Being Exploited Techno-cynics are all just wounded techno-optimists.

this is a great piece: aftermath.site/anthropic-cl...

It brings to mind that there is no clearer bellwether that AI is just a pure hype-bubble to generate large bank balances than the fact that they are now basically echoing the NFT bullshit 'you're not gonna make it' slogan to try and win by FOMO

20.02.2026 22:03 — 👍 21    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 0