Grimelios ❄️

Reminder that adventofcode.com exists if you're one for programming challenges. Shortened this year, but still a lot of fun. I'm particularly proud of my solution today (day 7). Pretty cool to compute a solution north of 15 trillion in a millisecond (in Python, so it could be even faster).

Years ago, I described AI as a plague. I haven't been dissuaded from that conclusion since.

Silksong's OST has joined Tears of the Kingdom as a productivity killer. Every time a Silksong track plays, I have to stop working and listen.

It's stupid how good Isles of Sea and Sky is. Gives Baba Is You a run for its money, which is extremely impressive. Maybe one day I'll even beat it.

Due to Tim Sweeney, it's likely I'll never purchase a game on the Epic Games Store again. Conveniently, Steam is a much better storefront on its own merits.

Vulkan's a blast to work with, but it's not for the faint of heart. Just spent the better part of six hours meticulously debugging a crash that nearly bricked my GPU each time. Root cause was overlapping memory. One-line fix once I finally figured that one.

Oh, they'll never acknowledge they fucked up, but the good news is that there isn't enough money to sustain AI long-term anyway. There just isn't enough revenue in AI, even with all the might of Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, etc. behind it.

After the AI bubble pops, I hope we never forgive the companies and individuals who promoted it. AI is a plague and I can't wait for it to end.

A master volume slider.

It's snowing in Wisconsin today, so I'm a happy boy.

YouTube video by RHINO Alan Silvestri - Suite From The Polar Express (Official Audio)

Definitely! It's very satisfying. Helps that Polar Express is a stunning piece of music: www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_1k...

Pretty great day. Beyond the obvious political victories, I'm playing first trumpet in a piece of music (Polar Express) I played way back in high school. I struggled back then, but I'm very close to nailing it now. Feels good to have my practice pay off.

Programming tip: alongside your primary project, create an empty, "clean" project used to quickly verify language features or spin up small reproducibles for bugs. I've found my clean project to be an invaluable tool while building my game engine.

Pretty fun getting to time travel twice a year, especially when I gain back an hour.

Custom engine. I use fixed rates for both update and render, although the two rates don't need to be the same since renders use interpolation. The update rate is hardcoded, while the render rate can be changed (generally to the monitor's refresh rate or a lower multiple).

Happy Halloween! 👻

I regret to report that I've become inspired to play La-Mulana. I played it for five hours a decade ago, so fingers crossed things will go more smoothly this time.

I apologize, but no, I don't know who you are. I don't recognize your account name, nor does browsing your feed clue me in.

I've had reposts disabled on BSky since I joined. Yesterday, as an experiment, I re-enabled them. While browsing today, it's pretty starkly noticeable how much angrier I feel, and I get angrier the more I scroll. I don't think that's a coincidence. May be worth experimenting for yourself.

Imo writing your own game engine (particularly while also developing a game) is a fantastic way to improve your skills as an engineer because you're forced to be both the producer and consumer of various systems. You have to idiot-proof against yourself.

It's funny how often I find myself anthropomorphizing my code. "It's true that removing a model by entity might be inefficient, but that's not the render engine's problem. That's the batch's responsibility." as if I'm not the one ultimately doing the work anyway. Makes me laugh sometimes.

Silksong's OST absolutely slaps.

Started Overwatch S18 with three consolation matches in a row, which is effectively three forced losses. Something's very wrong at Blizzard if they think this matchmaker is acceptable. It's been broken for 18 seasons with no sign of improvement. Does anyone on the team play competitive?

Finished up Crow Country tonight, a game that caught my attention last year. Felt thematically appropriate to tackle the game during October. Really fantastic experience from beginning to end. Pretty likely I'll do an additional playthrough or two to mop up remaining secrets and challenges.

This is something Old School RuneScape excels at. If you played for 30 minutes 20 years ago, those 30 minutes are still valuable today.

I wish to one day live in a world where Overwatch doesn't have winner's and loser's queues.

Finally 100%'d Silksong, using guides to mop up the remaining few percentage points. It's a game of very high highs and very low lows. I think the highs are likely to stick with me more powerfully. Happy to be done.

Sorry for referencing future content, but no, we're using the same definition. There are a number of ranged enemies who distinctly do NOT continue tracking until the last possible moment. The result is a feeling that enemies are "cheating" and aiming at your predicted movement, but inconsistently.

In my experience, ranged attacks actually tend to lock their target BEFORE release, which can make such attacks feel random and unfair. For example, wraiths in The Mist lock on the first frame of their animation, which is before the scream is even audible and WELL before the enemy actually moves.

Thank you! :)