This Dumb Industry: What is Vulkan?

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 3, 2019

Filed under: Column 114 comments

Here is the first video in the This Dumb Industry series. As I mentioned before, these videos begin as articles and are then turned into videos. I think this works better than going the other way. This ought to read like a slightly informal variant of my old columns. Or you could just watch the video. Whatever works for you.

Like I mentioned on the last video, I have a Patreon reward tier for people who want their names in the credits. These videos are often produced a week or so ahead of time, so if you signed up in the last 7 days or so then your name probably won’t show up yet.  I just wanted to make it clear that I didn’t forget you, we’re just dealing with normal video-production lag times. If you’re signed up now then you should show up in the next vid.

One final note is that this is obviously a shorter and less detailed version of an article I wrote back in 2016. I wanted to start off this series with something familiar and easy before we try to tackle more challenging topics.

Anyway, on to the article:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dumb Industry: What is Vulkan?”

 


 

Diecast #272: Control, Fortnite, Classic WoW

By Shamus Posted Monday Sep 2, 2019

Filed under: Diecast 94 comments

Here is a Diecast with 50% extra diecasting! You’re welcome! All this time, and we STILL somehow didn’t manage to answer any listener questions. I just want to make it clear that we’re not aloof, we’re incompetent. Big difference.



Diecast272

Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.

Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #272: Control, Fortnite, Classic WoW”

 


 
 

#53 Finale Part 2

By Shamus Posted Friday Aug 30, 2019

Filed under: DM of the Rings 32 comments

And here it is. The end of the tale. Note that during this series, I’ve been reposting everything verbatim, typos and all. For these last entries I’ve fixed a few errors and messed around with the formatting. I haven’t changed the events, cut any text, or altered any of the dialog. I just wanted to make the text a little more readable and combine everything so the finale wasn’t spread out over too many entries.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “#53 Finale Part 2”

 


 

Game Programming Vexations Part 1: Five Years Later

By Shamus Posted Thursday Aug 29, 2019

Filed under: Programming 126 comments

My programming posts are always popular, which is strange because it seems like they shouldn’t work at all. I don’t know where I got the idea to write about the fussy details of programming in casual, non-technical terms. It seems like non-programmers would be bored by all the stuff that has no bearing on their lives, and programmers would be irritated by all the entry-level explanations for things they already understand. But for whatever reason, both kinds of people show up for these articles.

Whichever group you belong to, buckle up. I expect some of this to get pretty controversial by the standards of programming flame wars, and I think I’m going to need to be more technical than usual.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Game Programming Vexations Part 1: Five Years Later”

 


 

Steam Backlog: Neon Beats

By Shamus Posted Wednesday Aug 28, 2019

Filed under: Game Reviews 69 comments

Here we have yet another musical platformer that I shouldn’t have bought but couldn’t help myself. This didn’t work out the last time I tried it. I’m sure it will fail the next time I try it. Evidently I can’t learn from my mistakes.

In the past I’ve said that I’m rubbish at 2D platformers. That’s basically true, but I don’t think that’s what keeps me from enjoying the genre. I’m rubbish at fighting games, but I still enjoy mashing the buttons and listening to the absurd sounds the combatants make when they pummel each other. Also, the cutscenes are usually… really something. I’m not so hot at driving games, but I can still enjoy them on the lower difficulty settings.

For the record, you control the square thing. The small square thing. The one in the middle of the screen.
For the record, you control the square thing. The small square thing. The one in the middle of the screen.

No, this problem goes deeper than being “good” at something.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Steam Backlog: Neon Beats”

 


 

Procgen Background

By Paul Spooner Posted Tuesday Aug 27, 2019

Filed under: Projects 45 comments

So, I’ve made quite a few space ships in this series, but none of them have received as much criticism as the background starfield.We’re not counting the tubes, okay? Okay. So that’s what I’m going to be working on today. It’s not going to turn out great, but it will be much better than it was. I mean, you can see the result in the splash image, so you can go straight to the comments if you see anything you don’t like.

The background effect was built without referenceMy first mistake? Hardly. but I had something in mind about big crosses and circles around startlingly bright stars. I think it probably came from some of the illustrations in the GURPS space source booksor the TMNT Guide to the Universe, but it was vague, and I’m lazy. So instead of improving the background until it objectively looked good, I just kept lowering my standard of what I was expecting while I was working until I thought “yeah, that looks good enough” and moved on to the spaceship making part. This is why reference is so important, at least for me. Maybe some people have enough internal artistic sense to force themselves to create a refrerence-free success, but I’m not that person. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Procgen Background”