Notices by Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place)

@yurnidiot The Nazis have been well known for their poor winter performance, so I'm not surprised.

I'm looking through someone else's Unreal code from an unrelated project right now, and one thing that stands out is they made a number of changes to the engine that in most cases could have been just child classes.

I'd recommend the latter, because sooner or later you're going to want to move on to a newer version and you don't want to have to redo all the engine customizations.

@cstross I imagine people generally have no idea about the goings on in other countries and the UK and US are an exception because of their cultural hegemony.

It doesn't become international news until it reaches Euromaidan-level intensity (Euromaidan was in 2014 in Ukraine, the police there killed about a hundred protesters).

@cstross I was born in 1980. In 1981 there was martial law, in 1986 there was the Chernobyl scare, in 1987 I got carbon monoxide poisoning, in 1988 the economic crisis got so bad my parents couldn't afford anything for next 5 years, in 1989 there was a revolution, in 1992 there was the "night of the briefcases" (basically a failed coup attempt), and I'm going to run out of characters before I get to the one good part (2004, EU accession).

@mindfuck_inc I think the low rolls were a choice to enforce some risk-taking, since the game is balanced to allow dice waste (it has to be because dice get broken rather unpredictably). But I agree some more low-risk rolls in cities would be nice. There are like three "safe" rolls in the whole game.

Also, more focus on the crew would be nice. Shame that they only have two dice and never grow their skills.

Citizen Sleeper 2 doesn't disappoint. It's mostly more of the same, but in a way that doesn't feel like a money grab. The new mechanics are fine. Going to buy all DLC they throw at me.

Rule of thumb: you need one tester for every ten team members in other roles, rounded up.

Things I can handle just fine: riot police, violent counter-protesters, distress calls from stranded teenagers, covert meetings, walking up to plainclothes police officers and taking pictures of the parliament building as they're watching me.

Things I can't handle: milestone delivery days.

@keul It's an old PC video game. Here's the Mobygames entry for it: https://www.mobygames.com/game/3785/gothic/

Well, no.

It turns out "Gothic" fandom still exists and there's even a Discord server. Someone learned about the book somehow, told their friends, and now some of them want it as a collector item.

I mean, it is nice to find someone with a shared appreciation of something, but also just imagine, you made a game 25 years ago, and some people still like it enough that they want a book about it in a foreign language.

So I have this tiny store on the web where I sell my books. The books are in Polish, and so is the store, because we're too small to have them translated and published abroad.

So imagine my surprise when one day I got not one, but four orders for a copy of the book about "Gothic", all from abroad, made on the same day, and even at the exact same hour in some cases.

My first thought was this was either a package redirection scam or someone hacked into other people's bank accounts.

I had a wonderful wholesome little adventure yesterday.

So, it so happens that I wrote a game design book. It sold well, so I wrote another. That other book has a companion in the form of a monographs of an old open world adventure/RPG game called "Gothic".

"Gothic" is a classic, it plays well even today, and also has a notoriously obsolete UI (designed before it was obvious that mouse is for camera controls). So overall a very interesting case study.

@wariat "at least"

@kasica The way I used to do it was instead of writing e.g. "this new law sucks" I would write "I agree with these people who oppose the new law".

My challenge for all of you is to repost someone you agree with (doesn't need to be a 100% agreement) at least once per every three times you post about someone you dislike.

It's doubly humiliating when the game says "oh sure, you can have more hitpoints in this section if you want", but that won't help with my reaction time begin what it is ,I'lll just fail more times before it's game over. Conversely, if the game had the option to get slowed down by like 10%, it would make a world of difference.

My pet peeve: when the core of a challenge in a game is something closely tied to the player's physiological limits, such as reaction time. The challenges get progressively harder, and at some point they get close to or even past the player's hard limit, and at that point the player can no longer continue. Happens to me a lot in some more dexterity-based games (e.g. in Hollow Knight, which i never finished for this reason).

Someone really should just remake the original Deus Ex now. Like, literally remake it with better graphics, updated NPC algorithms, and modern controls. Keep all the story, even the parts where pacing falters a little. Just make sure the current generation teens can play it.

(do fix the "I stomped on a cat / pigeon again" issue, though)

It's funny how "microblogging" has split along the usual political lines:
- there's a legacy app that got hijacked by the far right
- there's an emerging mainstreap app for mainstream people
- and the left-leaning "I told you so" app has been there all along but it barely blips in the media so it keeps doing its thing on a smaller scale while no one else cares about it

"Crypt Custodian" was recommended to me by a coworker and it is indeed very good in a "back to basics" kind of way. Bonus points for a charming story.

It also reminds me of just how much I hate boss battles - but that's a me problem. They're very well done, like the rest of the game, they're just not my cup of tea.