Notices by Jacek Wesołowski (jzillw@mastodon.gamedev.place), page 3

The best thing about incoming milestones is that there's always a ton of small things to do, which means I get a few of them done in a day, which makes me feel very productive.

@resuna @lolgop I do wonder what kind of perfect storm of managerial issues has led to them releasing such an, um, pre-alpha product. I mean, I fail to believe the engineers or factory workers have suddenly forgotten how to make cars.

@EUCommission does it need to be safe for work?

Dyslexia: putting "slut" in "consultant" since 1881.

Played some more Frostpunk 2, just got to chapter 3, and all in all this is a much more "faithful" sequel than people are making it sound. It's amazing how much the first 30 minutes can weigh on the entire experience!

It's basically the same structure. They expanded upon some of their ideas (e.g. the way research works), and they tried to make it work on a grander scale (eg. you now have more than one city). The factions aren't just sitting there, either. A proper sequel, if there ever was one.

@Nifflas And to make things even better, programming makes you solve puzzles in order to make more puzzles!

Frostpunk 2 is getting worse reviews than Frostpunk 1, at least on Steam, and my quick diagnosis is it's trying to still be the same game about little freezing people going to work through the snow early in the morning, except in no longer has people or mornings.

In other words, they tried to make the same game, but with districts instead of buildings, and teams and factions instead of individuals. It feels much more abstract and much less personal. No wonder it feels dissonant to players

The "Dead Space 2" debacle made me realize I haven't played a decent single-player shooter in a very long time. The one exception was the rebooted "Doom", which was excellent (and then followed by a much less compelling sequel).

DS2 also gave me an idea as to why. Compared to, say, Half-Life 2, it's such a massive step back in terms of what the level design in particular is trying to do.

I wonder if there's room for a genre revival, but then perhaps "retro shooters" are already that.

@darth Fix schedules and always-online are publisher's decisions, patch sizes depend heavily on engine architecture, and performance issues were way, way worse back in the 1990s, because today "AAA" games are usually multiplatform and need to run on consoles (which are generally low-end machines).

@MrBehemo If Embracer didn't have enough self-awareness to call themselves something other than "Embracer", then I guess there's no hope for the terminally rich.

@cstross It's interesting that this pattern repeats itself across different countries, because it's also what's making these regimes less stable.

Here in Poland, the authoritarian-but-not-extremely-so right needed to ally itself with the really-hard-right, and that forced them to push for a strict abortion ban they didn't really want because no one likes it. Ultimately, it made them lose an election.

People like to laugh about the Torment Nexus, and I agree it's a good joke.

But did you know in Poland large office complexes are called "mordor"? There's even The Mordor, in south Warsaw. Everyone calls it that, and do you think it has given any of the corpos who rent offices there as much as a microsecond of a pause? Of course it hasn't.

One day some actual invention is going to be named "torment nexus" retroactively, and some techbros are going to be proud their product got the privilege.

@maxim Doesn't feel very practical. You would be gaining utility if the chair was fixed and the driver simply got into it from the side.

This game also has what I call "hostile design", which is when the challenge part of a game loop is supported or indeed relies on the deliberate shortcomings of the interface.

In Dead Space 2, the main character obscures the lower bottom quarter of the view, which means you can't see the enemies there, which in turn is supposed to contribute to the feeling of being surrounded. Except no, I literally can't see what I'm doing because you took my peripheral vision away.

In Chapter 6 and by now I can tell which parts of the corridor are meant to be peaceful, and which are combat arenas. Is it still a jumpscare when you know up front that it's going to be there, and it's going to jump at you, and scream a lot?

This game has less suspence than a walking simulator (fun fact: "Dear Esther" was released in 2012).

I played Dead Space 1 when it was new, and didn't like it. But I heard the sequel was better, and it's been 13 years, and it was on sale, so thought: why not.

Four hours into the game, here's why not:
- it's gross
- it's poorly written
- the interface is a bigger threat than the enemies
- it's literally one long twisted corridor - I almost forgot how bad mainstream FPS design was at the time
- it's predictable
- it's not scary at all

On the up side, it can no longer connect to its EA server.

@emill1984 A z Warszawy nie, widać zabory (przprszm).

Is there anything more European than a tram driving championship? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nWeSxnFALo

@danil @sos That would disappear literally the entirety of Unreal development[1], among other things.

As for the original question, my boss has explicitly forbidden me from declaring multiple variables in a single line.

[1] Unreal has its own implementation of a garbage collector, so no need to manage memory manually, but still pointers are used directly, and IsValid() is pretty much the top most used function.

Sorry Unity, but the milk is already spilt. I've been coding in Unreal for a year now and I just feel more comfortable continuing to do so.