Notices by Joni Korpi (jonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.place)

If anyone else needs visual design inspiration, old travel posters from Finland and Sweden are cool as hell.

https://cometofinland.fi
https://cometosweden.se

@sinbad From my perch all I’ve really seen is the entire industry copying Apple. After a while Apple stopped being good at design, but the copying didn’t stop.

@sinbad This is very much the case. Dwindling use of affordances along with rising use of “modes” (the same action does very different things depending on context) is what has ruined UIs. We learned this like 25 years ago and somehow forgot. https://www.amazon.com/Humane-Interface-Directions-Designing-Interactive/dp/0201379376

Slowly drafting a blog post about making web apps without big frameworks, but honestly the summary is:

1. Write super simple JS, using basic functions and built-in data types.
2. Make your functions write to the DOM with `lit-html` (not the same thing as `lit`).
3. Re-run your functions in response to events with a "signals" style library, like`reactively`.
4. Get more events from your DOM with Resize/IntersectionObserver.

Performant, robust, and learnable.

Finally zeroed in to what bugs me about the modern tech industry. It used to be about making new tools, putting them in the hands of users, and watching them do new things.

Today it’s about taking users out of the equation. Making products instead of tools. Limiting instead of enabling. Reducing users to glorified slot machine operators.

In game design we often ask: who is having the fun here, the player or the designer?

@jzillw Very good point! In Finnish we have at least Oakmonth, Pearlmonth, Wheatmonth, and uhh… Deathsignmonth? The archaic words hidden in there are especially fantastic, after looking up their etymologies.

@sinbad Had to go check how much they gouge for extra storage these days and lmao it’s even worse than I thought

Wondered how my Mac can suddenly be out of disk space. Hello 130 GB of unspecified "System Data”. x_x

@sinbad I hope I can pick the crust back up for +1 hp!

@sinbad The whole “you can easily link/import other people’s code so you don’t have to write it yourself!” part of the web platform is a bit of a trap. Especially when it’s happening outside a browser.

@sinbad For me it's just that… well, if there's a 0.001% chance of danger per device every day, okay. However… what if there are like 30 devices? Suddenly the combined chance is not that tiny anymore. ><

Taking stock of all the little lithium-ion fire hazards I’ve been keeping in a box… under our bed. Should probably get rid of these.

The dumbest fucking thing I can imagine happened, and I’m uncertain how to deal with that fact. If this can happen, anything can.

Zillions spent on generative AI development and not a single thing produced that's anywhere near as novel as this https://www.boze-style.com