Notices by Tom Forsyth (tomf@mastodon.gamedev.place), page 3

@sinbad Speccy lad myself. I think my "retro" line runs somewhere between the Amiga/ST and the SNES/MegaDrive. I do think every 8-bit thing counts - we were really wrestling with the capabilities back then. It was an achievement to make anything even recognisable. Actually getting to "art" was basically impossible. But it also means those games are... hard on the eyes.

The ST/Amiga was the first time things actually looked somewhat like the box cover.

@skinnylatte Ha. I had no idea some people thought H1-Bs were "poorly paid". I'm an ex-H1-B myself, and of course met and swapped stories with others on them, and one thing none of us were, is poorly paid.

The competition for H1-Bs is extremely fierce and you need a degree and industry experience at a minimum. Plenty of brilliant folks at big tech companies have failed to get an H1-B allocation, had to be on a temporary visa, and then had to return home after a few years - it's brutal.

Wat? No. I'm using it. Get your own.

@aeva

Me: hey did you know the ISS runs on Linux?

Them: oh, so that's why in space no-one can hear you stream?

@crk5 "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."

@eniko It is amazing how much less sick I have been these past 4 years. Well, except that one time that started six months ago and is still going on. Getting better!

I wish I'd been masking on planes for the last 30 years. Think of the time and misery saved for a trivial bit of embarrassment.

@lritter @kojack @sinbad Yup, that's the first struggle - to get a reliable enough power supply that you can leave it for 5 mins and it won't go poof. It's very important at that stage to switch off stuff you don't need.

That's one reason NOT to funnel materials into containers. I just use a moderately long conveyor instead. That way it will fill up with 20-30 items of the thing, and then the machine will back up, stop, AND STOP CHEWING POWER.

@lritter @kojack @sinbad Don't worry - you will solve the power problem soon with... something new :-)

@lritter @sinbad The game starts deliberately slowly - it takes a lot of manual work to even get to power and conveyors, which of course are the core of the game. I understand why they'd take it slow for total newbs, but for people who already know the genre it's a bit tedious.

@lritter @sinbad How dare the game interrupt me when I'm working!

@lritter @sinbad That's what happens if you wander too far from the drop point too early - the animals get harder and harder. Pro-tip - don't do that.

@StompyRobot @lritter @kojack @sinbad Heh. I didn't touch nukes for my whole playthrough. Just kept on burning oil all the way through.

@sinbad @lritter @artificialmind Astroneer is quite impressive. A mere 5 minutes in and I'm stuck. "Build a tether". Cool. How? There's some stuff I can click on and it does... unknown stuff. I can click on the backpack and there's a word saying "tether" and clicking on it or anything near it does nothing. No tooltips anywhere. The tutorial is useless. This is exactly the bullshit I hate about "no interface" games.

@sinbad @lritter The big world / exploration side turned out to be so important. Interesting contrast with Infinifactory which just didn't quite grab me as much.

Finishing the last few achievements in Satisfactory. This game is EXTREMELY pretty. Amazing environments, huge draw distance. Just a fantastic engine - well done that team!

From here you can see the first 75% of my game - the desert biome - and that's only about a fifth of the world!

@lritter An Excel sheet? in MY Satisfactory? Unthinkable!

@lritter Anyway, I disagree. It's a really nice UI that works as designed, has a ton of bells and whistles, each one has a fairly standard layout that shows me what I expect where I expect it, and doesn't get in my way.

@sinbad Two of ours are like that - they like being near you and talking to you, and a chin rub is fine. But even after four years of training, being picked up is still something to be grudgingly endured, and lap-sitting is for special occasions only.

Although one of them will now sit on our laps if (and only if) we're watching TV, and she seems to like to actively watch it with us. Very odd.

@0xabad1dea Remember how every Thursday they decide that defacing the flag should be a capital offense?

It's worth trying all four starting locations in Satisfactory, at least up to the coal stage. Because when you finally go for the completion run, the feeling of going out from one start location, and finding your way to another, is pretty cool.