*thinking, not thing.

Yes! I finished it going “hee hee, that’s fun” rather than slogging through thing “yes you’re SO clever”. Big difference.

Really glad I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. It was *clever* (negative connotation).

“Fire it up.”

A series of Pokemon thumbnails of a three year old’s favorites: charmander, torkoal, torchic, charcadet, scorbunny, and onix, most of which are Fire types which gives the author some concerns

My three year old is suddenly very into Pokemon thanks to Pokopia, and already understands that people have six. She’s picked her six and I’m mildly concerned about the obvious theming:

question: Hey Dr. Tingle, got any parenting advice? I’m pretty sure we’ve already got the unconditional love and support bit down, but wow this is an intimidatingly high stakes job! answer: this is going to sound OVERLY SIMPLISTIC but in some ways i think that is the point, because the specifics will always vary but i think this part will remain the same: your gift to your child is positive attention. it is simply to care when they are young it is to take a moment and give them your time. to read to them. to play. to say 'hey what are you up to over there? wow thats pretty cool.' when they are older they might start to push away and that is fine, you still just say 'hey what are you up to over there? wow thats pretty cool.' when they are adults you will call them on the phone and say 'hey what are you up to over there? wow thats pretty cool.'

'hey what are you up to over there? wow thats pretty cool.'

I recently played As Long As You're Here and there's a bit in that game involving taking medication; it really captured this kind of feeling.

Same.

It does consistently amaze me how often the same fundamentals are argued over in the MMO space in a way I don’t see in a ton of other genres.

I remember sitting and taking notes in those roundtables, the once or twice I made it to GDC. Now I make MMOs and debate with myself how much I feel like those notes have changed!

My successor picked it up and, after using it for about a year, made a few really smart updates to it. Her comment to me was that the document saved her weeks of work trying to understand the automation, and she cut out tons of tests that she immediately knew wouldn't be useful.

In its place I left a document about how the automation process worked, why it worked that way, the goals of the automation, and things that my successor(s) could check to ensure it was still working properly and test if they had ideas to improve it.

I did my due diligence, following the complete process and then testing which parts of it actually made a difference. I ultimately axed the entire thing and replaced it with an automated system which was 90% as effective and required 5 hours of dev work a year instead of 15 a month.

Too wordy, and the person implementing it will go "ugh, yeah, yeah, I got it" and move forward even if they don't.

In my last role, there was a design doc for a process left by the previous producer-turned-product-manager that was 28 pages long. People had been trying to follow it for years.

A thing I think about a lot is "how close would someone get to implementing this the way I'm thinking if they can't talk to me?"

Part of that is being clear, the other part is being concise. If your writing is unclear, the person implementing it is more likely to do so incorrectly.

Absolutely love this kind of design documentation, and it's very close to the model I use for both design and product feature documents.

I do add two pieces to this model: Rationale (Why?) and Priority (which parts of this design are vital, and which can come later?), but same basic idea.

The other piece of that puzzle was in big combats with lots of players, you might have rogues attack a cluster of healers, but one or two Friars in that cluster could appear to be casting heals but then jump into action. Friars not only LOOKED like caster, but could actively deceive.

The Friar was one of the best aspects of DAoC PvP. Completely agree that unpredictability made it much more interesting on all sides of the equation.

My other version of this is the Mass Effect-inspired RPG in which you play as an Academy graduate making their way through the ranks and dealing with a bunch of stories from the Academy all the way to Captaincy.

What's your Star Trek project only you would love?

Star Trek: Galaxy, a procedurally generated open galaxy game inspired by Stellaris and Crusader Kings, except instead of a 4X you're following one customizable ship through its many iterations across the Trek timeline, FTL-style.

God, I wonder what I even said. Guess I’ll find out!

Oh wow that was a while back, wasn’t it

This is also definitely not borne of working on desert levels and finding that the lack of verticality meant players could cross them way faster at a normal map size, and then amping up the sizes before coming to our senses and inventing verticality.

I have a theory about this and it’s an art thing. Video game deserts often have very little vertical blocking and tend to be huge as a result, and when you see a non-dunes desert they read as “canyons” and not “deserts”, which people don’t view the same.

A pair of painted Battletech mech miniatures inside a lightbox, showing the use of dirty down moss effect for the grassy bases.

It’s great! I used it for these.

I have come to absolutely love Dirty Down Rust. Took me forever to try it but it’s a really cool tool. I especially like the moss one, using it for grass on Battletech bases.

If you get to like two to three more days it stops itching usually. The itchy stage sucks though.

Grocery shopping in the early 00s with too little sleep and a Star Wars shirt, I make a comment about bread to a gorgeous woman who glances at my shirt and looks tired. She’s polite and nice but seems awkward, so I excuse myself which visibly surprises her.

Later I realize it was Natalie Portman.

A picture of the best dog the author could have ever wanted. RIP

I miss my dog, already. Sleep well, River.

You love to see it. I’m hyped for my copper magnet!