Now that you reminded me of vanquish, I'm upset we'll never see a sequel

I see you bought a toilet seat. Would you like a second one?

Explaining what I do (level/activity sometimes systems design) to someone who has no knowledge of gamedev is a really hard thing to do. I've still not found the perfect non-games analogy.

It's just this weird Internet mentality where empathy just doesn't come into the equation and it's all about piling on to the negative discourse. If you don't like a game just find one you do and move on.

Robot Malfunction:

In China, a dancing robot suddenly started smashing dishes. It knocked over plates on customers’ tables & then kept dancing without stopping. Staff tried to stop it, but it didn’t respond for several minutes. In the end, one of the waitresses simply dragged it into the back room.

My favorite one of those is where the delivery driver took a photo of the front door building number (to prove he was there) from his car, carefully cropping out the wide open door due to renovations happening in the building. Also I was home F5ing and it was covid times so...

Having messed around with a number of the public engines, this one has felt the most natural to understand

I'd also add the new employees are invaluable to improving workflows. Often they can point out inefficiencies from a purely curious POV that you have internalised a workaround for. Some are difficult solutions, others are just a case that no one logged it as an issue.

I always thought that the fear of lacerations from rotors was missing from my every day life

Does anyone else find themselves reminiscing about 90s pizza hut? As a kid, that whole experience was a joy

This is really interesting! Thanks for sharing Tom!

Even outside of events, something I always want to say to more junior devs is to stick around for Friday gatherings and mingle. Best way to meet your peers and speak with people you'll likely work with in the future. And should people change jobs, they'll remember you if a related role comes up.

I'd like to add, I'd like to think the (made up) statistic of impressions made on famous devs is: doesn't register=70%, stay away from me=29.99%, you're hired!=0.1%.
Imo best to stick to having interesting discussions with your peers and leave those famous devs alone/don't seek them out.

Hopefully I'm not wrong but I believe the term "smoke test" was an olden times test for pushing smoke through pipes to identify any cracks or leakage before pumping through the intended liquids. So in game dev it's that equivalent.

Man, what a game. Just such strong direction on all fronts. It holds a special place in my heart

a plane with the letters zoob on the side ALT: a plane with the letters zoob on the side

For me it will always be the spitfire.

I also noticed an uptick in "I'm winding up an attack... But how long will I wind up for? Tick tick mister bond... If you get your dodge wrong, I will hit you for your whole life bar."

Yeah thoroughly enjoyed it. It's like political backstabbing but not from the people in power but those in the shadows pulling the strings

When I saw Dune TV show, the had my curiosity. When it cast Travis Fimmel, they had my attention.

What does "investing in the cloud" even mean? Are they going to set up their own cloud infrastructure? Just seems like they're mentioning it because it's one of the tech buzzwords.

Any recommendations for short indie games that released this year that may have been overlooked?

Guess I should innaugurate my arrival on Bluesky to say Merry Christmas or happy celebrations to those not celebrating it!