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electronstudio

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www.electronstudio.co.uk

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Willing to relocate: No

Location: London, UK

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Rust, Kotlin, Python et al.

Résumé/CV: https://electronstudio.co.uk/public/cv2021_redacted.pdf

Email: hn@electronstudio.co.uk

Currently working as coding teacher/author. I have a couple of decades experience as a software engineer and want to return to working on larger projects. Previously I’ve been an indie game dev, freelance app developer, academic. I’m very good at making things myself but I’m not so good at deciding what to make and doing the other parts of a startup like sales and marketing, so I’m looking to work for someone else.

Currently interested in Rust and Kotlin but far more interested in the people being right then the tech stack being right.

Location: London, UK

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Godot, Java, Kotlin, Python, Swift, OpenGL, Linux, Android, iOS.

Résumé/CV: https://electronstudio.co.uk/public/cv2019-redacted.pdf

Email: hn@electronstudio.co.uk

I have made: PC games, desktop applications, Android games/apps, iOS games/apps, back-end servers, network protocols, educational books and videos.

Currently I am teaching and working on education-related projects but I could take on a development project for up to 12 months if it was interesting and provided opportunity for me learn something new, e.g. Rust.

Godot 3.2 6 years ago

Yes people are entitled to sell proprietary forks of free software - it's a non-copy left license so perfectly legal. However it puts Godot in a poor position relative to competitors. If you want a free console game engine you could use Monogame. If you want a non-free console game engine then you could use Unity or Unreal and you would have the advantage that you know up-front what it will cost and you know that it will be well supported by well-known developers throughout the lifetime of the console. Godot is a very compelling choice for PC and mobile, but the current situation of “there is console support but it’s a secret so we can’t tell you who makes it, how much it costs and how long it will be supported in future” makes it very difficult to recommend Godot over those alternatives to anyone developing console titles.

Godot 3.2 6 years ago

Sure you can hire someone to do the port - they do advertise it on that very page.

But there is another open source game library, Monogame, that distributes their code for free for consoles. You just have to vertify that you are have signed the NDA before you get access to the code. They advertise this. So there is no reason that Godot couldn't do the same if they wanted to open that code.

Godot 3.2 6 years ago

When I started developing RetroWar[1], I found Unity quite a disappointment, and so I developed my own custom engine in Kotlin. It works very well, but it took several years.

Recently I tried Godot because I was looking for something simple I could teach to kids[2], and I was amazed how easy it makes game creation. I made these games with no experience in just a couple of days!

https://github.com/electronstudio/godot_racing

https://github.com/electronstudio/godot_space

GDscript is great. It's similar enough to Python that kids who know Python won't notice much difference, and it actually simplifies things for beginners, e.g. you can use objects without the need to define classes because they are created automatically when you create a script.

Godot is still a little rough around the edges, e.g. not everything has keyboard shortcuts, sometimes it crashes, some of the built in tools like map editor are very fiddly to use. But it's open source so I'm sure they will be fixed eventually (and if they aren't I can always do it myself.) The only major issue I can see for the future of Godot is the lack of exporters for Xbox, Playstation and Switch.

[1] http://retrowar.net

[2] https://loughton.me.uk/2020/01/22/godot.html

The goal isn't education in how to make games or use a particular library. The goal is education in coding, and games are just the hook to maintain interest. Pygame Zero hides the bits we don't care about so they don't distract from the bits we do. Middleschool students might cope with full Pygame, but when you're teaching 8-year-olds who can't type quickly, getting a sprite on the screen without any boilerplate is an advantage in maintaining their attention.

Another advantage of Pygame Zero is that the author was involved in the creation of Mu, and so Mu comes with Pygame Zero pre-installed. Having to install Pygame via pip would be a challenge for many kids.

Anyway, Pygame Zero includes all of Pygame so you're free to introduce as much of it as you like.

I have been teaching kids games programming with Python. I have compiled some of the material I created into a book here: https://github.com/electronstudio/pygame-zero-book

The only way I have found to maintain interest is to do fewer toy examples and more full-size games, but that also inevitably leads to the kids not understanding so much of what they are doing. I think ultimately you have to accept that some kids will be interested in coding and some will not, no matter how 'fun' you make it.

Location: London, UK

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Java, Kotlin, Python, Swift, OpenGL.

Résumé/CV: https://electronstudio.co.uk/public/cv2019-redacted.pdf

Email: hn@electronstudio.co.uk

I have made: PC games, desktop applications, Android games/apps, iOS games/apps, back-end servers, network protocols. I also teach and do sys admin.

I'm open to work on any sort of project. I place highest priority on finding an interesting project with reliable team mates rather than any particular technology.

Thank you, Chris 7 years ago

You have a short memory. Netscape Navigator 3 had a >75% market share. Mozilla, which became Firefox, was a total rewrite, but that rewrite was done by the same people and was released as Netscape 6 - 9.

Since Red Hat make Red Hat and Red Hat also make CentOS, could Red Hat not simply ask Red Hat not to put in those references in the first place? Or when they do put them in to always include a flag to easily remove them?

If they had done just that and only that - taken IPv4 and added more bits - we might all be using IPv6 now. Instead they used the opportunity to cram every feature but the kitchen sink in there, so none of the hardware vendors were interested in implementing it and the backbones were slow to adopt it. So we got mass adoption of NAT instead of mass adoption of IPv6.