justindz

Thanks, this is another great idea and I'll consider it as an addition or alternative. Do you think this works in an open-world, non-linear type game?

What a great lunch read! I've been weekend-warrioring a terminal-based CRPG for a bit myself. I was recently exploring ways to use agents to help with balance testing, which is a real scale problem for solo indie dev. So far, all I've created is a fight simulator: essentially, have the current player state (stats, effects, gear, companions, etc.) do this fight, simulated, X number of times using one of the currently-implemented GOAP personalities and report how often it wins, loses, average end turn, stuff like that.

I hadn't really thought about trying to create a harness for agents to play the full game interactively. I'd love to explore this. If you don't mind, here are a few questions:

1) Correct to assume that I probably need a text-only harness even though my game is text-based already because I do make use of menu selections made via arrow-key-and-enter interactions?

2) Do you have prompt recommendations for the type of feedback you have found to be useful? I would guess in your case, the objectives of the game are more clear than an open-world RPG. What dead ends have you run into? Maybe a variety of approaches would be good? One agent tries to fight everything. Another focuses on gaining and completing as many quests as possible?

3) How bad is the token burn doing this? Any optimization strategies you've employed?

I think it would be fantastic to have a reference site for significant, complex projects either developed or substantially extended primarily via agent(s). Every time I look at someone's incredible example of a workflow for handling big context projects, it ends up being a greenfield static microblog example with vague, arm-wavey assertions that it will definitely scale.

I ride the metro for about 1:30 a day (part of which is walking to and fro), which I prefer to my prior driving commute of 25-30 minutes. I have had to increase my fantasy and sci-fi novel budget, however.

One can perhaps take comfort in the fact that a civilization advanced enough to be aware of us would likely be aware of the fact that we were more advanced than what they could see at any given moment (or they had found a way to narrow the perception lag).

I was in the Azure TAP program many years ago and they talked about this extensively to the participants. I would echo the consistency of direction on this. I had a vague sense that it was an attempt to quell enterprise fears about the cloud and lock-in, but perhaps not.

I am the same way. I found it surprising. I get so much positive feedback from the editing process that I have actually developed a routine of editing as I draft. Although it improves the quality of my draft, it takes ages. For poetry, it worked well. For novels, I think I'll need to break the habit.

I'm not sure I quite expected to see this on HN, though I'm glad it was posted since I happen to be trying to learn novel writing. I thought the before and after example of the basketball article was a concise and clear way to explain over-writing. The second version was clearer, more accessible, less obnoxious and no less informative and narrative. A series of poetry and short fiction teachers in college helped me become self-aware about this bad habit. I still make the mistake consistently, but I have learned to either catch it or agree with the suggestions of my peers who catch it when I don't.

I personally believe that programmers can learn from poets, for example. Write constantly. Read the work of others, both critically and for enjoyment. Writing is the sexy part, but revising is at least as important a task.

I was at a product management event once and met a guy who managed a product in this space. A group of us went out for drinks after the event and he ended up explaining what he did. At some point he mentioned "Chinese hackers." Another guy in the group called him on it, wondering why he just assumed it was Chinese. He laughed and said that the near constant level of activity they see goes basically flat on Chinese New Year.

I suppose if you're not a Chinese hacker, it might pay to pretend you are by tailoring your working hours and days.

I read it the way you apparently intended to write it. In college, getting to where I could write and get published poems that weren't a personal embarrassment took more or less the same amount of study and practice as getting my CS degree. I think mastering either craft would be a comparable endeavor and accomplishment (though one would pay much better).

The nice thing about compilers is they tell you when your code has a problem. There's no equivalent barrier to posting awful poetry-drivel on Facebook ;-)

My experience has also been that managers at the "average company" these days are pretty much expected to both manage and be a fully productive individual contributor. Realistically, this means that they spend about 80% of their time working to hit their own goals, which directly point at them, and 20% of their time (at best) really working to enable their team to succeed, which can always be deflected from direct responsibility to some degree. Since most managers' managers are also in the same boat, they can't tell when someone is shooting their own team members for self-preservation because they are too busy to have any sense for the morale and culture they've created.

In my personal opinion, you get a healthier culture if you either 1) have managers and let them manage or 2) admit that you require them to be individual contributors and restrict their "managing" purely to part time HR initiatives and not to actual additive management (something more like extra-curricular mentoring and not talent management, career and skills development).

I should caveat that I've had good managers, bad managers and completely mediocre managers. So I do believe that, although rare, it can be done well and it can provide value to individual contributors' careers and to the company's value. I just don't assume it's automatically the right approach at every company.

Looks like they got the cert deployed, although the process isn't directed to https yet. I hand-added https to the URL for the payment collection page and had no issues.

Agreed. In its current state, I will not participate.

Lawrence and crew just responded to my tweet on this. They use Stripe, which is encrypted. The SSL certs for the page that is unencrypted will be up later today.

https://twitter.com/Boyko4TX/status/461902353105317891

EDIT: forgot to link the tweet.

I've spent a lot of time in technology product management (PM) and I still frequently encounter "Product Managers" who are doing entirely project management (PMO). And there's business analysts and other technical product management functions that are centered around requirements and specifications rather than market discovery, product fit and strategy, plan for making actual money, etc.

I'm not suggesting that anyone in the thread is conflating PM and PMO in this way, but it's a challenge for the profession and I wouldn't be surprised if given posters perspectives reflect different views on what the PM role is actually supposed to be the expert on. I don't think it's their fault. We use a hyper-generic name that is almost indistinguishable in full and acronym'd form. We also tend to write awful job postings, though that's a rant for another thread.

Re: #16, my experience with and in management positions is that we no longer think of managers as people who specialize in management and whose function is to help a pool of natural talent stay coordinated, focused, challenged and rewarded. We instead think of them as people who do 40+ hours a week of their own specialized, non-management work but who also have to do performance reviews. I try to take a mentor/servant/counselor approach with my team, but it's difficult to do and my own experience suggests that it's a fairly uncommon mentality.

I think journalists or other hobbyists/professionals with work they need to protect should start thinking about keeping an air-gapped computer around. I've seen this phrase used recently to describe a computer which has never been connected to the internet, a network or another device. I'm sure it's non-trivial to source a computer that arrives in a trustworthy state, however.

I would love a good citation if you have one. I'll look around on my own, too. Curious about this because I am 1) very pale and 2) enjoy hiking.

Ah, the mighty SX processor series. These look like very similar specs, even though I'm sure it wasn't a Toshiba.

I don't think so. I'm wracking my brain now to remember the manufacturer. I might have to ask my dad. Ah, childhood comes rushing back.

Born, raised and educated entirely in West Virginia. Currently a Director of Product Management at a DC tech company. My dad, who worked for the National Park Service for 35 years (retiring last month) brought home a 25Mhz "shades of grey" decommissioned laptop for me to play with in Jr. High. The rest is history. If I look back on that history, I definitely see myself being incredibly lucky, but also putting myself in the position to capitalize on every break that I got. At any rate, thanks for sharing. Montani Semper Liberi.

This has been my basic frustration with what I call "YouTube logic," which seems to take this form:

1) Determine what you would prefer to be true. 2) Spend your time absorbing and referencing supporting evidence, at the expense of verifying its credibility. 3) When presented with contradicting evidence, spend your time dismissing or discrediting it, at the expense of verifying its credibility. 4) Re-affirm your belief successfully through willful or accidental intellectual dishonesty.

Perhaps there's a formal name for this. YouTube logic works for me, though, because that makes it sound appropriately juvenile.

This is a fairly common model. One of the best examples I've encountered lately is League of Legends. The game is a MOBA (coined: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) for team fights on a map that is similar to Defense of the Ancients from Warcraft III. The core of the game is that you learn how to play champions, of which there are over 100, and you boost them up a bit with runes. The game has two currencies: Riot Points and Influence Points. Here's how they handle maintaining balance and rewarding payment with acceleration:

- You start with a few Riot Points. Enough to buy a starter champion, but not much else.

- Riot Points can be purchased.

- Influence points are earned along with experience by playing matches.

- Champions can be purchased with either currency. However, most of them take far more Influence Points, so you can achieve instant gratification through cash outlay or you can play for fun over time and pick up a few more advanced champions.

- Runes can only be purchased with Influence Points. Therefore, you cannot simply drop cash and get the best runes, then have an edge over other players. You earn them by playing. You can earn them faster by getting Influence Point boost periods by paying Riot Points, which of course is cash for acceleration, but not instant gratification since it still encourages you to play and practice the game.

- Every week, there is a free rotation of a set of champions. If you are patient enough, you can try out tons of different champions before spending a dime. If you like one enough to want to keep playing it after it rotates back out, you can drop cash to buy it or spend a giant pile of Influence Points that you've earned. Or, you can simply play with them for fun, endlessly, and enjoy the variety.

- The only "pay to play" thing I've found is that you can purchase extra pages for rune configurations. This can't be earned any other way. It's not overly expensive, it's not mandatory, but it seems like you probably need to do it for any serious competitive play in order to be efficient and prepared for different matches and roles. I wasn't put off by this.

I thought this was a pretty good implementation. I've spent a reasonable, tolerable amount of money so far on the game and have more champions than I probably should have right now, due to enjoying them. The experience felt very much not "pay to win" and that it scaled very well with your interest. The one thing I really liked is that even paying to accelerate your experience was always still contingent on you playing lots of games and therefore getting better and trying out lots of roles and champions. That felt very smart because it doesn't burn you out but invests you further.

If you're researching this kind of model, I would highly suggest trying the game out to get a feel for what the customer experience is like. It seems like a good reference implementation that could be adjusted to match games that aren't based on this champion asset model.

Hijacking for personal benefit. I'm a long time cold cereal breakfast addict. I eat the store brand equivalent of Life cereal (has actual sugar!) mostly, along with other things like apple cinnamon cheerios. I don't eat anything with a strange color that dies the milk, contains hardtack marshmallow or has a cartoon character on the box.

In an effort to substitute something more nutritious and dense, I was considering trying the Greek yogurt breakfast approach for a few weeks based on some Cleveland Clinic advice I read about better breakfast habits--I don't have time to make omelettes in the morning.

I'm going to be buying this stuff at the grocery store. What am I looking for? I don't like overly sweetened stuff and usually don't like fruit/yogurt. I'm also looking for the real thing. Not any non-fat crap. May add my own granola if I find it too boring over time. I've seen some that comes with honey. Are there any good "common" brands I should look for beyond reading labels? Sounds like you've looked into this and I would appreciate your and anyone else's advice before I hit the store this weekend.

The "Yea, but so what?" is relevant for policy-making. Legislation that would protect a specific luxury/entertainment industry from privacy may be re-distributing wealth to those players from other less protected players.

Not an argument against you, but a point that I see glossed over a lot. Unless you somehow legislate away piracy across an entire budget category very broadly for families and individuals, you run the danger of picking winners.

I thought the point about demand signal was interesting that you raised. Do people consider rampant privacy in some specific area to be a demand signal that is coupled with an extremely high price sensitivity?

I was at the SXSW gaming expo last month and they had a booth about this merit badge at the event.

"In its first three weeks on sale, the game sold 2 million copies, according to Electronic Arts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)

Unfortunately, the citation link is dead on the article. I don't know if this answers your question about commercial success. Maybe someone knows more about this data point in context of the industry.

Your last line is interesting and seems like a useful line of discussion to come out of this otherwise PR-laden exercise. Is there somewhere that you could elaborate on the evidence and suggest alternatives? You'd have at least one reader.

Do either you or the poster have advice regarding single parenting + full time job + nights/weekends-style startup? Possible? Was unclear if you were saying that spouse + support = okay, or just if spouse, then support = okay. Do you rely on the presence of a spouse who happens to be supporting to be able to even get the part time priority on the list below the rung to family?

If only they'd let you sign up for these things for only the immediate purpose and not be sent other "important campaign" emails. I would be cool with someone reading and trying to pronounce my name (incidentally, failing miserably) as part of a filibuster here. But I wouldn't want a single other email beyond that point.