saluk

Python was the first programming language (outside of ti-basic) that I was able to master, after trying to learn c and java. I learned it to script blender games, which had a very fun little game engine.

Blender's use of python was quite extensive, as a way to quickly retool the program as an animation studio experiences many changing requirements from clients. Fun fact, blender and python both have dutch roots.

I think Python's main acceptance came from it's uses as an embedded scripting language, and as a perl or bash replacement for automating computing tasks. Tools like scons to replace make, or PIL to do image processing were pretty big deals. You would often hear about such and such replacing their complicated patchwork of tooling and manual processes with something more organized built in python.

Where TTS excels is for designers. It's super quick to change rules in the middle of the game, import new components, make small alterations, you name it. You can open a new table and just start experimenting with the components they give you, and move on to importing new assets when you are ready. And you don't need to code up a ui for it.

This freedom is good for tabletop roleplaying as well, though if you are working within an established ruleset that has an implementation on roll20 or fantasygrounds those give the gm more out of the box automation tools.

As someone who learned on python (many years ago), I think the balance of being allowed to shoot myself in the foot, while only having to learn complexity when complex concepts came up, was a good combination rather than a bad one. Trying to learn C++ and Java before, having to type everything was an impedement. On python, you find out that types still matter when you try to add a string to an integer, for example. The moment the type matters to you is when you need to dig into those details. I'm not sure I would have the career I do if it hadn't been around to be the one language that fit my 16-year old brain.

Mute everything. I solves most of these issues.

I'm not surprised at how your mom reacts to Trump. I'm surprised so many young people believe that covid is no big deal. I agree with you that the quality of our ideas has improved, but I also disagree in that the spread of our bad ideas has also improved. Concepts that were held by a fringe of society in the past, like the idea that the Earth is flat have grown their own communities who have interests in keeping those ideas alive. Ideas, bad and good, have gotten a lot stickier.

With stickier ideas, the marketplace becomes worse, because nothing ever gets pruned out of it. Too much energy is spent on limiting the growth of bad ideas than can be spent on refining the better ideas.

There are multiple levels. While I like the idea of separating seeing only what my followers post and seeing other posts, it gets really blurry when the people I follow are clicking the "like" and "retweet" buttons. I would guestimate around 30% or more of my twitter feed are posts people I follow have liked or retweeted rather than posted on their own.

And the network can make that happen on its own, without an algorithm reordering content - if someone I follow is retweeting something that someone they follow retweeted.

While WebVR scenes can be viewed in a browser, their intended target is the vr headset, where the "dragging" is not at issue, and you are turning the view by turning your head. I think it would make more sense to keep the reverse dragging and change the mouse icon here. The intended experience is not "here is a scene that you can drag around" but "here is a virtual scene you are standing in and you can look left and right". So the intended context is that, headset or not, you are controlling the viewers head.

"Now you download Unity and almost everything but the art design and game logic is done for you."

Yes, Unity helps to visually organize your game's data, and there are built in and downloadable components (which are all created by coders) that can be used to plug into your game, but it's just another set of abstractions. Most of the time you will be writing your own components in a traditional coding language or delving into other's component code to adapt it to actually make your game function. There ARE game creation systems intended for no coding required, but they come with the expected limitations of visual coding that people are bringing up in this thread. No, Unity doesn't really fall into this category, barring a few limited game domains.

Perhaps in 50 years every domain will be "mapped" in this way, with predefined components that work with each other and can be tweaked as needed, but I don't see how that could eliminate coding, or even displace it that much. Two reasons I think coding is here to stay:

1) Any sufficiently complex system needs it's organization to be managed. At a certain complexity, whatever system is replacing coding will become something that looks a lot like coding. At that level of complexity, text is easier to manage than a visual metaphor. 2) Most pieces of software need custom components, even if only to stand out. Those game creation systems with no coding? No one is impressed by the games that are created in those systems. Not because the system cannot produce something worthwhile - but because with everything looking the same, the value of that output drops substantially.

I think coding will only go away when programming does. When the computer is as intelligent and creative as we are. And that's a point which I do not want think about too much.

Steamspy is highly inaccurate, but I do think Vive sales are generally healthy, and it seems like they are making them about as fast as they can be sold now. It has enough of an install base for quality content to make it onto the top 10 list when they launch, as Pool Nation VR did a few weeks ago. The general public still has not tried VR (barring maybe cardboard) and a very vocal group is against the very idea of it. Still a pretty steep mountain to teleport up.

Setup can be full of issues for sure - but when it is working properly you should never be losing tracking. Are you using the sync cable? Things got a lot better when I started using that. I still am not understanding the "many cables" functionally there is only one. It is a pain to deal with, but if there is any roomscale with Oculus touch, you will run into the same issue until we can get wireless systems.

Blurry edges depend a lot on where the headset is sitting on your head, and playing with the straps can really improve the experience (even the feeling like it's heavy). Mine is fairly tight on the sides and then long on the top strap, pulling everything back a lot further than it feels like you are supposed to.

Anyway, not trying to criticize your preference, but hoping your Vive experience can get a bit better.

VR is interesting. It gives content creators a lot more options to engage participants, but it also takes an axe to their knees in their ability to control things. The author has no control over where the participant is looking - and with room-scale tracking, very little control over where the participant is standing either.

The most successful content in my view capitalizes on this freedom, and provides new spaces for participants to express themselves. You do not have to roll on the floor to dodge lasers in the arcade shooter Space Pirate Trainer, but it is fun to do, gives you a workout, and was not programmed into the game.

If it replaces anything, it will be things like museums, casual sports (ping pong, pool etc that require big space commitment for a singular activity), and social interaction tools like skype.

You make an interesting case about the difference between a societal problem and an individual failing. However, consider the options available to society. I think you would agree, we would enjoy society much better without as many homeless people. Now consider the options for solving such a problem. There are as many options as have been tried, and perhaps some that haven't. But I would posit that of the two ends of the spectrum, the side of society working to help people out of homelessness and prevent people from becoming homeless has a greater chance of success than ignoring the problem and locking up the ones who commit crimes in jail. (I mean, isn't that basically providing them a home, but potentially at a greater overall cost than other methods?)

While there will always be people who wind up there of their own poor choices, I hope that you would agree that it is not all of them. And even in the poor choice case, there may be societal systems that helped to enable them to get there.

It is not about blame in my opinion, but solutions. Solutions which at the moment, sadly, seem to be in short supply.

It is not the same. However, the homeless person sleeping on the bench is hurting others. The purpose of having a bench is to have a place for people who are waiting for the bus, or taking a short break while moving through the city, to have a place to stop. If a person (homeless or otherwise) is using the bench to sleep, that is going against the intent of the bench in the first place. While many of these measures are primarily aimed at making things difficult for homeless people, extended bench stays are still undesirable in general.

The networked social interaction is more social than any previous networking technology. And in person, the Vive usually does about as good at wii sports for keeping everyone engaged, even those who aren't playing.

I mean, I CAN have visuals like that, as I don't have aphantasia. But I don't believe most of my ideas originate from the visual imagining. It usually starts with concepts, is connected through logic, and then along the way images may or may not be generated, depending on what I am ruminating about.

Yes. Videos like that need to show a clear use case that everyone can understand. There was a lot going on but none of it really made any sense.

I don't know what you are seeing, I'm passionate about it. There are really only one or two puzzle games of this caliber every year, if that, and for me this is the best one in many years. The superficial similarity of the puzzle design to some popular iphone games, combined with a higher price than indie games typically have, seems to be putting people off.

It's also a very simple game. There isn't a lot someone who likes it can say about it without spoiling anything. There are puzzles. They are good. The island is also a puzzle. It is fun to solve puzzles. Yeah, I can't really go on that way for very long, can I.

Sterile puzzle collection; or clean, pure set of puzzles that interplay on each other within a larger interlocking puzzle.

You kind of can with a hack, but it's not a comfortable experience. The game was not really developed with VR in mind, though the team experimented with VR support.

I'm guessing it's planes all the way down.

I had thought we would never get 360 + stereo. I wonder how much touch up work this will require and what kinds of scenes will provide problems with incorrect depth heuristics.

The problem with 48fps on the big screen was that it didn't feel "filmic". It actually WAS more realistic, but in that specific instance this actually hurt the message of the content. When we are recreating live events, concerts etc, we aren't going for filmic, we are going for the feeling of being there. I have tried the Paul McCartney example on GearVR which uses a similar technique as Jump - it's not perfect but it is a lot better than watching the concert on a screen.

TL;DR - We are approaching what we might want in a captured live experience, where early 48fps3d movie experiences may have passed what we want in a filmed one.

"Corresponding to the prior probability (50%) of the coin falling heads or tails, we now have some prior probability of Doom Soon or Doom Late."

Nice to just magically know this probability. I get that the actual number doesn't matter, but I worry about a predictor that doesn't care about any real probabilities based on observation.

There are plenty of good indie films - they just aren't desirable in the way indie games are right now. The glut of content is really helping sites like GoG or humble to experiment with different models and push things like no drm. Successful films, and successful indie films, are different.

There is a similar glut of tv content as indie games, so you see many more ways to access this content, but no real push for free-drm here. They are still following the ad-based method.

Netflix/amazon/hulu as they grow their own original content could get to a point where they can disrupt distribution (more than they already have). But all of them already have a culture of drm so it's not clear that they would follow a similar stance as gog given the chance.

I think the point of the article isn't that PM tools aren't useful, it's that they shouldn't be the focus especially of a new team starting out. When starting something new, it's easy to get bogged down in the how, rather than focusing on the why and the what. I think analyzing workflow and project management is more successful when you have already worked on a team for a while and realize where your strengths and weaknesses are, so you actually have data to use to determine what project flow might be more efficient.

The pricing must be priced at the time of the transaction - so you will need to search based on historical valuation.