@patrick.games
Game developer, Android Games DevRel, roboticist, dad, and a bard so bad that he causes psychic damage. Previously worked on Star Wars BB-8, Space Miner, and those Sphero robots. Opinions are my own (Google doesn't want them, especially bagpipes). He/Him
If you see this, post a robot.
This is also for @davidpierce.xyz . I used to work at a toy company and furby inspired me to build this 😆
It's built onto a Sphero board since this is before we built Ollie.
This is different than my AI art rant. All you need to know for that one is that I think it's a problem that chat apps all have a AI prompt to image box, but not an easy way to draw with a stylus/finger/mouse in app to send goofy sketches to my friends.
So I think we're in a good spot now? People I know who've never written code are finally taking control of the computers in their lives and automating work like my tiny Perl scripts.
But it feels like we could've done better sooner -- maybe reframing what a computer is and how to use it.
There's something here where every GDD I've ever read has been internally inconsistent. And the inconsistencies I've worked out testing and iterating during implementation. LLMs don't have that taste, and English isn't really formal enough to correct it away.
So now we have these LLM agents that let folks customize their computer experience like I could in the 90s (tweaking resource files, which are locked away in modern OSes). Which is great, except that we could've made something much easier to use and harder to mess up.
So AI agents are great in that they push all the big castles and such us engineers make to keep our large code bases organized away and let anyone in. Part of me feels like us coders dropped the ball by locking down the products we ship - a Kotlin DSL vs. XML and an editor.
I see modern niceties like DSLs in Kotlin, and these are amazing -- if you're an engineer with a toolchain writing a bespoke app. Not so much if you want to ship a user configurable app. Since I see regular folks make wild UGC in Lua for games, I suspect users always want to make cool things.
Games are assembled by artists, designers, writers, &c all working in main. Even if I, a programmer, start working on gameplay code I'm not unit testing something. I'm usually not building to a spec: I have a rough guide in my GDD and I'm trying to implement it in a fun way.
Folks often ask me "why don't game developers unit test?" And the answer is, they do: folks working on rendering and physics engines taught me unit testing, I wrote the tests for a math library at my first studio.
The problem is most code in a game isn't written by coders.
A random set of thoughts I have WRT gamedev and AI programming that I'd write down in a blog post if I wasn't busy parenting these days:
The best thing about AI programming is that it's showing programmers that most folks like to code, but in the least efficient way possible 😆
I think it's the same benefit as running a booth at GDC. Even around my fellow awesome nerds I never know what to say. But put me in front of a giant stand that says "Android Performance Optimization", bam, all my priors are established and I know my script.
As a parent, I end up chaperoning during kids play dates: where you sit around for an hour with usually cool adults. I could either be awkward and hide in a phone _or_ be awkward but playing a dulcimer or mandolin. With the benefit of option 2 being I don't have to initiate smalltalk.
I normally run around with an instrument these days since it keeps me off a phone.
Someone tried very hard to pay me for playing music in a local corner store. Eventually throwing $2 into my pocket and running away.
It's both very validating but also breaks my wall between hobbies and income 😆
Which, "computer" as in the old profession:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute...
And yes it was my grandmother, it's good to remember that not only can girls code: they invented it.
I'm the grandson of a computer.
Me: let's talk about syzygy
Them: gets excited in astrology x astronomy
Me: so I have this module on a number ring
Them: melts in maths
I'm at that point where I hear pop song and suddenly realize I know the Irish tune underlying it 😆
I've been itching to make a similar aesthetic game myself (ie: "it would be cool to play the Windows 95 maze screensaver").
But I have a tiny person that demands my time and a wall full of folk instruments.
I like how Vampire Crawlers says "wishlist now" when I'm funny prepared to pay full price this very second for this game as is.
If it ran on mobile, it would easily be the first game to unseat "Slice & Dice" for playtime.
It's funny how it's impossible to pin down folks to teach you folk music. Which is probably why I get along with them so much, but also gives me a big helping of "this is what it's like to deal with me, huh?"
These look so cool. Yes, I will be taking questions.
youtu.be/sQphscV_9So?...
When I'm stressed, I tend to shop for strange instruments.
I have pages open for a banjo dulcimer, tenor gourd banjo, and octave mandolin.
That's how I'm feeling right now.
I...might've gotten a wee bit sidetracked into modelling uniform polyhedra for a random idea 😅
At least now I know what a rhombicuboctahedron is (the chonky fella on the right)
Hyperion is a contender for my favorite book of so time 😥
Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed
If I need to play a 3 minute song as a sfx in a video game, it's in the format I need!
I'm going to go out of my way to support musicians, even buying from their mini custom web-stores. But surely if you can stand up a site you can give me an album download in a format other than 1GB of wav files 😆
I prefer hypolinks.
"I don't really feel like clicking this. But sure, I guess. I'm probably not going to like it"
The real danger is that I've also wanted to try a bouzouki and a tenor banjo. And now I have to go run around and figure out where the devil I'm going to find these things in a locale dominated by bluegrass instruments.
I just found an octave mandolin in a store and tried it for the first time.
How much more comfortable to play for me than a real mandolin is going to be a problem for me. Especially since the shop also didn't want to take my hurdy gurdy on consignment 😆