Author: helava

Lair

Ha. This finally came out. I expected not to get quoted, as I made it pretty clear I was only on the tail end of the project. But there ends up being a blurb about the control/FOV issues.
This is probably the single feature I wasn’t able to get through that I regret the most, as I think it’d have had a massive impact on how people felt about the controls.
Basically, if you were turning, trying to follow an enemy as they flew around you, even if you had a *perfect-to-the-frame* reaction time, you’d overshoot the target (over-rotate), and have to turn backwards to correct your aim.
This wasn’t a subjective thing – if you were actually relying on your eyes, and not a built-in knowledge of where an enemy would be, the FOV was so narrow, and you turned so fast that you didn’t have enough time, given a standard human’s normal reaction time, and given the momentum of how the dragon slowed their turn, to hit a target. This was made worse by the fact that the game ran in the low-teens/high-single-digit FPS for the bulk of the tail end of development, which made things significantly worse.
So the fix was pretty simple – we added a “camera look-ahead”, where the camera would turn *in addition* to the dragon turning, by a tunable number of degrees, and it’d ease in/out of the dragon’s orientation over a tunable time. Think of it as the dragon pilot turning their head to “look-ahead” as the dragon turned.
It gave us a bit of wiggle room to keep the dragon turn rate independent of target acquisition, and then tune the damping of settling back to a neutral state independent of the dragon’s animation. The result was that if you had decent-but-human reactions, you could get the target dead center of the screen every single time, even from a maximum-speed turn.
It didn’t make it into the final game, which is, I think, a real shame. There are valid reasons why, of course, but I’d have made a different call than the one that was made.

Rando Stuff

Busy week. A bunch of stuff happening at work, almost all of which is awesome. But it’s a lot, and it’s just the start. Once we get into a rhythm, it’ll be easier, which is great – but we’re making a bunch of progress (rather, the *team* is making a bunch of progress, since most of this week I feel like I didn’t have time to actually *do* anything). But it’s great. I’m still kind of flabbergasted that this is what we’re doing & how we’re doing it, but it’s … just really exciting. Wish I could share more with everyone, but that’s one of the weird things about working on a secret project at a public company – it’s actually gotta be kinda secret.
Today was mostly just a day of lying around & not doing much. Lindsi, Adia & Co. came by, and we got to hear in literal real time about the Hawaii missile alert, which was, even though it wasn’t real, a very strange microcosm of “Oh, this is how everything ends.”
Having a President who I think is basically an insane four year old idiot (idiot *for* a four year old, not for a 70+ year old man) in a moment where it feels like WW3 is literally minutes away is not a comforting thought.
It really drives home how fragile I think the US has become. I’ve been listening to a lot of Pod Save America, and one of Jon Favreau’s recurring themes is that he’s impressed by how well a lot of our institutions are holding up, and while yes, there are examples, the institutions that should be really nailing the first line of defense are either categorically weak (the media, cowed once *again* by the right wing shouts of “bias”, as though the ones shouting have any integrity or are even good actors *at all*), or have completely abdicated their responsibility (most of Congress), or are actively treasonous & covering up or complicity in crimes (Republican investegatory committees like the one dealing with the Steele dossier led by Grassley, who after reading that transcript, I think should be run out of the country with pitchforks and torches.).
So I don’t feel that sense of faith that our institutions are holding up. I think I *may* feel better about them in 2018 if we can successfully wipe the slate clean of GOP members. This is a party that should be *utterly annihilated*, politically. It should be as poisonous as declaring yourself a Nazi, and declaring yourself a Nazi should be as fucking poisonous as *fucking declaring you’re a god damned Nazi*.
It’s insane that this is where the discourse is at. It’s insane that we take for granted that half the government is so utterly, completely partisan and so totally unconcerned with anything actually related to the well-being of the country as a whole that the assumption is that Trump is un-impeachable no matter *what* he does – that there’s *no* standard the GOP is willing to uphold. They need to be, politically, destroyed.
So yeah, oddly stressful day. Tomorrow we’re headed over to my parents for a bit to do the usual stress-relief-valve for their relationship, which is really getting on my nerves. I just want an uninterrupted weekend. I don’t mind work. I love spending time with the kids. I don’t mind occasionally spending time with my parents. But having the weight of starting a job AND the kids AND the parents AND the rest of life… one of those is pushing itself over the edge a bit.
My mom’s been great about it – but my dad’s periodic “everything is wrong and exploding and you have to pay attention!” texts at 11pm, which force me to get really wound up, and them constantly being over phantom nothing bullshit… it’s getting tiring.
BUT.
Still. Work is good. Kids are great. Rest of life is pretty darned good. Picked up a “legacy” style game called Charterstone that looks really interesting, but I’m wondering if it’s taken us 2+ years to get through a third of Pandemic Legacy S1 when I might be able to get anyone to actually give this a shot. 😃
Been reading through The Expanse – finished book 2, then switched over to a book called “The Rook” (Christy’s recommendation, I think) which I’ve been enjoying, for a thematic break. Trying to get Ei-Nyung caught up on the TV series, but it’s slow going because it’s a pretty stressful show.
Watched the Lego Ninjago movie with the kids, which does manage to completely break the streak of charming Lego movies, despite Jackie Chan’s presence. The story is *terrible*, even if there are a few good jokes, and the animation is still pretty charming. I liked the TV series (which the kids watched last year) a lot better than the movie, which is disappointing.
Oh, have I mentioned how great Hawking Bird is? No? Go check it out. Basically near Bakesale Betty. Get the Hawking Bird w/ an egg & chicken fat rice. And the Tater tots. You’re welcome.
I’m gonna try to cook something marginally ambitious on Monday. Don’t know what yet.

Time Off

Today was more reorganization & cleaning. Also played frisbee with J&K – got a knockoff Aerobie at Target. The kids don’t like throwing a ball around, but for whatever reason, frisbee is right up their alley.
Cleaned out the foyer closet, which is where I discovered all the hats. Got rid of a few jackets, and a 20 year old suit that was both too small and the shoulder pads were … not good.
Also grabbed my dad’s old briefcase, which has been in that closet for something like 10 years. It holds all the stuff I need to go to work. So I’m using it. It’s ridiculous, sure, but whatever.
Played a bit of Fortnite Battle Royale – I’d picked up PUBG a few days ago, because I figured it’s the kind of thing I should know about (and indeed, it’s fun!). FBR is a bit more up my speed than PUBG – I like that it has something that feels like style and character, but PUBG has a nice tension that comes, I think, in part from the realism.
Also picked The Division back up again, for reasons that are somewhat beyond me – it’s fun, but one problem with jumping in after a year away is that I have almost no idea what the fuck is going on. I didn’t play it a ton when I originally got it, since no one else I knew was playing at the same times I was playing, but since the shine’s really come off of Destiny 2 recently, it’s a sort of loot-based game that’s similar, but different enough, and I’ve got a long way to go before the endgame, so it’s a nice change of pace. Also played a little bit of Horizon, and man – that game is just jaw-droppingly beautiful. The design, the character art, the environments, the enemies – it’s all just really, really damn good.
Started up another bottle of the Sol Food hot sauce again. It’s a couple days of soaking jalapenos in vinegar to start, so I’ve got time to get the rest of the stuff I need.
All in all, it’s been a pretty great two weeks off. We had a few days here before heading out to ATL, then a few days after we got back when J’s school was still off, so it’s felt almost like three vacations back-to-back-to-back, even if two of ’em were just puttering around at home taking care of shit.

Parents

One thing we’ve been doing when going to my parents’ house with the kids has been to basically incentivize them to want to go to the grandparents’ house. Despite my dad just sitting on his iPhone the whole time, my mom will hang out with the kids – they played Qwirkle this afternoon, and they have a pretty good time. They often get sweets from my mom, and they like running around on the flat yard, which is a nice change from our house – they played frisbee for a bit this evening.
I, on the other hand, have been anti-incentivized to go to their house. Every single time I go, I’ve got literally hours of manual labor to do, and every week, it just piles up and up. More, every time a weekend passes and I *don’t* go, by midweek the next week I get some text from my dad saying that he & my mom got in a fight, and she’s a.) so stressed she’s going to leave him, b.) has obvious memory problems and I need to take him seriously, or c.) some other shit.
And no, none of those things are true. But they always weigh on me. So the only associations I have now are a.) lots of difficult, often frustrating physical labor, and b.) being the only bulwark holding back my parents’ implosion.
Every goddamn week.
And it was alright before I had a job. But I have a job now. One I like, sure, but it’s still got a lot of stress & effort, and now I get to go from that to a job I’ve grown to despise, sacrificing what amounts to half my weekend to deal with them.
I get why my mom feels trapped. It’s driving me bananas. And I feel terrible for feeling this way, but also, fuck – half of this shit they can take care of on their own, they just don’t because I’m here. And Ei-Nyung posited that maybe they do this to have an excuse for me to come over, but if that’s the case it’s a terrible plan, because it’s going to explode in their face in a hurry. Or it won’t, because I don’t have any fucking choice in the matter regardless.

Random Photos

I think I need to get off of WordPress. The site’s just too junky to be considered a modern blogging option. The way it handles media files is garbage, and its interface is just … ugh.

Anyway. Here’s some recent photos.

 

2017

Well. 2017 on a national level was an obvious dumpster fire. On a personal level, it started out terribly. Wonderspark had some very long odds for survival, and despite making a game I was really proud of, we couldn’t find it an audience in time.

In March, we ran out of money, and shut the company down.

Ei-Nyung and I spent the bulk of the year unemployed. In every way but financially, it was a pretty spectacular time. I learned to kiteboard, we managed to move my parents out to Concord, we spent a lot of time with the kids, going to Dublin & London, Tahoe… it was a really good summer (aside from the stress involved with moving my parents). I took on a contract design job that was an interesting foray into health-related stuff, and then in October, a friend of mine, Chuck, dropped a job in my lap that I couldn’t pass up.

So I took it. I’ll write a little more about it later when it’s more public, but not only was it perfect on paper, but after starting, I’ve become even more excited about it as it’s developed.

The kids are great. Still a wonderful team. They’ve spent so much time making things, drawing, telling stories… it’s great to see how creative and constructive they are. J’s a generous older brother, and K is amazing at keeping up with someone almost twice his age.

We’re just north of Atlanta now, hanging out with Ei-Nyung’s side of the family – the kids get along great with their cousins.

Will post pics later.

Star Wars

I’ve got today off, and was contemplating going to see The Last Jedi again, but instead decided to watch The Force Awakens in the background while doing other stuff.
One thing about both TFA and TLJ that I really appreciate is how different the jobs they had were.
There were so many details in TFA that feel so natural now, but when seeing it for the first time, were significant, and important to be there. The ways in which Rey’s personality and life are conveyed are elegant and brilliant. The tension before Chewie and Han step on to the Millenium Falcon. The blaster bolt hanging in the air.
TFA had to resuscitate a franchise that was largely dead to me. It had to remind me of the awe I felt when I watched Star Wars for the first, twentieth, hundredth time as a kid. And yet, it had to feel new. Enough. It boggles my mind that they were able to walk that line.
People complained about how it felt like New Hope v2, and yes, it absolutely does. That’s its job. But it also gave us a bunch of new paths into the universe. New characters who were *different* than their New Hope counterparts.
And then TLJ’s job was to really blow that all apart and show us how Rey isn’t Luke, how Kylo Ren isn’t just an echo of Vader. How all the beats that we were expecting could be subverted and repurposed, and for the seeds of the new Star Wars, that were planted in TFA, to grow in their own directions.
I’m listening to the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack now, and one of the things that I really enjoyed about 2049 was that while it was consistent with the universe, it did the same kinds of things – it continued some of the critical hallmarks, and still forged new ground. It illuminated the original without overshadowing it or subverting it, and it extended a lot of the themes of the original without feeling like it was a slave to the expectations it created.
Maybe that’s why there’s such a backlash among the whining manbabies about TLJ. It’s a story that in large part, doesn’t feel like it owes anything to the fans.
It takes its direction from the story, and its potential for the future. It’s not there to give people what they think they want.
I love that about TLJ. And I massively respect the monstrous task they had with TFA. Both are amazing works of threading impossible needles. To me, they (and 2049) make it through with elegance, delight, surprise – and they honor the source material.
I’d love to see a Denis Villeneuve take on Star Wars. 😮

One Shot

One of the things that always ticks at the back of my mind is that we only ever get one shot at this. Many days, it often feels like we can try try again – but much of life is once and done. The kids aren’t babies anymore, and I expect I will never be a father to a baby again. I expect I will never start a company again. Go caving again. Do a triathlon again. Maybe – there’s always a chance. But it’s strange. I will never be who I was again. I can only become who I will be.

Star Wars Battlefront 2: WTF???

Played the first level of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 with Luke Skywalker in it, and it is, as far as I can recall, one of the worst single levels of a game I’ve ever played.
And it’s not just that mechanically, it sucks. But oh my god mechanically, it sucks. Swat flies with lightsaber. No actual skill involved. Do it for a long time. Have to do it again. End level. From a gameplay perspective, it’s garbage.
But the early parts of the level and the narrative are even more jarring. You’re Luke Skywalker. You’re on a weird planet, so you go exploring. You feel something in the Force. You run into a bunch of Stormtroopers. You mow them down without a second thought.
At some point midway through the level, you come across a member of “Inferno Squad”, the squad the main character is part of. This guy is one of her close compatriots. He’s trapped. So you free him. Luke doesn’t kill this guy. And he asks, “Why didn’t you kill me?” and Luke says basically “I killed those Stormtroopers because they didn’t give me a choice. You did.”
And it’s *insane*. Luke just killed dozens of soldiers literally without a second thought. And then for purely plot reasons, he not only saves this guy, but teams up with him, and then expresses “We’re not getting out of this without each other,” which is *nonsense*. Luke’s an incredibly powerful Jedi. This guy is basically a badass TIE fighter pilot and nothing more.
The whole story is so off the rails and Luke’s behavior is so nonsensical that it’s really disconcerting to me that this is a canonical story. And then for the last half of the level after meeting that guy, you swat bugs. For 10 minutes. It’s terrible.

I Got Mine

There’s a political debate going on on a friend of mine’s post (on Facebook), and there’s a right-winger who’s gamely arguing their position. He’s articulate, and detailed in his explanations of his ideology, which is interesting because most of the arguments I’ve seen from right wingers are unintelligible racist/misogynist/homophobic nonsense.
So this guy’s at least trying to make arguments couched in a kind of intellectualism, which is a nice change of pace. I can even follow his logic in many places, and it seems at least internally consistent.
The problem is that the internal consistency *constantly* just leads back to something along the lines of, “I’m a self-made success, and I deserve everything I have. Everyone who isn’t a success deserves not only failure, but nothing from me.” Basically, it’s an ideology completely codified around being a self-absorbed asshole.
I got mine, fuck everyone else. They failed because they’re unworthy, there’s no system that’s stacking anything against anyone, because *I* succeeded.
I guess it’s better than outright misogyny and racism, but it’s couched in a kind of “intellectual” distance, which is also in a way significantly worse. Like James Damore, there’s a pretense of rationality, but the arguments are hollow and unsubstantiated, they just *sound* better than “waaah black people.” But it’s all the same morally vacant shit.