ahsanfayaz - Network

My emulator now shows a graphical view of the internals of the CPU and memory.It's really cool being able to watch the test programs...

My emulator now shows a graphical view of the internals of the CPU and memory.
It's really cool being able to watch the test programs running this way!

My phone telling me I was “asleep” when I was doomscrolling literally on the same device that blared my wake up alarm 🤦🏽‍♂️

My phone telling me I was “asleep” when I was doomscrolling literally on the same device that blared my wake up alarm 🤦🏽‍♂️

And yes, I like to sync the whole repo, so I can pick up *exactly* where I left off on another device without having to commit, push to...

And yes, I like to sync the whole repo, so I can pick up *exactly* where I left off on another device without having to commit, push to remote from my desktop, then pull on my laptop.

IMO commits should represent a whole block of work, not “this is what I did in the 1h I had spare last night”

I lost the last couple of commits to my local git repo because my cloud sync server had a conflict!That’s never happened before!!Luckily I...

I lost the last couple of commits to my local git repo because my cloud sync server had a conflict!

That’s never happened before!!

Luckily I didn’t lose any real work, it reverted to having the changes uncommitted..

For anyone remotely interested in the process of game development, the 20th anniversary update has commentary by the developers which are...

For anyone remotely interested in the process of game development, the 20th anniversary update has commentary by the developers which are absolute gems. They’re really gonna make me play through the game yet another time 😆

I got Half-Life 1 in 2003, and it 100% lived up to all the hype. I adored its map editor, whereas other engines were impenetrable to 16 yo...

I got Half-Life 1 in 2003, and it 100% lived up to all the hype. I adored its map editor, whereas other engines were impenetrable to 16 yo me. After HL2 released I spent many evenings modding the Source engine. It was such a huge influence on me as a game dev. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years!

We released Tropico for Meta Quest last week and I’m proud to have been part of the team that worked on it!It is absolutely breathtaking...

We released Tropico for Meta Quest last week and I’m proud to have been part of the team that worked on it!

It is absolutely breathtaking to see your island come to life in VR ☀️🏝️

https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/6257074614332373

Where have all the 4k 24” and 5k 27” screens gone? I’m pretty sure they were common just a few years ago?? Now there’s nothing out...

Where have all the 4k 24” and 5k 27” screens gone? I’m pretty sure they were common just a few years ago?? Now there’s nothing out there with a PPI > 200… I used to daily drive a 27” 5k iMac so anything less is a noticeable step backwards.

Anyway, I went and bought a second hand 1200p monitor from 2010 to match the one I already have, the text clarity is better than most modern 4k screens I’ve used. Better than dropping £500+ and worrying the screen I actually want is just round the corner…

Spent a lot of time focusing on getting analogue stick input absolutely perfect. I’ve got it to the point where moving around the world...

Spent a lot of time focusing on getting analogue stick input absolutely perfect. I’ve got it to the point where moving around the world and turning the camera is so much fun, and then I remember there’s the rest of the game to play as well!

Don’t underestimate how important it is to get the basics right!

Massive thanks to this (archived) blog post which discusses the typical pitfalls with deadzones and how to avoid them: https://web.archive.org/web/20190129113357/http://www.third-helix.com/2013/04/12/doing-thumbstick-dead-zones-right.html

Yesterday we released Total War: PHARAOH for macOS on Steam, alongside the Windows...

Yesterday we released Total War: PHARAOH for macOS on Steam, alongside the Windows version!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937780/Total_War_PHARAOH/

Incredibly proud of the whole team for such a great release and managing to hit day and date!

I played the hell out of Pharaoh last night, it is a timeless classic and have spent hundreds of hours of my childhood on it.I am of course...

I played the hell out of Pharaoh last night, it is a timeless classic and have spent hundreds of hours of my childhood on it.

I am of course talking about Pharaoh: A New Era, a remake of the 1999 city builder in the Sierra series, which got a major update this week and fixed a lot of the game breaking bugs:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351080/Pharaoh_A_New_Era/

Am I forgetting some other Ancient Egypt related thing that happened this week? 🤔

Occasionally, I’ve asked a question on Stack Overflow that relates to some really obscure Cocoa API that gets no answers.Once, I asked a...

Occasionally, I’ve asked a question on Stack Overflow that relates to some really obscure Cocoa API that gets no answers.

Once, I asked a question and got an answer that definitively said it couldn’t be done, only to prove otherwise by experimentation.

Stack Overflow is an amazing resource and taught me a lot about C++ that uni wouldn’t. But I’ve had some bad experiences that stuck with...

Stack Overflow is an amazing resource and taught me a lot about C++ that uni wouldn’t. But I’ve had some bad experiences that stuck with me.

I wanted a Qt4 UI for my 3D app and needed glew to access modern OpenGL functions (this was 10+ years ago). Trying to use both resulted in cryptic errors, so I asked my question.

A prominent user commented “Qt and glew do the same thing, why are you using both?”, and refused to elaborate. Even now, it makes zero sense to me.

The ROM hacking tools and community for Super Mario Bros 3 in the late 90s/early 00s is a big part of the reason I’m a game dev now.Making...

The ROM hacking tools and community for Super Mario Bros 3 in the late 90s/early 00s is a big part of the reason I’m a game dev now.

Making crazy ass Mario levels to annoy my family, learning how the hardware of that era worked, and dissecting how those games were made were just as much fun as playing through the games themselves for me.

I played Super Mario Bros 3 again for the first time in something like 20 years, and I went through each level properly instead of warping...

I played Super Mario Bros 3 again for the first time in something like 20 years, and I went through each level properly instead of warping straight to World 8.

It still holds up incredibly well, before I knew it was 3 in the morning! Great game design is timeless…

Point is, devs have to work with the constraints of the platforms and tools just of out necessity.It’s not just about money and end user...

Point is, devs have to work with the constraints of the platforms and tools just of out necessity.

It’s not just about money and end user privacy (although those are major concerns). By financially incentivising certain behaviours, they’re restricting the kinds of games that can be profitably made.

How will Unity’s per-install fee negatively affect how games are made? They explicitly say they want creators to keep ongoing financial...

How will Unity’s per-install fee negatively affect how games are made? They explicitly say they want creators to keep ongoing financial gains from player engagement.

Will more games try to hook you in to coming back regularly, drip feeding the actual content, to avoid being uninstalled?

Will games shrink in size using the lowest possible quality assets to avoid an uninstall (and risk another install fee)?

Will we see a gradual decline in new original games as devs focus on existing installs?

It’s unbelievable how useful unit tests are. I’ve written the absolute bare bones of tests for only a few opcodes and it’s uncovered...

It’s unbelievable how useful unit tests are. I’ve written the absolute bare bones of tests for only a few opcodes and it’s uncovered so many subtle bugs for instructions and fetching modes that I wasn’t even testing for!

If your CMakePresets.json has an error Visual Studio will “helpfully” suggest you “use default settings”. But this generates a...

If your CMakePresets.json has an error Visual Studio will “helpfully” suggest you “use default settings”. But this generates a CppProperties.json file that overrides the other file! So I wasted ages wondering why my fixes weren’t being picked up!!

Anyway, that’s solved and the native CMake support is nice, saves having to maintain two separate project files.