Chapter 2 #

Yuri caught up quickly, not wanting to be left behind. The two of them walked across the long steel platform toward the far left side of the massive industrial space. Yuri could see the engineers ahead carrying Hawthorne’s stretcher down the scaffold staircase. They were so high up, the boy felt a bit of vertigo and kept his hand on the railing.

The first mech they walked past was a bulky Ajax frame painted dark blue, with massive miniguns held in both hands. Boone dragged his hand along the mech’s body casually, as they walked by. It must have been his.

Are you an angry American who is disillusioned by American politics? Depressed even? Here are some ways to take action.

Join the DSA #

If you’re a fan of Burnie Sanders or AOC, you should join the DSA and participate in your local chapter.

In light of how poorly the Democratic party is handling Trump’s second term, you should join an organization that is actually fighting against tyranny and oppression.

So there I was… #

So there I was applying to another startup on Y-Combinator a few Mondays ago, and in my cover letter I made a joke about how difficult it is to get deterministic responses out of LLMs. Almost immediately after I sent the email, I instantly came up with a better joke I should have used instead:

How many LLMs does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Chapter 1 #

A few hours later, on a dark and sandy beach, a few kilometers from the outskirts of New Miami, the young man reclined on his red and yellow beach chair. Waves rolled in slowly and quietly all around. On this lonely beach, he was isolated and free.

He’d been swimming in the ocean only minutes before. His clothes were drying on the mech that knelt on the sand beside him. His training mech, the old Ajax with chipping paint and rusting bolts, was larger than most buildings. To climb out, Yuri had used a rope-lift that dangled out of the open chest cockpit.

Chapter 0 #

“Order up! #103?”

The cook’s gray apron and red polo shirt were soaked through with sweat, and his thin mustache and long black hair curled from the humidity behind him. Steam and smoke emerged from the small noodle shop’s front window like ghosts escaping the underworld. The short, stocky asian man leaned out, underneath the bright orange neon sign, Lu’s Noodles, and looked around.

“Tonketsu Ramen, extra egg, extra meat! #103!” Lu said angrily, slamming the vinyl menu below the counter to make a harsh plastic clattering sound.

Intro #

I’m working on a game right now that involves a lot of narrative. That’s lead me to think a lot about moral choice in games, what I like, and what I want to do in the future.

For my game, Esmerelda: The Black Amber Covenant, I want to have quests and a morality system. But what does that look like, even just from the design perspective?

Well, let’s think about some games that did moral choice well:

The Problem #

Maybe like me, you work on lots of remote, terminal-only servers setting up stupid stuff like Plex, Jenkins, Godot Packaging, game servers, etc.

If you do this, you probably spend hours testing terminal commands trying to find the exact commands to configure your device properly. If your server ever went down, all that work would be lost forever.

Luckily, that command history is available on the device itself (up-arrow shows previous commands), but it doesn’t really help you if that VM is deleted and lost forever, or if you want to show somebody else the many steps it took to do something complicated. Copying commands one at a time is a non-starter too.

Intro #

The most popular apps and websites are designed to hook you like a drug. I had struggled for years with internet addiction, but finally feel free.

Here’s what worked for me:

Step 1: Go to a Therapist #

This was both the most important step. Being able to talk about my addiction with someone who could hold me accountable helped me fight back in a real way. Finding the right therapist was tough, but worth it.

Perfecting Survival Horror #

I think the games that have had the most consistent impact on me in the past have been survival horror games. But what makes a survival horror game perfect?

A survival horror game transcends the genre when it uses horror elements to effectively enhance its non-horror message. Here are some examples:

System Shock 2, Half Life and Half Life 2, Portal and Portal 2, Fallout 3, MGS2 & 3. I would consider all these to be games that have themes beyond “escape” or “survival”, and the elements of horror in these games support these non-horror themes.

I’m Doing it Wrong #

“If you’re not making quantitative predictions, you’re probably doing it wrong.” Said Gabe Newel, speaking about his company’s approach to design in this video.

Newel’s words got me thinking: What is a quantitative prediction? And how can game devs apply them to their design process? As a guy who wants to produce video games, it seems like a useful practice to employ.

Define: Quantitative Prediction #

A quantitative prediction is a guess based on a mental model combined with measured, numeric variables that ultimately tries to predict an outcome.