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RmBeer2
Member #16,660
April 2017
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Both bugs are great, wasps and mantises. ;D

@Edgar Reynaldo
You should be nicer to the poor bugs. :-[

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Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006

IIRC, someone said Mosquitos have zero value and cause a millions deaths a year. [just fact checked that!] Pretty much no scientist cares if they go extinct (save for storing their DNA).

They are testing GMA mosquitoes in Florida. They do not carry the diseases associated with the insects. Maybe they will find a way to use them to spread vaccines.

By reading this sig, I, the reader, agree to render my soul to Bob Keane. I, the reader, understand this is a legally binding contract and freely render my soul.
"Love thy neighbor as much as you love yourself means be nice to the people next door. Everyone else can go to hell. Missy Cooper.
The advantage to learning something on your own is that there is no one there to tell you something can't be done.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
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I stole(TM) Allegro code today. 😨

https://github.com/erinmaus/itsyscape/pull/276/commits/91f22f05b2730020f6fe113ec36966ff928a7b72#diff-7a8353d7fe4bd1ea998fb78e650737e81d72d349a7092b59bc76ddbeaef30105R114

But it's pretty worth it:

{"name":"613157","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/8\/281a197fa142c1ab0b0894e0f648115d.png","w":1602,"h":932,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/8\/281a197fa142c1ab0b0894e0f648115d"}613157

(The lightning strike is powered by Allegro)

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
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https://itsyrealm.com/api/photo/view/thumb/6

(^ Is a link to a GIF)

It looks better in motion. At the end of the day, if I like it, then it's good enough. I'm not making this game for money or anything - it's a passion project / creative outlet. It's literally free and open-source.

Allegro is awesome and I wish there was something like LOVE is to SDL for Allegro. I wasn't disparaging Allegro.

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

DanielH
Member #934
January 2001
avatar

I like it. Maybe a slight more exaggeration (too narrow), but the blending looks good.

Is is because Allegro is low level? So many game engines with the frills out there why go low level from scratch? I'm just stubborn is why I'm still here.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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I hate any library or tool that "takes over". Instead of you calling "start library()" in your main, you get something terrible and overly encapsulated like :

setup() //your setup code goes here
loop() //your game code goes here

And the "engine" will call it, at its own pleasure subject to whatever hardcoded assumptions that will show up later as random glitches that require hundreds of forum posts to fix (if there's even a fix) that there is no way for you to simply hit debug and walk the stack to find out why their code is breaking your game.

Engines give you a boost if you're doing everything 90% the same as everyone else. Another JRPG. Another platformer. But if you're doing something crazy, like Factorio, with literally hundreds of thousands of active units, the game engine's overhead designed to increase user simplicity explodes. Suddenly every object being treated as an individual monolithic class becomes a performance liability that destroys any chance of pipelining and multitasking. How many new games have you played that are still single-threaded? (Which, fun fact, should never exist ever. Because even if your game is single-threaded, you can pipeline with 'functional parallelism' so that audio is one core, drawing is one core, physics is one core and while Amdahl's law reduces your max gain, it's still more than one core.) Now, I'm willing to entertain the idea I'm wrong and that "single-threaded" is somehow better. But I've never seen such an argument other than "it was easier because it came that way".

Honestly, network code is far far far more daunting than multi-threading. You can, like I mentioned, at the very least and simplest, split things into macro level modules. A much much better, more scalable system is data/task parallelism (I don't recall the exact proper term at the moment), where you either schedule tasks and cores take them as they become available, or, you take a strip of data and individually work on it (physics, sound, etc) on a single core and then dump batches of those to each core. So it scales basically to infinite cores. So instead of one core per idea/topic/module (physics core, sound core), you have each core working on 1 (or more in batches really) object and doing all of its functions on that object. Of course, this can explode problems if you're doing advanced scripting where objects can communicate and effect each other which creates 'hazards'. So it has to be tailored for it.

I'm ranting but it's just a fun topic to think about.

Also, that lightning could be improved. It feels "fat" like there's actually weight in it bringing it down and clumping together. Also, I think you make it 3D and transparent. So it can pass behind itself and reinforce itself. Except lightning doesn't do that--it's so bright that it's full brightness even when it overlaps itself. So that's what's odd that catches the eye. It looks more like yarn which has density and stretchiness.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

When I started working on ItsyRealm, I wanted to get something done. I wanted to be able to finish it. Using Allegro is good and all, but it drastically increases development time for something of ItsyRealm's scale ("3D single-player MMO" 😁).

I was going to go with Unreal Engine, in honesty, but performance and battery life issues with the editor on my laptop changed my mind for me.

Yeah, I can't have a literal army of creeps fighting in a true open world hundreds of square KMs but my game doesn't need that. You're right - I could speed up the game by putting gameplay code on a different thread than rendering, and honestly, it's a TODO.

But first, I want to deliver. I'm been working in enterprise software development for nearly four years now and I've learned a lot - delivering an MLP (minimum,lovable product) is my first goal. And I'm very close to that - in fact, I've accomplished that sans music. I would still be an additional 1-2 years off of that goal I wrote this game in C++ with a lower-level library 😔.

Would it perform better? Scale better? Sure, but this is a hobby and I want to be creative, too, not just technical.

I've had such a great time working on an island, which has been something like >80% graphics/AI/other content, and <20% development of new features (i.e., programming). Do I like programming? Yes. But that's not all a game is. 😐

{"name":"613159","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/9\/c939c033acee8bf0a1045f498c6364f5.png","w":1602,"h":932,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/9\/c939c033acee8bf0a1045f498c6364f5"}613159

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

nononoo. I know you're a more than capable programmer. It's okay to use a toolkit if you know exactly what you want and you know your vision isn't going to be constrained by typical toolkit constraints.

I mean for most other people. The point is, it's a tradeoff, a risk/reward that has to be decided.

I do lots of "weird" things that most engines would explode on.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

@Chris: Oh ok yeah I totally agree. I think there's this line that's hard to find without a lot of prior experience that basically boils down to "what's the right tool for the job".

Thankfully, good open source projects help bend that line a little. Like with Allegro, when I encountered bugs or needed a new feature, I contributed. Or with LOVE, I frankensteined it to expose some of the internal, hidden 3D functionality. Can't do that with Unity. Would be pretty hard to do with Unreal (even though the source is available, it's a massive, massive project compared to Allegro or LOVE).

...

I am officially a homeowner. 😳 Signed over my soul today in a thousand pieces.

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Indeterminatus
Member #737
November 2000
avatar

Nice, Erin Maus! I like the shadow-effect on the grass, and how there's no apparent tiling on the brick wall.

_______________________________
Indeterminatus. [Atomic Butcher]
si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Congrats!

It blows my mind how expensive homes have gotten. How many people cannot even afford the same kind of houses they grew up in. It's so sad.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

@Indeterminatus: Thanks! The tiling was super hard to pull off - I ended up having two "even/odd" variants, so I could tile them and animate from one to the other to produce a nice floating/rotating effect without significant repetition. The walls took inspiration from the Slayer Tower in Old School RuneScape: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Slayer_Tower

@Chris: Yes, I make significantly more (2.5x) than the average in this neighborhood (which itself is over 2x the national median) and had a difficult time executing the offer. Stretched things very thin. :/ Housing is insane no matter what you do (renting or buying), especially in higher COL areas like the Charlotte, NC metro, let alone places like Seattle, WA. I can't imagine how peeps making a fraction of my household are doing...

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
avatar

Erin Maus said:

I can't imagine how peeps making a fraction of my household are doing...

I live in one of the "cheapest" sections of Nashville. Most of my neighbors are Mexican and we all spend most of our money on rent. America has really turned into a two-class society (servant class + upper class ala no middle class). Tickets for a concert are like $150, and you'll never see us or my Mexican neighbors there. It's like another world that's next door but you can never participate in. It's a strange feeling. You go to trader joes and it's like... 99.9% white millennials with tech jobs. You go to Aldi and it's 99% Indian, Ghanaian, Mexican, etc from working class jobs.

I don't hate that people have more. I really don't. It's just odd to watch so many people never be able to afford things that our parents generation did--like home ownership. Yet consumer goods like 4K TVs are super cheap compared to the gigantic box projection TVs that made you blind. Products are cheap (except food). But land, housing, and services (like healthcare) are still sky high.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Polybios
Member #12,293
October 2010

You go to trader joes and it's like... 99.9% white millennials with tech jobs. You go to Aldi and it's 99% Indian, Ghanaian, Mexican, etc from working class jobs.

Wikipedia just told me Trader Joe's and Aldi are apparently owned by the same family. Huh. I did not even realize they did business outside of Germany.

William Labbett
Member #4,486
March 2004
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Therefoe all products are cheap including food and using bitwise left shift operators. Money is bizarre I find. I can compare £10 with £400 but neither with
$100,100.
If people can really do this, it makes me wonder if they can think in everyday thought about a price like £(100,100!) i.e one hundred thousand factorial pounds.

EDIT : Beaten. Also, everything I said about me and my ability to think about money
wasn't quite right.

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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The Aldi of North America has no modern day working relation to Trader Joe's. It's a subsidiary of a different Aldi.

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Aldi rules.

I miswrote it. I meant to write Whole Foods.

They literally have blocks of cheese that are $20. Twenty dollars. For a single block of cheese. Imagine a "wine and cheese plate" for guests being over a hundred dollars. A bottle juice can be $20. That would have been almost three hours of my first job starting pay.

It's like peering into another world. A world where money is so abundant you can waste a hundred bucks on cheese and not even notice it.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
avatar

The cheapest foods are generally the least healthy, but the most expensive ones are not indicative of being the most healthy. But that's what Whole Foods tries to get you to believe. I'm all for not buying junky processed foods, but for me that means things like buying bulk meat from farmers and local fresh produce when it's available.

But shopping at Aldi allowed me to save enough money to buy (order) a new electric Ford Mach-E GT. After federal rebates and selling my 2016 SUV (likely for more money than I bought it for 2 years ago), the car will still be over 40k! That's more than twice what I've ever spent on a car, but I decided it's worth it for me because I'm sad that I never have an opportunity to ride my motorcycle and this is the next best type of fun thing to drive.

DanielH
Member #934
January 2001
avatar

So many choices here for groceries.

About 2 miles from my house we have 5 grocery stores:
Safeway (Von's in other states)

The next four are in each of the 4 corners of an intersection
Sprouts
Fry's
Aldi
Target

I usually go to Safeway. It's more expensive, but I like the layout better and less people. Target is ok but their produce section is tiny. They just put in an Aldi, but I haven't been to one since I was in Germany. Fry's is better in my opinion, but it is always crowded, parking is nice because it is all covered parking (solar panels).

However, since Covid, we do 95% of our shopping online. I rarely go to the store itself. Fry's and Target deliver same day for free ($35 minimum purchase).

Polybios
Member #12,293
October 2010

Should have read further... There are two Aldis going back to two brothers. They divided Germany into north ("Aldi Nord") and south ("Aldi Süd"). Turns out they divided the rest of the world, too. The US is the only country except Germany where both Aldis are active: "Aldi Nord" operates under the name of Trader Joe's, while "Aldi Süd" uses the brand "Aldi". I grew in an "Aldi Nord" area and now live in an "Aldi Süd" area.

Over here, it's not an exception for Aldi products to score pretty well or even take the (second) best place in independent evaluations of the quality of consumer goods (or whatever you call such a comparative "test" in proper English). I think everyone buys at Aldi here. Economists tend to be particularly devoted to it while the Bourgeois Bohème prefers expensive stores with organic foods.

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
avatar

I'm making a very simple project management application because I hate everything that exists. I wanna basically be able to paste in a list and generate a bunch of stories, quickly assign effort, and track progress.

So I decided to use all the new hip JavaScript frameworks and tooling for the frontend!

  • React (8 years old)

  • Redux (6 years old)

  • TypeScript (9 years old)

And the backend is pretty spiffy, too!

  • Python (31 years old)

  • Postgres (25 years old)

  • FastAPI (~3 years old)

Wow, such new technology!

I'm just trolling, but it's nice to make a modern, fullstack app outside of work. I'm theming it after ItsyRealm, so it looks goofy. Probably won't deploy it anywhere, will probably just run it locally on my network.

Have the login page working:

{"name":"613176","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/9\/d9b079fd5070fc3e4826eb8137bd49bf.png","w":1528,"h":1468,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/9\/d9b079fd5070fc3e4826eb8137bd49bf"}613176

So that's cool... Timeboxing it to two weeks or so.

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

Polybios
Member #12,293
October 2010

Please develop it further so that horrible Jira is killed. >:(



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