The Transformers: The Movie

Gaming on Linux is pretty good nowadays. I’ve only run into one or two games I couldn’t get working. The vast majority of games work with Proton right out of the box

miata.net!

My TV is 6 years old now and it does 120hz. My PC monitor does 200.

The Greatest Generation - Star Trek rewatch podcast. Rekindled my love for the greatest franchise in history. Hosts approach the show from a tv production background

Spout Lore - the best real-play podcast, in my opinion. Dungeon World with incredible world building despite almost everyone being named Greg

Blank Check with Griffin and David - film analysis from the film critic for the Atlantic and Arthur from the Tick / Orko / Watto, covering a director’s entire filmography each series

Marvel by the Month - Reading every Marvel comic, one month at a time. Has a gaggle of comic book industry legends as regular guests, talks about the context in which the comics were written, theme and interstitial music are bangers

It’s still good, as always it has its ups and downs but Ed is a wonderful addition to the show. I saw them live in San Diego a couple (?) years ago, one of the best live shows I’ve ever been to.

An experimental energy storage device exploded down the street, and a couple big chunks of shrapnel came down through the ceiling, smashed the shit out of an empty cube. We were lucky no one sat there.

Similarly, Fender Precision Bass. Hard to go wrong with a classic.

I was a sophomore in high school, from a military (though pretty progressive) family. Both my grandfathers were sailors and my father went to West Point. I was in NJROTC and had every intention of going to Annapolis. I wanted to be an astronaut, so navy pilot seemed the path, and I would be making my family proud. I happened to be the one to put up the flag at school that morning. All of this is to say that I was very proud to be an American, and was looking forward to serving my country. The terror and confusion of that day hit me as hard as anyone else, but in the following weeks I was appalled to see how my fellow countrymen reacted. The way we reacted, with fear and hatred and overwhelming violence, both within and without, fundamentally changed how I saw my nation. I eventually dropped out of ROTC and started studying history and politics. I found punk music and took theater classes. I identified as social Democrat until the BLM riots of 2020, when I was radicalized. I now consider myself an anarchist.

Most of this already exists and they haven’t taken that tack, though. SteamOS is just Arch and KDE, with access to anything Arch has access to. If you don’t like that, Valve made it trivial to put another OS on the Deck, like Bazzite.

Steam Play is already a streaming technology, which works great and is free to use and has been for like at least a decade.

Steam Store is already gigantic, despite having some well funded competition who has to resort to exclusives and free game giveaways to entice users. It’s already the de facto default game store for PC, and provides lots of extra features beyond just game delivery.

Most of the technology Steam uses (like Proton or GameScope or Arch) are open-source. We can (and do) fork their work for our own purposes regularly.

I don’t think Valve is perfect, but I do think they value their open approach to technology. I think as long as the company is never publicly traded, I would imagine anyone who currently works at Valve would share that attitude with GabeN, otherwise I imagine they wouldn’t work there long.

If they go public and have to report to shareholders, then I completely agree that the enshittification will be swift and merciless. I hope Gabe makes Valve an employee-owned co-op or something when he decides to retire. I can only imagine he has strong plans for the transition of power.

I’d work on my car and my computer/gamedev stuff, and teach others to do the same. Also more gardening.

It’s just the worst. I hate doing UI. A UX expert would be very high on my wish list of people to work with, lol.

As for reading list, right now it’s really just a big pile of things, not much order. There’s a lot of recommended reading in this book too that’ll get added I’m sure. You can look at my big mess of a github repo:

https://github.com/GrapeSodaGames/learn/

There’s a million issues in there with book suggestions, as well as my notes in the closed issues. I am planning to put up a little website to contain my knowledge for future reference. I’m really trying to create a habit to Learn In Public so I’m gonna put everything I do up there in that github org. Feedback and contributions of course welcome.

Yeah for sure. I’m about a third of the way through “The Art of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses” and it has proven to be a very useful book full of actionable tools to help get the creative juices flowing. The titular “Lenses” each consist of a few questions to ask yourself as you make decisions about your game. Some neat examples:

Lens 007: The Lens of Endogenous Value A game’s success hinges on the players’ willingness to pretend it is important. To use this lens, think about your players’ feelings about items, objects, and scoring in your game. Ask these questions:

1. What is valuable to the players in my game?
2. How can I make it more valuable to them?
3. What is the relationship between value in the game and the players’ motivations?

Remember, the value of the items and score in the game is a direct reflection of how much the players care about succeeding in your game. By thinking about what the players really care about and why, you can often get insights about how your game can improve.

LENS 009: The Lens of the Elemental Tetrad To use this lens, take stock of what your game is truly made of. Consider each element separately and then all of them together as a whole. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Is my game design using elements of all four types?
2. Could my design be improved by enhancing elements in one or more of the categories?
3. Are the four elements in harmony, reinforcing each other and working together toward a common theme?

LENS 015: The Lens of the Eight Filters To use this lens, you must consider the many constraints your design must satisfy. You can only call your design finished when it can pass through all eight filters without requiring a change. Ask yourself these key questions:

1. Artistic Impulse (“Does this feel right to me?”)
2. Demographics (“Will the intended audience like it?”)
3. Experience Design (“Is this well designed?”)
4. Innovation (“Is this novel?”)
5. Business and Marketing (“Will it be profitable?”)
6. Engineering(“Is it technically possible?”)
7. Social/Community (“Does it meet our social and community goals?”)
8. Playtesting (“Do the playtesters like it?”)

In some situations, there may be still more filters; for example, an educational game will also have to answer questions like “Does this game teach what it is supposed to?” If your design requires more filters, don’t neglect them.

The author has worked on a number of experiences for Disney that he relays as well, creating bespoke hardware and incredibly immersive short experiences. His emphasis on cross-domain knowledge and attention to detail in all aspects really appeals to me.

I’ve had to take a little break, got some life stuff going on, but I’m hoping to finish this book by the end of the month.

Oh here’s another fun one, I had a friend in high school whose mother was Taiwanese, and I wasn’t allowed to go into their house because I was Japanese. Like, I know the history, lady, but I’m 15 and both my parents were born in California. Luckily my buddy also agreed his mom was a racist.

I am white looking, but my parents are Jewish and Japanese. Basically every time I tell someone I’m Jewish (culturally, I am an atheist nowadays) it completely changes how people interact with me. The best I can hope for is being the “token Jewish friend” most of the time, but I’ve been treated to racial slurs and even physical violence. In middle school, the rich son of the local pastor called me a kike and I broke his nose for it. I was suspended from school and he was treated like a victim. Looking back on it, that might have been the beginning of my radicalization.

I bought a box of spoons at the Business Costco and now this is my whole life

When the corners are very, very tight, and there’s hardly any straights, it’s often beneficial to maintain entry speed and get the car rotated in the right direction quickly, assuming you’re capable of recovering the slide at the appropriate time. Look at how rally drivers take tight hairpins even on tarmac. Imo big showy drifts aren’t fast but they do serve as good practice for understanding the car at the limit and reacting in low-grip situations.

Bong rip

• Spout Lore - the best real play RPG podcast
• Last Podcast on the Left - True Crime, aliens, and cryptids.
• Marvel By The Month - every Marvel comic, one month at a time
• Blank Check - The best movie podcast
• The Flop House - the best bad movie podcast
• Depresh Mode - Mental health, also the best named podcast in history
• No Dogs In Space - alternative music history
• Sawbones - Medical history, also relationship goals
• Till Death Do Us Blart - the eternal podcast
• Improvised Star Trek - Sadly ended but still hilarious