choas

There's an XKCD comic for that.

This comic is so old, that both should be rather easy now
- She did get her research team after all :)
- Oh, yeah, the specific example listed was solved within roughly a month of the comic being posted. But the idea still applies, as seen with the twitter post above.
- Well, sure, with an image classifier, the bird identification is doable. I'm sure I could implement that if I went looking for some open source thingamabob that does that. But it's still not something I could actually understand. That part definitely hasn't changed over the years.
- only because people never stopped asking it to be able to id birds.
- It took almost exactly 5 years from publication for that to be commonplace.
- Can't wait for the Disney live action movie remake of XKDC comics!
- TBF it had been a long standing problem for roughly a half century before this. Specifically birds were the thing researchers tried to identify first, which is probably the reference here.

Well yeah, we have a character model for the giant demon and the giant demon has a huge use case.

A scarf? That's a model extension. Either you're asking me to create a whole new character with a scarf baked into the mesh that will deform weirdly as the character moves, or you're asking me to implement an accessory-anchor system all for the sake of a scarf (albeit other accessories might use this new framework) which will then need a physics/cloth sim to even look half good.

You could import fabric physics and just have it lie there, but that's going to be a bigger hit on performance than you possibly can imagine and it will move weirdly (in large part becomes we're not modeling wind, just fabric in a vacuum) and the model features it will lie on top of won't deform accurately from the simulated weight, etc...
- Feature requests never account for the performance hit.
my thoughts. system has to be made for costuming from the get go and you bring in a wierd new character race and everything breaks for them.

Game director : we’re gonna add interact-able doors with proper door opening animations for the characters

The game designers:

The programmers and artists:

The producers:

Now we need to decide in the case of collisions if:
Doors violently push anyone out of the way, possibly "crushing" them into walls or
Force themselves back closed, turning any random NPC / obstacle on the other side into an unbeatable lock or
Just trap an unfortunate NPC in a corner on the other side, or
If they use the physics system to swing open, in which case they'll look smooth but possibly bonk the player/actor going through them a few times and could potentially (and comically) insta-kill them if physics is feeling grumpy.
The frustratingly comedic unintended results of any choice makes for great organic marketing though.
Gamedev is magical.
Aside: Know what did this really well though? Resident Evil games after RE:4.
The ability to "slowly quietly open", and then at any time decide to violently action-hero kick it open to send a zombie on the other side flying, was genius.
- PM: You know real world?
  Make it like that
- Have you ever played ATV Offroad Fury on the PS2? When you reached the edge of the map, it would just fling you back towards the center.
  I propose that is how we deal with NPCs blocking doors. With negated fall damage, of course
FROM Software: Fuck that, we're doing fog-walls.
Granted. All door animations are now forced cutscenes.
- [Early Resident Evil Titles have entered the chat]
Okay, okay. No doors but stairs instead

Always have to remind myself of this when managers ask me if something could be done. If it's easy, I naturally get a little annoyed that they're even asking. But knowing that is my job, not theirs, and it's good that they ask. There's lots of places where they assume and things go badly.

It’s always nice of them to ask
Remember the phrase "it's not in-pattern". Another one is "it's possible, but expensive"
It’s not natural lol

I just want a game that lets my avatar be left handed.

As a gameplay programmer, I got anxiety from reading this (and I think the animators are already in a fetal position on the floor)
- Would it be possible to just mirror what the player is seeing so literally everything is backwards? Like a visual effect 'in-post'? Obviously that would mess with any printed text but other than I cant think of big issue?
changes all weapons to be two-handed
This way, no one will complain and there’s only one thing to maintain!
- You can hold a two handed weapon favoring the left, or the right.
minecraft allows left-handedness ever since they added the off-hand mechanic
- I think before that even
Counterstrike did that over 25 years ago. Yikes I'm old
- They just mirror the viewmodel
Counter strike

There’s already a codebase for bursting from the ground in an explosion of lava. Everyone wants that.

You’re the first person asking for a scarf, and our system doesn’t even know what a neck is.

Time for the old NPC-with-a-train-for-a-hat trick.

I worked at a company that made IoT stuff (which is an increasingly archaic term). The web team was pitching using a third party tool called ThingSpace to view and manage the things. The web dev said ThingSpace could do all these amazing things automatically. The manager said “can we change the color of the background?” The web dev said “…. no.”

css

body { background-color: pink!important; }
- I didn’t say they were very good web devs.

Only in 3D. In 2D, you slap some pixels on top and there's your scarf:

I tend to find it's the other way around. Once you've got a scarf modelled and rigged, it'll work* for all animations, but for animated 2D sprites you have a lot more things to do.
May have visual artifacts like clipping
Do you have the Orb yet?
- I actually do, yes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of hours played and I made it down there and back out exactly once. 🙃
and add a couple of frames to the sprite sheet in order to animate the scarf if that's required.

Player? Easy. Scarf? Easy. Wearing a scarf? That depends on a lot of factors such as which part of the body, how the models were made and rigged, etc.

And if it like blows in the wind that's a whole jigglebone system and wind simulation that's a lot of stuff going on

I want dresses, and I don't care if they clip through literally everything!

My bg3 character is female. She was in slacks until act 3 where she could finally have a dress
We looted everything. I feel like there are two dresses in the game: the robe Gale wears and a white dress you find in a Balders Gate house near the end of the game

Shadows in the real world a lack of energy Shadows in games imma need it all boss

The giant is easy. The ground is easy. The lava though... Do you want the particles to stick together? To visually connect? To collide with each other? To interact with dynamic objects?

Design lead wants parting earth and flowing lava. Budget dictates static assets and baked in animations.
The player will jump on it, what happens then?

relevant xkcd

The scarf in Shinobi was such a revelation when it came out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinobi_(2002_video_game)

Wow I had no idea that Shinobi was a series! When the original one came out in like 86 or so, I was obsessed with it. I still say “ninja magic!” to this day.

There is only one rule. It's much easier to add new things than to change existing things

what if you wanted a scarf, but god said

    
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "you.py", line 1, in <module>
    scarf()
NameError: name 'scarf' is not defined

No problem, just mention it in the requirements - early on. Not when everything is built to work this one specific way.

mf said choas

Sure. Player character? No.

And don't even get them started on doors.

That's cute 😅