I finally made a rainbow cake last night, but oddly, the blue food dyes completely evaporated in the oven. Now I have 4kg of disappointing cake to eat. 🥲
Simon Roth
@simoroth.bsky.social
Indie game developer (Maia, Trash Goblin, Compound Fracture, Soccer Story, VVVVVV, Kinectimals), technical artist, photographer, and community gardener.
Doing some really frustrating work trying trying to untangle weird Unity bugs and my neighbour has been angle grinding and chainsawing all day.
Urge To Kill Rising Simpsons
Alt: Urge To Kill Rising Simpsons
static.klipy.com
An "indie" publisher that strung us along for months and then backed out of publishing Trash Goblin last minute.. causing layoffs and almost killing the studio by doing so.. is now publishing a TG clone. Wow, just wow. 😅 Amazingly this isn't even the first time I've seen this happen first hand.
"French electronic music producer and DJ Kavinsky, whose real name was Vincent Belorgey, has died at the age of 50, Le Parisien learned on Wednesday, July 29." Oh no. So young 😭 I love his music.
Nightcall
YouTube video by Kavinsky - Topic
m.youtube.com
Le Parisien@leparisien.fr · last wk.🔵 INFO LE PARISIEN | Le DJ français Kavinsky a été retrouvé mort à son domicile parisien ➡️ https://l.leparisien.fr/b9Vs
Who made me grin enormously? It's @sallybeaumont.bsky.social 😁 [She's a fantastic voice actor & writer, too] @developconference.com
I've gotten so fit that my Wellness Age has gone negative and I am now the world's most shredded unborn baby. 😂
You would never get the "£50 doesn't even buy a meal quote if the topic was the benefit system, then you would have a guy going "sack of potatoes and a carrot, and you can feed a child for a month at just 3.2 pence per meal"
Sky News@news.sky.com · 2w ago'£50 doesn't even buy a meal': What people think of Burnham's electricity VAT cut
Gotta say a good 80% of game developers did actually manage to read (maybe the AAA-designer-friendly bright yellow helped), and although she had a few people touching her without asking or realising, she didn't get upset and had a lovely time meeting everyone at the conference.
Simon Roth@simoroth.bsky.social · 3w agoTime for a game of.. "Can game developers read and follow basic instructions? (no)"
Look, a lot has gone tits up the past decade but I'm still grateful the 15th July was the first and last time I'd heard of this. www.jank.cool/you-deserve-...
You deserve better literature than Dungeon Crawler Carl
Demand more from books inspired by videogames
jank.cool
This is how I lost my job, essentially. Major client dropped our contract because they were re-investing it in AI. Suddenly our studio couldn't afford to pay over half of its employees.
Bruno Dias@brunodias.dev · 2w agoThe main way in which AI has negatively impacted games industry jobs is not through actual automation of those jobs or even untrue claims about automation. It's by making capital unavailable because it's tied up in AI investments while also destroying the consumer base for video game hardware.
Two thirds of remaining Doom (2016) devs laid off during latest round of Xbox cuts
Two thirds of remaining Doom (2016) devs laid off during latest round of Xbox cuts
'I've been a gamer my whole life. If you cut a stat in half everyone would call that nerfed.'
gamedeveloper.com
Up super early because the football went on so long and was so bad and boring, that I was almost asleep by the finish, and ended up having to crash at my friends and drive home at 5am. 🥲
I set up my whole dev environment (half a dozen applications) and all my reference and spreadsheets last night, so I could start work with everything ready in the morning. Windows has rebooted without asking me and just nuked all my work in progress. Anyone remember when tech was useful?
One thing that came out of Develop, is that with the loss of the Oxford Video Games Meetup, I might have to step up and make some Oxford Indies branded events to rebuild community around here. However event spaces are painfully expensive here so sponsorship is the only way we can make that happen.
I've been saying this for a while now: if you can imagine yourself needing any computer components any time in the next few years, buy them NOW. Right now might be the worst time in the past decade to be buying computer hardware but it's the best time in the next 5 years.
Valve Says RAM Prices Are 'Lagging' And Will Only Get 'Worse'
Valve's top Steam Machine engineers think we have 'three to six months' before memory prices somehow become even more extortionate
kotaku.com
Absolutely shattered after Develop. It was good but I feel I only caught up with about 1/10 of the people I wanted to.
Simon Roth@simoroth.bsky.social · 3w agoMora is on the Hilton terrace. Meeting fans and biting hands. #developconf
Time for a game of.. "Can game developers read and follow basic instructions? (no)"
Not doing any Develop stuff today.. But if anyone fancies a seafront dog walk, I'll be heading down the seafront at 8ish.
On my way to Develop tomorrow. Get in touch if you want to catch up! I'll also be up for discussing any projects that you need a tech artist or programmer for!
29C in my house, 28C outside.. at 0039. Another week of 30C+ heatwave ahead of us. Help.
Whilst the games industry should celebrate its achievements, I'm not sure how to feel about ceremonies full of execs patting themselves on the back whilst the industry burns.
Looking forward to reconnecting with the games industry next week at Develop... What's left of it. 😬
There was a video going around where they add "Juice" to a game and literally almost every thing they added was an accessibility fail on any cert that covers it. Indies and hobbyists still share it all the time.
CutieKyubii🦊✨️💜@kyubii.bsky.social · last mo.I see so many cool indie games all the time I'd love to try but gods DAMN like, almost ALL of them have way too much flashing and no accessibility options to turn off the flashing. 😭
ANY sort of visual ‘aberration’, such as flashing/fast colour changing, motion/damage taken blur, camera shake, etc. MUST have an option to switch it on/off, and be off by default. #Accessibility
CutieKyubii🦊✨️💜@kyubii.bsky.social · last mo.I see so many cool indie games all the time I'd love to try but gods DAMN like, almost ALL of them have way too much flashing and no accessibility options to turn off the flashing. 😭
Simon Carless did a pretty big AI survey of Steam users. Interesting results: newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/what-do-st... In summary: People DO care and you will lose sales if you declare it. People are less bothered about AI for code. To be clear: We do not use it for anything.
newsletter.gamediscover.co
A bit of good news in the middle of all the bloodbath today: Supercell has announced a Grants program for game development studios across Africa with equity-free grants of USD $20,000–$200,000 to help them reach their next stage of growth. supercell.com/en/news/deve...
Supercell Developer Grants Program: Applications Now Open
Applications are now open for the first ever Supercell Developer Grants Program. We're looking to support exceptional game development studios across Africa with equity-free grants of USD $20,000–$200...
supercell.com