sam! 🐝 🇵🇸
@samhaskell.bsky.social
Physicist & Game Programmer | Manchester | Lucid Games | samhaskell.dev
What version of the api have you targeted? I remember really struggling with Vulkan in the past. Recently, coming back to it and making use of push descriptors and dynamic rendering I’ve found it way more pleasant
May 25, 2025 at 11:25 AM
What version of the api have you targeted? I remember really struggling with Vulkan in the past. Recently, coming back to it and making use of push descriptors and dynamic rendering I’ve found it way more pleasant
From my experience a mix of dislike and a vibe of “gonna have to get used to it I guess” from most people, some engineers using it for code but not a crazy amount. Technical leadership want to explore it but it’s not exactly the kind of gold rush behaviour we’re seeing from big tech orgs right now
May 24, 2025 at 1:43 AM
From my experience a mix of dislike and a vibe of “gonna have to get used to it I guess” from most people, some engineers using it for code but not a crazy amount. Technical leadership want to explore it but it’s not exactly the kind of gold rush behaviour we’re seeing from big tech orgs right now
The price of games hasn’t risen in ages and we had like 3 years of high inflation recently, I really don’t get your point here
May 17, 2025 at 11:09 PM
The price of games hasn’t risen in ages and we had like 3 years of high inflation recently, I really don’t get your point here
And just to clarify, we were lucky enough to be able to afford it in the first place, lots of people didn’t move off the previous gen for a very long time, and that was fine! The games were still there when they finally upgraded
May 17, 2025 at 9:03 PM
And just to clarify, we were lucky enough to be able to afford it in the first place, lots of people didn’t move off the previous gen for a very long time, and that was fine! The games were still there when they finally upgraded
It sucks when we can’t afford to play a title we are excited about, sure, but this is just the reality of it. I still remember how expensive the ps3 was at launch, my family would exclusively rent games from blockbusters for the first few years because it was such a big purchase
May 17, 2025 at 8:56 PM
It sucks when we can’t afford to play a title we are excited about, sure, but this is just the reality of it. I still remember how expensive the ps3 was at launch, my family would exclusively rent games from blockbusters for the first few years because it was such a big purchase
The game is literally priced at $70 like any other headline release, or you can buy a month of game pass and play it in one go as if it were a rental. It’s arguably never been cheaper to play games. Games never got more expensive, consumers have just gotten a whole lot poorer over the past decade
May 17, 2025 at 8:54 PM
The game is literally priced at $70 like any other headline release, or you can buy a month of game pass and play it in one go as if it were a rental. It’s arguably never been cheaper to play games. Games never got more expensive, consumers have just gotten a whole lot poorer over the past decade
I agree on your point about fidelity. But given a studio that clearly wants to make a certain game, I’m always gonna defend the choices of the developers in leveraging tech that helps them achieve their vision without burning everyone out and blowing out the budget.
May 17, 2025 at 1:28 PM
I agree on your point about fidelity. But given a studio that clearly wants to make a certain game, I’m always gonna defend the choices of the developers in leveraging tech that helps them achieve their vision without burning everyone out and blowing out the budget.
No I really don’t, this is not like AI, you don’t have execs forcing tech leads to choose RTGI over other lighting techniques in the same way you have a top down push of stuff like generative AI. I can see the point you make but I think people fundamentally misunderstand how tech decisions are made
May 17, 2025 at 1:18 PM
No I really don’t, this is not like AI, you don’t have execs forcing tech leads to choose RTGI over other lighting techniques in the same way you have a top down push of stuff like generative AI. I can see the point you make but I think people fundamentally misunderstand how tech decisions are made
I don’t know a single developer at my studios whose workload gets reduced and they aren’t then excited about getting to use that time to make the game even better in other aspects. Yes there’s a profit motive, but workers want to make good products, stop framing us as not having any agency
May 17, 2025 at 1:03 PM
I don’t know a single developer at my studios whose workload gets reduced and they aren’t then excited about getting to use that time to make the game even better in other aspects. Yes there’s a profit motive, but workers want to make good products, stop framing us as not having any agency
Looking at the scale of the maps they aimed for in the dark ages, I’m pretty convinced you could not ship a profitable game using the workflow they did for eternal. The labor costs would just be too high. Besides, you think the devs would rather bake all their lighting still?
May 17, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Looking at the scale of the maps they aimed for in the dark ages, I’m pretty convinced you could not ship a profitable game using the workflow they did for eternal. The labor costs would just be too high. Besides, you think the devs would rather bake all their lighting still?
It’s not as simple as just giving the user a button to switch it off, games that have full RTGI do not have an alternative lighting model to fallback to, they don’t have baked light maps, this is precisely why it streamlines the development cycle and makes environment artists lives easier
May 17, 2025 at 12:30 PM
It’s not as simple as just giving the user a button to switch it off, games that have full RTGI do not have an alternative lighting model to fallback to, they don’t have baked light maps, this is precisely why it streamlines the development cycle and makes environment artists lives easier
Felt a bit like they had a cohesive script then got told Apple wanted 6 seasons so they panic developed a bunch of characters back stories that maybe they originally intended to be left opaque (like ms cobel, the rest of the gangs outies etc)
May 15, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Felt a bit like they had a cohesive script then got told Apple wanted 6 seasons so they panic developed a bunch of characters back stories that maybe they originally intended to be left opaque (like ms cobel, the rest of the gangs outies etc)
Time is just weird and not well understood in fundamental quantum mechanics, we have operators for measuring space, but it turns out if you try to define an analogous one for time the eigenstates would require an infinite amount of energy to construct
March 12, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Time is just weird and not well understood in fundamental quantum mechanics, we have operators for measuring space, but it turns out if you try to define an analogous one for time the eigenstates would require an infinite amount of energy to construct
How was it a rant? I was literally just saying I don’t have problems with lifetimes in c++ because I opt out of the features I find problematic, I didn’t say a single thing about rust
March 9, 2025 at 1:24 AM
How was it a rant? I was literally just saying I don’t have problems with lifetimes in c++ because I opt out of the features I find problematic, I didn’t say a single thing about rust
I don’t recall saying either of those things pal
March 9, 2025 at 1:15 AM
I don’t recall saying either of those things pal
Tbh rust is really cool in a lot of ways, if I worked in anything other than games I’d probably make a concerted effort to pick it up but I just don’t have the time for another big complex language haha
March 8, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Tbh rust is really cool in a lot of ways, if I worked in anything other than games I’d probably make a concerted effort to pick it up but I just don’t have the time for another big complex language haha
I just don’t like objects as a concept at all, I find managing lifetimes of data relatively easy in c/c++, I just never use constructors and destructors.
March 8, 2025 at 11:11 PM
I just don’t like objects as a concept at all, I find managing lifetimes of data relatively easy in c/c++, I just never use constructors and destructors.
Tbf I think they get overly hated, I think a lot of people just really hate having to debug anything inside an stl templated type
March 7, 2025 at 10:49 PM
Tbf I think they get overly hated, I think a lot of people just really hate having to debug anything inside an stl templated type
Oh don’t get me started on RAII haha
March 7, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Oh don’t get me started on RAII haha
It’s funny because even if it became commercially viable on paper from a raw output standpoint. You’ve then got to figure out all the boring logistical stuff like how to deal with the tritium that just goes through shit and makes anything remotely porous radioactive too
February 14, 2025 at 12:17 AM
It’s funny because even if it became commercially viable on paper from a raw output standpoint. You’ve then got to figure out all the boring logistical stuff like how to deal with the tritium that just goes through shit and makes anything remotely porous radioactive too
hear him out, he knows spanish
January 28, 2025 at 5:49 PM
hear him out, he knows spanish
yeah, I also just find all the social media algorithms are really bad at tech/software based suggestions, before I deleted twitter my for you feed was awash with that exact type of arrogant tech bro shit, despite me following mostly just indie devs and graphics people
January 24, 2025 at 1:39 PM
yeah, I also just find all the social media algorithms are really bad at tech/software based suggestions, before I deleted twitter my for you feed was awash with that exact type of arrogant tech bro shit, despite me following mostly just indie devs and graphics people
I guess with Casey it’s also the overlap with the handmade network stuff, like if you’ve interacted with Abner much maybe the algorithm latches onto that
January 24, 2025 at 1:33 PM
I guess with Casey it’s also the overlap with the handmade network stuff, like if you’ve interacted with Abner much maybe the algorithm latches onto that