5
points
cloudmike
Joined 595 karma
Working on tools for 3D games. Previously at Apple (AR/VR), co-founder of Moatboat, Simplenote (YC S10), and former game dev at Irrational Games.
https://twitter.com/kineticpoet https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/
- I use Luau with my Unity game for all gameplay code (60k+ loc so far). I agree the docs could be improved, especially for custom integrations. The new type system + LSP aren't great together yet either, and I've been a little worried about the direction since zeux left the team.
But otherwise I really like it. My Luau code hot reloads almost instantly while the game is running, and my C++ project compiles quickly when I update it. I like that it provides sandboxing if you want to support modding. And there's an active community of people on the official Discord, which is better than nothing.
- Some friends of mine played Descent competitively, and I was amazed to learn about so-called trichording: to maximize your speed, you need to press multiple keys at the same time to travel along all 3 axes at once, e.g. forward/right/up. The best players zip around the map diagonally.
I always assumed this was a bug-turned-feature, like skiing in Tribes. When I saw the repo just now, I looked for clues, but didn't spot any related comments around the line of code where this ultimately happens:
https://github.com/kevinbentley/Descent3/blob/142052a67d4318...
- I use Luau in my games and tools [1], and I recommend it. While I can't speak to transitioning to it from Lua, since I didn't do that, I can say that it's fast, stable, sandboxing just works (important for your use case), and it's very well supported and regularly updated.
For context, I first started using Luau as an experimental hack by integrating it with Unity. I mostly just wanted fast and simple hot reloading. I found myself writing more and more of it, and now I'm writing most of my code in it.
VS Code support is pretty good via the luau-lsp language server [2]. Type support for certain code patterns isn't great yet, but there are RFCs to improve this.
They're also quietly working on native code gen and JIT support, e.g. this PR from a few hours ago [3].
Overall, recommended! You're not crazy.
[1] https://twitter.com/kineticpoet
- Finger snapping is fascinating too. I always assumed the sound happens when your finger rubs quickly against your thumb. But it’s actually after that, when your finger strikes the fleshy part of your thumb. You can verify this by blocking your finger from striking your hand.
So it’s actually more like finger clapping. The “snap” part just lets you build energy for the “clap” part. Maybe obvious to some but I amazingly only learned this later in life.
- My emotional journey with Val having just learned about it today:
Oh neat, a new systems language, probably nothing but let's take a peek. Docs look legit. Hmm some thoughtful ideas in here around ownership. Syntax makes sense. But is it different enough to justify its own existence? Who makes it?
Oooh, Dave Abrahams is working on it. We crossed paths at Apple and I remember his Crusty talk about Swift [1]. It was great, loved the strong opinions, but Apple sadly removed it years later because it had some outdated advice. Wait, he's at Adobe now? So is this an Adobe language?
Conclusion: keep an eye on it, will watch the linked talks, wait and see.
[1] edit: I found the Crusty talk! "I don't do Object Oriented!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3zo4ptMBiQ
- 1 point
- A friend of mine is making a new city-builder called Metropolis 1998 [1]. If you're into SimCity 2000 specifics, you might also enjoy his dev updates where he posts about his pixel graphics engine, custom pathfinding for agents/cars, etc.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Archapolis/
(his subreddit is called Archapolis but he recently changed the name)
- When I started making a game [0] last year, first thing I did was write a little Unity script that takes a screenshot of the opening scene, counts current lines of code using CLOC [1] (for fun, not as a true measure of anything), and occasionally renders it all out to an image file.
With that I'm able to create some pretty fun time lapses of progress. I've been doing this at an arbitrary milestone, whenever my Luau [2] LOC surpasses C++ by another factor. This post reminded me I'm overdue for another now that Luau > 3x C++ LOC.
I find it rewarding to look back at my progress. I'll share in case it's interesting for you too [3].
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168330/Helmscape/
[1] https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc
[3] https://twitter.com/kineticpoet/status/1619508466212831232
- The most remarkable thing about "Bret Victor's vision" is how different people have interpreted what his vision even is. His ideas are multi-faceted, so they inspire in several important directions all at once, e.g.:
- "what if" feedback loops (crudely, "live programming")
- direct manipulation (an old idea but beautifully captured in his projects)
- making logic feel more geometric / concrete
- visualizing and manipulating data, especially over time
- humane interfaces (putting "computing" into the world around us, but without AR)
- etc.
Bret Victor is very much Alan Kay's protege and has unfortunately inherited the curse of people cherry-picking particular ideas and missing the bigger picture.
So as others have pointed out, the only person who may be fully attempting Bret Victor's vision is Bret Victor with Dynamicland. You may also be curious to check out Humane [1] which is a hardware startup founded by ex-Apple people. They're rumored to be shipping a projection-based wearable device this year. This device could potentially be a platform for people to experiment more in the direction of Bret Victor's vision.
[1] http://hu.ma.ne
- 3 points
- It's great to see you applying the latest tech to this idea.
We got pretty far with this a few years ago using more basic ML/NLP. The app was called Moatboat: https://twitter.com/moatboat/status/1082425681210859520
The area I think is most exciting (and in need of more innovation) is using natural language to create (and modify!) the actual simulation / rules / behaviors. Our approach was to map language outputs to actions that could be chained together using Goal Oriented Action Planning plus an Entity Component System. The user's verbs / prepositions / etc. would add layers of goals, each of which would enable or disable certain behavior components when triggered.
More details here for anyone interested: https://medium.com/@mikejohnstn/whatever-you-say-happens-2fa...
Directly generating source code from natural language would be a fun alternative approach to try today.
- As others have mentioned, "making software programmable" isn't really landing for me.
In the tradition of borrowing terms from the games industry (where we often see early popularization of good ideas), I wonder if "modding" could be a helpful addition somewhere in your marketing.
This seems to have worked for the term "multiplayer", though "moddable" probably isn't as widely appreciated yet.
- 15 points
- The makers of Dion now work at Epic. My guess is they're contributing to Verse [0], a new programming language (environment?) being worked on at Epic, which could be of interest to people in this thread.
Verse is believed to include ideas from SkookumScript, which Epic acquired [1], and Simon Peyton Jones, a main contributor to Haskell [2].
[0] https://twitter.com/saji8k/status/1339709691564179464?s=20
[1] https://skookumscript.com/blog/2019/01-23-epic-aquires-agog/
[2] https://discourse.haskell.org/t/an-epic-future-for-spj/3573
- JetBrains MPS [0] is worth a look for inspiration. Like some of the other projects mentioned here, it's an editor on top of an Abstract Syntax Tree. You can use it to make DSLs that have different UI/UX projections.
I'm not sure anyone's actually using it, but there are some good ideas in there.
- This is a good idea. Thanks for posting about it.
It does get lonely. I'm a former YC founder and I left Apple earlier this year to be a solo game dev. Making games (compared to apps or tools) is especially hard because "fun" is so nebulous that "make something people want" is a blurry goal at best.
I also work on my own tools and I'm using them to build the game. I'm very interested in tools that help a very small but talented team (1-4 people) build ambitious games more successfully.
I post progress here if anyone's interested: http://twitter.com/kineticpoet
- > has anyone even proposed an "engine agnostic" IDE experience for game dev?
I'm working in this direction. My focus is on higher-level editors for making worlds, meshes, animations, sounds, and visual effects. So far it's mostly written in Luau (Roblox's open source version of Lua) and the first engine integration is Unity. You use the editors and a Luau API to make your game. The API for now is part Unity-inspired and part Roblox-inspired.
I have the editors and Luau integration working well enough that I'm now using them to build a game. I plan to do that before supporting other engines. I've been building with other engines in mind (including having an abstraction), but I wanted to prove (to myself at least) that the editors have value before going down this path.
I'm kind of taking some risks with the editors, e.g. they're diegetic (all in-world UI). My main goal is to build higher-level editors that are actually fun to use, and then supporting multiple engines is secondary. Good to know someone else is thinking about that though!
I post about progress here if you're interested: https://twitter.com/kineticpoet
- Very interesting. Like the sibling comment, I'm also curious about your API for this.
I've been using Unity in a similar way but with Luau (a gradually typed Lua by Roblox) for the API. It's been very educational to treat Unity as a box like this, and I've been making the Luau API very high-level, often following Roblox patterns (more coarsely grained).
As a side-effect of this separation, it's also refreshing to have the option to make everything work with other engines.
- I used to work at WordPress.com (Automattic) after they acquired our startup Simplenote. P2 was great.
Now I'm at one of the big tech companies that is suddenly all-remote. I miss P2. It gives you a place where ideas can "stick" much better than with async chat, email, or wikis. At the top-level (per-team or per-project) P2s feel like much more than just another wiki aggregation page. You actually want to visit them to catch up on the latest.
The per-post threaded conversations promote more thoughtful, ongoing discussion. These naturally fade over time as new posts are made, a bit like HN or reddit. Generally this is a useful, organic default, and complements (rather than replaces) async chat.
It can be overwhelming once you're interested in tracking many P2s. But you can address this with discipline, culture, and more tools.
- 31 points
- 1 point
- Moatboat | Lead Developer / CTO | San Francisco, CA | ONSITE | Full Time
Moatboat (http://moatboat.com) is a way to think creatively inside virtual reality and augmented reality. It lets you create and command the world around you by simply saying your ideas out loud.
We're looking for an experienced, hands-on technical leader to join us on-site and spearhead our development efforts. The ideal person is excited to help build unique VR/AR experiences at the intersection of apps and games. Although job titles don't matter too much on a small team, this could potentially be (or become) a CTO role.
We’re a small, ambitious team in downtown San Francisco with experience building products, apps, and games at companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Irrational Games. We don’t have ping pong tables or crazy free meals. But we do have a bright, airy office near Union Square, lots of VR gear, and a healthy perspective on work-life balance. We celebrate uniqueness, and encourage people to follow their passions.
More details here: http://www.moatboat.com/jobs/
Contact jobs@moatboat.com
- It's worth looking at who's at the helm. You don't make John Riccitiello[1] your CEO just to be bought by Microsoft, unless the price tag is extremely high (possible). He's there to build a huge business, plausibly bound for IPO.
- Beyond continuing to dominate the indie/pro game dev space, and slowly but surely expanding the scope and capabilities of the Unity Asset Store (devs selling code and assets to fellow devs), they're firmly on board the "democratization" train: make game development available to everyone [1].
Looking to the horizon, post VR hype, they're trying to take this further with experiments like Carte Blanche, which is creating VR from within VR itself for non-technical users [2].
But a consumer-oriented approach isn't in their DNA and isn't well aligned with their core business. Meanwhile, VR/AR startups who are entirely focused on this view of the world will evolve the right DNA and could build significant consumer-oriented value over the next few years. A war chest will come in handy if Unity wants to acquire that value and inject new DNA.
[1] http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/13/unity-has-democratized-gam...
- Moat Boat is hiring two experienced programmers (San Francisco, ONSITE), one interested in leading and doing, the other more interested in doing.
Moat Boat is a tool for thinking creatively together inside virtual reality. Whatever you say, just starts happening around you. It's a little crazy. We're very early (two of us), pre-product, post-prototype, funded, and excited to be working from first principles to figure out what it means to think and create inside this new medium.
I previously made Simplenote/Simperium (YC S10), which we sold to WordPress.com, and before that I worked at Irrational Games (makers of BioShock). My co-founder Katrika led design on Labs teams for Office, Xbox, and Windows at Microsoft. It's just the two of us. This is our first public job posting. We don't have a hiring page yet. Our site will be refreshed soon (moatboat.com).
We don't have free lunch or lots of ping pong tables. We're not killing it or growing explosively or hiring Engineer #20 to fulfill specific duty X.
We do have reasonable salary, generous equity, a strategy/runway for riding out the VR hype until it goes mainstream, and many fun technical and design challenges. We're looking for another lady and/or gentleman to join the founding team as peers. A good fit could be a very experienced fullstack or frontend dev looking to dive into something more game-like, or an experienced game dev looking to build something that's not just fun, but also impactful. hello-AT our domain if you're looking for a change.
Sounds like the Discord I mentioned is technically the Roblox discord. The #luau-lang and #luau-lsp channels are where I lurk.