turtledragonfly

3 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

The Lua source code is also a masterclass in C, I recommend it to anyone learning that language. It's big enough to be an involved implementation, but small and focused and well-organized enough to (at least roughly) understand what's going on at the various layers. It's a very solidly-written mass of portable C, with only minor exceptions.

turtledragonfly

4 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I'm sure you know, but for others reading: even on the same architecture, there is more to floating point determinism than just running the same "x = a + b" code on each system. There's also the state of the FPU (eg: rounding modes) that can affect results.

On older versions of DirectX (maybe even in some modern Windows APIs?) there were cases where it would internally change the FPU mode, causing chaos for callers trying to use floats deterministically[1].

[1] https://gafferongames.com/post/floating_point_determinism/ (see the Elijah quote, especially)

turtledragonfly

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Partly what I mentioned above: a higher rate of development "churn" — incorporating new systems or technology before it's well-baked or well-integrated with the rest of the OS, only to be replaced a few years later with something else. The kerfuffle over WireGuard in FreeBSD 13 (ultimately backing it out of that release) is, I think, one recent-ish example of the FreeBSD devs taking a stance to demand a certain quality bar for such things.

Another aspect for me is documentation. I've been disheartened recently by how some faster-paced changes to the FreeBSD ports system aren't well-documented, so 'man ports' and the handbook are a bit out-of-sync with reality. Being able to read the handbook and the manpages to get an accurate education on the OS has always felt right to me, and the Linux ecosystem doesn't do it nearly as well, I feel.

I think generally it's a cathedral-vs-bazaar sort of difference. I hope FreeBSD stays more cathedral-y than Linux.

turtledragonfly

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

> FreeBSD was perfectly fine but it didn't do anything I needed that Linux didn't already do.

I broadly agree, even as a FreeBSD fan myself; things have converged a lot over the decades. But still, I generally feel that while you can get the same work done in both, FreeBSD does things better (and/or cleaner, more elegant, etc) in many cases.

The overall feeling of system cohesion makes me happier to use it, from small things like Ctrl-T producing meaningful output for all the base OS tools, to larger and more amorphous things like having greater confidence core systems won't change too quickly over time (eg: FreeBSD's relatively stable sound support, versus Linux's alsa/pulse/pipewire/..., similar for event APIs, and more).

Though I totally feel your pain about latest-and-greatest hardware driver support. Has gotten better since the '90s, but that gap will probably always be there due to the different development philosophies.

I hope FreeBSD never gets too "Linux-y"; it occupies it's own nice spot in the spectrum of available options.

turtledragonfly

6 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Why must you attack me personally like this?! ⠀(:

turtledragonfly

6 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

This is super cool, and I like the no-nonsense presentation.

I'm curious to know where he takes the gameplay. He mentions it being digging-focused, and also mentions the digging/terrain deformation aspects in other games like No Man's Sky are relatively low-fidelity. I wonder what a "high-fidelity digging game" looks like (:

Aside, if I may self-plug: I wrote a small series on SDFs, for those who might be interested[1]. I'm also using them in my game engine (though it's 2D, for me).

[1]

* https://festina-lente-productions.com/articles/sdfs-1/

* https://festina-lente-productions.com/articles/sdfs-2/

* https://festina-lente-productions.com/articles/sdfs-3/

turtledragonfly

6 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

The Dreams team made a nice talk at SIGGRAPH 2015, if you want to check it out:

* Slides (good notes): https://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2015/AlexEvans_SIGGR...

* video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9KNtnCZDMI

turtledragonfly

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I'm reminded of that scene from A Beautiful Mind where someone asks him if he still has his hallucinations. He looks over and sees the fake people still there, and says "Oh no, they're not gone. Maybe they'll never be." And they still would drag him into things again, but he has learned to ignore them and not get pulled in.

So it is with internal demons sometimes, I find. You learn to recognize them, rather than expunge them.

turtledragonfly

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Pretty cool. I haven't dived into the details of this post, but it's a problem I've been wrangling with from time to time in my game.

Below is a series of writings on this topic that I enjoyed, by James Blinn, of "Blinn-Phong reflection" fame (and more). Not state-of-the-art, but an interesting read. It's just for cubics, which is what you need to solve the distance formula for quadratic bezier curves (my particular case), rather than the harder cubic curves of the linked article.

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

* https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse590b/13au/lectu...

turtledragonfly

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

From the name, I thought it was going to be about fractal dimensions[1] (:

So on that tangent ... you can measure that value for ordinary objects using the "box counting" method[2], to get a notion of objects being "1.3 D" and such.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_dimension

[2]https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ergreen/honors_thesis/dimension.h...

turtledragonfly

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

This seems fairly culture-dependent, from my experience.

For instance, I've noticed a distinct difference in how sarcasm is received in the Northeast US vs the West Coast. What you described feels more Northeast-y to me (I'm sure it varies by other segments and sub-sub-cultures, too).

There's the saying: "If an Irish person calls you 'asshole,' it means they think you're a friend. If they call you 'friend' it means they think you're an asshole."

Not just for the Irish though, I don't think (:

turtledragonfly

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> Games are for playing, code is an unfortunate side effect

Boo, hiss!

(I respect your opinion, though :)

turtledragonfly

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> you can't ignore 90% of the game and expect to have fun.

I think maybe what you meant to say was "... and expect to _win_"

Plenty of people have fun turtling (:

This is one thing I liked about Total Annihilation — defense tech was relatively strong, so some amount of turtling and racing to get high tech artillery (eg) was a viable approach.

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