There was something in the manual if I remember correctly. Which you wouldn’t necessarily have if you rented the game.

Edit: just checked and I was wrong. Nothing in the manual. I must have been thinking of another game.

https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_NES/Manual/formated/Castlevania_2-_Simon-s_Quest_-_1988_-_Konami.pdf

I used to be an avid reader but as I got older and busier I just couldn’t find the time.

Then when I did have time there was always distractions, or other things I could be doing.

So now I read primarily via audiobooks through Libby and my library.

I read 130 books or so last year that way.

Mowing the yard? Audiobook.

Long drive? Audiobook.

Waiting at the doctors? Audiobook.

Dishes? Audiobook.

And then when I’m really invested I’ll relax by playing some mindless game while I listen. Think match 3 or bejeweled.

Just engaging enough to keep me from getting bored while listening but not so much that I can’t do both.

Balatro, BABA is you? Bad candidates for playing and listening.

The last couple of years I burned through the wheel of time series, all of Brandon Sanderson’s books (except skyward which I haven’t gotten to), a lot of Adrian Tchaikovsky, and others.

It may be easier to supply DC power directly to the soldering joints (at the right values after the converter) or even replacing that one component as using the jack itself.

A bunch of tiny lightbulbs that use twisted light and quantum mechanics to turn on or off.

And if you want to tank it without overtly tanking it.

“We will need to establish a review and governance board to establish standard data structures and reporting that can be used to drive the initiative.

It will need to be cross team and cross specialty so we should start by establishing a group to identify those people so we can proceed”

A year later and you’ll be lucky if they’ve even picked out who can be part of the review process let alone agree on some convention and adjusting their tooling and processes to make that work.

I don’t write games but a lot of people that do often say something similar. Do play tests for the concept/mechanics.

This way you don’t spend time/energy and resources on art and assets that won’t be used, etc.

Similar to a minimal viable product in regular dev or, perhaps a better analogy, technical demos.

You want to write a site or app that fetches API data for GPS, calendar and Weather and show them together? You don’t start with the UI. You start with:

• Can I get the GPS coordinates
• Can I call another API and get the weather for those coordinates?
• Can I get the coordinates or other info for some future location?
• Can I send that to get the weather?

Once you know you can and that it “works” you build around it.

So like you said. I have boxes, and this other box (or static PNG of a cat) moves around them and when I move this way it drops the box down on another box.

Does that work? Does it feel “fun” to arrange them? No, it feels tedious or can’t get the collision right? Then let’s try a different angle or taking the part that did work and iterating on it.

This also leaves you open to random bugs that end up being “fun” when you lean into them.

Game Makers Toolkit has some good videos on his journey making “Mind over Magnet”. Here’s the playlist.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_uH3OK4sTa4bf-UXGk2NW2n

There’s also PirateSoftware whose entire stream is devoted to “go and make games”

Windows when you can activate it without giving MS your info. Of course, like so many final bosses, it tends to come back harder the next phase.

Using iOS photo editing tools I take it?

That’s not an easy medium to work around, well done.

Psych

If I had to guess there would be, at the very least, some businesses that used their business continuity insurance.

Those companies, after paying those claims, will probably be expecting reimbursement or preparing to sue crowdstrike to recoup those costs.

They’re sure you will, or some will, but the number of customers they lose will be offset by the revenue gained.

Since that’s the only metric they really care about at the end of the day it makes “sense” to them to do it.

It’s also good to remember that Katrina’s storm surge and the subsequent failure of the levees and flooding of the city is what was so damaging.

Besides the wind and rain the destruction of the levees took a huge toll on New Orleans.

If I recall correctly it’s important to be running ECC memory right?

Otherwise corrupter bites/data can cause file system issues or loss.

I see a lot of good answers here but let’s try it from another angle.

How do we get randomness from a function or formula?

For starters let’s setup a few simple rules.

Every time our random function is called we’ll

• Take the last output from a variable we call LAST_RESULT
• If there’s no value in LAST_RESULT we’ll assume the value is 1
• We run a set of calculations storing the value in a variable we call X
• We store the result of these calculations in LAST_RESULT
• We return this new “random” number.

So let’s call it.

> Random()
Since LAST_RESULT is undefined SET LAST_RESULT to the value of 1
Set X to the result of this calculation 
   (LAST_RESULT+1) * 3

X is now 6

Set X to the result of this calculation
   (X + 7) / 2

X is now 7

Set X to the result of this calculation (rounding to the nearest whole number)
   X/LAST_RESULT

X is now 7

Set LAST_RESULT to the value of X

LAST_RESULT is now 7

Return the value of X as the result 

Result is 7

Ok. So let’s call it again

 > Random()
Set X to the result of this calculation 
   (LAST_RESULT+1) * 3

X is now 24

Set X to the result of this calculation
   (X + 7) / 2

X is now 16

Set X to the result of this calculation (rounding to the nearest whole number)
   X/LAST_RESULT

X is now 2

Set LAST_RESULT to the value of X

LAST_RESULT is now 2

Return the value of X as the result

Result is 2

And if we call it again we get seemingly random results

Random() Result is 4

Random() Result is 3

But the next time you run it you’ll get the same results in the same order. 7, then 2 then 4 then 3

So what you need is something to “seed” the random number calculation.

Something like

SetRandomSeed Set LAST_RESULT to the current second of the day

Then when you call Random after this it starts with that as the prior results and gives seemingly random results.

Of course my calculations are rough and probably fail/repeat after so many calls but it gives you an idea of how this works.

So the trick is to get noise for the seed. That could be the number of non leap seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970 (Unix epoch)

Or the temperature reading of a CPU chip.

Maybe it’s the ratio of red vs yellow from a camera feed looking at lava lamps.

Or the current users average typing speed.

An additional note. Many of those would not be “cryptographically” secure for encryption because they can easily be determined by a third party. We all experience the same “Unix epoch” within a few milliseconds if our system clocks are properly set for example. Or monitored from afar and reproduced (hacked webcam shows they had just typed the following letters in the previous 27 seconds that we know the “algorithm” uses, etc.

Oh no. They published Outer Wilds, Stray and alot of other great titles.

It’s sad to see this happen to another publisher and I worry about what happens to such great IP’s going forward.

I think you misunderstand.

Here’s an example. It has the math but doesn’t require that you “know” how to work the formulas or equations.

Because he’s doesn’t require that you know the math. He shows it, explains it, and visualizes the concept.

Quantum Mechanics 1b - Birth of the Quantum II

I can’t remember which video it was but in one he explains about how Einstein was shown that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was related to relativity in a series of letters. At which point Einstein conceded the point.

All this was done showing the equation… and then shifting the pieces around and explaining what they were. Until at the end what was left… was e=mc^2.

Edit: It was this video but I misremembered. It uses Einsteins equations to prove the uncertainty principle

Quantum Mechanics 3b - Probability and Uncertainty II

My point isn’t that the math isn’t there. It’s just that you’re not dropped into a video with here’s a formula… solve it and you’ll see why XYZ is true. The equations themselves are explained, visualized, etc.

If there’s a concept such as bell curves he shows that without requiring you do the numbers by showing how random motion will lead to certain probabilities over others.

Check this out

Quantum Mechanics 1a - Birth of the Quantum I

And then compare to this next episode in the series

Quantum Mechanics 1b - Birth of the Quantum II

And this later one. Where he gets more and more into the mathematics. But you’re not just thrown into the deepend at the start

Quantum Mechanics 5a - Schrödinger Equation I

It’s not at all. I’m saying it was good then and it is now.

It’s gotten heavier and more technical but that’s because as it goes on you learn and it gets deeper. And yet they still find a way to make it accessible even though they’re obviously still only scratching the surface.

As a counter point via science is really good but tries to avoid the deep math as much as possible while explaining the concepts behind it. All the while it’s been pure science and less of the popular topic as a way to introduce the science.

It’s still fantastic. But the tone was different.

They pulled us in with the quirky, and tricked us into learning about space time curvature, spin, Higgs fields and tensors.

The sly dogs.

Crazy Tuesday… the day we eat at Crazy Joes Taco Palace.

Does make it easier to isolate vocals I guess