Transcript
Speaker: Hey, Matthew.
Speaker: So we've known each other for at least a few years.
Speaker: I don't know how far back.
Speaker: Oh, I think it's, yeah, between five and ten.
Speaker: It's gone real quick.
Speaker: I can remember at least 2018.
Speaker: Yeah, I know it's been a while.
Speaker: And so a little bit about how we met.
Speaker: I think it was through a Construct 3 episode.
Speaker: group?
Speaker: Yes, Construct 2.
Speaker: We did not know Construct 3 back then.
Speaker: Oh, that's right.
Speaker: So, if anybody's listening, Construct 2 and 3 are kind of low to no-code game engines.
Speaker: And so that's kind of, I don't know, I guess we, did we start talking in the forum?
Speaker: Or how did that even... Yeah.
Speaker: We had similar sort of ideas for where we wanted to take development using Construct 2.
Speaker: Um, we went back and forth a little bit on some forums and I think I had some ideas that you sort of liked the idea of and we discussed them and just went from there.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That, that makes sense.
Speaker: So, um, so what are you doing?
Speaker: Are you, are you working as a developer now or why don't you, why don't you give me a little bit about your, uh, programming background and so forth?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Um, so been wearing a lot of different hats.
Speaker: over the years.
Speaker: So I started off full stack web development.
Speaker: So did a lot of that.
Speaker: Then I transitioned into Python and Java development as well.
Speaker: So I've got a background in that too.
Speaker: Done a lot of government projects and things like that.
Speaker: Right now I've been training for the last seven years.
Speaker: I've been training other people in cybersecurity, full stack development and programming.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Not so much on the game development front.
Speaker: That's still very much more of a passion of mine, but sort of just the indie dabbling, so to speak.
Speaker: In terms of what I'm doing with game development at the moment, mainly, again, just the small projects.
Speaker: I like to do a lot of it myself rather than frameworks.
Speaker: I like that sort of additional challenge, you know, of reinventing the wheel, so to speak, so.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: So, all right.
Speaker: So we met on, I guess it was Construct 2 Forms.
Speaker: I do remember we kind of, you know, we were both working on different kind of games.
Speaker: I was doing some kind of a space shooter, but kind of with an exploration style thing.
Speaker: And you were doing... Exactly the same.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I remember seeing some stuff where, you know, and they were 2D games, so you had showed me, like, some UI of landing on a planet and maybe kind of purchasing or doing some sort of trading, something along those lines.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Does that ring a bell?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes, that's exactly it.
Speaker: I'm quite surprised you remember that.
Speaker: That was quite a while ago.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yes, that's exactly what it was, because...
Speaker: we found Construct 2 at the time didn't have a dedicated way to make a UI.
Speaker: So, you know, you could pop up the random controls, so to speak, but, you know, if you wanted to do a UI for purchasing items, like if you wanted to allow the player to do that, there wasn't a dedicated way to bring up a menu and then track the statistics of what's clicked on and the quantity and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker: It was,
Speaker: less robust, um, in that regard.
Speaker: So yeah, that, that was, um, something I was posting about, I was trying to work out if there was a way to actually do that in a much nicer method because, uh, it didn't seem to, which I guess is one of the downfalls of, um, any of those, uh, WYSIWYG, so to speak, uh, editors, you know, you're always confined within the features that they give you.
Speaker: You could extend it if they allow extensions, but you're largely sort of kept hostage, so to speak, with the features and functionality they give you, and you're sort of boned if you want anything outside that scope.
Speaker: Yeah, I definitely, I seem to remember you running into issues with displaying the UI and doing some kind of different things on that side of it.
Speaker: UI, I think, is, I mean, these days, you can pretty much go and buy a UI system and drop it into most game engines, but back then it was, yeah, it was difficult.
Speaker: That was, I wouldn't say it was the hardest thing, but.
Speaker: No, and I think the hardest adjustment for me was coming from a background of, you know, always doing things myself, because I started off making non-flash web-based games, so a lot of JavaScript for a lot of the logic.
Speaker: You could do anything, you know, it's like, oh, I want to do this, how am I going to do this, okay, and then your brain just unpacks it, you write it all down, you plan it, and then you start development, and the world's your oyster.
Speaker: Whereas working with Construct 2, you know, you come into it with this existing sort of freedom mindset, and then you've got to think, ah, how do I funnel that idea into this more narrow scope?
Speaker: And inevitably you find things you can't do within that feature set.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Have you tried Construct 3?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So, I mean, a little bit.
Speaker: Not a ton.
Speaker: I did play around with it some.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I somehow wound up with a six-month subscription or something at some point because it's all subscription-based now.
Speaker: I don't think it was back when we used 2.
Speaker: I think 2 was...
Speaker: was buy buy to use yes but three is subscription based it's like uh actually let me look um i think it was and i think that was i think that was the biggest reason why i didn't transition as well um also the you know the more limited scope i'd rather do it myself and be able to do what i want um right but yes the subscription based model as well was a bit of a bit of a killer
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Yeah, it's subscription-based.
Speaker: I wonder how much it is.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: We're going to look and see what Construct 3 is going for.
Speaker: It is now up to $129.99 annually.
Speaker: $469 for a business.
Speaker: And education, they are now charging $32.99 per seat annually for education use.
Speaker: That's kind of a lot.
Speaker: I mean... Yeah, I mean, I'd be interested to... Sorry?
Speaker: Oh, no, go ahead.
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: I was just saying, I'd be interested to see how much it differs from Construct 2 to justify the subscription model.
Speaker: especially when you've got a lot of other ways to develop 2D games, especially, you know, you could just use Unity, which is free for the base copy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's not go there.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I don't like it either, but you've got options.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, if you're looking for, for a something with that sort of UI, are you familiar with,
Speaker: What is it called?
Speaker: GDevelop, I think.
Speaker: GDevelop?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, I am.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cross-platform, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's completely cross-platform now.
Speaker: They've done a whole lot of updates.
Speaker: It's no code.
Speaker: You can code if you want, but they have a really good system for logic and
Speaker: works really well i've used that probably a good bit too okay um i've been using i've been using yeah a little bit oh no you're fine um godot godot uh yeah sorry i'm gonna i'm gonna add links to uh the show notes for all these engines for anybody that's interested but um
Speaker: It's yeah, I go to I've been following them around for a bunch of years, just kind of watching development and stuff like that.
Speaker: And I never pulled the trigger.
Speaker: I guess I have like I've tried it a few times.
Speaker: but I probably never gave it a fair shake to where I sat and built out a game on it or anything like that.
Speaker: It just felt somewhat counterintuitive to me, but it's just me.
Speaker: I know there's lots of people that use it.
Speaker: I've had long talks with several developers that have launched games on it,
Speaker: there's a little indie studio of two guys.
Speaker: They've put... I think they're on their second...
Speaker: or third game now with Godot.
Speaker: And, you know, their games are on Steam.
Speaker: They're very good.
Speaker: I've played both of them.
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not sure why Godot just hasn't really clicked for me, but I think it's got kind of a Python-y syntax.
Speaker: So anybody that's used Python should feel somewhat at home with it.
Speaker: What about you?
Speaker: Have you given it a shot?
Speaker: I have had a brief look at it, sort of the reverse to you.
Speaker: So I've had a bit of a poke around and a look at Godot, but I haven't been doing much more than observing GDevelop.
Speaker: So sort of the flip side of you there.
Speaker: We've both monitored different programs.
Speaker: They're similar in approach.
Speaker: They both, because they're cross-platform, you know, you can write web-based programs.
Speaker: games that use javascript and html5 and css and all of that um so they're similar in approach in that regard um obviously as well you can build a bit more advanced games uh in either of them as well so godot you can do a a uh 3d as well with supports but like you said it's a bit more of a python-y syntax um if you're familiar with that it's good
Speaker: But I think what lured me over to Godot was the dedicated 2D engine, which I found quite easy to wrap my head around.
Speaker: So it wasn't too bad.
Speaker: But again, just small sample projects, you know, to really just get a feel for the engine and see what it could do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Depending on when you last looked at it, it did go through a rather large update.
Speaker: I think it was a year or two now.
Speaker: Went through quite a big update.
Speaker: So it's a lot better now than it was.
Speaker: So it might be worth a look again.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I'll probably wind up taking another look.
Speaker: I've been kicking around, you know, making another game or something.
Speaker: I just haven't... I've been so busy with my startup and, you know, a lot of this other stuff I have going on, so...
Speaker: I just recently got back into Android development, which I kind of dabbled in, but kind of taken more seriously now.
Speaker: So, you know, I'm hoping to kind of brush up and build out something and then maybe do some job hunting and or freelancing, you know, just
Speaker: just depending on how things go.
Speaker: But, but yeah, Godot is always kind of, I've always been watching it and kind of cheering it on from the sidelines, mostly because I've seen Unity and Unity started out being very,
Speaker: very user friendly and then and very when I say user friendly I also mean non corporate like they were you know very much kind of I don't know they were just they were really cool it's more down to earth
Speaker: Yeah, and now they've become more corporate.
Speaker: I think they got – didn't they get procured by somebody?
Speaker: I'm actually not sure.
Speaker: I'd have to have a look.
Speaker: They either merged or procured or got procured by a company that used to make spyware.
Speaker: let me see if i can find the information on that uh oh yeah here we go um
Speaker: Iron Source.
Speaker: They merged with Iron Source in 2018.
Speaker: Yeah, Iron Source.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what it was.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Iron Source.
Speaker: So pretty sure Iron Source used to make spyware back in the day.
Speaker: You know, or whatever you want to call it, you know, where it would basically throw ads up on your screen no matter what you did, and then you had to figure out how to
Speaker: There was some blowback over this a little while back.
Speaker: It seems like everything that Unity's done recently has been... There's been blowback over, and they just keep making these steps toward driving away all their developers.
Speaker: So this recent one, I came across this on Game from Scratch on YouTube.
Speaker: Great, great channel.
Speaker: Yeah, that channel's awesome.
Speaker: That guy is on top of all the shit.
Speaker: Like, he watches engines like a hawk.
Speaker: And anytime something pops up...
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Anytime, you know, every time I've looked for some sort of new engine to play with, I just go to his channel and just scroll through, and likely I'll find something that hasn't been touched on in a while.
Speaker: You know, I found a bunch of really good... Oh, sorry.
Speaker: I just got a pop-up.
Speaker: I don't know if that came through or not.
Speaker: Was it from Iron Source?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, no, that's funny.
Speaker: So it says, effective January 1st, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity runtime fee that's based on game installs.
Speaker: We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity's subscription plans this November.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Unity Runtime is installed every single time you install one of their games from the way I understand how it works.
Speaker: So they want to charge a fee every time somebody installs one of their games.
Speaker: Now they do have some criteria.
Speaker: It looks like Unity Personal and Unity Plus, it says those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months and have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Like, you know, you might look at that and be like, oh, okay, that's no big deal, you know.
Speaker: I'm going to be fine.
Speaker: But there are some indie devs that have made $200,000 and have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
Speaker: So the way this whole thing reads...
Speaker: is that if you, if you meet those two criterias, essentially every install above that, that 200,000, let me see 200,000.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're going to pay 20 cents per install.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's per install.
Speaker: That's not per purchase.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So every time you uninstall the game and reinstall a game, you're going to pay 20 cents.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's a rather predatory way to go about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, the biggest caveat that that makes me think of, we're in an age where so many people will grab a pitchfork and go against a developer for any number of reasons.
Speaker: And all it's going to take someone now is if they buy the game, reinstalling it as many times as they want.
Speaker: Technically speaking, everyone could band together and basically do a mass install and basically just make the indie dev get charged.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They could fuck any developer over, no matter who it is.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: So I, but you know, it gets, it gets less per, you know, like if you're on unity pro, you know, the, the price per install is less because you know, you're paying a subscription already, which if you're fucking paying a subscription, excuse my French, why are they then going to charge you at any point for, for installs?
Speaker: Um, yeah, that's, that's my biggest problem w ith it as well.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, I don't agree with that.
Speaker: If they're going to, if they're trying to seek more income, you know, I guess you might lose people over it as well, but probably less than this, but, you know, package it into your plans, raise the rates and say, you know, in line with, you know, how we're trying to expand the business model, you know, offer more support, duh, duh, duh, duh.
Speaker: The costs have risen to, you know, X value and then put an effective date there.
Speaker: At least, you know, because you're not building it in in a way that's seeming like you're penalizing, you're paying customers or even your free ones, but you're not penalizing your consumer base, your users.
Speaker: Whereas this is almost a penalty in a way.
Speaker: It's like, oh, cool, your game's successful.
Speaker: So in addition to, you know,
Speaker: you've bought a license to use our program as a service, we're going to add you an additional cost on top of that now that you didn't originally sign up for.
Speaker: I expect a lot of people are probably going to have to re-evaluate how they move forward using that.
Speaker: Yeah, I think there's been a lot of stuff where people are like,
Speaker: all right, well, this is kind of the last draw.
Speaker: We're going to switch to Godot or something.
Speaker: But none of those things have been as bad as this.
Speaker: Like, this is freaking serious because they aren't covering, like, as of January 2024.
Speaker: So they put it out far enough, but it's, the way I understand it, it's retroactive too.
Speaker: So if you've already hit that threshold, like, you're fair game.
Speaker: you know, you're going to get, you're going to start getting charged.
Speaker: What if, you know, you don't support your game anymore?
Speaker: What if it's just been sitting on, on Steam or something, you know, and all of a sudden you're going to start getting charged by Unity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, and you know, what if it cripples you to the point where you're no longer a business?
Speaker: So you, you can, and you go back to working in a development firm or whatever, but your game is still alive.
Speaker: Are they then going to still,
Speaker: charge you so you've basically got incoming bills from unity then on top of that.
Speaker: Um, and you know, imagine, imagine if let's just glorify it for a moment and just say we made the next Minecraft, um, and we made it in uni, uh, unity.
Speaker: Um, you know, that's, you know, obviously a glory situation, but you know, if you've got 30,000 installs a day,
Speaker: at the smallest, you know, that, that adds up, especially if you're an indie dev, you know, who may or may not have planned for that accordingly to, to begin with, I suppose, like you said, there's enough time now, but I think that retroactive application is really going to hurt a lot of people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because it also, too, it doesn't take into consideration games that you're giving away for free, games that wind up on bundles, games that people pirate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're going to get charged for pirated copies of your game now?
Speaker: Yeah, and get no income for it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you're not getting income off any game that was given away for free or, you know, given away as part of a whatever, a bundle, you know, when they go on humble bundle and stuff, usually you're not putting it on there to, you know, yeah, they do like charity.
Speaker: So it's sort of like you're given some way to charity, but you're not making that much on it, you know?
Speaker: No, it's not.
Speaker: You don't put it up there with the intent to use it as a marketplace.
Speaker: It's either, you know, a little bit of additional exposure, but also, you know, for a good cause.
Speaker: Sort of give and get.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so now you're going to get charged by Unity for, you know, if you're past whatever threshold they set, you're kind of screwed.
Speaker: And even companies that...
Speaker: aren't necessarily all that indie.
Speaker: They're making... Well, like you said, Minecraft, for instance.
Speaker: Or some of these other companies that have made game platforms where people can make stuff kind of in their game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now, you know, you're going to get charged every time somebody installs a free game, you know?
Speaker: Because, you know, a lot of places charge... Like, it doesn't take into account kind of that mobile-y setup, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Where people pay within the game for, like, items or stuff like that.
Speaker: Like, free-to-play games, I guess.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So, basically...
Speaker: Anybody that downloads a free game is going to get, you know, if you've hit that 200,000 minimum download, which on Google Play, free games hit that kind of number all the time.
Speaker: So you're going to start paying unity money for games that aren't making you any.
Speaker: It's such a bizarre option or idea.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not a big fan of it.
Speaker: And I haven't dabbled with Unity for quite a while.
Speaker: So what I'm going to say could be wrong or go off on a tangent that's not necessarily applicable.
Speaker: But I do know that historically a lot of games or some games, especially by indie developers who are, you know, they're producing their first or second game.
Speaker: They're still getting their feet where they're not quite across a lot of it.
Speaker: Patching.
Speaker: So if your game doesn't support incremental patching, and people are basically having to redownload and reinstall the entire game every single time, how's that going to trickle up the costs?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, this just feels like a really bad, bad, bad move.
Speaker: Yeah, it's very, very polarizing.
Speaker: I don't foresee a lot of people... I mean, a lot of people are going to reevaluate.
Speaker: They're going to look at this now and have to, regardless of, you know, their model for how they've built themselves up.
Speaker: I think, you know, the additional costs, I mean, even if it's not crippling for the business, it might be enough to be, you know, the final straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak.
Speaker: They might decide, well, okay...
Speaker: I'm not going to support them anymore.
Speaker: And then they have to go find another engine.
Speaker: Um, right.
Speaker: You know, is this, is this starting to set a bad precedent as well for, you know, other engines, you know, hopefully they don't, but you know, are other engines going to start considering doing the same, you know, if it works for unity as bad as it is, are they going to start trying to do the same thing?
Speaker: Cause unreal has been doing it for a while with their, um,
Speaker: you know, you earn over a threshold, but they don't charge per install even.
Speaker: But right.
Speaker: Um, back when they were, I don't, I don't feel like that's a negative.
Speaker: Like, no, if, if you, you know, and you know, unity's done the whole subscription thing.
Speaker: Basically, if you,
Speaker: If you make over $200,000 minimum, then you have to use the pro version, which is a monthly fee.
Speaker: That's totally fine.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: But charging for an install can make that... You're going to go from paying $50 a month to paying $40,000 a month.
Speaker: Yeah, for 200,000 installs.
Speaker: Like, that's a huge chunk of change, especially if you're an indie dev whose game has just exploded for some reason, which happens.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what Minecraft was, you know?
Speaker: He just started it at a small game, Marcus Persson.
Speaker: He didn't think it would take off and become that popular.
Speaker: And then just everyone started picking it up and it just, you know.
Speaker: thousand fold in a day just took off or um so it's another one what's that gardening game that's done so freaking well that um which one jesus uh
Speaker: I know it's 2D.
Speaker: Come on, name something.
Speaker: It's 2D.
Speaker: It's, uh, you basically, yeah, Stardew Valley.
Speaker: Like that thing took off.
Speaker: Um, yep.
Speaker: You know, small, small game that he just, you know, was developing because he was bored or, you know, needed, you know, it was just kind of yearning for some sort of like break from the craziness of living in a city and all this.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: So he makes this little game and it freaking blows up and he's still working on it.
Speaker: You know, still adding onto it.
Speaker: I think he's just about done, but I think he said the last big update was going to be the final one, but you know, he's, it's, it's paid him well enough to, to do that for a living.
Speaker: You know, I'm certain that he's had well over 200,000 insoles and made over $200,000.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Especially because it's on so many sales platforms.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you have somebody like me, for instance.
Speaker: I will play a game and then I'll uninstall it.
Speaker: You know, I'll play another game, I'll uninstall it.
Speaker: You know, and these days with games getting so big, you have to conserve hard drive space.
Speaker: Unless you're just like adding more and more external hard drives, which I don't do.
Speaker: But maybe some people do, but I don't think, I think most people do what I do.
Speaker: And they just uninstall games when they're done with them.
Speaker: I'll come back later.
Speaker: I'll be in a mood.
Speaker: You know, I might play this.
Speaker: Like, for instance, I just reinstalled Dead Space 2008.
Speaker: And I've been playing through that.
Speaker: You know, but that dev using Unity is going to get charged 20 cents for my fucking download and install.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And then you got people like me who similarly, you know, have a game uninstalled.
Speaker: three years later, get the vibe to play it again, we'll install it and then change our mind once it's installed and then just uninstall it again.
Speaker: And, you know, without even knowing, I've just charged that developer for my, my change in mind.
Speaker: So, right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Extra kick in the teeth.
Speaker: I have done that too.
Speaker: Just like, you know what?
Speaker: Not in the mood for this game.
Speaker: It was a great idea until I installed it.
Speaker: I just used, you know, 80 gigs of data, and now I'm not playing the game.
Speaker: Such a far cry to the past, though.
Speaker: You know, the old dial-up days.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, man.
Speaker: You would not be doing that back then.
Speaker: It takes me... It might take me a...
Speaker: maybe two to three hours to download 60 to 80 gigs.
Speaker: I think last time I checked.
Speaker: Great, great time.
Speaker: Great time to live for internet.
Speaker: Yeah, for real.
Speaker: Even that I'm just like, Jesus, is this thing done yet?
Speaker: Let me know.
Speaker: I know, right.
Speaker: It's like perpetually as technology advances, we just get more and more impatient.
Speaker: Yeah, we really do.
Speaker: You know, where, where I live, we have two internet providers, um,
Speaker: One is on one side of town and one is on the other side of town.
Speaker: And they won't cross-pollinate.
Speaker: So I can't order internet from the other guy.
Speaker: I have to get it from the provider on this side of town.
Speaker: And... Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, it's so weird.
Speaker: But I think I get... I get 400 megs down.
Speaker: Which is...
Speaker: pretty good.
Speaker: But on the other side of town, I think the other side of town, they just put in fiber and I had them for a little while and I could get a gig for 75 bucks, I think a month.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: I think I pay like, I pay like 55 bucks for, for 400 bucks.
Speaker: But I mean, honestly, yeah, really.
Speaker: What are you working with?
Speaker: Have you got tissues, Andy?
Speaker: Yes, I am.
Speaker: I am ready to shed some tears, my man.
Speaker: Australia has always played catch-up.
Speaker: I think I could get the date wrong, but probably, I think it was like eight,
Speaker: seven years ago something like that we started getting fiber laid everywhere um we've still got quite a lot of copper networks everywhere um so i've got we they've got because they like to red tape everything there's different fiber plans based on like how the houses are built you can get fiber to the curb which is obviously
Speaker: the, uh, to the street, but then you still have copper wiring from your house to the street.
Speaker: So you got a little bottleneck.
Speaker: Oh, yep.
Speaker: You're kidding me.
Speaker: Or you can have, no, no.
Speaker: Or there's a fiber to the premises, which is literally FTP and it's, you know, fiber built straight to your house, which is what a lot of the newer developments have.
Speaker: So that's what I had, but even with the fiber to the premises,
Speaker: I'm still paying $99 for a hundred down.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: So I guess in American dollars, a hundred is probably sort of 55, maybe something like that.
Speaker: Wait, is your money worth more than ours?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: No less.
Speaker: I've gone backwards.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: 64 us dollars.
Speaker: So I'm paying 64 U.S. Okay.
Speaker: You're paying 64 U.S. Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For a hundred down.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, that's still a good bit.
Speaker: And that's amazing to me.
Speaker: I mean, that's not terrible.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So the, the fiber company that we had.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I live in a rural area.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so typically what we were dealing with was before that.
Speaker: So this was just, I think they brought the fiber in in 2019.
Speaker: So my town went from having to deal with essentially fast dial-up.
Speaker: They called it, what was it called?
Speaker: I can't remember the name of it, but it was like five times faster than dial-up, basically.
Speaker: It was nothing.
Speaker: Is that your ADSL or DSL?
Speaker: Yeah, DSL.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what it was.
Speaker: So we had DSL.
Speaker: It was the closer you were to their node, the faster your internet was.
Speaker: We were out too far.
Speaker: So we were getting five megabits.
Speaker: Five.
Speaker: And they were like, oh, it's high speed.
Speaker: Like this shit is not high speed.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: So then our electric company, which was a co-op, they connected with another co-op in Missouri to bring the fiber in.
Speaker: And with their goal of being connecting all of their rural customers with fiber internet, which is great.
Speaker: So they ran all this fiber on their poles, on their electric poles.
Speaker: Um, and then if you bought the service, they would connect you up.
Speaker: They'd run it from the pole to your house.
Speaker: Um, if they had to dig a trench, they'd dig a trench, you know, just whatever it took to, uh, to get it to your house.
Speaker: Um, and they paid for it.
Speaker: Um, and it turned out to be a huge, huge hit for them.
Speaker: So they, you know, they more than made their money back on the installs, but, um, most companies wouldn't do that.
Speaker: They would charge you, um,
Speaker: to to bring the fiber from the pole to your house um you know i've heard some people say that you know they had to spend like you know two thousand five thousand ten thousand dollars to bring fiber up to their house from the pole wow which is just insanity um they were like nope if you um
Speaker: You know, you pay for a service.
Speaker: It's a sort of contract, I think.
Speaker: So, like, they wanted you to have the service for maybe a year or two.
Speaker: Maybe it was a year.
Speaker: But they...
Speaker: They didn't write it too well because I found a loophole.
Speaker: I had to move out of the house we were living in about six to eight months after we got it.
Speaker: And at the time, we didn't know it was a contract.
Speaker: But they said that you had to keep the service for, you know, they didn't say you had to stay in a residence.
Speaker: So I checked where we were moving to and they were like, oh yeah, you have our fiber there.
Speaker: You'll be fine.
Speaker: So we went ahead and moved.
Speaker: And then when I called them to get it switched, they were like, oh no, you can't.
Speaker: You're going to have to pay $200 penalty for canceling the service.
Speaker: I'm like, we didn't cancel the service.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So they had it written.
Speaker: in their contract that you had to keep the service, but they did not have it written in the contract that the service had to be at that residence.
Speaker: Um, so I got ahold of, you know, a bigger wig who was like, Oh no, don't worry about it.
Speaker: You know, we've, um, we're waiving that, you know, that fee, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: So, um, so it worked out and we got it moved.
Speaker: Um, and then we kept the service for another couple of years, um, before Corona hit.
Speaker: And, um, I was working in the oil field at the time, so I was making really, really good money.
Speaker: And then when that crashed, um,
Speaker: um, you know, had to downsize.
Speaker: So, uh, so we moved and wound up on the wrong side of town.
Speaker: No, it's not really the wrong side, but we just, uh, we, we aren't big fans of that, uh, of our current electric company and internet providers, but, uh, you know, it is what it is.
Speaker: Yeah, it's sort of like that out here.
Speaker: Down here, it's a bit of the Wild West.
Speaker: You know, you've got one company that outsources all of their support networks to overseas, so you can be able to get assistance when you need it, and then you've got one that does the same, but charges more, but has the monopoly on all the lines.
Speaker: They have the better performing lines, so
Speaker: you know, it's sort of the better of the two evils, so to speak.
Speaker: So, you know, people get the better service, internet service, but still struggle with support or what do you do?
Speaker: In recent years, there's been a better one, which is all using support staff that are within the country and it's all owned by, you know, people in the country.
Speaker: And it's just like, just all for the country itself.
Speaker: So they've taken off quite a lot because they've got,
Speaker: Similarly, great support and speeds to the larger one, but much better service and the pricing is better as well.
Speaker: So they've obviously gone up.
Speaker: But what I found most interesting and what you said about how, you know, some over there you'd have to pay to get the lines to your house and everything.
Speaker: Over here, the government controls all of that.
Speaker: the entire underlying infrastructure.
Speaker: They actually, over the course of several years, went around and did all of the upgrades that they needed to.
Speaker: So every house that's connected to it has a government-owned NBN box, we call it, the National Broadband Network.
Speaker: And that's, so every house has that and all the underground wiring is all done by the government.
Speaker: And then all the
Speaker: the plan providers use the government lines for that.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I thought that was pretty interesting because then, yeah, there's no additional cost to the consumer.
Speaker: You don't pay to get that re-hooked up.
Speaker: We do still have some pockets where, you know, there'll be some properties that are older and don't have access to it.
Speaker: I think largely by now they probably all have access to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So with our fiber, they basically bring in a fiber line from the pole.
Speaker: They run that line to your house.
Speaker: They put a little box outside of your house.
Speaker: And then they take another little line right inside and plug it into your...
Speaker: uh your modem so there there's no need for it to worry about copper wires or any of that um so that seems weird to me that that you still have to deal with you know like copper wire or anything like that so i wonder that's that's only the older properties yeah that's only the older properties there was something that they
Speaker: with older properties, they decided that they weren't going to, I don't know the specific criteria, but they decided that they weren't going to, you know, for every single house that needed it, you know, rip up every, cause the government's doing it and they don't want to do it to every single house.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they, they did it for all the new ones or the new developments or the, the within, I think a three year period or something like that.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: You know, if someone's got a 20-year-old house in the middle of the suburbs, depending on the suburb, they'll go around and do it.
Speaker: But there'll be some older properties as well that they've got all the old fiber.
Speaker: So the government says, well, okay, we'll do it to the street side.
Speaker: We'll do it to the curb for you.
Speaker: You know, and then it's copper from your house to the curb.
Speaker: That's so weird.
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: It's like, here, we're going to give you this solution that improves everything, but not actually improve it because we're going to leave your bottleneck there.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker: Like, with ours, they don't do a connection from the pole to some sort of existing wiring.
Speaker: Like, they literally just run a fiber line from the pole to your house.
Speaker: Yep, yeah, to the...
Speaker: to the box and then yeah into your garage or whatever and yeah wherever you want it right yeah exactly um so you look there they'll like okay where do you want to put it you know well put it in the central area you know living room by the tv you know okay so we'll just run it over here you know and um and that's pretty much it um trying to think where we put it in the first house but yeah it's
Speaker: It was pretty easy.
Speaker: Um, uh, it's so weird how it's different from country to country too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I'm just looking up, you know, the major differences now.
Speaker: It doesn't surprise me.
Speaker: Fiber to the curb is cheaper.
Speaker: So that explains why for a lot of the older properties, they just did that instead.
Speaker: Because, you know, they're ticking the boxes for the constituents.
Speaker: If they're, like, my question is, what are they hooking it up to?
Speaker: Like, cable line?
Speaker: You know, like, that's the weird thing.
Speaker: Like, what would they even, anyway, I'm just, you know, running my mouth.
Speaker: So I don't expect you to have all the answers on this.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no.
Speaker: Answer all my questions, damn it.
Speaker: Ha ha ha ha.
Speaker: Well, you see, that's my problem because I train everyone in full stack and everything now.
Speaker: So I'm used to, as soon as someone gives me a question, I fire an answer back.
Speaker: Like, does it matter if it's right?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Just answer 42 to everything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: 42.
Speaker: Douglas Adams.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: You don't know that reference?
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: 42.
Speaker: Oh, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Speaker: Oh, okay, okay, sorry.
Speaker: No, I have not actually... You have to see that.
Speaker: I'm looking it up.
Speaker: Accurate answer to life.
Speaker: Oh yeah, 42.
Speaker: I do vaguely remember something about that.
Speaker: Yep, the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.
Speaker: So, you get a question and you don't know the answer, just say 42.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I'll do that.
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: So what kind of game development are you doing now?
Speaker: Or are you?
Speaker: At present?
Speaker: So what I'm really doing at the moment, a lot of it's just work, to be honest.
Speaker: I'm not doing as much game development.
Speaker: But the larger things that I'm trying to do, I'm really on a physics kick at the moment.
Speaker: So just to sort of stretch my brain, I'm...
Speaker: trying to make a physics engine um okay just a two just a 2d one just to give that a go i haven't spent a lot of time on it um i also made a i made an a star pathfinding um i just implemented a star pathfinding for for 2d which was um interesting to try and wrap my head around from scratch and that's
Speaker: It's why I like to sort of do all these self coding projects, because I find a lot of developers, indie developers, at least they lose a lot of the, the ability or they don't chase getting that ability when they can just get it with a framework.
Speaker: It's just, you know, let's load up unity, for example, and let's just add a physics controller and I'll look, it's all there and I'll just set some values.
Speaker: But right.
Speaker: you lose that sort of deeper understanding of exactly how it works.
Speaker: Um, but that sort of deeper understanding of how it works, that's what I like to, to chase.
Speaker: So, uh, in usual to go back to, uh, the construct days, you know, I've made a, uh, script that randomly generates a star field.
Speaker: Um, whenever you, when you run it and it runs and generates a star field of about 500 stars and then,
Speaker: they're all color-coded with temperatures and stuff.
Speaker: So, you know, you've got your K-class stars and whatnot.
Speaker: So all different ones there and you can click on one and then it loads up another solar system and then you'd have your planets and everything rotating around it.
Speaker: Sort of like a conquest type game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, but I've got a script that generates all of that and I've totally lost my train of thought.
Speaker: We went from physics talking about that.
Speaker: I swear there was a correlation.
Speaker: That's terrible.
Speaker: Oh, that's funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you're not wrong.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: You know, when I think about making a game, the last thing I really look, I really all that interested in is making the underlying stuff that you need, like physics, you know.
Speaker: I'll just grab a library and implement it.
Speaker: Or, you know, in the case of a no code, you know, just use it and it does what it's supposed to do without you having to deal with it.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: yeah and I mean that's it's still good you know there's nothing wrong with that I think that's what you have to do realistically like if you're going to you know unless you're a big massive studio with the time to invest in it and you build your own engine and then you've got to obviously make your own physics engine within that or you know buy a third party implementation you know use the Havoc physics engine or something like that but I don't know I find
Speaker: I've always been interested in how things work and sort of, cause it's more, I'm more of a hobby developer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I like to spend that extra time.
Speaker: I'm less interested myself in creating an end product than exploring everything inside it.
Speaker: That makes it tick.
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, I might play a game and just look at it and be like, Oh, I wonder how they've done that.
Speaker: And then I'll try and sort of debunk how they might've done it.
Speaker: And then I'll see if I can sort of replicate it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's what I mostly like to do these days.
Speaker: And I think a lot of that comes down to because so many games these days are, at their core, very familiar or the same.
Speaker: You know, it's like every year there's a Call of Duty and it's the same.
Speaker: But, oh, look, skins.
Speaker: And to me, that doesn't mean anything.
Speaker: And you've got all the groundwork done.
Speaker: That's just sort of churning out the same stuff on a conveyor belt.
Speaker: And that's not something I'm interested in.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So, yeah, I like to really understand how things tick and focus, like you said, on the gameplay and experiment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Speaking of experiments, are you familiar with Ghost Song?
Speaker: Yeah, I'll put a link.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I am not.
Speaker: I know it's out on Steam now.
Speaker: Let's see here.
Speaker: I've been playing Starfield like every man and their pet.
Speaker: What was that?
Speaker: I've been playing Starfield like every man and their pet.
Speaker: It's an Aussie phrase saying every man and their dog.
Speaker: So it's just like meaning everyone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a link if you didn't find it.
Speaker: Cheers.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker: 2D side-scroller.
Speaker: Sci-fi game.
Speaker: So this game started out... Hold on.
Speaker: I'm trying to think of the name of the engine.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: It was kind of a no-code game engine.
Speaker: It was free.
Speaker: Stencil.
Speaker: It was on Stencil.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: You familiar with that one?
Speaker: It rings a slight familiarity, but I can't say I fully actually remember it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Here.
Speaker: Here's a link.
Speaker: I like how the Google page make iPhone, iPad, Android, and flash games.
Speaker: Flash has been defunct for how many years?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, that's funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When you actually go to it, it doesn't mention the flash part anymore, but I think it's hilarious that it's still, um, Google still remembers Google remembers everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um so he started on this and it was logic blocks very similar to like scratch um it's coding but it's you know um not typing it out yeah um so yeah he was on that it's actually using scratch it extends it
Speaker: apparently oh yeah okay well that makes sense um he was on there for a long time and the game looked way bigger i wonder if i can find it on their forum let me look ghost song i wonder if it's still on there uh he yeah so that game i've been watching that game forever dude like
Speaker: it was like 2016, I think originally, or even before 2016, uh, big gifts ahead.
Speaker: Um, I think they're the best types of, um, development projects.
Speaker: The, the passion projects.
Speaker: I think that's at its core.
Speaker: I think if you're going to do anything as an artistic hobby or an artistic creation, you know, you want to sort of keep it true to yourself.
Speaker: You don't,
Speaker: And I think that's why I never sort of went or tried to go big with game developments and stuff, because I don't want to have to create something and then pander to what everybody else wants.
Speaker: You know, it's sort of like I've got a vision for what I want to do.
Speaker: And then, you know, you get people saying, oh, I get two less FPS than I should for this.
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: This game sucks.
Speaker: Zero out of 10.
Speaker: And then you get review bombed.
Speaker: And then they mass install my game and charge me 20 cents because it was made in Unity.
Speaker: So then they sent me a bill for $100 because they just install bombed me.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Oh my God, dude.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, so he started out on Stencil and then moved it to Unity where he finished it.
Speaker: And his art style obviously changed over time.
Speaker: But he found a way to use Spine, I think.
Speaker: And combine it with... Because he does... He did all the artwork, like hand-drawn everything.
Speaker: He's more an artist than a programmer.
Speaker: So he had people, you know, help him out with code and things like that to make it work.
Speaker: But anyway, so he's always iterating.
Speaker: And even though it's launched, he's still looking to add, like, more weapons and more, you know, stuff like that to it.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: when you were talking about kind of how it works and just, you know, making stuff, he does a lot of, a lot of like making new assets and animations and monsters and just, I think it's just fun for him.
Speaker: He's the only person I've seen take this long on a game and not seem like he's completely dead at the end of it.
Speaker: Um, cause I've seen a couple other people launch games that took them like five or six years to do.
Speaker: And they're just like burnt out and they feel like, um, committing, you know, suicide and mentally, you know, completely drained mentally.
Speaker: Um, yep.
Speaker: Some even go through that and don't finish.
Speaker: Um, right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if you ever heard of limit theory.
Speaker: Did you ever hear about that?
Speaker: Mm-mm.
Speaker: No, was it a game?
Speaker: Massive procedural game before sort of procedural games were all the rage.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so much promise, but so much scope and the scope just kept growing and growing.
Speaker: And then he started to experience the mental health problems and the burnout and everything that sort of comes from that.
Speaker: So he ended up having to, you know, cause he went through a kickstart.
Speaker: He was early days kickstarter.
Speaker: went through a Kickstarter campaign for it and everything.
Speaker: So it obviously fell through and there was a lot of rage about that and stuff too.
Speaker: But a lot of the, you know, hardcore people that sort of just kept following since the beginning were sort of, you know, always supportive of him saying, you know, we get it, you know, because of everything he went through.
Speaker: But yeah, that was entirely procedural.
Speaker: And yeah, like you said, you know, just so long working on it.
Speaker: And just the complete burnout and just, I don't know if he had suicidal thoughts or anything, but he got quite dark.
Speaker: And I think that's a trap that can be, that people fall into quite easy.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I followed a little development team.
Speaker: I think there was...
Speaker: Maybe five people working on it at the max.
Speaker: I think they had kickstarted the game.
Speaker: It was called ANNE.
Speaker: It is on Steam.
Speaker: And the team basically fell apart.
Speaker: It was in, I think it might have been in Early Access or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm looking at it now.
Speaker: It's still in Early Access apparently.
Speaker: Okay, but the guy is back to doing work on it.
Speaker: The main guy is actually... But, I mean, he took like a year or two off.
Speaker: They, you know... So, I followed that game forever.
Speaker: I thought it looked great.
Speaker: It was fun to play.
Speaker: And I love the art style.
Speaker: And, you know, it is what it is when you have to step away from something.
Speaker: You know, you have to do it for you, regardless of...
Speaker: you know, kind of the situation, but at least he's trying to make it right.
Speaker: Plus, you know, the project is pretty close to done, I think, at this point.
Speaker: I've played a few builds.
Speaker: I haven't beat it yet, but it's a blast to play.
Speaker: I just haven't gone through and finished it yet.
Speaker: And so I always check on these games.
Speaker: I'm like, okay, what are they doing?
Speaker: Are they coming back to it?
Speaker: Am I actually going to get a finished game at some point?
Speaker: Just kind of seeing what's up, and I saw that he had started posting updates again.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, this is great news.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, sometimes on projects, you just kind of have to take a brain break, as they call my son.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's in school, and they take what they call a brain break every so often to just kind of get up and walk around and relax your head, especially if you've been trying to work on something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um everybody needs a brain break now and again and sometimes that that time is much longer than you know a week or two yeah exactly i mean um in the case of limit theory like i was saying before you know he he went from doing an update every month to then two months and then it just became six months and then i don't think there was an update for a year or two and he basically said oh you know he had to step away from it all because of everything that he had to do to try and you know
Speaker: address his mental health and everything like that.
Speaker: Um, which I think is quite good because I mean, obviously you want to try and follow through with your game and, you know, you've committed to doing that as well, but you should never, I think be at the expense of yourself.
Speaker: I don't think it's healthy.
Speaker: Um, but he ended up, um, cause he couldn't continue it anymore.
Speaker: Just released all the source code.
Speaker: Oh, he did.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's, that's a good gesture.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Especially, you know, if you can't, because then it gives at least some people something to sort of work off if they want to continue it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, and I still think that's a better way to handle it, even though it might leave a sour taste in the mouth.
Speaker: I mean, that's what happened with Spacebase DF9 as well.
Speaker: Is that Link, is that the game you're talking about?
Speaker: Let me have a look.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: L theory.com.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I never heard of it.
Speaker: So if you look at some of the screenshots, visually beautiful game and it's, it's all procedural.
Speaker: All of that.
Speaker: 3d.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fully, fully 3d procedural, all the ship combinations and everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was really good.
Speaker: Had a lot of people psyched for it.
Speaker: But obviously, yeah.
Speaker: Fell through.
Speaker: But hopefully he's doing a lot better now and, you know, hopefully he's learned from it, how to develop something a little bit more longer term sort of pacing it.
Speaker: Cause he, he went, you know, tooth and nail right off the go, you know, he just dedicated so much time, you know, like 13, 14, 15 hour days and just plugging away so hardcore at it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I get it though.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: When you have a thing in your head and you just want to get it out, you know?
Speaker: Sometimes it will just drive you to put in hours and hours and hours.
Speaker: I wrote a couple of manuscripts that I had self-published one of them.
Speaker: But when you got something in your head like that, you just...
Speaker: You just want to sit down and you just want to like get it out, all of it at once.
Speaker: And it doesn't work like that.
Speaker: You know, you, you have to take breaks.
Speaker: You have to pace yourself.
Speaker: I think that's one of the most important things is, you know, you find a good pace that you can work at and then you hopefully can put it down for, you know, the rest of the day.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: And I think also,
Speaker: depends on personality but a lot of people are people pleasers as well and when you're developing especially if you do something like a kickstarter or early access and you see you've got 10 000 people that just bought your game and you've got you know 200 000 in the pocket and you start to sort of feel even though you had this plan there's a sudden pressure to get it out as soon as possible because i don't want to disappoint them um which again i get
Speaker: But like you were saying, and like I said earlier, you can't do it at the expense of yourself.
Speaker: Stick to your plan.
Speaker: You know, stick to your roadmap.
Speaker: If you need to push it out, it happens.
Speaker: I mean, it happens in projects in all aspects of IT.
Speaker: Not everything hits the deadline.
Speaker: That's just the reality of it.
Speaker: Software.
Speaker: Build your time in from the start.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Software.
Speaker: Build your time in from the start, but even then stress that it's, you know, preliminary.
Speaker: it could change subject to change.
Speaker: This is if nothing else happens.
Speaker: Cause I mean, all it takes is, you know, like COVID or any other sickness and you're out for a week or two and then everything falls behind.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, first and foremost, I think is just accepting and realizing first that, you know, you're always, even if you can't see it, you're going to have something that pops up and it's going to interfere with things.
Speaker: So just,
Speaker: make your initial plan and stick to it and just stick to it no matter what you might want to push it out early and you know i've got an extra few hours this evening i really want to tackle this problem no pull yourself back give yourself that health break that you may not know you need yeah you know go for go for a walk go outside get some sun um
Speaker: or, you know, if you've worked ages, probably nighttime by that point, but, you know, get some air.
Speaker: Like, you'd be surprised what a break does.
Speaker: I mean, the amount of coding problems that I have spent three hours or four hours just looking at, just trying to work it out, going, what is wrong with this?
Speaker: And I've gone away, and I've had a late lunch at, like, two o'clock, three o'clock, and I've just had, you know, a quick meal, and I've come back,
Speaker: And, you know, half an hour later I come back and then I solve the problem.
Speaker: And you just, they're cursing and flipping off your monitor.
Speaker: Cause you're just like, really?
Speaker: I spent three to four hours on this before and I couldn't get it.
Speaker: And now I've just done it in 10 minutes.
Speaker: And you know, there's some science in that as well.
Speaker: You need that, that refresher.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's almost like the tunnel vision, you know, the more you chase,
Speaker: what's at the end there, the more you sort of funnel yourself in, you miss the other stuff that's around you and the target just keeps getting further and further away without, you know, right.
Speaker: Yeah, that's, it's pretty nuts how that works.
Speaker: Um, but there's definitely some science behind that.
Speaker: And, um, I've often found, you know, walking away from a problem, uh, is a good way to solve it.
Speaker: It definitely happens.
Speaker: Um, so what, um, you said you're, you're teaching web development now.
Speaker: So, well, I wear a lot of hats at the moment.
Speaker: So as you would have seen on my LinkedIn, so I work for a training organization called Lumify Group.
Speaker: So it's basically like a college university, I guess, equivalent you would have over there in the States.
Speaker: But so we have different levels of accredited courses that we provide for students to learn.
Speaker: And that's a nationally recognized qualification.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: You know, we've got certificate three, certificate four and diploma.
Speaker: And then you have bachelor where you'd go to a university and stuff like that.
Speaker: So, but yeah, so we do a range of different courses.
Speaker: They're all like IT and management, you know, software development.
Speaker: We're doing a programming qualification at the moment, which is Python and Java.
Speaker: Then we've got the full stack web development.
Speaker: So I teach all of them.
Speaker: Um, cause I also, I also write them.
Speaker: So I sort of wear, like I said before, a lot of different hats.
Speaker: Um, cause there's a lot of, there's a lot of businesses out there that write course material and it's quite cheap.
Speaker: And for a lot of businesses, because they don't have the sort of technical knowledge, they just view all the, the mapping and they go, okay, cool.
Speaker: This, you know, has to teach X, Y, Z, one, two, three.
Speaker: I can see that these topics are covered.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: But when you actually have the skill set and you look in it, you look at it and you go, what the heck is this?
Speaker: Because it doesn't actually teach anything.
Speaker: It just talks about it.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So I write the courses for the organization and I teach some of them as well.
Speaker: So I'm a full stack web dev and the programming one at the moment as well.
Speaker: Oh, okay, cool.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: How long have you been doing that now?
Speaker: So as a career since 2015, so been going since then.
Speaker: I have done some classroom teaching in between as well because I'm a qualified elementary and high school teacher as well.
Speaker: So I did a stint during that as well before I actually came back.
Speaker: to doing the IT teaching because it's really that teaching and this core that I really like and the psychology, the learning, seeing the little light bulbs go off in people's heads.
Speaker: But IT is obviously a strong passion of mine and always has been as well.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Yeah, I do remember you having to take some sort of a break.
Speaker: Or, not a break, but I don't know what happened.
Speaker: But where you wound up teaching for a school versus teaching IT.
Speaker: What was the question?
Speaker: Sorry, you're wanting a comparison.
Speaker: Oh, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: I was just saying that I vaguely remember you talking about having to switch over to
Speaker: Oh yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there was a previous organization that I was training at and then they had to close up shop.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, so I trained all the students out and helped tie everything off.
Speaker: And then, yeah, I went to university for a few years and that's where I got, um, the, the teaching degree.
Speaker: So that's the formal, uh, elementary and high school degree.
Speaker: So I can teach both of those.
Speaker: And then I did a stint in the classroom there.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: teaching kids you know all the the core subjects including it um and then yeah there was another opportunity to to teach the the it again so i took that um and then that's evolved um into now also writing the material which i think is probably for me it's the best thing i love what i do um
Speaker: Cause like I said, the amount of times, you know, as an it professional, you go to an organization for some professional development and you look at the material and you go, no, that's not accurate.
Speaker: I get what they're trying to say, but that's, that's not quite right.
Speaker: Um, more often than, you know, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But because I'm sort of, I teach it, but I can write it as well.
Speaker: I actually get to directly influence that and give the best outcomes for the students, you know?
Speaker: So I, our courses, they have to follow a government training framework.
Speaker: So, you know, the government goes and meets with relevant parties and industry consultants and they determine, you know, oh, these are the requirements for this particular subject, this unit for this qualification.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: there might be 20 units that someone has to study in.
Speaker: In each one of those, they'll have a set of requirements.
Speaker: Some of them, you know, I look at it and you go, no, that's not really necessary.
Speaker: You know, there was, for example, there was a, because I know you know your web languages as well, don't you?
Speaker: So there was a unit on markup languages, but it was very HTML related because obviously it's a markup language.
Speaker: But then there was something about, I'm trying to remember what it was now.
Speaker: It was, sorry, what's weird?
Speaker: Oh no, that was on markup languages, not just like.
Speaker: Oh yeah, well, it was sort of an introductory unit to teach people HTML5 and XHTML because it's a good starting point to learn, you know, languages by then you mark up first.
Speaker: But the weirdest thing, like,
Speaker: They weren't weird.
Speaker: The weird thing was, I think it was in the XML component.
Speaker: They had to learn something about, what was it?
Speaker: It was a virtual reality markup language.
Speaker: And I'm just thinking, why?
Speaker: It's a markup language, sure, but it's got no contextual relevance.
Speaker: why, why do we need this?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: We are just not there yet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it was basically when you, you look it up, you know, it was, it was to do with, I don't even remember now.
Speaker: That's how irrelevant it was, but it was basically, it was something to do with like, you know, when you write your manifest files and stuff like that, which are automatically generated normally.
Speaker: So it's again, irrelevant.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, it was really, I think just to have context of, you know, this is something XML can be used for as well.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Um, but I don't get why they needed to, to know that it's not relevant.
Speaker: So yeah, but you know, being able to, you know, you might go to a third party and they might've written, excuse me, three, three pages of just random context, uh, just around that, which just explains what it is, but,
Speaker: is more than they ever needed to know for the level that they're studying.
Speaker: It just blows people's heads up because they don't understand what it's about.
Speaker: So, yeah, there's a lot of fun there having to pull apart stuff and work out to what level needs to be covered and how to sort of relate it and give it a context.
Speaker: So, you know, for that example, because it's irrelevant, I think, okay, how do I make it relevant?
Speaker: So then, you know, you make a part of a chapter talking about, you know, different types of markup languages and then providing an example.
Speaker: And then that sort of ticks the box.
Speaker: Yes, good.
Speaker: They understand that form of language.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Now, do you do any Android development or have you done any Android development?
Speaker: I did myself a brief...
Speaker: amount of Android development.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Using Java just with Android studio.
Speaker: I also did a little bit using, I don't know if it's, I don't think it's even in use anymore, but Cordova, Apache Cordova.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Cordova.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know how widely it's still used, but I don't know if it's widespread.
Speaker: I think it's still around, but I think, yeah.
Speaker: I think, is that the one that's called something else now?
Speaker: Apache Cordova?
Speaker: Maybe not.
Speaker: No, Cordova's still around.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: PhoneGap.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Oh, PhoneGap.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: PhoneGap.
Speaker: That was right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I've built some things in that as well, because obviously that's just a wrapper.
Speaker: So then you can utilize your existing...
Speaker: stack languages.
Speaker: So, you know, your HTML, CSS, and your JavaScript.
Speaker: And I mean, you can do all sorts of 2d games with that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, like I said before, that's where I did the, the star field that generates 500 different stars and saves the configuration.
Speaker: There's different temperatures and types and you can, um, you know, click on them and it zooms in, you get like a solar system and you can like set all the planet.
Speaker: And cause it was only just a debugging type, uh,
Speaker: extent that i got to but you know you had a little triangle as you ship and you'd click on one and get your pop-ups and uis that i couldn't do in construct 2 um when i had the freedom to code it all myself so yeah yeah um yeah so that was that was good fun i had to um pause that for a while though because it just started getting a bit too intensive to run in the browser um
Speaker: but I still got the script around and then there was the, um, I actually built it for a, um, uh, it was a portfolio piece for when I was going for employment, I built a little, uh, it was almost like a 2d top down splinter cell, uh, stealth game.
Speaker: So, so it was sort of a grid based maze that would generate and you'd have two guards walking around that try to find you.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Once they see you at the end of the corridor, you know, they start running after you because, you know, they sound the alarm.
Speaker: So you've got to try and then try and make it to the exit without being spotted or caught.
Speaker: So that was a bit easier to write in Spawn.
Speaker: That sounds like fun.
Speaker: What about games?
Speaker: Have you played any games lately?
Speaker: Yeah, so playing a lot of Starfield at the moment.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Full stop.
Speaker: You haven't?
Speaker: You don't want spoilers?
Speaker: I have not played Starfield yet.
Speaker: I am... I'm giving it the year.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: the track record of games coming out, um, in the past, say three to four years has been terrible.
Speaker: And they release seemingly half done or unfinished in areas.
Speaker: So I've taken to not buying a game until it's been out for a year.
Speaker: And then I'll buy it because it'll have, you know, it'll have been patched.
Speaker: Content it's missing will have been added in.
Speaker: Hopefully.
Speaker: So I've looked at it.
Speaker: I'm still kind of watching the news in relation to all the various backlash over various things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a bit silly.
Speaker: It has mixed reviews.
Speaker: Well, with some of the things, okay, like
Speaker: If it's game related, it totally makes sense.
Speaker: The planets, without playing it, I don't know, but I've seen and heard that they're very unfinished.
Speaker: There's a lot of loading screens.
Speaker: I think the problem is that they hyped the game really high, made it sound like it was going to be the next No Man's Sky,
Speaker: and then in implementation, it's not.
Speaker: Well, it depends.
Speaker: Oh, sorry.
Speaker: No, I was just going to say, and I think that that's part of the backlash.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of it being reality versus expectation.
Speaker: I think the danger with any sort of hype
Speaker: I mean, it's a danger, but it's also an inherent benefit because hype is great for marketing because you say a few choice things and everyone takes what they want from it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But that's also an inherent risk when it launches because then they go, hang on, you said X, Y, Z. This isn't the case in my perspective.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's the danger you run into.
Speaker: But, you know, ultimately, if they've made a sale off it, it's successful marketing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love marketing, if you can't tell.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: But yeah, it is basically, if I was to describe it, it is very much a NASA mixed with No Man's Sky, mixed with your typical Bethesda single-player experience, I would compare them.
Speaker: It's not purely a No Man's Sky.
Speaker: And I mean, if it was to be another No Man's Sky, I don't think it would be as good because then you've just got to clone
Speaker: No one wants a clone.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: It wouldn't have done nearly as well.
Speaker: But as far as... If it was more like No Man's Sky in some aspects, I'd have been more interested in it.
Speaker: Mainly because... Well, it is.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: But... You can't seamlessly fly from planet to surface.
Speaker: It's a loading screen.
Speaker: You do have a nice animation of your ship taking off.
Speaker: but it's not seamless to and fro.
Speaker: The planet, the spaceship is used in space for combat purposes.
Speaker: That's probably one of my more gripes.
Speaker: The space combat feels a little bit swimmy.
Speaker: Everything's sort of just swimming around as a tadpole.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It doesn't feel spacey.
Speaker: Like it should be more.
Speaker: It doesn't feel as spacey.
Speaker: It's sort of,
Speaker: your ship sort of has a sweet spot in terms of its speed, whereby you can then obviously pivot a lot easier.
Speaker: And if you go too fast, obviously your turning suffers as a result, which is normal.
Speaker: But as a result, a lot of the AI ships as well sort of try to stay in that sweet spot.
Speaker: So you end up sort of doing these like left and right sort of wiggles to a degree, trying to line them up and stuff.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's weird.
Speaker: I mean, so the space combat was kind of weird too.
Speaker: Like I prefer a little more realism where, you know, using thrusters and things like that to maneuver.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And your inertia carries you forward.
Speaker: So you pivot and thrust in the opposite direction to counter.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'm the same.
Speaker: You should check out if you like that sort of stuff.
Speaker: check out there's a there's a procedural game called avorian a-v-o-r-i-o-n it's it's sort of like the x series combined with eve online oh but you can play it single player or multiplayer you can have stations your ships all you build it all your excuse me you build your ship all yourself like space engineers um you mine asteroids and blow them to bits but
Speaker: it generates all the factions and the space around you randomly.
Speaker: And there's like 10,000 odd sectors because it's all procedural.
Speaker: So, but as far as to go back to the, the star field being like no man's sky, it is, you know, you choose any one of the planets that get generated and you can choose where to land on that planet.
Speaker: When you land there, the planet itself has a few different locations.
Speaker: It can be randomly spawned.
Speaker: to go explore.
Speaker: So everywhere you sort of land on a planet is like a massive set of grids, basically.
Speaker: And, you know, any number of those can be different locations.
Speaker: Those locations, just like No Man's Sky, are built off prefabs, basically.
Speaker: So, you know, you might go to three different planets and you'll find the, you might happen to find the same looking mine,
Speaker: uh, twice, you know, but that's the reality of the procedural generation, because unless you're going to generate even the, the models for those procedurally, that's a different story, but, um, and you still got to scan all your flora and your fauna and, uh, your resources, uh, you build your outposts on it as well.
Speaker: And you mine the resources out of the ground and you can set up cargo networks between your, um,
Speaker: your base is there.
Speaker: I haven't done that part yet.
Speaker: Um, okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But yeah, so like, so that all sounds like no man's sky to me.
Speaker: Cause I played no man's sky.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I'd say the part that isn't is the, the, the fluidity between going from space to planet and back up, um, having to, having to fly to space to land on a different part of the planet, um, and not being able to just fly through the planet.
Speaker: And again, it's, it's the expectation versus reality.
Speaker: When they marketed it, it seemed to sound more like No Man's Sky in that regard.
Speaker: And honestly, there are parts about No Man's Sky that I do not like.
Speaker: And it's aesthetics.
Speaker: I don't like the...
Speaker: sort of like cheesy alien-y kind of aesthetic.
Speaker: So No Man's Sky that looked and felt more like Starfield would have worked for me.
Speaker: I'd have gladly played it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think it might hit a sweet spot for you still, but like you said... It probably would.
Speaker: But I think, yeah, I'll give it some time and, you know... There are bugs.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: It's Bethesda.
Speaker: I mean, I also don't like the fact that Bethesda seems to rely on its modding community to make its game better.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good topic.
Speaker: I'm sort of 50-50, but...
Speaker: not because I like to sit on the fence.
Speaker: It hurts.
Speaker: I think you do.
Speaker: I think you're a fence sitter.
Speaker: Take that back.
Speaker: You don't know me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I just, I'm very much a devil's advocate.
Speaker: So it's like, you tell me something, I'll pitch the opposite because I like to consider all angles.
Speaker: So sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So for me,
Speaker: What was the topic again?
Speaker: I've lost my train of thought again.
Speaker: Let me think.
Speaker: Shit.
Speaker: No Man's Sky.
Speaker: Oh, modding.
Speaker: Modding.
Speaker: Bethesda modding making the games better.
Speaker: Bethesda and modding.
Speaker: Because, I mean, I get yes, but you've got to remember as well, compared to the early 90s and the late 80s, games are so much more complicated now.
Speaker: So there's always going to be more bugs.
Speaker: A lot of people like to look back and go, oh, you know, when I used to play Roller Caster Tycoon back in 93, 94, whenever that came out,
Speaker: It wouldn't have been that.
Speaker: It would have been like 98.
Speaker: But, you know, a lot less bugs in, you know, one or two patches and it was golden.
Speaker: You know, it's like, yeah, but that game was less complicated.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Also, fun fact, that game was written in assembly.
Speaker: Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker: There's nothing written in assembly that is not that complicated.
Speaker: True, true.
Speaker: Assembly in itself is complicated.
Speaker: But, um...
Speaker: In terms of compared to, you know, a game written in assembly from the 90s compared to something that's written in C++ now.
Speaker: Like a lot of the gameplay mechanics and stuff are so much more complicated.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: So, you know, you're going to get a lot of problems as a result of that.
Speaker: I mean, and you've only got so much time because these days you've got people with pitchforks banging down your door if you're 10 minutes late releasing your game on the day it was meant to.
Speaker: Well, part of that is that these companies are beholden to shareholders.
Speaker: And you have the shareholders in the background, you know, release the game, release the game, because, you know, they make money when they release games.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: So then, you know, they got that pressure.
Speaker: Then on the front end, you know, they've gone and marketed the game out the ass to crazy, you know, crazy levels.
Speaker: And then they wonder why they get backlash when their game doesn't hold up to standards or, you know.
Speaker: yeah yeah yeah no i understand that so it's um kind of like they're they're stuck you know doing a rock and hard place of their own creation well that's that's it you know either way someone's going to be angry so it's like right yeah you can't please everyone so you got to choose your stakeholder because i mean they're the ones that funded you in the first place so right um but in terms of the bethesda and
Speaker: needing people to make their games good you you could argue as well though that and this is my perspective of it i think bethesda make great core experiences i think they build really great frameworks for you to build off of that's the way that i sort of view it i mean you know could there be a bit more q a yeah um not q a q a sorry
Speaker: But there could be more, you know, sure.
Speaker: But I mean, you know, do you really want to delay your game for another 12 months, lose more hype, lose more audience?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And your stakeholders want it out as well, especially if you have to keep delaying it beforehand anyway, because the 6th of September wasn't the original date.
Speaker: So, you know, you got all of that as well.
Speaker: But, you know, ultimately, I think every Bethesda game that's been released from Morrowind onwards,
Speaker: You know, so you've got your Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, and now Starfield.
Speaker: They build a great core experience.
Speaker: You know, you've got good character development to a degree.
Speaker: You've got beautiful world design that inspires.
Speaker: You've got, you know, your basic gameplay mechanics are generally good.
Speaker: They're everything that, they're fun to play off the bat.
Speaker: Bugswithstanding, they're fun to play.
Speaker: So they still need fixes, obviously.
Speaker: and a bit more polish and yes, people need to do that.
Speaker: But for me, I guess it's because, you know, you might be the same as a developer though, but I, I just see it as an opportunity.
Speaker: It's like, Oh cool.
Speaker: I get to, I can go do this now.
Speaker: You know, it's like, Oh, they didn't add a survival system.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: They've got food and water in the game.
Speaker: I'll go make a survival system.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, Oh, I can change the textures of this.
Speaker: I mean,
Speaker: They joke around in Starfield about how sandwiches have so much worth.
Speaker: It's like, cool, I'll go make some Subway textures.
Speaker: Make a Subway ship.
Speaker: You know, you can go deliver your sandwiches.
Speaker: So you sort of get this freedom with that because the scope is so open.
Speaker: You're obviously always going to have problems with such an open scope as well.
Speaker: But I think for what they do, I think they do it really, really well.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fair.
Speaker: There are entire games built on Skyrim, built on top of Skyrim.
Speaker: Yeah, I've downloaded a couple of them that are fantastic.
Speaker: You know, entire campaigns with all new, you know, characters and, you know, graphic mods and all that stuff.
Speaker: So, you know, the game looks way better than Bethesda ever intended.
Speaker: So I guess on one hand, I have to applaud...
Speaker: Bethesda for allowing the kind of creativity for somebody to pick up their game and then make a whole other game or, you know, make, fix something that, oh, you know, it could use this.
Speaker: So let's do that.
Speaker: You know, like you were saying with the.
Speaker: with the survival to tweak to your personal taste it's not necessarily broken but you can make it yeah right exactly you can make it yours um and they've done that i think pretty much with every game to my knowledge um so i do have to give them some props for that because that's um a lot of games don't do that you know you get the experience that they make um granted
Speaker: Those other games also tend to try to make it more polished.
Speaker: And I think that in some aspects Bethesda has gotten lazy on the polish end of things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're like, oh, it mostly works.
Speaker: Throw it out there.
Speaker: You know, expecting the community to polish it now that, you know, they've gotten such a large community that does that kind of thing.
Speaker: They just enjoy it or whatever.
Speaker: But the fact that a community can polish it and, you know, it's not against the terms of service, you know, they provide tools,
Speaker: for the community to do it, I think is, uh, that's pretty awesome.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: And I think an important thing to reflect on as well is we don't necessarily know that, you know, they view QA as a sort of a lazy thing and go, well, let's just throw it out there and let them fix it.
Speaker: Like you said, they're, they're, they're between two rocks.
Speaker: You've got the fans, they're knocking the door down and then you've got the stakeholders behind the other door saying, no, release it.
Speaker: Shove it out.
Speaker: Shove it out.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: I think anyone who's an inherently an artist or a creative wants to have their vision be a hundred percent perfect and will struggle with the reality of, well, we've got to get it out at some point and it's not entirely how we want it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There are concessions you make when you, when you deliver.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, I mean, I think that's, yeah, I reckon part of, sorry, continue.
Speaker: Oh, I was just going to say, I think that's a normal part of software development.
Speaker: You have to, you have to find the, the sweet spot.
Speaker: Sweet spot.
Speaker: As you said, well, that's it.
Speaker: So, so it's not necessarily like, you know, I'm sure there will be some developers that sort of go, well, you know, we've done enough.
Speaker: I think the context is the important thing.
Speaker: They might go, Oh, you know, we've done enough QA testing for now.
Speaker: You know, we know there's some bugs, but, eh,
Speaker: they'll fix it.
Speaker: That I would argue is sort of a lazy approach, but if it's sort of, you know, well, we know there's bugs.
Speaker: We need to try and do 12 hour days, 14 hour days to try and smack as many of these as possible.
Speaker: But ultimately we have to release by this date.
Speaker: If that's the internal discussion happening, if it ships with bugs after that, I don't think that's laziness.
Speaker: I think that's purely just, you know, this was the last date we could push back to.
Speaker: We've only got so many hours and so many staff because the other flip side is, you know,
Speaker: If they go around and talk to the developers and say, okay, well, we need you all to do 20 hour days for the next two weeks.
Speaker: So I know all these bugs, then they're going to get all the negative press and people wanting to leave or whatever else because of the massive crunch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, CD Projekt Red got in the, in the, they got in the weeds.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, the funny thing about CD Projekt Red is they were, they were sort of the gamers darling as far as development houses, because,
Speaker: When they made a game, they put it out and it was great.
Speaker: And then they supported the game and put out more stuff for it.
Speaker: And I think when they came out with... What was it?
Speaker: What was the game they launched?
Speaker: No, the one after that.
Speaker: Oh, Cyberpunk.
Speaker: So when they came out with Cyberpunk... Cyberpunk was a half-finished mess.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: They took the time to make it right after they stepped in the shit.
Speaker: And I still haven't bought it yet, but from what I can tell, the game is fantastic now.
Speaker: Obviously, no game is bug-free.
Speaker: I expect there to be bugs.
Speaker: I expect every game to have some sort of bugs.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: I run into them playing a game from 2008 and the game is still super fun.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm playing Dead Space and even the even the non remastered version is great.
Speaker: Um, yeah, but you know, it still has bugs and, um, issues and things like that, that just, you know, happens.
Speaker: So I, I don't expect Bethesda to put out a game that's completely bug free and, um, or any of that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And if, if they released a game where their campaign is solid, um, um,
Speaker: And, you know, I think, like I said, a lot of it had to do with the hype and the expectation versus the reality.
Speaker: Nobody expected it to be Skyrim in space.
Speaker: I think everybody expected it to be...
Speaker: No man's sky with better, with better graphics and more of a realistic approach.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, to a point.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think it's a blend.
Speaker: Everybody was like, Holy shit.
Speaker: All the loading screens, you know, nobody was expecting that.
Speaker: Everybody was expecting more fluidity, you know, going up to space and going down to planets kind of like no man's sky, you know?
Speaker: Um, in fact, part of the fun for me of no man's sky is just flying into and out of planets.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, conceptually it is a really hard thing to pull off though.
Speaker: Um, very few games have done it.
Speaker: I can only think of two.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Uh, no man's sky.
Speaker: Most people would only think of no man's sky, but I think there's another one called, uh, Evacron.
Speaker: I don't know if you've heard of that.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: that was an easy game as well um i'll actually put it into the oh yeah do that i'll get a link for you i want to take a peek um but yeah i'm trying to add stuff we've talked about here so i can stick it in my show notes but um yeah yeah you're fine um i may have to uh jump off soon as well yeah yeah i figured this is pretty wild yeah i just had a call from my my boss in the background there um
Speaker: you wanted to update me on something.
Speaker: But yeah, there's a bunch of those different Evocron games.
Speaker: But yeah, it's an indie game as well.
Speaker: But yeah, that one, I think it's that one, Mercenary, that I linked you to, but it's got the seamless planet to space and a realistic scale, so it takes you quite a while to fly to the planet and down.
Speaker: But even on that page there, if you look at the screenshots, you can
Speaker: you can see how there's, you know, a planet side and a space side as well.
Speaker: And yeah, they're all, that's all seamless.
Speaker: So you can fly up and fly down to it.
Speaker: And then, you know, before No Man's Sky, that's the only one I can think of that ever really did it.
Speaker: Yeah, honestly, I can't think of many games that have done that.
Speaker: So I, I also, I understand that that is very, very difficult to do.
Speaker: So yeah, cause there, there has only been a couple, I've seen some, some sort of development where, you know, they're making a system that can do it.
Speaker: But I don't think that, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you would think that, uh,
Speaker: a large company like Bethesda with a whole bunch of programmers could pull something off, but it's definitely, you know, a difficult system based on the fact that there's only two games that we can come up with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I think, I think one of the bigger challenges, I think, I mean, obviously without being able to see any of the backend, I think it's mainly because it's not all procedural.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: is the biggest sort of stumbling block because then you sort of, if the entire game was procedural, then you would have a lot of your core functions building everything procedurally and you would have all your garbage collection and you would build in everything you needed to progressively generate and remove stuff as part of that.
Speaker: Whereas if you've got sort of a star field where some things are set and some things that aren't,
Speaker: then it's sort of, you know, like I said, I can't entirely say without seeing the backend code, but I think it's harder than because then you've got to sort of switch between two different methods of handling things.
Speaker: And, you know, how do you sort of marry those two together?
Speaker: So the traditional loading screen is very much just, you know, cut everything and then you can,
Speaker: kill any existing functions and then start to load all your new stuff.
Speaker: So I think it's very much a clean way to handle it.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: But yes, obviously everyone hates loading screens.
Speaker: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker: It's not No Man's Sky, damn it.
Speaker: No, yeah.
Speaker: I think it will scratch that itch.
Speaker: If you're like me and you hated the idea of going to a planet and seeing, you know, these, everything that looks sort of
Speaker: claymation-y to a degree and you find your first aliens and they're like a frog right yeah i didn't you know and i think i i mean i've played 100 hours of starfield so far oh wow um there are bugs but and i i can't say i've gone to a large variety of planets and really 100 surveyed them i've probably done that for 20 odd but across those 20 odd
Speaker: Apart from buildings, because they're more realistic planets, I think everything is more spaced out and sporadic to a degree where you don't feel like every planet you go to is such a cookie cutter.
Speaker: Whereas with No Man's Sky, you know, because you've played No Man's Sky, there's very few sort of types of foliage or trees.
Speaker: or creature and you know you can play for several hours go to different planets and more feasibly run into the exact same thing you've seen already just with a different name yeah that's true there's more space between everything in starfield because the planets are more sort of barren because that's what planets usually are um yeah so
Speaker: I think that's where it sort of becomes a little bit more enjoyable because there's fewer earth-like planets.
Speaker: So you get a lot more.
Speaker: Yes, Jonathan, things like that.
Speaker: Diversity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can't land on those though.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what I mean.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You've got these.
Speaker: But yeah, you know, you go land on a moon.
Speaker: It's a moon.
Speaker: It's not going to have, you know,
Speaker: So you're not going to run into another frog alien that looks the same as this other one.
Speaker: You'll have some stations and some pirates and stuff and, you know, some caves and a mine or two.
Speaker: And then you can pick up where you left off and then fly to the other side of the planet and get relatively the same experience.
Speaker: But the buildings look the same because obviously they're not procedural.
Speaker: But they at least look more realistic and nicer than the No Man's Sky ones.
Speaker: Oh, gotcha.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I assume you can't edit the ground and things like that like you can in No Man's.
Speaker: No, it's not voxel-based.
Speaker: So that's the other caveat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you can build on top of it, but that's about it.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: Oh, so you can at least build stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, there's full outpost building.
Speaker: Yeah, you can build ships.
Speaker: Yeah, you can build ships.
Speaker: They've got like a modular snap system.
Speaker: You can choose like your corridors and gangways and cargo modules and engines and all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: Yeah, someone actually abused that.
Speaker: They made a ship because they found that the enemies, they all target your center of mass.
Speaker: So he made a ship.
Speaker: With no center of mass.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so they just ship through the middle of it and he never gets hit, really.
Speaker: That's nice.
Speaker: Yeah, but, yeah, you know, you've got a full outpost building and you build extractors for minerals to pull them up out of the ground and full, like, habitat domes and stuff like that and you get a crew member on your ship or you can also put them in an outpost and they manage the outpost for you.
Speaker: Hmm, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, go from there.
Speaker: That sounds fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would say I haven't looked at the Outpost building, but I think it's maybe not quite as diverse as the No Man's Sky ones, because obviously they have landing pads and other stuff like that as well.
Speaker: But there are a lot more realistic sort of modules, I think.
Speaker: in Starfield.
Speaker: It scratches that particular itch for me where I like to explore endlessly and go off the beaten path.
Speaker: I want to explore moons and planets and chart the wilderness, so to speak.
Speaker: And that feels more authentic in Starfield to me than it does in No Man's Sky.
Speaker: Graphically, it's really nice as well.
Speaker: And the art style scratches the NASA punk that they call it itch.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: because that's what I like, not sort of cartoon plasticine-y type.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: That was my biggest gripe with No Man's Sky.
Speaker: I was actually expecting it based on some of the, you know, I didn't know about the aliens and stuff when I started playing it, and I'm like, man, this is kind of, you know, like you said, kind of plasticky kind of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They've got some kind of like, I don't know, kind of eighties vibe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: I mean, I get the, I do think the aliens to a degree are realistic because the different environmental conditions would result in different development of life on those planets.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it would obviously develop a lot differently and be very weird, but yeah, like you said, it's more,
Speaker: the textures and the art style of it itself and how they're comprised as a package sort of doesn't seem as crisp and realistic as you might want from a game that, you know, you can go into space up and down and stuff.
Speaker: Whereas, yeah, like I said, I think Starfield hits that sweet spot of it's futuristic, but still modern.
Speaker: It comes across as viable.
Speaker: It's almost like a Star Trek versus Star Wars, whereas, you know, one's fantasy, one's semi-realistic.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So for me, yeah, that's that.
Speaker: But yeah, like you were saying, wait, wait, and pick it up later when there's been some patches.
Speaker: I've run into a few bugs in my 100 hours.
Speaker: My ship is frequently chased by an asteroid.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you're in space and you're fine and you're flying around doing whatever and then you go to jump to another system and you get sort of the cutscene animation and there's an asteroid lurking behind you in the cutscene as you're flying away you just need like
Speaker: just need some jaws music and it'll be perfect.
Speaker: It'd be great.
Speaker: Some alien music.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, um, yeah.
Speaker: And you know, I had a, I had a quest that, um, I had to walk a long way for, because there's no ground vehicles, um, which is a point of contention.
Speaker: Uh, I understand the reasoning behind it, but,
Speaker: it does take a long time to get to some places.
Speaker: Um, you know, planet hopping at 1.3, uh, gravity, uh, two Ks away, you know, it takes a couple of minutes and some people's idea of fun is not that, um, whereas, you know, if we could have just like an all-terrain little segue, you know, um, go bunny hopping off craters or something that'd speed it up and be a bit more fun.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: But where else are we going with that?
Speaker: I got really excited about the idea of a Segway.
Speaker: Oh, I don't know.
Speaker: Now I wish I knew.
Speaker: Anyway.
Speaker: Next time we'll talk about Star Citizen.
Speaker: There's not much to talk about on that because there's not much to talk about.
Speaker: I mean, I guess if you've played it, you know, the Star Citizen would tell you that it's the best thing since sliced bread.
Speaker: But, yeah.
Speaker: $400 million.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I still... Yeah.
Speaker: I feel like there's the potential, obviously, there, but it's very much like, you know,
Speaker: It's like someone wanting to go to a candy shop and just buy one of every single type of candy.
Speaker: But I think star citizen is a box in that store with one piece of every type of candy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you get everything you want, but it's in a much smaller format than what you originally wanted.
Speaker: So, you know,
Speaker: I think it's like a playground.
Speaker: You've got a little bit of everything you want to do there, but because it's such a small playground, I think you're going to, for most people, inevitably get bored.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think, I think it's, uh, I'm going to go hijack a ship and go shoot people.
Speaker: The definition of scope creep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I didn't have high hopes for it anyway, because Chris Roberts, um, cause he's, I,
Speaker: I only knew about it because of, um, I played the, um, the other games that he had with, uh, Mark Hamill that was in it.
Speaker: Wing commander series.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I played those and I heard that this was going to be like a new wing commander.
Speaker: And I'm like, Oh yeah, great.
Speaker: You know, I signed up for the beta and whatnot and sat and waited.
Speaker: I still get emails.
Speaker: Um, and I've, I've seen, I have a friend that bought a ship and,
Speaker: you know, occasionally plays it.
Speaker: But it's like, he loves it, you know, even though it's not done.
Speaker: But I'm not going to pay money for that kind of, I'm not going to invest in that kind of thing because it's an investment at this point.
Speaker: It's not a game.
Speaker: It's an investment.
Speaker: And it's not, to me, it's not an investment that's going to ever produce games.
Speaker: It hasn't yet, and, you know... It won't.
Speaker: I'm glad I didn't... Yeah.
Speaker: One of those people that bought the $10,000 Constellation or whatever.
Speaker: I just... I can't even, you know.
Speaker: I played this game a long time ago called Entropy?
Speaker: Entropy?
Speaker: Universe?
Speaker: The MMO one?
Speaker: Yeah, before it was a universe.
Speaker: It was one game.
Speaker: Entropy Universe I think Let me see Entropy Universe Entropia Universe Oh that's not it What the hell Built in Triengine 2 Oh Entropia That's the word Yeah It used to be just one MMO Right
Speaker: And I guess they've kind of branched it out to have like different planets and people can build planets and stuff.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But it was such a cash sink.
Speaker: Like it was kind of like you basically had to put real money in to get anywhere because you did this thing called sweating monsters where you ran around and tried to collect sweat off these creatures that would not.
Speaker: You could then turn around and sell for money.
Speaker: And that was how newbies got started.
Speaker: So it's Einli fans.
Speaker: Yeah, it was like hours and hours and hours and hours that you'd have to put in to get anywhere.
Speaker: I think I put in like $10 once to advance a little bit.
Speaker: But that was it.
Speaker: I did play it a lot for a while.
Speaker: And there was a good group of people that you could talk to.
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: It just...
Speaker: I petered out, you know, I moved on to games that actually didn't require you to dump so much money in to get started.
Speaker: And really, it was kind of built around the whole, you can make money in game and then take your money out.
Speaker: Like that whole kind of real cash thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I never saw anybody take money out.
Speaker: No, very money driven.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: yeah definitely yep yep all right dude i think we are just about at the end of this you got anything you want to shout out or um no no i i think i think we're all good um i'd i'd called out some of my colleagues and work and stuff like that but we were talking about game development so a bit off key um off topic but yeah no so i'm i'm all good just uh cheers for inviting me onto the
Speaker: the podcast good to chat as always and really hash out some of the unity issues and really talk about a lot of the behind the scenes of you know the implications of that I think it was a pretty good discussion and good way to get different perspectives yeah maybe I should do do like a gaming segment or something do like occasional episodes where we can just pop on and talk about gaming or gaming news or you know
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's up to you.
Speaker: I mean, because I, you know, excuse me, full stack and everything as well.
Speaker: So we can talk about, you know, programming and cybersecurity and AI because those are big topics at the moment as well.
Speaker: So especially AI.
Speaker: See, look, we could do a whole podcast on that because I think some cases are good for it, but there needs to be constraints.
Speaker: Oh, I completely concur with that.
Speaker: But yeah, we'll schedule another one in a while, and maybe we'll get on and talk about some other topics.
Speaker: That'll be fun.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, too easy.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Citizen Coder Podcast.
Speaker: You can find links to anything we covered in the show notes.
Speaker: If you'd like to sponsor the show, you can reach out to me at info at citizencodercast.com or hit me up on Twitter.
Speaker: Thanks, and as always, I'll see you next time.
