SootySootySoot [any]

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 10th, 2023

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  • hardware being ever faster is balanced by software being ever more bloated

    This is the key, really. I get that for a while, developers spent a lot of time and effort on optimising stuff to a tee, but we very much now go the other way, and developers will increase software size 10-fold before they spend a couple days work to make it actually efficient.

    Games nowadays will just include a 4GB texture for every dirty brick wall before they think about coding a shader for a prettier, smaller, less GPU-load, effect.

    Adobe Acrobat Reader is now about a gigabyte. To read PDFs. Yet far as I can tell outwardly the PDF format hasn’t changed in two decades, when the Reader was more like 10MB.

    So many modern days programs package in whole-ass web browser engines for like, one screen.







  • As someone who has made teeny weeny tiny games for game jams and stuff, I really think as a single person, at least to start, it’s good to aim very small and focus on what you’re passionate about. If you find something you enjoy making, that will be all the difference. Nobody starts off good at making stuff, and most game devs just have a history of repeatedly getting absorbed into a project and coming out knowing more, that’s all it is. There’s only one reason I code professionally now: Over years, I every couple of months went out of my way to find a bunch of interesting things I wanted to code as a hobby. That was all.

    Sprites and artistry are where I seriously fall over in my game dev projects. I tend to focus on avoiding that as much as possible, and if you start looking, you’ll be surprised how many successful indie games (at least initially) really cheap out on too many art assets. But the other thing to remember is there are tons of digital artists out there looking to get involved in stuff, and they’re often friendly lots. It’s okay to enjoy one aspect of game development, and go looking for other people to collaborate with. It’s something I intend to try more in coming years.

    Doing something that interests you, and working with people you get on with. Will get you a thousand times further than any amount of willing yourself into doing work you hate.