General Discussion
Welcome to Lemmy.World General!
This is a community for general discussion where you can get your bearings in the fediverse. Discuss topics & ask questions that don't seem to fit in any other community, or don't have an active community yet.
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- [email protected] - Into video games? Here's a place to discuss them!
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0. See: Rules for Users.
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I don't think it has ever changed for me. I may sure to grab 2 - 3 books everytime I drop by the library. I try to finish them in three weeks and the cycle continues.
Great bonsai! Just can't do that at my house due to the kids.
Nice, thanks to audiobooks I've been able to keep up with reading somewhat, but not as much since I was a kid. What is your favorite genre or style of book?
I just check my story graph and it says: "Mainly reads fiction books that are adventurous, mysterious, and dark."
I thought it was mostly sci-fi or fantasy but I guess there are more genres in my read list.
The bonsai and centerpiece
I'm big into hobby game development at the minute, got into it during the pandemic because I'd been wondering how video games work since I was about 4 years old, and it turns out it's quite complicated! But I spent a couple of years dipping a toe in here and there, learning one of the big popular engines (Unity), and putting out some truly godawful games as game jam entries.
Then after some frustrations with Unity a few weeks back, Mastodon convinced me to give Godot a try instead. So now I'm learning a whole new engine that works in a very different way, but it's going sort of ok considering.
I just love to make stuff, so there's the games but in my other life I'm a craft YouTuber so also obsess over knitting, crochet, cross stitch, sewing, needle felting, air dry clay...you name it I'll probably give it a whirl. Making stuff is the BEST!
Restoring old tools/machines. I'm don't know why its so fun, but its both relaxing and educational.
What's a recent tool/machine you've restored? I really appreciate old machines and try to keep them going, but I've not really gone too much into the restoration side.
I was making chainmail jewelry and I really enjoyed it. I had to put it on hold because I can't handle the craft show part of it.
I'm also making my own game. Learning as I go. Haven't made it very far yet but I'm learning something every day and I love it.
Crafts and games? Hi, we are now friends. What sort of game are you working on?
Probably one that will only interest me lol I wrote a story years ago, and /nosleep kept not letting me post it, so I decided to try a different approach. It was going to be an idle-city management type thing but it turned into a crude rpg. I'm proud that I'm working on it, but I don't even know if I'll share it. Guess it depends on what the family says after they play it.
So, ok it's obviously up to you and I'm not gonna pressure you to share. But allow me this small rant, because I keep seeing people say they don't have enough to share yet or nobody will care about their game.
I hang around in various gamedev communities, here on Lemmy, over on Mastodon, various Discords etc etc, as well as various communities for other kinds of making stuff (fibre crafts mostly), and the one thing they all have in common is people love to see what everyone else is working on and encourage each other. You just need to take a look at any fledgling creative community on here to know that "what are you working on?" is the top getting-to-know-you prompt.
My Mastodon posts are just a series of "look I made the world's most basic 3d model in Blender" or "now a thing appears in my game if you press this button!", small updates like that. Because I'm proud and want to share, but also because I want other people to see these tiny bits of slow newbie progress and realise it's ok to show off their own small progress too. Making games is HARD and even the tiny successes are worth celebrating!
(Ok I'm done, sorry you had to be the target of all that π )
Nah you're fine. I understand what you mean. I was crazy proud I managed to get a button to do exactly what I wanted it to do.
I'm learning to have healthy interactions about myself. My mother always shit on everything I did, so I expect everyone to. The nothing I ever do is worthwhile attitude.
This time though, I have nothing to share because I got frustrated with tilemap palette not working properly on my title screen and since this issue involves literal thousands of tiny files, I deleted the entire project to start over instead. My first version of the game, which includes the click able button, is currently locked away in my desktop computer with a dead graphics card I bought only 6 months ago. I'm currently waiting for a replacement.
I will definitely join the game dev communities. I only started working on game making 2 months ago, and my desktop has been out of commission for 1 of those. I'm only just learning the names of things/people, titles, etc. I had nothing to search for yet!
Congrats on your button! No mean feat lol.
Yeah I get you. Same deal here (like, EXACT same deal, thanks mother) so I have rants like the above one at myself on a regular basis to remind me that I'm a real person, the things I do are worth doing, and I'm not somehow lesser than everyone else. Eventually it turns out if you keep telling yourself these things, they start to stick more and you end up telling other people these things too!
Sucks about your computer, there's nothing more frustrating than starting a new hobby or project and then losing the ability to work on it. Ack. I do keep backups of everything and also have a repo on Bitbucket so in theory if my laptop explodes nothing will be trapped on it, but actually replacing hardware is the tricky bit. Hope your replacement gets here soon, I'd love to see what you've been making :)
p.s. the community at that first link I put in the previous comment has a pinned post with links to all sorts of related places, might be useful to you when you get going again.
Thanks! It's sad how many of us there are though.
I was able to upload all my assets to my Google drive so I still have those, but I use unity and I didn't know how to make a backup of my project. But since I've changed directions anyway, that project is now useless to me.
That's a relief at least!
When you get going again I'd really really recommend looking into version control and specifically Git. It's free, it's easy to learn, and it means you've got a way to back up your project but also keep a log of changes. If something is broken and you give up and want to flip a table you can just roll the project back to the last time it worked, if your computer is borked you can just clone the project to your new machine and pick up where you left off, etc etc.
It's a really core basic thing to use in any kind of dev but I see way too many beginners, in game dev specifically for some reason, dodge learning it. So many lost projects could be avoided :(
My graphics card is coming today so I hope that puts me back in business. If it does, I will definitely check it out tomorrow first thing!
Itβs free, itβs easy to learn [...]
Famous last words. =P I jest but this is really solid advice. Git probably has the most resources to learn with, but there are other free version control options available beyond that, so if Git doesn't click with you, it's worth keeping that in mind!
Lol true. I remember it being easy to learn, but maybe I've blanked out the worst of it π
If all else fails we've always got ohshitgit.com!
Designing and building mechanical keyboards. Over the pandemic I asked the dumb question to my group of friends who are engineers "Hey how do keyboards work? You think I can build one from scratch?" One of my friends is a electrical engineer and I'm a computer engineer so basically we had both skillsets needed to build and design everything from scratch. The only "out of the box" thing we used was the firmware but that was based on an open source firmware (QMK) but we had to contribute to the project to get our keyboards to work. The PCB was custom, the case was custom and 3d printed on my own 3d printer.
I've been using the keyboard we built for over two years and it's worked flawlessly (unless I'm messing with the firmware). There's things I would have done differently but that's what this current rendition is but now kinda off the walls because why not.
Guitar. I just started a few years ago and I think I'm good enough to start writing some songs and recording at home. It's been good for me mentally as well, I haven't had a real creative outlet in years.
Bit of a clichΓ© but I am getting back to gaming, I spent last 10+ years half-assing mmo's and only now discovered there really was some cool games released during that time. Got a good start with finishing some last few months and intending to continue.
Nice, what games have you gotten into recently? Anything you'd recommend?
Persona 5 is a great game
I got a switch a year ago, and Iβve been gaming a whole lot more.
Nice
Finding a way to move to Japan. Visas are hard, man.
I wish you good luck in your endeavor
I have a few side projects stemming from it but I am most passionate about falconry. Once you start really getting into it it's pretty much all consuming. It's not an exaggeration to say that falconry is one of my top considerations when making life decisions. Transportation - have a truck for ease of cleaning bed, housing - bought a house with a big yard for a mews (and no hoa), job - flexible hours and cool boss means I can fly them during lunch (house also near job), family - I can manage one baby but 2 would severely hinder me (among other reasons, like money and first one didn't sleep for shit and still doesn't).
Right now I'm getting a server ready for bird video storage, security cameras, and to host a lemmy server for falconry as I didn't see one, and almost done building a mews for my wife. I love it.
That sounds super dope, what kind of birds do you raise?
Right now I have a male and a female harris hawk that I fly together, we catch rabbits:
And my wife has an aplomado falcon, they catch other birds:
Aww, they are adorable!
That's a good question.
I thought about it, and it seems that I have none.
I enjoy certain hobbies and activities and can get quite invested, but I'm currently not, or no longer passionate about them.
I've reached a point with many of the things I do where progress is slow and often cumbersome.
Maybe I require something new or a change in perspective.
Mechanical wrist watches. You get a bit of history, a bit of technology, a bit of art. I can see how some people can spend hours shopping. It's kind of soothing.
Can you still find fully mechanical wristwatches at more affordable prices? I know there's plenty of "analog" watches still sold, but I'm pretty sure they're often not mechanical in the original sense.
Current passion is gaming. Right now I'm splitting my time between diablo IV and street fighter 6.
Gonna sound stupid, but local government. Specifically on relation to road planning and land use.
Like i have all of the stateβs/cityβs design manuals saved on my computer & review road projects against them. I make a list of questions along the lines of βthis section of the planning manual says that 2 lanes are sufficient for the traffic volumes you are designing to, why does your design have 4 lanes?β.
Take these questions to the public meetings to ask. It sounds so dry and boring, but has actually been quite fun!
Video games. Been slogging my way through college to learn programming so I can some day become an independent game developer.