Sometimes I make video games

Itch.io

  • 1 Post
  • 121 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2023

help-circle
  • The friggin’ dogs in Resident Evil.

    I have a kind of funny story about that. I was too young to be playing RE when it came out, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking it out of my dad’s collection of grownup games to try it anyway.

    So there’s this well known jump scare, probably in the first fifteen minutes as you say where you’re running down a hallway and suddenly some dogs jump through these glass windows. I screamed, fumbled the controller, and was eaten by dogs. Might have been the first jump scare of my life.

    So I hadn’t hit a save point, so you have to start the game over. So I decide to just leave the mansion through the front door instead of going out that way. And you get a cutscene where a dog jumps through the door and you have to wrestle it away.

    I still haven’t played the game since.

    But my wife and I are a big fan of the series, so eventually we decided to marathon them on the condition that she plays RE1. She’s playing the remake and goes into the room where the dogs jump through the windows and I’m holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Only it doesn’t.

    So I’m a little disappointed, but I figure it’s a remake so maybe they’re switching things up a bit and going to put the jump scare somewhere else in the mansion.

    Sooner or later you have to backtrack through that corridor though, and on like the third time going through this “safe” corridor the dogs jump through the window. She screams, fumbles the controller, and is eaten by dogs.

    Seven-year-old me was vindicated that my adult wife also got punked and I’m not alone.




  • I’ll take a crack at this one. For what it’s worth, I think the first couple are just loanwords from another language which sometimes gets used incorrectly, and the last three are uncommon words in conversation. Know your audience.


    “This isn’t a meeting about the budget per se

    “This isn’t exactly a meeting about the budget”


    “The victim met their demise vis a vis poodle attack”

    “The victim met their demise by way of poodle attack.”


    “Steve’s a real erudite.”

    “Steve’s a real reader.”


    “Tom and Jerry is a fun cartoon because of the juxtaposition of the relationship between cat and mouse.”

    “Tom and Jerry is a fun cartoon because of the oppositeness of the relationship between cat and mouse”


    “I don’t understand, can you elucidate on that?”

    “I don’t understand, can you explain?”



  • I was fortunate to not only have a typing class in school, but also the only computer game my grandma had was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Now I type for a living, so hey, I guess it must have paid off.

    If you’re already a hunt and peck typer, your brain wants to look at the keyboard to confirm where the key is before you press it. When learning touch typing, you’ll want to shift your focus from the keyboard to the screen.

    There are formal methodologies for learning where the keys are in relation to your fingers, but imo the most important thing is to not look at the keyboard. No matter what you end up typing, it’s pretty easy to find backspace and try again. Your eyes verify on the screen if your fingers are giving the correct output, and your fingers find their way eventually.

    Many students did benefit from having their hands visually obscured from them when typing. If you find you keep looking at the keyboard then you might want to look into that.



  • At the end of the day, I see cheats as essentially just mods for games. A cheat enables you to do something with the software that you couldn’t before. If everyone has equal access to the mods and agrees at the outset, then who cares? But if you’re the only one in the lobby cheating then you’re probably a jerk who puts their enjoyment ahead of others’.

    If you’re playing by yourself, hack away. Enjoy yourself. You should be allowed to have the maximum amount of fun with your toy.

    If you’re playing with other people, especially against other people, it’s super unsporting. Everyone should have a level playing field.

    Gamers with disabilities opens up sort of a morally gray area. Like, if you only have one hand you’ll have a hard time aiming and shooting at the same time. I could see why someone would be tempted to use an aimbot.

    As far as why cheating seems so prevalent, I place the blame largely with the F2P model. Now, I’m not saying that people aren’t cheating in other games. But if the consequences of getting banned for cheating is that you just have to make a new free account, then you could argue that there aren’t really significant consequences to getting caught. There’s money to be made by cheat vendors on massively popular games, so the free ones make sense to target because the costs are low.

    Worth mentioning: just because you think someone is cheating doesn’t necessarily mean they are. I’ve never cheated in a competitive game but I’ve been called a hacker by poor losers. If you’re looking for a cheater, you’ll likely confirm your biases and find one - whether or not someone was actually cheating.


  • I’m also nostalgic for the era where cheats were easter eggs that enhanced the single-player experience.

    Like, as a kid I was interested in Warcraft/Starcraft, but I’m horrible at RTS gameplay. Cheats gave me an out so that I could enjoy the story.

    Historically, cheats were essentially debug tools that the developer could use to, say, thoroughly play through a level with unlimited lives. But around the 90s/00s you started to see this shift away from using a complicated code of buttons to activate (Konami Code, IDDQD) to a simple to remember phrase (“PowerOverwhelming,”“GiveUsATank,” “GunsGunsGuns”).

    That shift makes me think that the cheats were for the players to enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn’t have fun names to activate them.











  • Apparently there are nine surviving Pirate Codes. Some are more equitable than others, and some are… more difficult to read. It definitely wasn’t sunshine and roses at sea, and there was definitely barbarism that happened.

    But I particularly like the articles of John Phillips, captain of the Revenge. Nine commandments governing the distribution of wealth, gun control, fire safety, and workers’ comp

    I. Every Man Shall obey civil Command; the Captain shall have one full Share and a half of all Prizes; the Master, Carpenter, Boatswain and Gunner shall have one Share and quarter.

    II. If any Man shall offer to run away, or keep any Secret from the Company, he shall be marooned with one Bottle of Powder, one Bottle of Water, one small Arm, and Shot.

    III. If any Man shall steal any Thing in the Company, or game, to the Value of a Piece of Eight, he shall be marooned or shot.

    IV. If any time we shall meet another Marooner that Man shall sign his Articles without the Consent of our Company, shall suffer such Punishment as the Captain and Company shall think fit.

    V. That Man that shall strike another whilst these Articles are in force, shall receive Moses’ Law (that is, 40 Stripes lacking one) on the bare Back.

    VI. That Man that shall snap his Arms, or smoke Tobacco in the Hold, without a Cap to his Pipe, or carry a Candle lighted without a Lanthorn, shall suffer the same Punishment as in the former Article.

    VII. That Man shall not keep his Arms clean, fit for an Engagement, or neglect his Business, shall be cut off from his Share, and suffer such other Punishment as the Captain and the Company shall think fit.

    VIII. If any Man shall lose a Joint in time of an Engagement, shall have 400 Pieces of Eight ; if a Limb, 800.

    IX. If at any time you meet with a prudent Woman, that Man that offers to meddle with her, without her Consent, shall suffer present Death.