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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Trantarius@programming.devtoScience Memes@mander.xyzCFCs
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    6 months ago

    Y2K specifically makes no sense though. Any reasonable way of storing a year would use a binary integer of some length (especially when you want to use as little memory as possible). The same goes for manipulations; they are faster, more memory efficient, and easier to implement in binary. With an 8-bit signed integer counting from 1900, the concerning overflows would occur in 2028, not 2000. A base 10 representation would require at least 8 bits to store a two digit number anyway. There is no advantage to a base 10 representation, and there never has been. For Y2K to have been anything more significant than a text formatting issue, a whole lot of programmers would have had to go out of their way to be really, really bad at their jobs. Also, usage of dates beyond 2000 would have increased gradually for decades leading up to it, so the idea it would be any sort of sudden catastrophe is absurd.



  • For a while I just couldn’t play souls-likes. The enemy attacks were blatantly undodgeable. Like, even if you move at the maximum possible speed, in any direction, at the very start of an animation, you can’t get out of the way. Then I realized you’re not really supposed to get out of the way, you’re supposed to abuse the immunity frames from the roll to “dodge” straight through the attacks. Basically the opposite of what I had been doing.




  • Well letters don’t really have a single canonical shape. There are many acceptable ways of rendering each. While two letters might usually look the same, it is very possible that some shape could be acceptable for one but not the other. So, it makes sense to distinguish between them in binary representation. That allows the interpreting software to determine if it cares about the difference or not.

    Also, the Unicode code tables do mention which characters look (nearly) identical, so it’s definitely possible to make a program interpret something like a Greek question mark the same as a semicolon. I guess it’s just that no one has bothered, since it’s such a rare edge case.




  • You are right in terms of in-development and future games. But unity is also trying to enforce these terms on already released games. This could potentially bring a challenge to their subscription model, which essentially states you must continue to pay as long as your game is available. I don’t know much about the law, but I do know that there are legal limitations on how rented/subscribed products work. These limitations are to prevent straight up scams from stealing from you and making it technically legal with some fine print. Which isn’t too far off from what unity is doing now.

    This is comparable to you renting a drill from someone to make a table. You agree to the terms that you must continue to pay a subscription as long as the table exists. Then unity drill co. decides you must also pay a fee every time someone sits at the table. Even though the table is already made, and you already had an agreement to pay for the drill you had previously used. Your only alternative is to destroy the table.

    Just because the terms said they could modify the deal doesn’t mean they can force anything on you as if you had already agreed to it.


  • You’re absolutely right about VR. But I don’t think AR is ever going to be that big. There just isn’t as much of a point in mixing the real world with artificial elements. The only reason to do so is to get information that can’t be emulated as well for VR. As VR gets better, AR gets more redundant. AR of the style we see on phones (like pokemon go) is even more pointless. AR will stick around for virtual desktops and smart glasses and the like, but for gaming it will always be a gimmick.






  • I think the relationship threshold for the sex stuff needs to be higher. In my playthrough, I was propositioned by at least 3 different characters, and I was literally roleplaying a serial killer. I made no attempt at all to get them to like me. I think that stuff should only happen if the player has been seeking it out. And I don’t just mean the sex scenes themselves, horny dialogue and thinly veiled suggestions should happen less often and later in the story (like at least halfway through, certainly not in act 1). It especially stands out since the rest of the writing is pretty good, so an obvious “hey Player, wanna see a sex scene” moment is very out of place.