Reapy's recent activity
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Comment on When did your preferred fighting game franchises peak? in ~games
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Comment on When did your preferred fighting game franchises peak? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentDid they ever fix it? I was into the game at release but saw a lot of that stuff and just the passive gameplay plus unlocking zone attacks were broken and I didn't feel like I wanted to invest any...Did they ever fix it? I was into the game at release but saw a lot of that stuff and just the passive gameplay plus unlocking zone attacks were broken and I didn't feel like I wanted to invest any further in learning the game. So many years later what is the state of it, is it more balanced around playing the game or still breaking animations and mechanics?
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Comment on What's your favorite personal gaming memory? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentDuck game with my kids was hours of fun, one of the few ones I got us all to play together. QUACK QUACKDuck game with my kids was hours of fun, one of the few ones I got us all to play together. QUACK QUACK
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Comment on What's your favorite personal gaming memory? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI only got into planteside 1 a little bit, but there was really nothing like the scale and scope of the game when all the pieces were working properly. I still have very strong memories of trying...I only got into planteside 1 a little bit, but there was really nothing like the scale and scope of the game when all the pieces were working properly. I still have very strong memories of trying to get transported somewhere with us all in a vehicle and a mosquito or reaver (I forget which) suddenly flying in out of nowhere and making strafing runs on us while the flak gun was frantically shooting and the driver trying to escape. It wasn't like i had not played this scenario from the plane or the shooting side in other games, it was the fact that there was real pilot in that thing and like 5 of us that 'need' to be somewhere, and this scenario had organically emerged en route. I didn't get into planetside 2 and a couple things in planteside 1 didn't click for me to stick around, but just a few weeks with the game was enough to have created tons of unique situations you won't see in many other games.
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Comment on What's your favorite personal gaming memory? in ~games
Reapy LinkI'm really enjoying everyone's memories and is so great to group of people that grew up gaming through the 90s and 2000's all in one place, yey tildes. For myself, I was completely hooked on...I'm really enjoying everyone's memories and is so great to group of people that grew up gaming through the 90s and 2000's all in one place, yey tildes. For myself, I was completely hooked on warcraft 2 over kali (program that allowed IPX lan only games to be played over TCP/IP). It was the Internet AND internet gaming arriving all at once to a 14 year old me and I was so sucked into another world. t is cool to know a few gaming terms were invented there like smurfing and 'rushing' from a grunt rush that was an all in strategy on medium resources and see them kicked around to this day.
I have some strong memories of great games from back then still to this day, but one acutal IRL match stood out. My school had gotten a computer lab and as we as kids made sure we were able to sneak on games and play them in free periods. Another kid had brought in warcraft 2 and started talking shit about how great him and his friend were. I was trying to be sort of humbling and say hey we should play, but he started shit talking me even harder. Now, at this point I'm 2 years into an online warcraft 2 gaming addiction where most of these people didn't even know what the internet was, let alone internet gaming. I'm sure some people remember how capitol b Bad people were at playing games in general back then, now a days there is some broad applicable gaming skill everywhere, but back then, oh boy. And that new skill vs hardened internet skill...
Finally needing to make a point I was like ok 2v1, he wanted GOW high and said 'oh you cant attack till we are at ogres' already making the fake rules. I said ok. Game start I walked center on GOW which had 4 gold mines, then proceeded to take over the whole map. Now, I had done plenty of 2/3 on 1's back in the day, used to go onto new platforms and dominate like the MS Zone or TEN. I actually have a screenshot still from a 3 on 1 with them being totally shocked as they all died one by one. But this, this was IRL. Behind me as I built I had all my friends and onlookers in pure shock while they witnessed competative gaming for the first in their lives. I was like 5x faster than them making dragons while I waited for the greenlight to attack from them. They were utterly demolished and humiliated and it was a really peak moment for me. I had spent so much time being ashamed of being a 'computer nerd' and gaming and was suddenly getting positive social feedback for doing something I loved.
I would have a lot to write about early MMOs but I think it is really covered well in the thread. It'll be hard to go back to that time when the concept of MMOs were so novel. The games were not strip mined of information before release, so there was mystery and rumor aplenty. Game design was non existant, for good and ill, people wanted to make worlds, not games. Pair that with the free time of youth, the internet still a novelty, the dream of a virtual world, it was un paralleled. I think it's hard to feel that again, despite the modern MMO being so much more well-designed with so much more content and gameplay that is MILES ahead of the crap EQ was putting out back then. But still, yeah its midnight and your corpse is stuck under monsters and your gear going to rot when that high level guy jogs by to save the day. Wonderful moments.
But the last gaming period to surprised me was in my 30s. I had pretty much assumed I was done doing the multiplayer online life thing. I was married, had a nice friend group and just had two young kids when this little indie game mount & blade I loved to death suddenly said they were going to make a multiplayer beta. Holy shit, over the moon, I need it yesterday. I finally got a beta key and bam, immediatly hooked again, like nothing else. I guess I had dreams of being a medieval warrior that I didn't know about, but makes sense given how much I grew up pc gaming and reading tons of fantasy novels. But it was awsome to crash into a feeling I thought long dead at this point.
What was different about this game too is it still had the small, server based communities (too small honestly), so I got to know a people just through playing. I never joined any of the community guilds or anything because I felt on average about 5 to 10 years older than most people and honesty I have some bad social anxiety and the age of voice made it much harder for me to take a random voice invite or even talk. In hindsight I think I liked abstractly communicating to people through gamelay rather than talking, then maybe text and then later voice. It's alimited vocabulary that is easy to engage in due to the gameplay driving it. I ended up getting incredibly into dualing one on one and got sucked further into the melee gameplay. It was hard on the NA servers to get a duel going as the game servers just had a deathmatch mode to support it, you had to get people collaborating to dual, and eventually enough randoms would join so the dualing rings always got broken up unless you could find a corner to hide in. But this gentlemen's agreement to play duals let me start to meet a buch more people on the regular and I got to talking to a few of them in chat.
One of them was so god damn good at the game and he was a very driven and serious in his approach. Up until this point I liked learning games mechanics and getting better at games but always took a 'it's a big joke' approach. I think as an adult I can admit that I was protecting my ego from loss by telling myself 'i wasn't really trying'. In any event, given how addicted I was to the game, and given how honestly amazing this guy was at the game (he was constantly votekicked from public servers for "cheating" because he was insane at the game, like score board him 120-2 , next guy like 30 and 15). We got to talking about a lot of stuff and got to know one another and ended up spending a lot of time dualing on a server I'd just set up on my machine. We ended up talking endlessly about the game, talking about styles, tricks, and whole bunch of other stuff. He'd have new tech all the time to try out on him, he wanted to get better so he would show me things and I'd learn it and try to weave it in to use against him so he could figure out how to beat it. He was a methodical terror.
On the side too I had gone off on the forums and decided to write a huge beginner guide to the game. This was an indie game and many of the mechanics were hidden with no way to learn. I wanted more people to see how amazing the game was and honestly I just was thinking about it all day so it was easy to info dump. That guide ended up being the default go to link for every new warband player that came through, and honestly almost everytime I logged in as Reapy I got a few people saying thanks and that it got them into the game and helped them early on. I think it racked up almost 300k views before it got folded in and they moved the forums over, which I guess is small potoatoes but I still am overwhelmed thinking of that number. I eventually made a youtube version of the video and that also grabbed about 110k views and I still get peole driving by every few months to leave a comment when they have some wrband nastalgia, which ends up taking me back too. It was an amazing feeling to just keep hearing that my writing hooked people the same way I was on the game. Some people over the years I played I would see them start as beginners and get harder and harder to dual. Then a weird moment where they start SEEing the game, and now all my weird shit I did would break their brains, and they were like nubs again. Then like 2 weeks later I can't touch them and start trying to borrow stuff they are doing to me in duals.
It doesn't much feel like there is space for guide writing. Nowhere to dump text, which I still like, and there are always youtubers and streamers that understand the game way better due to having so much time to lay with millions of views, it feels like I don't have much more to offer up anymore.
But this all resulted in me trying to be the best I could at the game. I learned so much about myself during this time because I wasn't taking 'no i'm not trying' as an excuse, I was asking myself why I wasn't trying or why I couldn't push on and be consitent, and no brain, don't quit. I learned where my limits are, I learned that I can only focus for very short bursts of time where I feel invicible, but those close down and are periods of almost not even being able to do the most basic of things. The person I dualed with pointed out a lot of insights into how I played and approached dualing. The amazing part is I have been able to apply these lessons to everything else I do in life and achieved a much greater undestanding of myself. I guess actually sitting down to do everything I could to be great at something is humbling and insightful all at the same time. I really owe my dualing partner a lot for showing me another way of gaming, pursueing growth and skills. I never liked scoreboards and swore off playing hard because I didn't want to be the scoreboard guy, but I learned that you can play hard and still not get mad about the outcome, just take everything as a new leson.
The two best memories for me both invovled playing with my dualing partner. We were doing our normal playing where he would beat me 3 to 1 on my good days and 5 to 1 on my bad days. Well, for some reason the dominos person on the phone made me incredibly angry when ordering dinner. I don't know what it was but I felt like I could life and throw a car kinda mad. I got right back into the duals and I was like another animal, so agressive, everything he did was too slow, my character, the game, slow motion. I beat the living hell out of him for like 5 minutes until I calmed down. He immediatly noticed like WTF was that, do more of that, hes like you were like a sith lord I could feel your hatred. It's amazing what adrenaline does, it was like activating god mode for a few minuts. Never got that back, and honstly probably glad.
But the strongest memory was a random pub match where I was playing with my dualing partner on the same team. Usually he would go to the other team so he could go up against me but not today. It was just myself and him when we were basically jumpped by like 10 other people from some bad pathing into the deathball for that round. I was honestly not very good at staying alive, I lose focus very easily and die to random things all the time. . But for some reason I was very fired up and we both just sprung into action and suddenly the game turned into a ballad of death. We had dualed for hours on end we just understood insticutally how we were going to move and attack and I was so locked into seeing the matrix.
I distinctly remeber feeling like knew exactly where his weapon weapon, my weapon, and everyone around me in range's was in space. Reading the blocking and attacking windows perfectly. Things like like facing down one enemy, blocking him, knowing that as soon as I block the guy my partner is on is free and spinning to hit him, but then like whoosh he has also done the same thing as me and is slamming into the guy I was fighting. It was a perfect dance of swapping opponens tandom strikes, like one person controlling 2 players just doing everything perfect. We decimated the huge mob of players immediatly, it was pure instinct. We both were like holy shit after it without even saying anything we both just sensed the pefect sync. That never realy happened again after that but god damn that was probalby 16 years ago now I can still freshly remember it.
Alright that was pretty epic dump, this is what you guys get for bringing out old school gaming memories ;)
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Comment on The boy that cried Mythos in ~comp
Reapy Link Parent100% percent, I am feeling like we will be entering a state soon where source code is transient and is constantly being rewritten and deployed every few seconds/minutes for security or other...100% percent, I am feeling like we will be entering a state soon where source code is transient and is constantly being rewritten and deployed every few seconds/minutes for security or other purposes. It may be that endpoints exist in a state of flux where attackers are constantly rewriting code to break in while the AI security is constantly rewriting and maintaining functionality and defense at the same time.
I've watched regular claude code at work hacking things successfully and there is no reason for determined people to not throw compute at breaching systems all day long. Even if claude or whatever LLM isn't as effective as the most elaborate hackers, it can process so much more than we can and also work 24x7 so there is no reason that people aren't going to let it churn on security (or targets).
In a way I think people aren't appreciating that the text web as we know it is basically gone. User submitted content (well probably already was) is so compromised we can't sort fact from fiction anymore. The only thing left will be old school web rings of tightly controlled and audited content to seek any kind of truth or reality. Yeah It's not there YET, but give it another few years and reality vs AI fiction will be hard to find. Video content honestly just about going to be gone soon too.
I don't like to feel so pessimistic about it, I think LLMs and other AI generation is extremely interesting and useful, I just can see the negative uses of it stretching out in front of me and don't see anything preventing it.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI am a huge fan of this game. I admit I really like tactic style games so that gives it a boost, but I feel like the game is really well executed. I was hesitant to buy this at first because I saw...I am a huge fan of this game. I admit I really like tactic style games so that gives it a boost, but I feel like the game is really well executed. I was hesitant to buy this at first because I saw people complain about the length of story. That was a concern for me as typically video game writing and story is not good or interesting, so being stuck in it can be pure torture. However once I played I found that I was really caught up in the story. The characters are extremely believable, the plots are interesting and the moral choices are such shades of gray that is very hard to pick out what is 'best', there will be tradeoffs. This made each one of the vote sequences feel not tedious at all but very interesting.
I've also come to realize over the years that in games I need some context to keep my interest in strategy games. It's the reason why I would struggle to last long in any kind of 'endless mode', even if I really, really enjoy the mechanics, the meaningless battles eventually get old fast. However when you introduce a story reason and/or a narrative, along with good theming, the gameplay doesn't feel old, and Triangle Strategy does a good job with this throughout.
I have played through it 2.5 times I think. The first time I went in blind and enjoyed seeing where my choices led me. The second time I was on my steam deck (amazing steam deck game I might add) and had mostly forgotten the plot and followed a 'golden route' guide using my new game+ save and still found it great. I love the way they scale leveling, so even if maxed out the levels feel interesting, and catching a character up to the point of being usable is very fast and rewarding feeling. I started another play through to pick up any characters I had missed but had put the game down after that for a while.
All in all I think this is a brilliant tactics game and has become one of my all time favorites. I feel like the second play through really cemented something in me where I came to appreciate everything about the game even more. I don't play through story driven games like this very often, so I feel like it's just doing something really right.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
Reapy Link ParentI really liked malazan and am super happy I read it, but it was a struggle. Granted I read this in my 30s and had small kids so my reading time / focus had dropped off at the time. I had a very...I really liked malazan and am super happy I read it, but it was a struggle. Granted I read this in my 30s and had small kids so my reading time / focus had dropped off at the time. I had a very common pattern while reading it, where I started out each new book almost angry that the focus shift away from the characters and plot I was invested in last book to mostly new people, yet, by the end of the book was very caught up in the new thing. Sometimes the transition was so hard that I had to wait a year to reset myself and plow on.
It 100% is going to be a 100% tropey high magic game world throughout and that will not change. You'll have seen many of these sequences if you are familiar with dnd and/or gaming rpg stuff. But, there are some very visceral sequences in the books. I still remember reading a few where I just did not go to sleep because I couldn't put the book down to sleep and was right there 100% in it with the characters and what they were going through.
The breadth of the story is also incredible, it takes places over so many characters, places, and events, yet all links up really well together. It is not a sanderson collision of events though (I read this before anything sanderson). So while you could wiki it, i feel like you will be very bored with what you read there, and you need it in the context of the characters struggling through it for it be interesting.
That all said, I have not gone back for a reread, I tried but stalled out in book 2. I think honestly sanderson just does the whole thing better which might be the issue. Before sanderson's ability to dribble connections and linkages everywhere while also providing consistent and good magic systems I would say there was nothing like malazan and it's 100% worth going through.
However, if I compared sanderson's world building to malazan's, i'd say straight up his work just does it in a more consumable interesting way.
However, the pure breadth of things happening and pure power creep of malazan is still something that sticks with me, though I'm not sure i could make it through it again, but I'll still remain firm I am very glad to have read it.
Also I want to note that kartool is my living nightmare and I wish he had never invented the place to live in my mind in any capacity.
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Comment on What if AI just makes us work harder? in ~tech
Reapy Link ParentI think we'll always be on a treadmill. We could make it right now that we don't need much human labor to keep us alive and happy. The problem is humans findamenrally compete with one another and...I think we'll always be on a treadmill. We could make it right now that we don't need much human labor to keep us alive and happy. The problem is humans findamenrally compete with one another and also compete to impose their will on others. It is in our nature and because of that we will always have to push for maximum output to compete or risk being owned or directed by another.
It would be my pipe dream that we could just through existence have a middle class lifestyle by doing nothing and then have to compete to get the best ever by working or all that. It would be nice if we didn't make it illegal to opt out of trying and also invested in keeping the people that can't or won't try to do stuff fed, housed and with entertainment available.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentI didn't see an option to zoom the main screen, you can zoom out the minimap. If there is a way it would help a ton.I didn't see an option to zoom the main screen, you can zoom out the minimap. If there is a way it would help a ton.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy LinkI'm still working my way through the calamity mod for terraria. We are at the last 5 or so bosses (according to the boss list mod we are using at least) and should be done sometime this week if we...I'm still working my way through the calamity mod for terraria. We are at the last 5 or so bosses (according to the boss list mod we are using at least) and should be done sometime this week if we have the time.
I really have to say it is an amazing mod for terraria. It is so well made in the style of it that it feels like just 'more' terraria, even though the bosses, weapons, and damage numbers are getting ridiculous, it still is very much in line with the design and flow of vanilla terraria. Bringing bosses down has been a very good feeling where we have to consider our gear, the boss abilities, and then learning to play the boss. There also doesn't seem to be too many ways to cheese past a boss besides 'get gud', they seem to force the need to dodge through mechanics.
One criticism I can level, and it is present in base terraria, but more present in calamity's 'bigger and better' combat, is that combat happens off screen frequently. The optimal way to play bosses for me has been looking primarily at the minimap. The boss is often off screen or zooming all over the place to the point I try to locate my mouse cursor and get it vaguely pointed in the direction of the boss while I have to watch for when and where they might crash through the screen. I would rather prefer to see all I need to see on my screen more often. Honestly this might just be a product of using the very fun, but very screen spamming end game calamity weapons and mysteriously sized bosses, but it's something interesting to consider in designs of future games like this, hoping kyora doesn't get too crazy off screen for example.
But really all in all if you are a fan of terraria and have not played calamity, I highly recommend a play through with it.
Once we are done I believe the next game we are going in is back to Vintage story, I have forgotten everything, so am looking forward relearning and experiencing it again.
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Comment on Are you a morning person or a night owl? in ~talk
Reapy Link ParentI'm very much in agreement. I think a lot of my night owl habits are the 'revenge bedtime procrastination' reasoning now a days. As a kid it was when my dad went to bed and then I could use the...I'm very much in agreement. I think a lot of my night owl habits are the 'revenge bedtime procrastination' reasoning now a days. As a kid it was when my dad went to bed and then I could use the computer all night that started it and then I just sort of kept it up. Then either it is growing older and/or having kids but the ability to sleep late was removed by necessity, but I've just fell into sleep late, up early, probably destroying my health.
But to further prove your point too, going on vacation has shown that I can very comfortably be a morning person. I think knowing that when you go to sleep you are waking up to a day of freedom it is easy to drift off and just go to bed. By then end of a week long trip I'm usually on a 11 to 8 kind of sleep pattern, but then going back home I fall back into the 2am to 830 pattern over the next few weeks.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy LinkI have some time to write on the games I've been playing a bit. My current gaming habits are basically cycling a few gatcha games daily and then one co op game with a friend at night. In order of...I have some time to write on the games I've been playing a bit. My current gaming habits are basically cycling a few gatcha games daily and then one co op game with a friend at night. In order of caring my current gatcha games are wuthering waves, then genshin impact, and am still dragging girls frontline 2 around.
Right now I feel like wuthering waves is the best one and I've been happily giving them my google rewards survey money for the 5 dollar a month subscription. I feel like they are pushing to continually up their quality as the game progresses still. The best way I feel demonstrates that is characters typically have a 4 hit attack string, and wuwa has given a unique 'exit' animation to each string with the latest characters, so if you stop on attack 2 vs attack 3 you will get a different exit, and not just easing back to neutral but some sort of character flare. The daily chores take about 5 minutes to complete, no overhead at all for me and I find it relaxing.
Next in order is genshin impact, I have played it a long time now so it make it a comfort food. I have a lot of characters and parts of the game are places I've been years ago. At times going back to an old feeling has that same 'going back to westfall or elwynd forest' in wow. I was growing a bit jaded with fontaine (don't like theme) and natlan (too modern, really dislike archon as motercycle person design), but the newest area is back to form for me and am enjoying it again. Still, comparing the effort they put out to WUWA's and it is hard to think they are trying that hard. I still can't believe the game does not have lip sync for the english voice over, for example. But, at the least it is consistent, and that is still ok for the price of free to me. The music in the early areas is still some of the best game music ever made IMHO and even with Yu-Peng Chen having left the newer music is still great, and they do put together some really cool vistas still.
GFL2 I am not sure why I keep playing it. I am a huge fan of tactical games, xcom 2 is one of my all time favorites, and I love games like Final fantasy tactics, fire emblem, and triangle strategy. GFL2 on the surface does so many things correctly from the game design pov. The UI is clear and snappy, the animations look good but are quick and in general it's very well assembled. On the other han, I don't even know wtf is going on with the plot if there even is one, the levels don't feel like places but blank rooms, and I personally don't like the aesthetic of the bad guys. In the end the game has been super generous with pulls and you can autoplay it in the background easily, so I've kept it up. A part of me feels like the game is like just on the cusp of being something great with some changes, however with the chinese version being well ahead of global you can see that they are mostly phoning it in and won't be doing that, but I just can't bring myself to drop it for some reason, I want to will it into a game I want to play somehow.
Finally onto the real games, I'm currently playing through terraria calamity mod with my friend. We just came off a stint of Icarus, which got boring very quickly. Icarus has great sound design, the storms are also amazing, but that is about all it had going for it. The release of a new terraria patch got us looking at it again, and while calamity is still on 1.4 (tmod loader still 1.4), we hadn't gotten around to this. Previously we had completed a 1.4 play through and a throium mod in 1.3 playthrough.
The calamity mod is actually fantastic, all of the new elements we have gotten to so far (we are post golem on hard mode currently) integrate into terraria perfectly, it's really just more terraria and doesn't feel out of place at all. This has really gotten me thinking about why I like terraria vs some other survival games for longer periods of time. I believe it comes down to the game throwing so many new things and challenges in front of you rather than relying on freeform entertainment. There is a cycle of finding a boss, dying a few times, then reluctantly deciding we have to dig out an arena to win. If that doesn't work then it is a revisit to our gear setups to see if we need to upgrade or try some other setups. Then the boss comes down and out pours a new set of items to look at along with the possibility of combining those with old trinkets along with new ore or some other zone changing in some way through the world. It is a really addicting cycle and I feel like the survival ones like valhiem that do this kind of thing really grab me. The other component is it does not force a pace on me, if I want to make a nice looking house or just dig things up then I can do that too.
A key mod we are using is magic storage. I think without it or some form of craft from the box I would throw the game in the garbage. This is kind of a hot topic for me with survival games, especially since my friend and I are hoarders, I just want to drill in and break down and take everything, throw it in a box, and forget about it. IDK why I want to, but this is just what I need to do. I DO NOT want to memorize recipe list, organize everything so I can find it, and pick off the 5 things, then do my craft. My brain does not like to do this sort of short term recipe loading and starts to find it unpleasant. If I can just type into a list and find what is missing, go out and get it, then craft, I'm pretty hapy.
Another 'issue' I have in survival games is coming back with a load of stuff and dashing around to put it in all the correct cabinets. I always end up making a dump box when I just can't handle it anymore and throw it all in that to sort later. What is nice is some games that design around that. In bellwright you can make a storage that bans all items, so the villagers will put them in the categorized stockpiles, and in necesse the same technique works there as well. I even recall in the starbound fracken u mod there was an item netowkr you could build that you could dump it into a bin an sort it all out as well. Honestly I really like when this feature is a part of the game and you can construct some sort of item sorting and storage devices instead of just dividing it all up in chests.
Alright let me end off there but as usually engaging with terraria really gets me thinking on game design and I'll still hold to I think its an almost perfectly designed game that everyone should play at one point or another.
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Comment on What are you no longer a fan of? in ~talk
Reapy Link ParentI followed the same chain and really learning about the work culture was the first strike. I hate people that have 100 percent agency over their lives trying to equate the time they put into...I followed the same chain and really learning about the work culture was the first strike. I hate people that have 100 percent agency over their lives trying to equate the time they put into things as equivalent to them forcing people to do insane hours who have no choice in doing so nor even what they are doing. They just never seem to fundamentally understand the difference between I choose to do this because I like it and am directly profiting from it vs I need to do this to survive and someone else will benefit from my labor.
I think in the end like everything we were fooled by good PR and at least social media has made it much harder for the billionaire class to hide their insanity when they make the mistake of directly posting.
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Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life
Reapy Link ParentI was going to write the same thing, i graduated college in 2002 an have been a software engineer since. I used to keep my collage notebook along with all my reference books with me in my desk...I was going to write the same thing, i graduated college in 2002 an have been a software engineer since. I used to keep my collage notebook along with all my reference books with me in my desk drawers. The older engineers I worked with had shelves of books behind them. I felt fancy when I got a html version of the orielly books to make searching for things faster.
But here we are in 2026 and half the languages I used aren't used anywhere, or i'm at a place that doesn't sue them, the software I used is dead, many of the day to day issues that I figured out how to solve on my own are solved by the tooling and IDEs, many of the base level techniques are wrapped in api's and frameworks. Some days I still feel like a beginner as I step into a new language and try to make use of it, and it gets harder to switch gears.
So for me AI is a super helpful way to investigate things then drill down for details and get custom explanations for things without having to look it up, most of the stuff I need to find are easily available so I can mostly trust the ai results and if they are shady asking for explanations and my own internal smell tests have been pretty good. I generally know what I want to do but am pretty tired of writing another XYZ along with all the support that makes it maintainable and good that you never get credit for (but makes my life easier), or, I just forget basic things like how to open a file in whatever language I'm using.
The AI has also really helped me learn a lot more than stack overflow was teaching me. Asking it how to do XYZ it sometimes comes up with libraries or ways of doing things that i didn't know existed in my language. Generally all the things i'm coding with now were self taught as needed for the job as requirements change. I plowed through tutorials and the docs for the language but generally usually noted things that were like c++ or java (what I learned in) and didn't get too into the idioms of each language. I then would research how to do stuff as i worked through a program, then carry those solutions forward into every project I did.
This way of learning gets things done, but it leaves a lot of holes if you don't go back and see what has been added to the language or keep piling up what is available. With the AI solutions dumping stuff at me I keep seeing new things that i didn't know were available, I then ask it about it, learn about the thing, and decide if I want it or not. It's super helpful if used that way IMHO.
The big downside is it doesn't really know what you are building and what you need, and that it isn't deterministic. I think it's dangerous how it's being pushed to provide data and summaries to information that should be 100% correct. It also is a terrible trap for the beginner to just not learn, and a weapon of the fraudster to inject crazy AI stuff into code bases that are very hard to detect.
I guess what I'm saying is that things are changing and yeah programming will always get more accessible, higher level, and hard won knowledge will become meaningless. I won't lie that it used to be 'easier' to be good at things as new tech emerged. Just knowing HTML you'd be considered wizard at one point in time. As fields get more saturated and common, the ability to stick out is harder and harder. However, while more people know about getting computers to do what they want, there are still so many people that just don't understand and don't care to, the knowledge will still be valuable. But, at the end of the day, only my immediate coworkers care if I write good code and they don't keep me hired. The people at the top have always only cared about results and solutions, so you always have had to be a person that can produce the correct results and solve problems and still will be.
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Comment on The 2025 Steam Winter Sale is live (runs Dec 18 - Jan 5) in ~games
Reapy Link ParentV rising is good as people suggested and should give you the most playtime IMHO. State of decay 2 is also great for the opening hours, but it falls off a cliff and starts to feel very repetitive....V rising is good as people suggested and should give you the most playtime IMHO. State of decay 2 is also great for the opening hours, but it falls off a cliff and starts to feel very repetitive. Still the opening hours are very fun and make it worth trying regardless of longevity.
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Comment on Gift recommendations in ~life
Reapy Link ParentYou might enjoy this podcast, Designer Notes by Soren Johnson, who worked at firaxis and was the lead dev on one of the civs (I forget which) before going on to make his own independent games, I...You might enjoy this podcast, Designer Notes by Soren Johnson, who worked at firaxis and was the lead dev on one of the civs (I forget which) before going on to make his own independent games, I think their current game is old world. He has a really, really long interview with Sid Meier in early episodes that probably covers a lot of what is in the book, but is great to hear the info from sid himself, really great insight on a lot of things back then.
He also has some episodes with jake solomon (of xcom fame) that are just as good, covering jake's early time starting as a jr dev with sid at firaxis, it was just as interesting hearing his point of view on everything.
In general, I love the people he sits down to talk with and it is super nostalgic and insightful when he gets guests that were working in the games industry through the 90s as well as just great talks about game design in general. Highly recommend!
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Comment on Gift recommendations in ~life
Reapy Link ParentI've suggested ember as gifts for people for a while now, it really is something you would look at and just not spend 100+ dollars on a coffee mug, however, if one landed in your lap for free, you...I've suggested ember as gifts for people for a while now, it really is something you would look at and just not spend 100+ dollars on a coffee mug, however, if one landed in your lap for free, you would use it every day. If your price points are around there for a gift, it's a pretty good one.
I think sometimes the best gifts are really something a person could practically use, but never purchase on their own, either due to cost, not knowing about it, or being just superfluous due to say having an adjacent tool already. So for example the can opener listed above, people definitely have a can opener in their house, but maybe not one like that one, they might have seen the can opener but chose not to purchase it due to already having a functioning can opener, even though this one might be better in different situations.
I've had a lot of luck giving gifts over the year trying to follow that philosophy.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentThe gallery was rough, I played streaming it to a friend and we managed to sucker his wife into looking at the pictures and she ended up solving them for us luckily, so we looked them up too hehehThe gallery was rough, I played streaming it to a friend and we managed to sucker his wife into looking at the pictures and she ended up solving them for us luckily, so we looked them up too heheh
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Reapy Link ParentDo yourself a favor and run a wiki or note taking app that you can screenshot and paste straight into it as you are playing. Keep the notes by room name to organize it so you can reference it...Do yourself a favor and run a wiki or note taking app that you can screenshot and paste straight into it as you are playing. Keep the notes by room name to organize it so you can reference it later. I have not taken notes for years in a game but I happily did it for blue prince and it payed off greatly. This is the kind of game where searching for hints online can accidently wreck puzzles and the joy of discovering new things, so we have to do it the old school way for the most enjoyment.
Thank you for the info! I was looking at my older game videos the other day and had some for honor stuff and was wondering what a few years had done to it. I probably won't quite install again but maybe worth a YouTube drive by to see how it's doing.