David Will @Trashbang@mastodon.social

actually I guess I make a lot of one-unit brushes as well

maybe the problem is me

it's genuinely a little upsetting how many Doom map effects can basically only be achieved with tiny one-unit-wide slivers of sector geometry

I had a space shooter as a kid that would read your directories and make your files float around the levels like asteroids -- you could get in trouble if you destroyed them.

It probably was a better idea back when you still *mostly* knew what the contents of your hard drive were

not that I wish for a wholesale return to the nineties homebrew scene but I feel like it's been far too long since I played a game where the premise is that you go inside your computer and blow up viruses or something

An editor view of our current test map, with all the brushwork filtered out. Feels weirdly more substantial this way ^____^

in the dark ages the scariest thing anyone could think of was a creature with the head of another creature because nobody had invented those little mix-n-match books of barnyard animals that you give to toddlers

waking up in a roomful of swords like "hell yes. fuck yes. I have so many swords. this was a sound investment. I will come home with another armful tomorr

a programming language that alternates between parenthesis/bracket types on each level of nesting

you know, for readability

removed from the team after my 'ship exterior' planning document turns out to just be an extensive Red Dwarf moodboard with some feverish notes on the side

ever think about how you used to be able to just walk around your garden thinking up names for the things you saw, and writing them down, and that could be your job?

those wealthy renaissance buggers never knew how lucky they were

I meant to tweak some monster spawns in the final area of my map but instead I spent an hour laying out the sector work for a collapsed overpass because uhhhh the real monster was improperly maintained civil infrastructure

beginning to suspect that I don't enjoy 'writing C#' so much as I enjoy tackling every problem with mountains of LINQ method syntax

put LINQ in everything

"so yeah, *that* happened" I wisecrack

the other chrononauts nod gravely, adjusting their causality trackers. it's important not to mistake errant threads of the timestream for real events.

I could never be a writer because every time I get the chance to whip up some placeholder flavour text I'm like "okay what's a goofy made-up word I can put in here to make people do a double-take?"

level designers say "don't use symmetry", but what they mean is "don't use symmetry as a shortcut"

it's a pattern, and patterns are a tool

The Paris palace, the Bangkok hotel, the Hokkaido hospital. If you've seen one half, you have a rough idea of the shape of the other half. You know where to find stairs and doors and exits in a pinch. But the way those spaces have been used? That's something else altogether.

What stands out to me about Hitman's level design is that it's so good at creating spaces that are structurally symmetrical -- in the way that realistic architecture so often is -- and then mutating them in very natural, human ways to make each side feel unique.

who needs coherent UX just bombard me with meaningless stimuli wheeeeee

I muted system sounds on Win10 years ago and it's only after reinstalling that I'm beginning to remember why

I have absolutely no idea why it dings at me half the time, and I cannot distinguish a "that was bad, do not do that" ding from a "beep boop I am working very hard" ding