Megan Fox Profile picture
Queer af founder of @GlassBottomGame, made @skatebirb! BAFTA Breakthrough. I work in a barn in the woods.🐦💸➡️ https://t.co/p0h2G2L6H3
Aug 3, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Woaaaah, Spiritbox fucks, this is great

(Death Metal woooooo) They have a tiny, tiiiiny bit of the Big sound that Devy has. Not the same thing at all, but absolutely nobody sounds like Devy, so honestly even a little bit of that is fantastic!
Aug 2, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
I have learned Cursed #UnrealEngine knowledge and must pass it on:

UE4 has a kind of Cursed Reflection, in the form of the "ke" console command. They let you call an arbitrary event on an arbitrary actor, by string-name.

also, "ce" calls level BP events! shootertutorial.com/2015/11/09/ue4… We here in the ex-Unity corner like Reflection, mmmmm. Lovely cursed string-based calling to abuse at our leisure.

Is it good Reflection? NO. Is any Reflection actually "good" in the first place? ALSO NO. So it's really just as good as Reflection!
Jul 21, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read
Oh ha I found the Indie Publisher Discourse

So! The statement that deals have gotten worse, with pubs asking for 50% after 100% recoup, is quite accurate.

The counter of "but they give you tons of money!" is also off-base, because

lately they don't take concept pitches either! So the deal isn't "we give you tons of money, but want all the profits."

The deal is: "we want you to come to us after investing hundreds of thousands of your own dollars. If we like it, we'll give you enough to finish it, and then also never let you earn back your own money"
Mar 24, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Anyone know if this is unique Epic research? Or did a new paper drop in the last year that could be the genesis of this?

Order independent translucency was something I thought was simply impossible except maybe at driver level at great cost (depth peeling). So. WOW. Ah, yeah, I'm hearing the papers have been floating around for a while. Here's an activision one: research.activision.com/content/dam/at…

and I guess there's nVidia and ATI work on the subject too. So. NEAT!
Mar 24, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
This is WILD. I don't think folks are as excited about this as they should be.

It's a sea change for how to make 3D platforming/action games more accessible. This generalizes in so many ways, if you start designing from the idea that perspective dictates reality. Or this?

This is coyote time for 2022. It's the same idea, extrapolating intent that diverges from physical reality, but applied to perspective. It looks like it should work, so it does.
Mar 22, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Utterly shocked at how extensive our SkateBIRD credits are on Mobygames. I really hope they found the credits.txt I left for them in the game files (or at least I think I did), cus hand-transcribing all these from the scroll would have been hell D: mobygames.com/game/windows/s… They actually found the right account to link to for @PartlyAtomic.

Even I didn't know that! (and I still won't list it, cus I just list what folks want, so I don't accidentally unmask anybody)
Mar 22, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
I feel like someone is gonna take that last slide and go "SkateBIRD only made $500k, because their budget was 210k and they said they're at 2x so-"

and nah. Remember, revshare! All primaries, porters included, got a slice. Yay! It went to workers, not funders.

Also taxes. AAAA. Image And remember that a lot of that XBox slice is GamePass, and amounts to a year's worth of rev basically? That's sort of how these deals work, they're covering you for (however long their free-offering lasts).

So the other slices will likely catch up over the next 6 months or so.
Mar 22, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Wanna hear about marketing first dev? Branding? SkateBIRD postmortem?

All that, AND MORE, if you decide to come to my #GDC22 talk today

Independent Games Summit: Building The 'SkateBIRD' Brand In Layers*
Tuesday, March 22nd, 9:30 am - 10:30 am Pacific Time
Room 2001, West Hall I expect to ramble and stutter a lot, but for once I have slides, so I'll at least ramble and stutter within a more narrow scope.

I'm a pro at this, even if I'm not actually very good at it. People just keep letting me near podiums. Their mistake, mwahahahah.
Feb 5, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Me: No of course I can't just make DataTable in UE4 reference static meshes. Spawning in-world objects entirely by data would be dangerous. The table's mesh refs would be pure strings! super fragile, what if the mesh moves?!

UE4 Experts: "..."

Me: <tries it> Motherfucker WHAT Image Me: HOLY SHIT IT WORKED

UE4 Devs: "Now make them soft references so they don't get auto-loaded, only on demand"

Me: But that would probably cause segfaults! Dangerous

UE4 Devs: "... actually-"

Me: <tries it> oh my god they're even cute pastel colors Image
Feb 5, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
It has been

0

days since I embarrassed myself in UE4 chat by not understanding it is better than Unity and has basic functionality I'd simply assumed wasn't there. Did you know that in UE4, you can create an arbitrary component on an actor, that requires a startup argument, and simply flag it as On Spawn? And then when you spawn that actor,

IT JUST GIVES YOU THAT ARGUMENT AS PART OF THE SPAWN

meaning you can feed it startup arguments?
Jan 29, 2022 10 tweets 3 min read
I'm eternally shocked every time I remember that Windows 11 doesn't even fix HDR, so we're just in a timeline where PCs don't get HDR this decade. Which means HDR support period will lag, because that's what we dev on.

MAYBE by the end of the decade. If we're incredibly lucky. How are Microsoft / nVidia / ATI / Intel this behind? HDR is well liked, and has been available so long that it comes default on TVs now.

Yet I've never even seen an HDR game. Maybe I never will. What.

We had better support for even those fucking THREE DEE TEE VEES than this.
Jan 28, 2022 9 tweets 2 min read
We're getting to where stuff is starting to feel Good with the basic character rig in next game, and I'm realizing it's because

somehow

this is the first game we've ever done where we just have a simple, reliable character rig, and a pro animator has control over look and feel. Jones On Fire? I did it all.

Hot Tin Roof? Animator, BUT, hamstrung by weird boxy people and side-scrolling tech.

Spartan Fist? Animator, BUT, hamstrung by floating fists/hands AND we did our own first-person hand anims (sigh)

SkateBIRD? Animator, BUT, physics-driven character
Jan 28, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Would it kill Steam to drop an actual error here? I don't know, literally anything?

(if anyone has ideas why it isn't pushing to the FLAC depot, would be appreciated, the scripts all look fine) The error appears to relate to failing at scanning files, but-

they're just fuckin files. I don't get it. It literally uploaded these previously as part of the merged OST depot. Didn't seem to retain them on the client download, but it sure as shit scanned and uploaded them.
Jan 27, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
OH. So this is important. This will especially hit Kickstarted games, because what you've done there is tidly bundled every single hardcore fan up into a bucket Valve doesn't treat as real people (because you gave them keys).

It's a good change overall, but it DOES impact stuff. There's probably a good argument that if you really, really like a game, and see it being Kickstarted? You might want to not back it if they don't NEED need your support. Instead, buy it on launch. You'll end up helping them more that way, if you were only backing for a game key.
Jan 27, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read
My favorite is mason bees. They're tiny, and mostly can't sting (only one gender can sting at all, and the other will only buzz threateningly at you). They live in tiny holes, as solitary lil friends.

They're one of the sorts you attract with stacked tubes or drilled-out blocks. Well ok I fibbed a bit my OTHER favorite is bumble bees, because they're big and dumb and kind.

They're the himbos of the bee world.
Jan 26, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
I will fail your code review if you don't line break and put your { on an empty line. (unless it's studio style to do same line { in which case I will make a Disappointed Noise)
Nov 15, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
My memories of OG Xbox are all over the place. First it was just a really great console for Halo and stuff (and it had the best console bootup of all time). Then later in life, the soft-modding world turned it into a REALLY cool media PC, Stepmania machine IIRC, and more. Also,

the Duke is still the best gamepad ever made.
Nov 14, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Power's been out for almost 4 hours. Due to light rain. In Washington. And PSE hasn't even gotten to investigating the cause yet?

Come on, @PSETalk, what the hell. Yeah this is weird. I'm guessing something waaay up the line got busted. I know we're in a rough weather pattern right now that's meant to bring rain, so even if it's mild here, presumably further up has more issues. But then why is the outage so spotty? You'd think that's local.
Nov 13, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Seriously, the only immersive sim is Subnautica.

All these fuckin devs making "immersive" sims that don't even HAVE a swimming system and I just 😤 And don't even get me started on FIRST person shooters.

They never ONCE shoot at the player camera. Only ever shoot the third persons. I just, I can't even.
Oct 31, 2021 6 tweets 1 min read
Me on Halloween be like Correction, it still doesn't work.

This mod system is a piece of fucking shit. I can't believe I installed Python for this completely non working garbage.
Oct 30, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
Downside: my goofy little temp laptop crashes on UE4 constantly, so I spend a lot of time sighing and letting it restart

Upside: I think I can change the boot up splash to a soothing picture of a cute bird Yes! Hahahah! I AM INVINCIBLE