Hello Melbourne!

TFW you are furiously working on a presentation for a conference and you get the "Checkins are open" notification for your flight to said conference. So you stop to post about it on Socials instead of working more.

I'll be at #GCAP next week! If anyone wants to catch up, HMU. Also, I'm landing in Melbourne Sunday arvo, so if anyone wants to catch up for a drink, let me know. Purely for jetlag remediation of course - that 30 minute difference can be a killer.

"Solving the Autism problem" You mean stacking the dish washer the CORRECT way?

Just got a new #C64 tattoo! It’s still a bit angry but it really complements the rest of my C64 sleeve.

This. A thousand times, this.

This showed up in my feed yesterday. A snippet from a different time, hilariously understated.

I just spent 4 hours debugging something that I had previously documented as not yet implemented. At least now I know why it doesn't work. sigh

Getting back to my roots, doing some weekend programming..

Hello. I just realised that I much prefer Star Trek to Star Wars. What does that say about me?

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for my C64 -- and I said "Fuck that, you suck" and made an angry post on social media.

This is glorious. There is a real joy in building a creative product that you love, and we so often forget this. Deadlines, budgets, bad management, massive teams, and bad tools can all detract from this. If you are a Game Dev, don't forget - you get to build games for a living! How cool is that?

A friend recommended this game to me one week ago. It sounded good, so I bought it and started playing. I've now spent 40 hours on it in the last 7 days. 40 hours! Yeah. It's fucking good. It has depth - even it's layers have layers. Do yourself a favour and grab this one.

Guess who's talking at GCAP 2025? I'll be talking about rewriting a particle system which has been modified by dozens (100+?) of people over 15 years and is a critical part of a game that ships every 2 weeks to millions of players. Lessons learnt, problems found, solutions created. It's a journey.

I just finished Death Stranding 2. Loved it. I loved the insane cut scenes, the crazy story lines, the stupid boss fights, the fact that you can skip boss fights if they're too hard (I didn't. I'm a big boy now). The game is beautiful and I cared about the characters. Now I'm off to build more roads

Me At Work 2 weeks ago: "This system has been stagnating for years. It seriously needs a refactor. I'll just change a few things..." Me today:

Damnit. Animals As Leaders have cancelled their tour. I'd forked out for the VIP tickets and was looking forward to meet them.

Shroom and Gloom is a beautiful looking game! And it plays well too - First person Slay the Spire? The demo is out now - if you like rogue-lite deck builders (like I do) then you'll probably like this.

In October we're getting a new C64 and a new Tron movie. Both were inspirational and led to me eventually pursuing a career in game dev. I'm really looking forward to October.

For your Wednesday listening pleasure (and the video is awesome too)

This is not something I expected to be saying in 2025. I just ordered a new Commodore 64. www.commodore.net

Just had a horrible 20min. My steam deck wouldn’t boot. With 24 hours trapped on a plane WITHOUT A GAMING DEVICE looming before me, I was lucky enough to find the magical start up button sequence to resurrect my dead device.

Bloody hell Paris, what are you doing?

Last time I was in Paris I saw a lot of tiled Space Invader graffiti. Looks like the artists have upgraded to 16 bit now.

Paris is quite pretty.

I'm heading to France on Saturday to teach a Masterclass on performance optimisation in Paris and Lyon next week. Of course, I'm flying via Dubai, so I'm hoping the knobheads flinging missiles at each other can chill out and relax.

I feel seen.

This game is awesome. I've spent about 15 hours on the demo and I still want to keep playing it. Zombies, loot, robot arms, banana suit and a bus - what more could you want?

Animals As Leaders are touring Australia! Last time they did that I was in LA and missed them. I've already grabbed my ticket - only 115 days to go!

Australia, fuck yeah! #auspol

I just voted early for the first time. I thought I'd save some time doing it early but there was a bloody long line and the Democracy Sausages stopped just before voted. Although, I did get to meet some of the local members and accidentally insult the Liberal candidate.

I was watching The YouTubes today and one of the faces mentioned using ChatGPT to help with renovation planning. That sounded like a great idea so I decided to give it a shot. I uploaded a photo of my front yard and asked it to put a black fence on top of the existing brick one and sent this photo

I think Mark has been watching me work from home.

After staying up to watch the Switch 2 Direct, the game I'm most excited for is Enter The Gungeon 2 on Steamdeck.

Feels like the last GCAP only just finished and now its time to get my shit together for the next one. I have a good idea for a talk, but it will be based on code I've not written yet, but plan to in the next 6 months. What could possibly go wrong?

I did a search for "atan2f" and guess what Google showed me? atan(2) degrees Fahrenheit = -17.1626952 degrees Celsius Thanks Google.

I went to a Comedy fundraiser (for Ukraine) at the Fringe last night with no idea who was in the show. Turns out Ross Noble, Stephen K Amos and Laurence Mooney were some of the comedians. `Twas a bloody excellent show.

We should kick the US out of Pine Gap and use the space for our version of Burning Man. We could call it Burning Gap.

Guess who's giving a couple Masterclasses in France this June? Lots of stuff on Profiling and Optimisation as well HEAPS of stuff on profiling and monitoring your game's performance AFTER it has shipped. Should be lots of fun and I guarantee more graphs per minute than any other talk.

You know what I want? I want a link on YouTube videos which, when that video is just someone "reacting" to someone else's video, will take me to that source video.

Nekrogoblikon and Alestorm were awesome. And I came out with zero injuries.

The Wife and I are off to see Nekrogoblikon and Alestorm tonight. The last time I went to see Alestorm I got knocked out in a Wall of Death and ended up in ER getting stitches in my head before they even came on. Hopefully I have more luck tonight.

Hey #GameDev Engineers! What do you use for Telemetry in your games? What data do you collect, how do you inspect/visualise it, where do you keep it and how much do you keep? Are there any solutions you recommend?

Some people get tattoos of their loved ones, so I did too. Homage to my first computer, the C64 (the code is an older tattoo)

I’m not posting an image of the tattoo today - it’s pretty angry and under a second skin. Tomorrow. But I really like it.

Just got back from LA yesterday and I’m curing my jet lag by getting a sleeve tattoo. It’s definitely keeping me awake. I’ll post photos when it’s done (hopefully today)

I cut myself shaving this morning. Quite a nasty cut. On the end of my left little finger. So yeah, its that type of day.

Saw a nice little game on Steam for $4. Cheaper than a coffee so I thought I'd just buy it. Then I saw another for $7. "Yeah, why not?". And then another for $14. $90 later and I've somehow got 5 new games. Careful out there. It's a slippery slope.

The Promise: AI that analyses your blood and provides a vaccine that cures your cancer. The Reality: AI that analyses your browsing habits and feeds you ads for things that you are slightly more likely to be interested in.

The best code comes from working within well defined constraints.