I have arrived in town for GDC, for the first time in a long time!

I've decided to make my way to GDC this year. Haven't been since 2019, and I figured I'd give myself another event to work towards, to keep getting my game into shape.

Adam Saltsman just gave the best talk about the process of game design that I’ve ever seen. Bravo. Incredible investigation of the journey an idea goes through, and smart breakdown of the intrinsic and extrinsic forces tugging on the project. A must watch.

This is a pretty great video, encapsulating a lot of the problems with how things are these days. www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4OO...

A new person came to gymnastics yesterday and was looking lost, so I asked them what they wanted to do. They said a backflip. I asked if they'd ever done a flip before... no. Somersaults? No. Nothing. I had them landing a front flip in 10 minutes and landing a backflip by the end of the session.

Today while practicing double front flips, I threw the worst flip I've ever thrown. The kind of flip that makes people stop in shock and go silent and murmur to each other about whether you're ok. It was as close as I have ever come to diving straight down onto my head with force.

Enjoying all of these "commit to a front flip from another move" skills!

Found a product on my phone, went to buy it at my computer where it was easier to type, different price. Opened in another browser, same PC price. Opened incognito. Same price. Different phone browser, my phone price. Wifes phone? Even cheaper. Saved $800 buying it from my wife's phone instead.

I don't have videos to share yet, but just letting y'all know, double front flips are back! To the point where... when trying to show someone the basics of how to do a regular flip... I accidentally threw one and a half flips and scorpioned myself... TWICE.

Sometimes I listen to a song or watch a show from like 15 - 20 years ago and think "Must be cool to have made a thing people still remember, so many years later." Then I catch myself, because my relationship to my own work is way more complicated than that.

When I was younger, I had people telling me I was doing things beyond my age. Now that I'm older, I have people telling me I'm too old for certain things. How about the consistent factor here is that I am interested in things and therefore I do them, and age is not the significant factor?

Using big data to provide predictions only works when you provide inputs into the correct data set. Don't underestimate the power of the human brain to make the right connections, based on much more subtle information.

Love when I say no to random business proposals and people respond with things like "Up to you, but it's your revenue you're leaving on the table." Mate, you're contacting me about a game released 10+ years ago, seemingly with no idea of how the game did in that time. I'm ok with my choices.

Real Estate is the worst game I have ever played. Everything about the game sucks. I understand the game and how it's played, but I despise it.

Have been dealing with people in businesses who give me unrealistic expectations then get upset at me when I hold them to them, and they can't meet them. Situations that could be avoided entirely if you just did the thing you said you would originally.

I installed Satisfactory, then I ran around for 10 minutes before deciding I don't care about running around mining resources so then I can craft things. I'm pretty sure there's a whole level of game here beyond that, but... there's pretty strong resistance to me actually getting to any of it.

When I read roguelike in a games description now, my brain substitutes it with "Game that is happy to waste hours of your time with arbitrary difficulty spikes and making you repeat shit endlessly"

Having mostly stepped away from social media, online discourse, etc again it gets REALLY apparent how much this stuff brings me down instantly when it creeps back into my days. A low level sense of dread and anxiety humming in the background that goes away when I'm switched off just doing my thing.

Random things stick with you over the years. One time someone asked about work I was doing, so I explained a bunch of stuff to them. Then someone else came up and asked the same question, so I gave the same response, and the first person walked away kinda annoyed that I said exactly the same thing.

Reading expert predictions on markets often feels the same as reading horoscopes. "Now is a good time because of X and Y. It is also a bad time because of W and Z. If you consider V and U, no one really knows. Everything changes on a case by case basis. Go with what makes you comfortable."

Love it when I build some big complicated thing, only to look at it and go "Oh, I built all of the parts I didn't need, I actually only need the inverse of this." Like shading a complicated image and then realising you actually only needed the simpler negative space part of it instead.

Extended period of time away from design work: "Oh my god I don't have enough interesting stuff, maybe I've been kidding myself..." After a solid day of design work: "I have too much stuff. Where do I put all of this? Also, what about these other 10 things I just made that need to go somewhere??"

I've been taking medication for a fungal infection for like 6 months, noticing systemic changes to things that I accepted as "that's just my body I guess" for probably the past 20-30 years? That's what happens when people keep saying the issue is a different thing, and nothing else you try helps.

Hi Bluesky. Here's the full video of the Australian Poetry Slam 2024 National Finals from last month at the Sydney Opera House. Spoiler alert, I came third. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF26... My first poem "Shame" (Top 20) is at around 1:11:30. My second poem "Lucky" (Top 5) is at around 2:12:00.

Am I making a game, or am I making a sequence of shelf moments, designed to test how much you can tolerate??

There are a bunch of game development tasks that I just do way faster when I'm drinking. The less I give a fuck, the faster the work gets.

I have started playing Tactical Breach Wizards, and am enjoying it very much. Good job as always @pentadact.bsky.social

Wildly swinging mood / motivation atm. Feeling crushed under my own mental state and internal pressure, then walking through a shopping mall looking at everyone else wandering around and thinking "Well most of these people probably have regular jobs they don't really care about, but they seem fine."

Let's see what happens if I set this as one of my default pages and then accidentally just type thoughts here instead, when I have some random thing to say. :)

Sometimes creative people sound like special snowflakes and "ugh no I just CAN'T get things done today because I don't feel creative / inspired..." But also, there's an opposite attitude to this like: "It's ok buddy. You'll just be inspired to do things some other day. I know how this goes... 🙄"

Driving home at night, chilling to music, then irrationally angry out of nowhere because an SUV has way too high and bright LED lights blasting my eyes for no fucking reason. I really hate that this is acceptable on the roads. Basically people permanently driving with hibeams on.

Y'all follow me like "I'm really interested in what Alex is doing next!" While I'm actually like "Gotta do some gardening. I need to pay the plasterer invoice. I have to go to the doctor. I'm going to climb some rocks. What should I make for dinner?"

Sometimes the world feels overwhelming and heavy, so I go out into the sun to do some gardening for a few hours. And then I think, I’m just cutting trees and shit… everything is fine.

Look at all these new follows. Silly Twitter... doing things that make people want to leave.

I came third in the Australian Poetry Slam 2024 National Finals! I will post videos when they upload them to YouTube :)

Hi Bluesky! Another poem from me, which again is a link to Twitter because Bluesky doesn’t allow videos longer than 60 seconds… I was one of the winners of the Victorian Finals of the Australian Poetry Slam, and will be performing at the National Finals next weekend :D x.com/demruth/stat...

Hi Bluesky. Here's what I get to stare at every day these days. Trying to organise this over time is a mess, and it's still missing most of the game lol.

Yessssss look at me I'm so special I really added a lot of value to this website being in the first 10% of users who signed up to it. My contribution was immeasurable. This community is clearly way better because I'm here.

When you have something that is 95% of the way there and you're trying to eke out that last 5%, every change is more than likely going to make it worse, not better. Can still be worth looking for that extra bit though, hard as it may be to find!

Heck yeah game development. Actually implementing things rather than just talking about things I will implement one day.

Here, you can have an actual opinion while I'm here... I didn't like Inside Out 2. To me it felt rushed and unnecessary... a sequel for a sequels sake. The concepts it wanted to introduce were fine, but the execution was lacking imo. It's ok if you liked it though! I'm one of the weird ones here.

Ohhh, some new followers. I logged in here again lol. Hi. I don't post here much. I save most of my opinions about anything for stories or creative work. I've been doing way more writing over the last few months. I'm still making a game, but that game is also now a catalyst for me writing stories.

Oh hey, I logged in after not being here for ages. I'm still slowly making a game, same as I have been for the past many years. Here, have a poem I performed recently. The video was uploaded on Twitter, but whatever. "What are you working on?" x.com/Demruth/stat...

Bluesky, how're you doing? You follow me for some reason... what do you want to know? What are you looking for? What answers can I provide? lol

Ahhh hI just read a thing about Blusky being visible publicly without an account. Quick quick I better say things here otherwise peole who find my account will think I'm boring

Explaining theories to smart people and having them come back with "Huh, interesting. Counter intuitive at parts, but makes sense when you think about it, and now I can understand how you would model this to explain it clearly."

Hi Bluesky. I came here to share a video with you... but Bluesky doesn't allow posting videos apparently? What? So um, have a link back to my video on Twitter instead. :P x.com/Demruth/stat...

Sometimes I see a thread on Twitter move from developers talking about issues to gamers starting flame wars. Let's just say I prefer listening to developers.

Hi Bluesky. How are you? What's new over here?

I have nothing to post here, because I barely post anything anywhere online. Good content, right here folks. Very self-aware.