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Alan Au

@alanau.bsky.social

2.4K followers 1.3K following 7K posts

Trickster disciple. 🦊 Game developer. 🎲️✂ Professional data generalist. 📊 Delightfully imperfect. ☁️ Not that kind of doctor. 🎓 [E] Itsatrap 🎮 He/Him

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Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · Nov 13

Days since uttering "what the actual fuck?": 0

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1h

a group of men are running on the beach and one of them is wearing a white shirt with a british flag on it

Alt: A short GIF of the beach running scene from Chariots of Fire (1981) set to the iconic Vangelis theme.

media.tenor.com

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1h

Ah yes, everybody knows that's why it's called Twilight Confederation. 😂

Reposted by Alan Au

Tess Snider @malkyne.com · 1d

My "Require alt text before posting" setting got randomly cleared, at some point. If you use this setting, you may want to make sure it's still turned on.

A picture of the Alt text settings in the Accessibility section of BlueSky's settings.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 5h

I very occasionally dip my toes into a competitive multiplayer video game of some sort, and anytime I'm at the top of the leaderboard, something has gone very, very wrong.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 5h

Free Guy (2021) was fine as a Tron remake. But mostly it was about watching charismatic actors make fun of modern video game culture for 2 hours. Although, now I can't help but wonder what would have happened if they swapped out Jared Leto for Ryan Reynolds.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

castlevania: castle of the vania

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

Not *entirely* unrelated, I don't think there have been any significant advances in teledildonics. Uh ... not that I've checked recently ... 😳

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

The good news is that the videoconferencing part has been somewhat improved. The bad news is that actual tools for remote diagnosis have not. The thing I was particularly working towards was better access for rural maternal checkups, so that expectant mothers didn't have to trek out to a clinic.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

Oh right, in one of my past lives, I used to work on telemedicine stuff. This was all in the pre-pandemic era, so the tech hadn't advanced particularly far at the time. But even so, I'm still surprised and a bit annoyed that it hasn't really advanced much beyond video-conferencing.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

Is it also called a "sound hole"? Because that would be a really weird coincidence.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 6h

Extra cards come from a long tradition of adding weird crap to games. And by weird crap, I mean stuff like face cards, or major arcana, or seasons. Basically games about numbers where you add stuff that isn't numbers. 🎲✂️

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 8h

There are very few universal truths, but "nobody wants to see Jared Leto in movies" is one of them.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 9h

I appreciate some of the themes that 4 tries to tackle, but my feeling is they took a more comedic tone, which I personally found inconsistent with the first 2 films. That and I think they must have found a bunch of extra slime in the storeroom and decided they needed to use it all up. 😂

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 10h

Yes and no! It works great for a while, and taking that first step is often the hardest part of the process.

But at some point you start to encounter tradeoffs, and it becomes a different sort of choice.

You *can* just do things! But cannot do *all* of the things.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 10h

Speaking of spooky/seasonal games, I'm randomly thinking about "Uninvited," an early point-and-click game, which surely someone must have ported to an online browser game by now.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 10h

The quick summary is that originally, my thought was asymmetric scoring of the same scarce resources granted by board locations. Lots of push/pull over where the borders are.

But also, I've been toying around with ideas for a non trick-taking card game. Poker makes interesting use of shared cards.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 16h

Instead of sleeping, I'm thinking about weird game design stuff again. So like, what if I turned my asymmetric cyberpunk area control game into asymmetric poker? And what if I also added weird extra cards? 🎲✂️

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 17h

I should be sleeping. Instead, I'm thinking about pronouncing "Bananaphone" and "Persephone" the same way just to mess with people.

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 20h

Okay, I'm starting to suspect that I might have actually caught something. But also, I guess it's a nice confirmation that I actually do still kind of understand how my body works. So anyway, yeah, I guess I'll plan on drinking lots of soup this weekend. 😑

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Between that and the federal shutdown impacting transit workers, I hope you're able to get home okay!

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

Oh wow! That's so awesome! It feels weird running out, but it's better than bringing too many! 🤩

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

This goes along with my insistence that the real skill isn't about implementing the test/model; it's about picking the right one.

Reposted by Alan Au

alyssa mercante @alyssamerc.bsky.social · 1d

Current or former Sucker Punch employees!

I'm looking to talk to people about company culture, Ghost of Yotei harassment, and the events that took place last month. I can protect your identity.

It would be immensely helpful for a story I'm working on. My information is signal below.

alyssamercante.29 signal

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 1d

One of the best things about Fridays is that I allow myself unrestricted access to whatever remains of my weekly snack ration.

Reposted by Alan Au

Alan Au @alanau.bsky.social · 4d

Sometimes I feel like there's a potential future where we're all stuck trying to independently verify things from first principles again, and I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

And look, I don't care what the "use by" date says; I'm still doing a smell test before I cook with it.