Andrew Doull
@andrewdoull.bsky.social
16th level information technologist, 12th level game designer | 60y in space https://half-apress.itch.io/60-years-in-space | pronoun he/him/his/his/himself
Pinned
Andrew Doull
@andrewdoull.bsky.social
· Jul 28
A Lot of Zeroes by half-a.press
A solo or coop game of mapping interstellar journeys.
half-apress.itch.io
I've release a new solo/coop TTRPG about mapping a journey through the Milky Way with your immortal and unusual crew. It's inspired by the High Frontier Interstellar board game I helped develop but goes much, much further: to the galactic core and beyond! half-apress.itch.io/a-lot-of-zer...
It’s not just writing. The lead developer of Kerbal Space Program 2 had a (highly technical) day job.
almost every novelist you read who's not from the airport fiction or bestseller sections is working a full on day job, including multi-award winners and absolute legends, or they have a spouse or trust that supports them. virtually across the board. just normalize in your mind that's how it works.
I know we know this, but authors need to get better at talking about how they actually make their money. Stop pretending it's from the books.
November 26, 2025 at 7:52 AM
It’s not just writing. The lead developer of Kerbal Space Program 2 had a (highly technical) day job.
Reposted by Andrew Doull
I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.
November 24, 2025 at 5:54 PM
I see some book piracy discourse, and, to make a positive argument in favor of buying books, your marginal ability to influence what books get published and support the careers of writers you like is massive compared to most other forms of media.
All games become crabs.
We don’t really have a term for evergreen design paradigms like roguelikefication which can form the core of a game play loop.
Multi-day real time play like Neptune’s Pride/Cataphracts being another (much less safe) example.
Multi-day real time play like Neptune’s Pride/Cataphracts being another (much less safe) example.
November 25, 2025 at 11:11 PM
All games become crabs.
We don’t really have a term for evergreen design paradigms like roguelikefication which can form the core of a game play loop.
Multi-day real time play like Neptune’s Pride/Cataphracts being another (much less safe) example.
Multi-day real time play like Neptune’s Pride/Cataphracts being another (much less safe) example.
November 25, 2025 at 11:10 PM
We don’t really have a term for evergreen design paradigms like roguelikefication which can form the core of a game play loop.
Multi-day real time play like Neptune’s Pride/Cataphracts being another (much less safe) example.
Multi-day real time play like Neptune’s Pride/Cataphracts being another (much less safe) example.
Split a word in half to make it truly cursed. I’ll start.
Maga/zine
Maga/zine
November 25, 2025 at 10:39 PM
Split a word in half to make it truly cursed. I’ll start.
Maga/zine
Maga/zine
Pros: in the next update there’s a colonist name generator using a whole bunch of European pre-industrial agricultural techniques
Cons: I’d quite like there to be some non-European agricultural techniques in there
Cons: I’d quite like there to be some non-European agricultural techniques in there
there is almost no feedback I will reflexively ignore as a game developer but “you shouldn’t name something X because people don’t know that word” is one of them. oh no! You might learn a new word! God forbid you take away a piece of knowledge from a game that’s not a brand of gun or some shit lol
November 25, 2025 at 10:02 AM
Pros: in the next update there’s a colonist name generator using a whole bunch of European pre-industrial agricultural techniques
Cons: I’d quite like there to be some non-European agricultural techniques in there
Cons: I’d quite like there to be some non-European agricultural techniques in there
This is amazing and also makes the game designer in me go
November 25, 2025 at 10:00 AM
This is amazing and also makes the game designer in me go
Great thread on initiative systems.
There’s one not mentioned here which is multiphase resolution — where your moves occur in a separate phase to your attacks, allowing players to reposition if they have a lower initiative to make the attacks harder (due to facing, cover etc)
There’s one not mentioned here which is multiphase resolution — where your moves occur in a separate phase to your attacks, allowing players to reposition if they have a lower initiative to make the attacks harder (due to facing, cover etc)
One of the TTRPG conflict design principles that's fascinated me for decades has been peoples' attempts at simulating "reaction-response speeds" and how different writers tackled it. Full disclosure: most of these attempts ended up leaving me cold for one reason or another. A short thread.
November 25, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Great thread on initiative systems.
There’s one not mentioned here which is multiphase resolution — where your moves occur in a separate phase to your attacks, allowing players to reposition if they have a lower initiative to make the attacks harder (due to facing, cover etc)
There’s one not mentioned here which is multiphase resolution — where your moves occur in a separate phase to your attacks, allowing players to reposition if they have a lower initiative to make the attacks harder (due to facing, cover etc)
I’m with one of the commenters on this one.
November 25, 2025 at 4:19 AM
I’m with one of the commenters on this one.
Reposted by Andrew Doull
i have never wanted to make a YouTube video before, but now i want to make one that's basically: Books Are Not Free Content For You, Stop Stealing From Authors, You Scabs.
we are not the enemy.
every dollar folks think they're taking from Amazon, they're taking from authors more.
we are not the enemy.
every dollar folks think they're taking from Amazon, they're taking from authors more.
November 24, 2025 at 5:38 AM
i have never wanted to make a YouTube video before, but now i want to make one that's basically: Books Are Not Free Content For You, Stop Stealing From Authors, You Scabs.
we are not the enemy.
every dollar folks think they're taking from Amazon, they're taking from authors more.
we are not the enemy.
every dollar folks think they're taking from Amazon, they're taking from authors more.
I keep my latent contempt for most things in check except for people who somehow think a mostly smooth 9.8m/s/s acceleration field somehow makes an activity interesting.
Like have you even heard of dancing?
Like have you even heard of dancing?
November 23, 2025 at 8:54 PM
I keep my latent contempt for most things in check except for people who somehow think a mostly smooth 9.8m/s/s acceleration field somehow makes an activity interesting.
Like have you even heard of dancing?
Like have you even heard of dancing?
Reposted by Andrew Doull
Related: People I know IRL who know what I do for a living often ask what they need to know about online safety for their about-to-be-teenagers, and there's a lot of answers, but the thing I always emphasize most is: under no circumstances should you ever threaten to take access away from them.
And a lot of you post the photos but put an emoji sticker over the kid's face or whatever: that is really, really, really not sufficient to prevent people from doing things with them you do not want to know about. Do not post photos of your kids online, period.
I am one of those people who is *really, really good* at identifying exactly where and when a photo was taken from basic context clues (a skill I developed for human rights research and journalism purposes).
Trust me on this, don’t post photos of your kids on the public internet.
Trust me on this, don’t post photos of your kids on the public internet.
January 10, 2025 at 5:37 AM
Related: People I know IRL who know what I do for a living often ask what they need to know about online safety for their about-to-be-teenagers, and there's a lot of answers, but the thing I always emphasize most is: under no circumstances should you ever threaten to take access away from them.
Reposted by Andrew Doull
I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.
AirBnB CEO calling it “vibe revenue” just 👨🍳 😘
The underlying cause of every bubble - debt masquerading as financial innovation - depends on not just short financial memory & speculative neophytism, but reinventing jargon of finance, like how each generation of kids has new ways to say same things.
The underlying cause of every bubble - debt masquerading as financial innovation - depends on not just short financial memory & speculative neophytism, but reinventing jargon of finance, like how each generation of kids has new ways to say same things.
November 22, 2025 at 6:02 PM
I once knew a Federal bank examiner, and one time someone asked him why we had to KEEP inspecting banks over and over. He basically said every new batch of business school grads invents bank fraud from first principles.
Great news! If you were thinking of including combat rules in your TTRPG, it turns out you don’t have to include submarine vs submarine combat rules because it’s not something that’s happened more than once.
Oh, you weren’t planning on doing that?
Ask yourself why not?
Oh, you weren’t planning on doing that?
Ask yourself why not?
So it turns out submarine vs submarine combat is as science fiction as spacecraft vs spacecraft combat.
November 23, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Great news! If you were thinking of including combat rules in your TTRPG, it turns out you don’t have to include submarine vs submarine combat rules because it’s not something that’s happened more than once.
Oh, you weren’t planning on doing that?
Ask yourself why not?
Oh, you weren’t planning on doing that?
Ask yourself why not?
So it turns out submarine vs submarine combat is as science fiction as spacecraft vs spacecraft combat.
November 23, 2025 at 12:04 AM
So it turns out submarine vs submarine combat is as science fiction as spacecraft vs spacecraft combat.
This is what you’ll be doing for the climatic 15 years of my 2000+ page magnum opus TTRPG Sixty Years in Space
November 22, 2025 at 11:31 PM
This is what you’ll be doing for the climatic 15 years of my 2000+ page magnum opus TTRPG Sixty Years in Space
I wonder if Mastodon is better for these game design noodling posts because they don’t seem to get much interaction here
Day 3 of trying to figure out how to make looking at fish mechanically interesting and still wondering “does it have to be?”
(It kind of does because otherwise your posthuman cyborg in a mech characters don’t get to do much with their abilities).
(It kind of does because otherwise your posthuman cyborg in a mech characters don’t get to do much with their abilities).
November 22, 2025 at 9:19 PM
I wonder if Mastodon is better for these game design noodling posts because they don’t seem to get much interaction here
Jfk don’t ever make video games
Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called "Half Life 2".
I wrote it up over on Mastodon (I find it's better at long threads):
mastodon.gamedev.place/@TomF/115589...
I wrote it up over on Mastodon (I find it's better at long threads):
mastodon.gamedev.place/@TomF/115589...
Tom Forsyth (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image
Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may heard of called "Half Life 2". Are you sitting comfortably? Then I sha...
mastodon.gamedev.place
November 22, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Jfk don’t ever make video games
Day 3 of trying to figure out how to make looking at fish mechanically interesting and still wondering “does it have to be?”
(It kind of does because otherwise your posthuman cyborg in a mech characters don’t get to do much with their abilities).
(It kind of does because otherwise your posthuman cyborg in a mech characters don’t get to do much with their abilities).
November 22, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Day 3 of trying to figure out how to make looking at fish mechanically interesting and still wondering “does it have to be?”
(It kind of does because otherwise your posthuman cyborg in a mech characters don’t get to do much with their abilities).
(It kind of does because otherwise your posthuman cyborg in a mech characters don’t get to do much with their abilities).
In case it’s not obvious, I got Knoll’s Lawed hard by the latest episode of the Spelunky Showlike
November 22, 2025 at 5:01 AM
In case it’s not obvious, I got Knoll’s Lawed hard by the latest episode of the Spelunky Showlike
Me: Michael Brough’s games are so reflective of his thoughtfulness and caring nature, reflected in his videos and connection to the world and the people around him. I’m sure I’ll find evidence of that even in his old usenet posts.
The posts:
The posts:
November 22, 2025 at 4:54 AM
Me: Michael Brough’s games are so reflective of his thoughtfulness and caring nature, reflected in his videos and connection to the world and the people around him. I’m sure I’ll find evidence of that even in his old usenet posts.
The posts:
The posts:
I hear you're "into Michael Brough" cool, but are you "Michael Brough was commenting on your blog in 2008" cool? www.blogger.com/comment/full...
Post a Comment
www.blogger.com
November 22, 2025 at 12:42 AM
I hear you're "into Michael Brough" cool, but are you "Michael Brough was commenting on your blog in 2008" cool? www.blogger.com/comment/full...
Podcaster: “We want to get away from the semantic overloaded meanings of the eggplant emoji.”
Graphic designer: “So you don’t want the penis to be subtext, got it.”
Graphic designer: “So you don’t want the penis to be subtext, got it.”
November 21, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Podcaster: “We want to get away from the semantic overloaded meanings of the eggplant emoji.”
Graphic designer: “So you don’t want the penis to be subtext, got it.”
Graphic designer: “So you don’t want the penis to be subtext, got it.”
Reposted by Andrew Doull
After "film trilogy that dropped a critical plot point exclusively via timed Fortnite event" and "video game series whose story only makes sense if you're aware of the events of a canon pachinko machine", I feel like there are whole frontiers of user-hostile narrative design waiting to be explored.
November 21, 2025 at 9:29 PM
After "film trilogy that dropped a critical plot point exclusively via timed Fortnite event" and "video game series whose story only makes sense if you're aware of the events of a canon pachinko machine", I feel like there are whole frontiers of user-hostile narrative design waiting to be explored.