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Arvīds Kokins

@archo5.bsky.social

74 followers 49 following 380 posts

Trying to make things that vaguely resemble games (and the tech to make them work). Recently released corpo/ghost as @interleavedsystems.com https://store.steampowered.com/app/2844660/corpoghost/?utm_source=bskybio

store.steampowered.com

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Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 1d

what's the use case? having written 2D and 3D CSG code a long time ago, seems best to avoid it as much as possible

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 1d

www.hourences.com/tutorials-ue... Unreal definitely didn't, not sure about Quake

that said, the HL1 VHE CSG/BSP compilers were quite reliable in my personal experience

Hourences.com – Tutorials UE1/UE2 BSP

Sjoerd De Jong's Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal Engine 3 learning resources

www.hourences.com

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

there is a "web startup culture" that is mainly funded with VC money

this seems to be a major chunk of what drives "cloud" revenues (the most profitable thing mag7 has)

so I'd expect that taking out the VCs would also cause a drop in mag7 "cloud" revenue & web tech use (no idea how big though)

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

wishlist (somewhat realistic):

- a bunch of VCs going bankrupt, substantially damaging the long tail of the dot-com bubble
- subsequent deprioritization of web tech and endless associated fads
- a growing culture of economic evaluation of computer systems (whether they are/can be worth the cost)

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

this whole distraction leaves basically nothing of value and the only ones winning here are

1) Nvidia
2) the stock gamblers that are cashing out at peak price and managed to get in very early

looking forward to seeing what overpriced stupid thing Jensen decides to buy with all the money

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

also on the GPU front, Nvidia has been working mainly on

1) preventing their biggest GPUs from catching fire while they run
2) very low precision number format support (highly limited use cases compared to existing higher precision formats, basically only good for "decisions")

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

not to mention the "Even if the investors don't get all the returns" part

what returns? not only are there none, there's less than none

the whole thing has been almost exclusively losing money from day one, with no path to profitability

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

www.axios.com/2025/10/07/a...

what "something productive"? the endless spam? the broken shitpost images and videos? the overpriced half-GPUs with a ~5 year lifespan or the massive buildings they're in?

holy shit these people are either fucking stupid or in damage control mode already

What they're saying: "I do want to caution us against thinking all bubbles are financial," Daly tells Axios. "I don't see many signs that that's the case."

"Research and economics call it more like a good bubble, where you're getting a ton of investment… Even if the investors don't get all the returns that the early enthusiasts think when they invest, it doesn't leave us with nothing. It leaves us with something productive," Daly says.

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 2d

maybe they'd choose something retro-futuristic, like...

OneDrive.NET 2077 Express

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 7d

Cik Bolt e-pastus apskatījos (tur rāda nobrauktos km), esošais kļūdas procents varētu būt (ļoti aptuveni) zem 5%. Nezinu viņu metodi (spidometrs, GPS vai abi kopā), varbūt būtu jākalibrē precīzāk/biežāk priekš īres maksas aprēķiniem, bet mērīt ir iespējams.

Par sekundēm piekrītu.

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 7d

Absolūti nepārdomāta ideja, jo acīmredzami nav saprasts reālais lietojums skūteriem (izīrēt vienvirziena braucienam).

Šeit aprakstīju praktiskāku ideju: x.com/archo5dev/st...

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 8d

political power ultimately comes from persuading people

the seats, laws and everything downstream of that are primarily a mere reflection of the broadly held opinions

youtu.be/okOEMgu2iZQ?... (timestamp points to the conclusion but I recommend watching the whole video)

How the Far Right Took Over Britain

YouTube video by Tom Nicholas

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 8d

even with multiple parties they aren't a good indicator of what people want since they're an indivisible collection of shifting views, influences and red flags

that's what opinion polling is for

and according to that, they seem quite ready, at least within D-team

news.gallup.com/poll/694835/...

Image of Capitalism Slips to 54% in U.S.

Fifty-four percent of Americans, down from 60% in 2021, have a positive opinion of capitalism, while a steady 39% view socialism positively.

news.gallup.com

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 10d

the professional morons that are the new investors appear to have "priced in" replacing many EA's employees with "AI" but

1) "AI" doesn't work
2) it's expensive
3) there's no path to improving it

once they realize it (possibly within a year or so), I expect they'll want to pull out ASAP

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 10d

Also official: EA is dead.

insider-gaming.com/new-ea-owner...

New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed

According to a new report, Electronic Arts' (EA) new owners are going to utilize AI in order to cut costs and boost profits.

insider-gaming.com

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 13d

the obvious consequences in construction being:

- less of the more useful buildings being built
- customers having to overpay for construction
- private customers passing along the price increase, contributing to rising house prices

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 13d

it would be like what happened internally within Nvidia - "AI" GPUs becoming so expensive that their sales and manufacturing got prioritized far beyond any other product

the result being a reduction in manufacturing capacity for the far more useful GPUs that aren't nearly as profitable currently

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 13d

random thought for some economist to untangle:

could data center building revenue be currently outcompeting house building revenue?

depends on what's the overlap between data center builders and house builders

(quick look at datacentremagazine.com/top10/top-10... suggests there may be some)

Top 10: Data Centre Construction Companies

Data Centre Magazine considers some of the leading construction companies committed to building the innovative data centre facilities of the future

datacentremagazine.com

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 13d

had a similar thought lol

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 13d

we still effectively have gatekeepers, they're just in the media now

disagree on the "more interesting/creative", many of the games that came out in the '00s still haven't been surpassed (they're being remade/re-released now instead)

choice is a finite resource so "more choices" isn't all good

I’m not sure there’s any solution to this problem. Returning to the era of gatekeepers would be a regression, and the increased democratization of game development has led to more creative and interesting products all around. This glut may be intimidating for players, but it also presents them with more choices than ever before, so long as they can ignore the FOMO of not jumping on every new release as soon as it hits.

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 14d

assuming you're talking about Windows games specifically, and about something that was available for Direct3D 8/9 (where Alt+Tab was an issue), it's probably EnumDisplaySettings(Ex)W (available since Windows 2000 it seems): learn.microsoft.com/en-us/window...

EnumDisplaySettingsExW function (winuser.h) - Win32 apps

The EnumDisplaySettingsEx function retrieves information about one of the graphics modes for a display device. To retrieve information for all the graphics modes for a display device, make a series of...

learn.microsoft.com

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 16d

is that an "AI" summary? 👀

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 16d

a thread on 2: mastodon.gamedev.place/@archo/11485...

by the way, I recommend looking at the sun in the non-HDR GTA games (definitely VC and SA, unsure about 3), they've done a rather interesting thing there ☀️👀

Arvīds Kokins (@[email protected])

wondering if game graphics should leverage optical illusions more wrt light/shadow levels true realism seems to generate far more work: > realistic lighting (specular highlights, intensities) > HDR ...

mastodon.gamedev.place

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 16d

for me it's the other way around lol

spent so much time with PBR/HDR, started noticing

1) the many things that are missing from modern graphics that unintentionally make most PBR productions look like cartoons

2) how HDR generates extra work that often also works against accessibility/gameplay

Arvīds Kokins @archo5.bsky.social · 17d

one would expect that at least the "AI" developers, or independent consultants, or literally anyone involved had a firm grasp of basic and intuitive math concepts like combinatorial explosion

but I guess not 🤷