ItsFirefly

9 ms·

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by ItsFirefly 3y ago
Sorry to self-promote, but, Angeldust ( https://angeldu.st ) is a single, persistent, real-time voxel world going for about eight years now. Can handle 300+K players on a single server due to massive parallelism. Unfortunately we
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by ItsFirefly 5y ago
Angeldust, my 'fast and efficient' video game was on the HN front page for days in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858226 I now present the first, native, optimized build for all Raspberry Pi models t
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Angeldust for Raspberry Pi, Open Beta(raspberrypi.org)
7 points by ItsFirefly 5y ago|1 comments
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
I didn't really use many external resources during development, most of the time I'm just "winging it" and acting towards a goal that I have in my mind. Coming up with a naive solution first, then trying to optimize it a
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Thanks for the elaboration, I get that the design just doesn't do it for you personally. Did you already see that the game's also available in a highly abstract "Cartoon" visual style featuring hand-drawn, 2D animated sp
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Go for it! If you already have OpenGL experience—doesn't matter what level—you "only" have to add a bit of basic 3D world math and input handling. I found SDL ( http://libsdl.org ) to be a very good core framework t
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
It's ridiculously hard to come up with an answer to this seemingly simple question. I've tracked my time usage pretty meticulously by version number, but for most features I had to develop the server-side, client-side, website and
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Sorry for taking a while to reply—I contacted Apple support and it seems like the issue is out of my control. For both you and the GP comment I'd like to refer you to my reply here with background and more information: https:/&#x
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Sorry for taking some time to reply in full, but I wanted to wait for an official answer from Apple support. Apple informed me that: "[Y]our apps … are available worldwide and functioning as expected. If your customers are reporting is
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Angeldust has practically zero level of detail (LoD) and has no occlusion culling. "Almost zero LoD" means that geometry is always rendered at full resolution, but subtle vertex-shaded effects like the waving of grass are not appl
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
I think your first question is actually supposed to be: what if a single (not two) entity is modified from multiple chunks? All external effects that can happen to an entity are written to an atomic integer that tracks healing points, dam
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
I considered it, then dropped it. The Google Play Store definitely has a mechanism of adding more data/bundles to your application, but (when I investigated this) you'd need to drag in Google-provided libraries and tie your app to
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Really getting into the nitty-gritty here. If an entity migrates to an inactive chunk, I keep the entity "on hold" and add a "chunk set mutation" to the active chunk set so that the set is expanded in the next tick. The
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
You might have noticed I already took a looong time to formulate a reply to your questions. And I'm still not sure how to approach them, so I'll reply to the last part first. Currently I only have my livestreams as a public presen
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Pick your poison; I also have a Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/AngeldustLive I'm not a social media user and I currently don't keep a public blog. There are many interesting aspects of Angeldust to talk abo
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Oof! I'm the designer and art director myself. Please elaborate a bit as "colors and textures fighting each other" doesn't give me the slightest clue as to what you perceive as problematic. Can you post annotated screens
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
You can read a bit about the Angeldust backend architecture in this comment chain (I have no idea what to call this): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858618 The Second Life approach sounds like a very good solution i
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
I hope you enjoy the experience! To be honest I think Angeldust is a video game tailored for non-gamers. Most people playing Angeldust that I know in real life are not gamers by any stretch of the imagination, but they just like the laid-ba
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Thanks, I took a look. They look geared specifically to getting Unity engine projects "ported". Porting my (non-Unity) code is the least of my worries; I'm already maintaining about ten different build toolchains. I anticipat
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
I'd say: have fun! With Angeldust being a shared, persistent, open online world it's a pretty cool place to make friends and work on building projects together. You can leave a permanent mark in a place where you can be someone el
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Attaching a price tag it (done!) and trying to spread the word through relevant channels (in progress). Posting on Hacker News has been a thoroughly enjoyable process so far and I look forward to meeting more great minds.
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Don't sweat it! I did get an older version of Angeldust running on OpenBSD with pledge and unveil without problems. It's just not a market I can comfortably cater to at the moment. Kick back and relax for a moment and there'l
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Since your message popped up right at the top I'm going to reply to it, hopefully summarizing my view on this and addressing the lively discussion about the game's name. There is a special meaning for the game. The short backstory
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Don't worry about a thing. Over the years I've come to appreciate feedback in any shape, way or form. Anyone taking the time to reflect on my product, my work or me as a person is someone who's apparently invested, but possib
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Migrating requires downtime since the game server runs as a monolithic entity. I migrate between dedicated servers and VPSes based on expected demand. Right now we're running on big metal to be able accommodate many players coming whil
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
I'm going to give a sentimental answer instead of a fully accurate one. This also came up during the livestream, so it's a great question! When I was a five or six years old kid I used to program on our home computer, a Philips P2
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Both you and Exuma: thanks for the down to earth answers! I'll give it my best shot.
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Good follow-up question! As for the read state, you're already golden in the sense that you only read data and don't update it. If a chunk needs world or entity data from a neighboring chunk—or even halfway across the world—you ca
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Thanks! A slight word of warning though, something that also came up during yesterday's livestream: I've been really lucky to be able to successfully fulfill my childhood dream by making this game. But like Freddie Mercury sung: i
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by ItsFirefly 7y ago
Of course! I can't distribute iOS apps outside of the iTunes App Store, but I do have DRM-free, standalone versions of Angeldust for macOS here: Itch.io: https://metagaming.itch.io/angeldust Steam: https://s

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