Session Planning I see a potential problem in the controls if more than one controller button is needed simultaneously. The isFiring returns a boolean on the FIRST button push it detects, and would ignore any additional entries in that list. This means if I press A, it will do the action for A, but then if I keep pressing A, and also press B, the action for A+B would not get executed; only the action for A would....

Today, I’m adding controller support to Centipede. (See the first controller commit.) Controls Code Cleanup First, the location of the controls currently doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I’m moving them to a new file, controls.js. On load, controls.addEventListeners will execute. There are no dependencies, so the script load order doesn’t matter. Previously these were on the gameArea object because that’s where the keys tracker was stored, but the keys tracker can just live in the controls object....

Session Planning Back to centipede! Adding that falling bug creature. It should be pretty much exactly like the worm, only moving vertically, and will create mushrooms in its wake. Rename the worm object to something else like simple-interval-creature (is that a horrible name?). This could be combined with spider as well, with an if statement on the type to change the shape and movement functions. Session Post Flies are in!...

Thoughts on Multiplayer and Matchmaking More streamlined matchmaking equals a less meaningful social experience. Matchmaking allows for a much higher number of unique inputs, but many games that use it lack any meaningful social aspect, since there’s no actual teamwork required. There’s no real strategy, just general patterns to follow. There are no real shared stakes. Show up and hit Triangle to win. Playing alone together. Multiplayer solitaire. Maybe these aren’t the goals of matchmaking systems, but matching only for the sake of increasing the variability, and therefore the opportunity for a unique experience may not necessarily increase the quality of those experiences....

Can I say that? Does it make people think I’ll never focus or settle? Are they sighing and looking at me with frustration and thinking “Not this again?” Does it matter what they think? Answer to all: maybe. I have half a dozen self-published, unfinished games that nobody plays up on a free hosting site. They aren’t very good. Three of them are really poor copies of some of the best games of all time....

Monster Hunter World removes a lot of the tedium of previous titles in the genre Capcom did a wonderful job addressing complaints about gameplay elements from previous installments that didn’t add value to the experience. This host of improvements makes the gameplay much more seamless and lowers the barrier to entry for new players. No more tedious utility item management You no longer have to keep track of, and use up inventory spaces on, whetstones, pickaxes, or bugnets....

Inquiring minds yearn to know: “How do you manage to manage all those ideas and projects?” And I say to them: “Well, inquiring minds, yearn no further. The answers are thither. Or do I mean yon? I don’t think thither means what I think it means. Onward to me asking myself a pile of questions!” Identifying Problems or Bottlenecks or Interesting Technologies is What Keeps Me Going “Aren’t you busy enough?...

What’s a better source of knowledge? A book or an article? We’re talking physical book vs digital article here. An article gives readers an injection of thought-provoking, potentially worldview-altering/confirming serum (if they’re reading the right articles) and maybe a lesson they can absorb and apply to their lives then and there. But how do they keep track of it? What binds in memory the many disparate topics on articles one might read throughout the day?...

Alt Title: How Not To Make a Ton of Money Blogging About Things That Matter to You Why Do I Write? I mostly write for selfish reasons. I started blogging because I thought passive income would be great, but then after a while I realized it’s probably the wrong niche, and I’d have to (be really annoying || prolific || write about popular things to generate clicks) to even be seen, and that’s not what I want to spend my resources on....

Welcome to the first of a multi-part series of tutorials on how to develop, source control, and run scripts to control your Android device, using only mobile apps for development. Dev On the Go I recently went on a road trip, and wanted to experiment with a mobile-only workflow. The main components I needed were an interpreter, an IDE, and source control. The suite of apps I discovered and used are as follows: QPython3 (a python IDE and script runner) SGit (source control) LabCoat (GitLab repository viewer) Dropbox (ad-hoc, easy-access file storage) Dropsync (one- or two-way sync between directories on your mobile device) Epsilon Notes (a markdown editor and renderer) In this tutorial, I will cover my experience with QPython3....