Building a clicker game with React It’s really easy to make a big ball of mud in JavaScript. You start with a simple loop. You want your program to do A, B, then C. Great. But then you realize you also want D, E, F, G, H, and I. Before you realize it, you have dozens of functions spanning hundreds of lines with no clear structure. So you try to create structure after the fact....

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....

It’s good to celebrate the accomplishment of finishing a book. Usually (unless you are HIGHLY disciplined) that means the book had something to offer that you could use at the current point of your life. I think equally as important as celebrating the books we finish is celebrating the books we gave up on. It’s not laziness or lack of perseverance, but rather, the recognition that that book just didn’t help with the problem at hand....

The Great Bottomless Soup Vat Experiment of 2017 Cooking healthy food is cool I’m not a health nut. Mostly I’m just lazy. I want to stay healthy with the least amount of effort, just like every other regular person. This includes not having to think up new things to eat all the time. Making the same decision over and over is exhausting, and when we’re exhausted, we do dumb things, like take shortcuts....

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....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuhari shu (守) “protect”, “obey”—traditional wisdom—learning fundamentals, techniques, heuristics, proverbs ha (破) “detach”, “digress”—breaking with tradition—detachment from the illusions of self ri (離) “leave”, “separate”—transcendence—there are no techniques or proverbs, all moves are natural, becoming one with spirit alone without clinging to forms; transcending the physical You cannot write without reading. It is impossible to write well without first consuming colossal amounts of reading material. The writer must input massive amounts of information and ideas into their brain, then simmer in thought for a great while, before finally being able to form unique ideas of their own on demand....

found common symbols between ores and bars (iron, copper, gold) and tools (replace iron with steel). iron, copper, and steel have very similar symbols; they look like something shiny under a hill, followed by another shape. Copper and steel 2nd symbol looks similar, but the shape inside the container is different. Don’t really see similarities between those and iron’s second symbol. Gold is different entirely. It looks like a little shrine, or a slightly different shape under the hill....