Podcasts about Zachtronics

It's been 16 frigid months since our last all-intro episode, but now we're pulling the ice tray out of the freezer and offering you another cube of cold opens, covering everything from surge protector safety to thermal paste application methods, stacking storage bins without crushing them, the crazed monitor murderer who's struck again, artifacts of our very early careers, an intensive Weird Al lyrical breakdown, a little paean for Zachtronics, and how not to forget about obligations that might get you arrested. Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, a monthly bonus episode, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod

Cette semaine : la Thailande à l'honneur dans Valorant, Acclaim rappelé par l'avarice, Zachtronics revient avec une moustache, Meld Studio, Discord veut entrer en bourse, Revolt, Daredevil: Born Again, Andy Bell - Pinball Wanderer, Apple M4 MacBook Air et M4 Max / M3 Ultra Mac Studios, Apple iPad 2025 updates, tests de la Nvidia RTX 5070, et AMD Radeon RX 9070XT / 9070. Lisez plutôt Torréfaction #324 : Meld Studio, Apple MacBook Air M4, Mac Studio M4 Max / M3 Ultra, tests Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 + AMD Radeon RX 9070XT et RX 9070 avec sa vraie mise en page sur Geekzone. Pensez à vos rétines.

There is surprisingly little use for the podcast block. Welcome back to the podcast! Today, the dice have ordained we talk about Infinifactory. This is a game that has been on our list for many years at this point and the main reason we ended up putting it on the (now comical misnomer) Mystery May table was mostly out of fear. Fear of exposing our deep inability to play puzzle games with any kind of ability. Infinifactory is a game by Zachtronics, who are known for creating this sort of puzzle game in which you create machines to accomplish a task. This happens to be one of their most literal. Tasked with creating factories that create specific outputs from a never ending conveyor of inputs in the form of blocks. Using a litany of different tools including welders, rotators and pushers, you orient blocks and combine them together. This ramps up in complexity shockingly quickly and it's both impressive and intimidating, as the objects you create become less abstract and more like actual things. This plays into the game's thematic elements as you are creating these products for an alien race under duress. This plays into the visual and interstitial elements of the game, but also into a surprising narrative. Less surprising because of its content, more due to its existence at all. We're going to be talking about our struggles with the game as it progressed, the relaxed atmosphere of the game, and how difficult it sometimes is to buy burritos. Thank you for joining us again this week! We may have been slightly out of our depth in the second half of this game, but we wanted to play it because it is, at first glance, the most approachable of Zachtronics' games. And this largely bore out. Are you a long-time Zachtronics fan, or do you find these games kind of unapproachable? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we do not get to rest our brains, as we are playing Obduction, from the creators of Myst and following very much in its footsteps, so if you aren't as mentally exhausted as we are, we hope you'll join us for that.

Lords: * Megan * Lexi Topics: * Erik Satie's performance indications * https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=60&threadid=4497 * Instant food from other cultures (why isn't everyone eating maggi noodles??) * Seasonal decorations * Delhi Metro * https://docs.google.com/document/d/17k75ftxEn2xR-tJkLSV4H8st5BFAxPNxE3BNCXDI6Go/edit * Becoming Immortal by being predictable * Living in different climates (e.g. my experiences with the harsh winters of Chicago vs sweltering Austin TX summers) Microtopics: * Music implementation for The Lamplighters League. * Watching a streamer play games and asking them for a turn at the controls. * How to pronounce "Erik Satie." * How to pronounce "Gymnopedies." * Finding 100 umbrellas in your dead friend's apartment. * A list of Satie's performance indications. * Grandly forgetting the present. * With your bones dry and distant. * Playing music with your forehead. * Doing something to a piano. * Your boss sending a memo asking you to work with a shy piety. * Pizzicato vs. Bartok pizzicato. * Adding the hamburger so it's not just Helper. * What instant foods are missing from your food vocabulary. * Adding heavy cream to ramen broth. * Getting an apron so you can have a little costume when you cook. * Realizing that when you wear the apron you don't get food on your shirt. * A big bib for Big Jim. * Normalizing scoop bibs. * Kraft Dinner. * Halal certified instant stir fry noodles. * Ramen in a cup or ramen where you provide your own container. * Insurance Mac. * Canned cheeseburgers. * A boring house with nothing on it. * Movable feasts. * Keeping those 12-foot skeletons in your yard and decorating it seasonally. * The beetles that clean bones for you. * Recreational Explosives Day. * A Zachtronics programming puzzle for every holiday. * A movable feast where you don't eat. * Decorating your house to celebrate Toyotathon. * Falling for strangers and their blue hair. * A poem that is long if you read it but short if you recite it. * Taking public transit as an act of defiance. * A gift that is impossible to give yourself on purpose. * Inventing a shower proof phone so nobody ever has shower thoughts again. * Putting your phone in a Ziploc bag and watching movies underwater. * Sitting down at your computer and getting stuck. * Hacking your executive function by adding friction in the right places. * Whether Wellbutrin gives everyone tinnitus or just you. * Death hacks for staying mentally connected to your dead relatives. * A service that puts your podcast on vinyl. * Using CRISPR to infect the cockroach population with 229 episodes of Topic Lords. * Moving to a land where your snot doesn't freeze. * Not trusting your own weather opinions. * Surprising yourself by enjoying seasons. * Driving in icy conditions. * Standing under the heated lamps like a lizard. * Waiting for the bus in the dark. * Learning to drive after you move to a city with public transit. * Not driving with kids. * Getting rid of all the bots. * Sgt. Pepper Bot.

#293The Logistics of Moving OnInterview2023.02.22Your nice hosts invite Zachtronics founder Zach Barth to discuss the closing of the studio and the logistics of moving on from that. In this episode, you'll also hear about ruminations on what success means as a game dev, a theory about how great walking is and exclusive news about Zach's future plans.The Logistics of Moving OnIRLProductionZachtronics websiteLast Call BBSWhy Zachtronics is shutting down for good this time - Alex Calvin, gameindustry.bizLegal Systems Very Different From Ours - David Friedman, Peter Leeson, David SkarbekWhy Walking Helps Us Think - Ferris Jabr, The New YorkerCoincidenceZach BarthGuestZach Barth was the founder of Zachtronics and is currently working on unannounced projects.External linkZachtronics on Twitter

In dieser Folge sprechen Christina und Florian über Sticky Business, World Of Horror, Hands, Laika: Aged Through Blood, Snacks als Mahlzeit und Essens-Takeaways aus Japan.

Episode Notes Rachael Wright-Munn (ChaelCodes) talks about her love of programming games (games with programming elements in them, not how to make games!), starting her streaming career with regex crosswords, and how streaming games and open source every week led her to a voice acting role in one of her favorite programming games. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. mastodon twitch Personal website Programming Games mentioned: Regex Crossword SHENZHEN I/O EXAPUNKS 7 Billion Humans One Dreamer Code Rom@ntic Bitburner Transcript You can help edit this transcript on GitHub. Jeremy: I'm here at RubyConf San Diego with Rachel Wright-Munn, and she goes by Chaelcodes online. Thanks for joining me today. Rachael: Hi, everyone. Hi, Jeremy. Really excited to be here. Jeremy: So probably the first thing I'll ask about is on your web page, and I've noticed you have streams, you say you have an interest in not just regular games, but programming games, so. Rachael: Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked about this. Okay, so I absolutely love programming games. When I first started streaming, I did it with Regex Crossword. What I really like about it is the fact that you have this joyful environment where you can solve puzzles and work with programming, and it's really focused on the experience and the joy. Are you familiar with Zach Barth of Zachtronics? Jeremy: Yeah. So, I've tried, what was it? There's TIS-100. And then there's the, what was the other one? He had one that's... Rachael: Opus Magnum? Shenzhen I/O? Jeremy: Yeah, Shenzhen I/O. Rachael: Oh, my gosh. Shenzhen I/O is fantastic. I absolutely love that. The whole conceit of it, which is basically that you're this electronics engineer who's just moved to Shenzhen because you can't find a job in the States. And you're trying to like build different solutions for these like little puzzles and everything. It was literally one of the, I think that was the first programming game that really took off just because of the visuals and everything. And it's one of my absolute favorites. I really like what he says about it in terms of like testing environments and the developer experience. Cause it's built based on assembly, right? He's made a couple of modifications. Like he's talked about it before where it's like The memory allocation is different than what it would actually look like in assembly and the way the registers are handled I believe is different, I wouldn't think of assembly as something that's like fun to write, but somehow in this game it is. How far did you get in it? Jeremy: Uh, so I didn't get too far. So, because like, I really like the vibe and sort of the environment and the whole concept, right, of you being like, oh, you've been shipped off to China because that's the only place that these types of jobs are, and you're working on these problems with bad documentation and stuff like that. And I like the whole concept, but then the actual writing of the software, I was like, I don't know. Rachael: And it's so hard, one of the interesting things about that game is you have components that you drop on the board and you have to connect them together and wire them, but then each component only has a specific number of lines. So like half the time I would be like, oh, I have this solution, but I don't have enough lines to actually run it or I can't fit enough components, then you have to go in and refactor it and everything. And it's just such a, I don't know, it's so much fun for me. I managed to get through all of the bonus levels and actually finish it. Some of them are just real, interesting from both a story perspective and interesting from a puzzle perspective. I don't wanna spoil it too much. You end up outside Shenzhen, I'll just say that. Jeremy: OK. That's some good world building there. Rachael: Yeah. Jeremy: Because in your professional life, you do software development work. So I wonder, what is it about being in a game format where you're like, I'm in it. I can do it more. And this time, I'm not even being paid. I'm just doing it for fun. Rachael: I think for me, software development in general is a very joyful experience. I love it. It's a very human thing. If you think about it like math, language, all these things are human concepts and we built upon that in order to build software in our programs and then on top of that, like the entire purpose of everything that we're building is for humans, right? Like they don't have rats running programs, you know what I mean? So when I think about human expression and when I think about programming, these two concepts are really closely linked for me and I do see it as joyful, But there are a lot of things that don't spark joy in our development processes, right? Like lengthy test suites, or this exhausting back and forth, or sometimes the designs, and I just, I don't know how to describe it, but sometimes you're dealing with ugly code, sometimes you're dealing with code smells, and in your professional developer life, sometimes you have to put up with that in order to ship features. But when you're working in a programming game, It's just about the experience. And also there is a correct solution, not necessarily a correct solution, but like there's at least one correct solution. You know for a fact that there's, that it's a solvable problem. And for me, that's really fun. But also the environment and the story and the world building is fun as well, right? So one of my favorite ones, we mentioned Shenzhen, but Zachtronics also has Exapunks. And that one's really fun because you have been infected by a disease. And like a rogue AI is the only one that can provide you with the medicine you need to prevent it. And what this disease is doing is it is converting parts of your body into like mechanical components, like wires and everything. So what you have to do as an engineer is you have to write the code to keep your body running. Like at one point, you were literally programming your heart to beat. I don't have problems like that in my day job. In my day job, it's like, hey, can we like charge our customers more? Like, can we put some banners on these pages? Like, I'm not hacking anybody's hearts to keep them alive. Jeremy: The stakes are a little more interesting. Yeah, yeah. Rachael: Yeah, and in general, I'm a gamer. So like having the opportunity to mix two of my passions is really fun. Jeremy: That's awesome. Yeah, because that makes sense where you were saying that there's a lot of things in professional work where it's you do it because you have to do it. Whereas if it's in the context of a game, they can go like, OK, we can take the fun problem solving part. We can bring in the stories. And you don't have to worry about how we're going to wrangle up issue tickets. Rachael: Yeah, there are no Jira tickets in programming games. Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. Rachael: I love what you said there about the problem solving part of it, because I do think that that's an itch that a lot of us as engineers have. It's like we see a problem, and we want to solve it, and we want to play with it, and we want to try and find a way to fix it. And programming games are like this really small, compact way of getting that dopamine hit. Jeremy: For sure. Yeah, it's like. Sometimes when you're doing software for work or for an actual purpose, there may be a feeling where you want to optimize something or make it look really nice or perform really well. And sometimes it just doesn't matter, right? It's just like we need to just put it out and it's good enough. Whereas if it's in the context of a game, you can really focus on like, I want to make this thing look pretty. I want to feel good about this thing I'm making. Rachael: You can make it look good, or you can make it look ugly. You don't have to maintain it. After it runs, it's done. Right, right, right. There's this one game. It's 7 Billion Humans. And it's built by the creators of World of Goo. And it's like this drag and drop programming solution. And what you do is you program each worker. And they go solve a puzzle. And they pick up blocks and whatever. But they have these shredders, right? And the thing is, you need to give to the shredder if you have like a, they have these like little data blocks that you're handing them. If you're not holding a data block and you give to the shredder, the worker gives themself to the shredder. Now that's not ideal inside a typical corporate workplace, right? Like we don't want employees shredding themselves. We don't want our workers terminating early or like anything like that. But inside the context of a game, in order to get the most optimal solution, They have like a lines of code versus fastest execution and sometimes in order to win the end like Lines of code. You just kind of have to shred all your workers at the, When I'm on stream and I do that when I'm always like, okay everybody close your eyes That's pretty good it's Yeah, I mean cuz like in the context of the game. Jeremy: I think I've seen where they're like little They're like little gray people with big eyes Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, so it's like, sorry, people. It's for the good of the company, right? Rachael: It's for my optimal lines of code solution. I always draw like a, I always write a humane solution before I shred them. Jeremy: Oh, OK. So it's, you know, I could save you all, but I don't have to. Rachael: I could save you all, but I would really like the trophy for it. There's like a dot that's going to show up in the elevator bay if I shred you. Jeremy: It's always good to know what's important. But so at the start, you mentioned there was a regular expression crossword or something like that. Is that how you got started with all this? Rachael: My first programming game was Regex Crossword. I absolutely loved it. That's how I learned Regex. Rachael: I love it a lot. I will say one thing that's been kind of interesting is I learned Regex through Regex Crossword, which means there's actually these really interesting gaps in my knowledge. What was it? at Link Tech Retreat, they had like a little Regex puzzle, and it was like forward slash T and then a plus, right? And I was like, I have no idea what that character is, right? Like, I know all the rest of them. But the problem is that forward slash T is tab, and Regex crossword is a browser game. So you can't have a solution that has tab in it. And have that be easy for users. Also, the idea of like greedy evaluation versus lazy evaluation doesn't apply, because you're trying to find a word that satisfies the regex. So it's not necessarily about what the regex is going to take. So it's been interesting finding those gaps, but I really think that some of the value there was around how regex operates and the rules underlying it and building enough experience that I can now use the documentation to fill in any gaps. Jeremy: So the crossword, is it where you know the word and you have to write a regular expression to match it? Or what's the? Rachael: They give you regex. And there's a couple of different versions, right? The first one, you have two regex patterns. There's one going up and down, and there's one going left and right. And you have to fill the crossword block with something that matches both regular expressions. Rachael: Then we get into hexagonal ones. Yeah, where you have angles and a hexagon, and you end up with like three regular expressions. What's kind of interesting about that one is I actually think that the hexagonal regex crosswords are a little bit easier because you have more rules and constraints, which are more hints about what goes in that box. Jeremy: Interesting. OK, so it's the opposite of what I was thinking. They give you the regex rules, and then you put in a word that's going to satisfy all the regex you see. Rachael: Exactly. When I originally did it, they didn't have any sort of hints or anything like that. It was just empty. Now it's like you click a box, and then they've got a suggestion of five possible letters that could go in there. And it just breaks my heart. I liked the old version that was plainer, and didn't have any hints, and was harder. But I acknowledge that the new version is prettier, and probably easier, and more friendly. But I feel like part of the joy that comes from games, that comes from puzzles, It comes from the challenge, and I miss the challenge. Jeremy: I guess someone, it would be interesting to see people who are new to it, if they had tried the old way, if they would have bounced off of it. Rachael: I think you're probably right. I just want them to give me a toggle somewhere. Jeremy: Yeah, oh, so they don't even let you turn off the hints, they're just like, this is how it is. Rachael: Yep. Jeremy: Okay. Well, we know all about feature flags. Rachael: And how difficult they are to maintain in perpetuity. Jeremy: Yeah, but no, that sounds really cool because I think some things, like you can look up a lot of stuff, right? You can look up things about regex or look up how to use them. But I think without the repetition and without the forcing yourself to actually go through the motion, without that it's really hard to like learn and pick it up. Rachael: I completely agree with you. I think the repetition, the practice, and learning the paradigm and patterns is huge. Because like even though I didn't know what forward slash t plus was, I knew that forward slash t was going to be some sort of character type. Jeremy: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of, there was, I'm not sure if you've heard of Vim Adventures, but... Rachael: I did! I went through the free levels. I had a streamerversary and my chat had completed a challenge where I had to go learn Vim. So I played a little bit of Vim Adventures. Jeremy: So I guess it didn't sell you. Rachael: Nope, I got Vim Extensions turned on. Jeremy: Oh, you did? Rachael: Yeah, I have the Vim extension turned on in VS Code. So I play with a little bit of sprinkling of Vim in my everyday. Jeremy: It's kind of funny, because I am not a Vim user in the sense that I don't use it as my daily editor or anything like that. But I do the same thing with the extensions in the browser. I like being able to navigate with the keyboard and all that stuff. Rachael: Oh, that is interesting. That's interesting. You have a point like memorizing all of the different patterns when it comes to like Keyboard navigation and things like that is very similar to navigating in Vim. I often describe writing code in Vim is kind of like solving a puzzle in order to write your code So I think that goes back to that Puzzle feeling that puzzle solving feeling we were having we were talking about before. Jeremy: Yeah, I personally can't remember, but whenever I watch somebody who's, really good at using Vim, it is interesting to see them go, oh, yes, I will go to the fifth word, and I will swap out just this part. And it's all just a few keystrokes, yeah. Rachael: Very impressive. Can be done just as well with backspace and, like, keyboard, like, little arrows and everything. But there is something fun about it and it is... Faster-ish. Jeremy: Yeah, I think it's like I guess it depends on the person, but for some people it's like they, they can think and do things at the speed that they type, you know, and so for them, I guess the the flow of, I'm doing stuff super fast using all these shortcuts is probably helpful to them. Rachael: I was talking to someone last night who was saying that they don't even think about it in Vim anymore. They just do it. I'm not there yet. (laughs) Jeremy: Yeah, I'll probably never be there (laughs) But yeah, it is something to see when you've got someone who's really good at it. Rachael: Definitely. I'm kind of glad that my chat encouraged and pressured me to work with Vim. One of the really cool things is when I'm working on stuff, I'll sometimes be like, oh, I want to do this. Is there a command in Vim for that? And then I'll get multiple suggestions or what people think, and ideas for how I can handle things better. Someone recently told me that if you want to delete to the end of a line, you can use capital D. And this whole time I was doing lowercase d dollar sign. Jeremy: Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, it's like there's so many things there that, I mean, we should probably talk about your experiences streaming. But that seems like a really great benefit that you can be working through a problem or just doing anything, really. And then there's people who they're watching, and they're like, I know how to do it better. And they'll actually tell you, yeah. Rachael: I think that being open to that is one of the things that's most important as a streamer. A lot of people get into this cycle where they're very defensive and where they feel like they have to be the expert. But one of the things that I love about my chat is the fact that they do come to me with these suggestions. And then I can be open to them, and I can learn from them. And what I can do is I can take those learnings from one person and pass it on to the other people in chat. I can become a conduit for all of us to learn. Jeremy: So when you first decided to start streaming, I guess what inspired you to give it a shot? Like, what were you thinking? Rachael: That's a great question. It's also kind of a painful question. So the company that I was working for, I found out that there were some pay issues with regards to me being a senior, promotion track, things like that. And it wasn't the first time this had happened, right? Like, I often find that I'm swapping careers every two to three years because of some miserable experience at the company. Like you start and the first year is great. It's fantastic. It's awesome. But at the end of it, you're starting to see the skeletons and that two to three years later you're burnt out. And what I found was that every two to three years I was losing everything, right? Like all of my library of examples, the code that I would reference, like that's in their private repo. When it came to my professional network, the co -workers that liked and respected me, we had always communicated through the workplace Slack. So it's really hard to get people to move from the workplace Slack to like Instagram or Twitter or one of those other places if that's not where, if that's not a place where you're already used to talking to them. And then the other thing is your accomplishments get wiped out, right? Like when you start at the next company and you start talking about promotion and things like that, the work that you did at previous companies doesn't matter. They want you to be a team lead at that company. They want you to lead a massive project at that company and that takes time. It takes opportunities and Eventually, I decided that I wanted to exist outside my company. Like I wanted to have a reputation that went beyond that and that's what originally inspired me to stream And it's pretty hard to jump from like oh. I got really frustrated and burnt out at my company to I've got it I'm gonna do some regex crossword on stream, but honestly, that's what it was right was I just wanted to slowly build this reputation in this community outside of of my company and it's been enormously valuable in terms of my confidence, in terms of my opportunities. I've been able to pick up some really interesting jobs and I'm able to leverage some of those experiences in really clear professional ways and it's really driven me to contribute more to open source. I mentioned that I have a lot of people like giving me advice and suggestions and feedback. That's enormously helpful when you're going out there and you're trying to like get started in open source and you're trying to build that confidence and you're trying to build that reputation. I often talk about having a library of examples, right? Like your best code that you reference again and again and again. If I'm streaming on Twitch, everything that I write has to be open source because I'm literally showing it on video, right? So it's really encouraged me to build that out. And now when I'm talking to my coworkers and companies, I can be like, oh, we need to talk about single table inheritance. I did that in Hunter's Keepers. Why don't we go pull that up and we'll take a look at it. Or are we building a Docker image? I did that in Hunter's Keepers and Conf Buddies. Why don't we look at these, compare them, and see if we can get something working here, right? Like I have all of these examples, and I even have examples from other apps as well. Like I added Twitch Clips to 4M. So when I want to look at how to build a liquid tag, because Jekyll uses liquid tags as well. So when I'm looking at that, I can hop to those examples and hop between them, and I'm never going to lose access to them. Jeremy: Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point where I think a lot of people, they do their work at their job and it's never going to be seen by anyone and you can sort of talk about it, but you can't actually show anybody what you did. So it's like, and I think to that point too, is that there's some knowledge that is very domain specific or specific to that company. And so when you're actually doing open source work, it's something that anybody can pick up and use and has utility way beyond just your company. And the whole point of creating this record, that makes a lot of sense too, because if I wanna know if you know how to code, I can just see like, wow, she streams every Thursday. She's clearly she knows what she's doing and you know, you have these also these open source contributions as well So it's it's sort of like it's not this question of if I interview you It's it's not I'm just going off of your word that and I believe what you're saying. But rather it's kind of the proof is all it's all out there. Rachael: Oh, definitely if I were to think about my goals and aspirations for the future I've been doing this for four years still continuing But I think I would like to get to the point where I don't really have to interview. Where an interview is more of a conversation between me and somebody who already knows they want to hire me. Jeremy: Have you already started seeing a difference? Like you've been streaming for about four years I think Rachael: I had a really interesting job for about eight months doing developer relations with New Relic. That was a really interesting experience. And I think it really pushed the boundaries of what I understood myself to be capable of because I was able to spend 40 hours a week really focused on content creation, on blogging, on podcasting, on YouTube videos and things like that. Obviously there was a lot of event organization and things like that as well. But a lot of the stuff that came out of that time is some of my best work. Like I, I'm trying to remember exactly what I did while I was at New Relic, but I saw a clear decrease afterwards. But yeah, I think that was probably close to the tipping point. I don't for sure know if I'm there yet, right? Like you never know if you're at the point where you don't have to interview anymore until you don't have to interview. But the last two jobs, no, I haven't had to interview. Jeremy: So, doing it full -time, how did you feel about that versus having a more traditional lead or software developer role? Rachael: It was definitely a trade-off. So I spent a lot less time coding and a lot more time with content, and I think a little bit of it was me trying to balance the needs and desires of my audience against the needs and desires of my company. For me, and this is probably going to hurt my chances of getting one of those jobs where I don't have to interview in the future, but my community comes first, right? They're the people who are gonna stick with me when I swap between jobs, but that was definitely something that I constantly had to think about is like, how do I balance what my company wants from me with the responsibility that I have to my community? But also like my first talk, your first open source contribution, which was at RubyConf Denver, Like, that was written while I was at New Relic. Like, would I have had the time to work on a talk in addition to the streaming schedule and everything else? Um, for a period of time, I was hosting Ruby Galaxy, which was a virtual meetup. It didn't last very long, and we have deprecated it. Um, I deprecated it before I left the company because I wanted to give it, like, a good, clean ending versus, um, necessarily having it, like, linger on and be a responsibility for other people. but... I don't think I would have done those if I was trying to balance it with my day job. So, I think that that was an incredible experience. That said, I'm very glad it's over. I'm very glad that the only people I'm beholden to are my community now. Jeremy: So, is it the sheer amount that you had to do that was the main issue? Or is it more that that tension between, like you said, serving your audience and your community versus serving your employer? Rachael: Oh, a lot of it was tension. A lot of it was hectic, event management in general. I think if you're like planning and organizing events, that's a very challenging thing to do. And it's something that kind of like goes down to the deadline, right? And it's something where everybody's trying to like scramble and pull things together and keep things organized. And that was something that I don't think I really enjoyed. I like to have everything like nice and planned out and organized and all that sort of stuff, and I don't think that that's Something that happens very often in event management at least not from my experience So these were like in -person events or what types of events like I actually skipped out before the in -person events. They would have been in -person events. We had future stack at New Relic, which is basically like this big gathering where you talk about things you can do with New Relic and that sort of stuff. We all put together talks for that. We put together an entire like. Oh gosh, I'm trying to remember the tool that we use, but it was something similar to gather round where you like interact with people. And there's just a lot that goes into that from marketing to event planning to coordinating with everyone. I'm grateful for my time at New Relic and I made some incredible friends and some incredible connections and I did a lot, but yeah, I'm very glad I'm not in DevRel anymore. I don't, if you ask any DevRel, They'll tell you it's hectic, they'll tell you it's chaotic, and they'll tell you it's a lot of work. Jeremy: Yeah. So it sounds like maybe the streaming and podcasting or recording videos, talks, that part you enjoy, but it's the I'm responsible for planning this event for all these people to, you know. That's the part where you're like, OK, maybe not for me. Rachael: Yeah, kind of. I describe myself as like a content creator because I like to just like dabble and make things, right? Like I like to think about like, what is the best possible way to craft this tweet or this post or like to sit there and be like, okay, how can I structure this blog post to really communicate what I want people to understand? When it comes to my streams, what I actually do is I start with the hero's journey as a concept. So every single stream, we start with an issue in the normal world, right? And then what we do is we get drawn into the chaos realm as we're like debugging and trying to build things and going Back and forth and there's code flying everywhere and the tests are red and then they're green and then they're red and then they're green and then finally at the end we come back to the normal world as we create this PR and, Submit it neither merge it or wait for maintainer feedback. And for me that Story arc is really key and I like I'm a little bit of an artist. I like the artistry of it. I like the artistry of the code, and I like the artistry of creating the content. I think I've had guests on the show before, and sometimes it's hard to explain to them, like, no, no, no, this is a code show. We can write code, and that's great, but that's not what it's about. It's not just about the end product. It's about bringing people along with us on the journey. And sometimes it's been three hours, and I'm not doing a great job of bringing people along on the journey so like you know I'm tooting my own horn a little bit here but like that is important to me. Jeremy: So when you're working through a problem, When you're doing it on stream versus you're doing it by yourself, what are the key differences in how you approach the problem or how you work through it? Rachael: I think it's largely the same. It's like almost exactly the same. What I always do is, when I'm on stream, I pause, I describe the problem, I build a test for it, and then I start working on trying to fix what's wrong. I'm a huge fan of test -driven development. The way I see it, you want that bug to be reproducible, and a test gives you the easiest way to reproduce it. For me, it's about being easy as much as it is about it being the right way or not. But yeah, I would say that I approach it largely in the same way. I was in the content creator open space a little bit earlier, and I had to give them a bit of a confession. There is one small difference when I'm doing something on stream versus when I'm doing something alone. Sometimes, I have a lot of incredible senior staff, smart, incredible people in my chat. I'll describe the problem in vivid detail, and then I'll take my time writing the test, and by the time I'm done writing the test, somebody will have figured out what the problem is, and talk back to me about it. I very rarely do that. It's more often when it's an ops or an infrastructure or something like that. A great example of this is like the other day I was having an issue, I mentioned the Vim extensions. If I do command P on the code section, Vim extensions was capturing that, and so it wasn't opening the file. So one of my chatters was like, oh, you know, you can fix that if you Google it. I was like, oh, I don't know. I mean, I could Google it, but it will take so long and distract from the stream. Literally less than 15 minutes later a chatter had replied with like, here's exactly what to add to your VS Code extension, and I knew that was gonna happen. So that's my little secret confession. That's the only difference when I'm debugging things on stream is sometimes I'll let chat do it for me. Jeremy: Yeah, that's a superpower right there. Rachael: It is, and I think that happens because I am open to feedback and I want people to engage with me and I support that and encourage that in my community. I think a lot of people sometimes get defensive when it comes to code, right? Like when it comes to the languages or the frameworks that we use, right? There's a little bit of insecurity because you dive so deep and you gain so much knowledge that you're kind of scared that there might be something that's just as good because it means you might not have made the right decision. And I think that affects us when it comes to code reviews. I think it affects us when we're like writing in public. And I think, yeah, and I think it affects a lot of people when they're streaming, where they're like, if I'm not the smartest person in the room, and why am I the one with a camera and a microphone? But I try to set that aside and be like, we're all learning here. Jeremy: And when people give that feedback, and it's good feedback, I think it's really helpful when people are really respectful about it and kind about it. Have you had any issues like having to moderate that or make sure it stays positive in the context of the stream? Rachael: I have had moderation issues before, right? Like, I'm a woman on the internet, I'm going to have moderation issues. But for me, when it comes to feedback and suggestions, I try to be generous with my interpretation and my understanding of what they're going with. Like people pop in and they'll say things like, Ruby is dead, Rails is dead. And I have commands for that to like remind them, no, actually Twitch is a Rails app. So like, no, it's definitely not dead. You just used it to send a message. But like, I try to be understanding of where people are coming from and to meet them where they are, even if they're not being the most respectful. And I think what I've actually noticed is that when I do that, their tone tends to change. So I have two honorary trolls in my chat, Kego and John Sugar, and they show up and they troll me pretty frequently. But I think that that openness, that honesty, like that conversation back and forth it tends to defuse any sort of aggressive tension or anything. Jeremy: Yeah, and it's probably partly a function of how you respond, and then maybe the vibe of your stream in general probably brings people that are. Rachael: No, I definitely agree. I think so. Jeremy: Yeah. Rachael: It's the energy, you get a lot of the energy that you put out. Jeremy: And you've been doing this for about four years, and I'm having trouble picturing what it's even like, you know, you've never done a stream and you decide I'm gonna turn on the camera and I'm gonna code live and, you know, like, what was kind of going through your mind? How did you prepare? And like, what did, like, what was that like? Rachael: Thank you so much. That's a great question. So, actually, I started with Regex Crossword because it was structured, right? Like, I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do and what I wanted to work on, but with Regex Crossword, you have a problem and you're solving it. It felt very structured and like a very controlled environment, and that gave me the confidence to get comfortable with, like, I'm here, I have a moderator, right? Like we're talking back and forth, I'm interacting with chatters, and that allowed me to kind of build up some skills. I'm actually a big fan of Hacktoberfest. I know a lot of people don't like it. I know a lot of people are like, oh, there are all these terrible spam PRs that show up during Hacktoberfest and open source repositories. But I'm a really big fan because I've always used it to push my boundaries, right? Like every single year, I've tried to take a new approach on it. So the first year that I did it, I decided that what I wanted to do to push my boundaries was to actually work on an application. So this one was called Hunter's Keepers. It was an app for managing characters in Monster of the Week and it was a Reels app because that's what I do professionally and that's what I like to work on. So I started just building that for Hacktoberfest and people loved it. It got a ton of engagement, way more than Regex Crossword and a little bit, like those open source streams continue to do better than the programming games, but I love the programming games so much that I don't wanna lose them, but that's where it kind of started, right? Was me sitting there and saying like, oh, I wanna work on these Rails apps. The Hacktoberfest after that one, And I was like, OK, I worked on my own app in the open, and I've been doing that for basically a year. I want to work on somebody else's app. So I pushed myself to contribute to four different open source repositories. One of the ones I pushed myself to work on was 4M. They did not have Twitch clips as embeds. They had YouTube videos and everything else. And I looked into how to do it, and I found out how liquids tags work, and I had a ton of other examples. I feel like extensions like that are really great contributions to open source because it's an easy way with a ton of examples that you can provide value to the project, and it's the sort of thing where, like, if you need it, other people probably need it as well. So I went and I worked on that, and I made some Twitch clips. And that was like one of my first like external open source project contributions. And that kind of snowballed, right? Because I now knew how to make a liquid tag. So when I started working on my Jekyll site, and I found out that they had liquid tags that were wrapped in gems, I used that as an opportunity to learn how to build a gem. And like how to create a gem that's wrapped around a liquid tag. And that exists now and is a thing that I've done. And so it's all of these little changes and moments that have stacked on top of each other, right? Like it's me going in and saying, OK, today I'd like to customize my alerts. Or like, today I'd like to buy a better microphone and set it up and do these changes. It's not something that changed all at once, right? It's just this small putting in the time day by day, improving. I say like the content gears are always grinding. You always need something new to do, right? And that's basically how my stream has gone for the last four years, is I'm just always looking for something new to do. We haven't talked about this yet, but I'm a voice actress in the programming video game, One Dreamer. And I actually collaborated with the creator of another one, Compressor, who like reached out to me about that Steam key. But the reason that I was able to talk to these people and I was able to reach out to them is rooted in Regex Crossword, right? Cause I finished Regex Crossword and Thursday night was like my programming game stream. And I loved them, so I kept doing them. And I kept picking up new games to play, and I kept exploring new things. So at the end of it, I ended up in this place where I had this like backlog in knowledge and history around programming games. So when Compressor was developed, I think he's like the creator, Charlie Bridge is like a VP at Arm or something. And okay, I should back up a little bit. Compressor is this game where you build CPUs with Steam. So it's like Steam Punk, like, electrical engineering components. Ah, it's so much fun. And like, the characters are all cool, because it's like you're talking to Nikola Tesla, and like Charles Babbage, and Ada Lovelace, and all this sort of stuff. It's just super fun. But the reason he reached out to me was because of that reputation, that backlog, that feedback. Like, when you think about how you became a developer, right, it's day by day, right? when you develop your experience. There's a moment where you look back and you're like, I just have all of these tools in my toolkit. I have all of these experiences. I've done all these things, and they just stack to become something meaningful. And that's kind of how it's gone with my stream, is just every single day I was trying to push, do something new. Well, not every day. Sometimes I have a lazy day, but like, but like I am continuously trying to find new ground to tread. Jeremy: Yeah, I mean that's really awesome thinking about how it went from streaming you solving these regex crosswords to all the way to ending up in one of these games that you play. Yeah, that's pretty pretty cool. Rachael: By the way, that is my absolute favorite game. So the whole reason that I'm in the game is because I played the demo on stream. Jeremy: Oh, nice. Rachael: And I loved it. Like I immediately was like, I'm going to go join the creators discord. This is going to be my game of the year. I can't wait to like make a video on this game. What's really cool about this one is that it uses programming as a mechanic and the story is the real driver. It's got this emotional impact and story. The colors are gorgeous and the way you interact with the world, like it is a genuine puzzle game where the puzzles are small, little, simple programming puzzles. And not like I walk up to this and like I solve a puzzle and the door opens. No, it's like you're interacting with different components in the world and wiring them together in order to get the code working. The whole premise is that there's an indie game developer who's gone through this really traumatic experience with his game, and now he's got the broken game, and he's trying to fix it in time for a really important game demo. I think it's like, it's like Vig something. Video game indie gaming. But what happened is I started following the creator, and I was super interested in them. And then he actually reached out to me about like the Steve workshop and then he was looking for people to voice act and I was like me please yes so yeah that's how I got involved with it yeah that's awesome it's like everything came full circle I guess it's like where you started and yeah no absolutely it's amazing. Jeremy: And so what was that experience like the voice acting bit? I'm assuming you didn't have professional experience with that before. Rachael: No, no, no, no. I had to do a lot of research into like how to voice act. My original ones were tossed out. I just, OK, so there's one line in it. This is going to this is so embarrassing. I can't believe I'm saying this on a podcast. There's one line that's like, it's a beautiful day to code. It's like a, because I'm an NPC, right? So like you can keep interacting with me and one of the like cycling ones is like, it's a beautiful day to code. Well, I tried to deliver it wistfully. Like I was staring out a window and I was like, it's a beautiful day to code. And every single person who heard it told me that it sounded like somewhat sensual, sexy. And I was dying because I had just sent this to this like indie game developer that like I appreciated and he replies back and he's like, I'm not sure if there was an audio issue with some of these, but could you like rerecord some of these? So I was very inexperienced. I did a lot of practicing, a lot of vocal exercises, but I think that it turned out well. Jeremy: That's awesome. So you kind of just kept trying and sending samples, or did they have anybody like try and coach you? Rachael: No, I just kept sending samples. I did watch some YouTube videos from like real voice actors. To try and like figure out what the vocal exercises were. One of the things that I did at first was I sent him like one audio, like the best one in my opinion. And he replied back being like, no, just record this like 10, 20 times. Send it to me and I'll chop the one I want. Jeremy: So the, anytime you did that, the one they picked, was it ever the one you thought was the best one? Rachael: Oh gosh, I don't think I actually like, Wow, I don't think I've gone back over the recordings to figure out which one I thought was the best one. Or like checked which one he picked out of the ones that I recorded. Oh, that's interesting. I'm going to have to do that after this. Jeremy: You're going to listen to all the, it's a beautiful day to code. Rachael: The final version is like a nice, neutral like, it's a beautiful day to code. One of the really cool things about that, though, is my character actually triggers the end of game scene, which is really fun. You know how you get a little hint that's like, oh, this is where the end of the game is, my character gets to do that. Jeremy: That's a big responsibility. Rachael: It is. I was so excited when I found out. Jeremy: That's awesome. Cool. Well, I think that's probably a good place to wrap it up on. But is there anything else you want to mention, or any games you want to recommend? Rachael: Oh, I think I mentioned all of them. I think if you look at Code Romantic, AXA Punks, Bitburner, is an idle JavaScript game that can be played in the browser where you write the custom files and build it and you're going off and hacking servers and stuff like that. It's a little light on story. One Dreamer, yeah. I think if you look at those four to five games, you will find one you like. Oh, it's 7 Billion Humans. Jeremy: Oh, right, yeah. Rachael: I haven't written the blog post yet, but that's my five programming video games that you should try if you've never done one before. 7 million humans is on mobile, so if you've got a long flight back from RubyConf, it might be a great choice. Jeremy: Oh, there you go. Rachael: Yeah. Other than that, it can be found at chael.codes, chael.codes/links for the socials, chael.codes/about for more information about me. And yeah, thank you so much for having me. This has been so much fun. Jeremy: Awesome. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time. Rachael: Thank you.

In which we talk to Zach Barth (1986), designer of SHENZHEN I/O (2016), EXAPUNKS (2018), and many other genre-defining “programming games.” Zach insists the Zachtronics catalogue isn't meant to teach you anything. Pippin agrees to disagree. David is accused of having a substandard laptop. These, and other GAMETHINGS. Zach Barth was developed and published by his parents in 1986.

In which we play EXAPUNKS (2018), and try to find the cure for the common code while being blackmailed by an edgelord AI. Pippin hacks the rainbow. David sounds it out. These, and other GAMETHINGS. EXAPUNKS was developed by Zachtronics and published by Zachtronics in 2018.

In which we play SHENZHEN I/O (2016), a game of code, circuits, and Solitaire. Pippin designed that VR Intimacy Buzzer you asked for. David goes through all the stages of grief in 30 minutes. These, and other GAMETHINGS. SHENZHEN I/O was developed by Zachtronics and published by Zachtronics in 2016.

Your nice hosts invite Zachtronics founder Zach Barth to discuss the closing of the studio and the logistics of moving on from that. In this episode, you'll also hear about ruminations on what success means as a game dev, a theory about how great walking is and exclusive news about Zach's future plans. The Logistics of Moving On IRLProductionZachtronics websiteLast Call BBSWhy Zachtronics is shutting down for good this time - Alex Calvin, gameindustry.bizLegal Systems Very Different From Ours - David Friedman, Peter Leeson, David SkarbekWhy Walking Helps Us Think - Ferris Jabr, The New YorkerCoincidenceZach BarthGuest Zach Barth was the founder of Zachtronics and is currently working on unannounced projects. External link Zachtronics on Twitter

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we continue our series on Plundered Hearts, the pirate romance text adventure, and also turning to a short bonus discussion about Twine games. We mostly discuss our takeaways before turning to the bonus discussion. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Podcast breakdown: 0:18 Takeaways 51:02 Break 51:12 Bonus Discussion Issues covered: text adventure length, an introductory adventure and the audience it sought, being unable to market, a diversion to Rogue Legacy 2, finding a parser bug, game pack-ins, losing a thing to the parser, a garter on a crocodile, waiting and responding to player choice, playtesting internally, not knowing to wait, inventory combination vs revisiting every location you've missed, failure-driven games, piecing clues together through trial and error, choosing your verbs carefully, whether there are multiple solutions, the hostility of a trial-and-error design, subverting your genre through mechanics, Tim's life as a series of flow charts, a structure still used today, flow charts for puzzle steps, working back from a problem to the solution, responding to your players, using good writing to provide a rich experience, interesting work coming from diverse sources, being playful with text, Twine as an environment, what you can do with good writing and simple tools, text effects, the approachability of the tools, personal games, an experimental game and interpretation, the structure of "howling dogs," simulation aspects, commentary on games, the default response and the "that's interesting," poetic/evocative/allusive tone, being in a browser and the affordances, a commentary on the games industry, the anxiety-provoking games, feeling seen, being exactly spot-on, a learning tool, the value of constraints. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Dark Souls, Zork, Infocom, Byte, Nibble, EGM, Nintendo Power, Rogue Legacy 2, Halo, LucasArts, Day of the Tentacle, Emily Short, Counterfeit Monkey, Tim Schafer, Dave Grossman, Dungeons & Dragons, MYST, Space Quest, King's Quest, Reed Knight, Ron Gilbert, Peter Pan, Errol Flynn, Geena Davis, Cutthroat Island, Matthew Modine, Activision, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Chris Klimas, Hypercard, howling dogs, Porpentine, The Writer Will Do Something, Matthew Seiji Burns, Tom Bissell, Game Developer magazine, Magical Wasteland, IF Comp, Andrew Plotkin, Meg Jayanth, Richard Hofmeier, Papers Please, Hot Pockets, Mountain Dew, Warhammer, Frog Fractions, Universal Paperclips, Frank Lantz, HP Lovecraft, Melville, Shakespeare, Mark Laidlaw, Eliza, Zachtronics, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.  Errors! It was not Papers, Please (which is also excellent and by Lucas Pope), but Cart Life that was by Richard Hofmeier Links: When You Say One Thing and Mean Your Motherboard Next time: ...?! Twitch: brettdouville or timlongojr, instagram:timlongojr, Twitter: @timlongojr and @devgameclub DevGameClub@gmail.com

Kapsule Pixel est un format de vidéo/podcast qui vous fait découvrir un jeu vidéo en moins de 2 minutes. Zachtronics est clairement l'un de mes studio préféré. Et quand ils ont annoncés qu'ils arrêteraient après cet ultime jeu, j'avoue avoir eu un petit pincement au coeur. Mais Last Call BBS ne démérite clairement pas et est une solide conclusion à l'ensemble de leur oeuvre!

Chris and Elecia bounce from topic to topic, discussing life and work and occasionally answering listener emails. Python can format code into equations in Latex with Latexify (as noted in this tweet)  Interesting sensor: Sensing deep-tissue physiology via wearable ultrasonic phased arrays   Turing Complete - a listener-recommended logic gate puzzle game for Steam. In the past, we've also talked about Zachtronics' TIS-100 which is similar and Shenzhen IO which is at the circuit level. Oh, and there is The Human Resource Machine by Tomorrow Corporation. A listener recommended the Agile Embedded Podcast, particularly the episode on technical debt. News that Rollercoasters are triggering iPhone 14 and Apple Watch Crash Detection led to a mentions of a blog post about debugging Fitbit's issues with rollercoasters and accelerometers. Visual Studio Code for embedded systems development: You can use CubeMX and Platform.io (here is a how-to) Try out this stm32-for-vscode extension that claims to do what you want (we haven't tried it, tell us if it works)  Or you can go more directly with the cortex-debug extension and locally installed ARM GCC package. Don't forget the VSCode Code Spell Checker extension. From the notes for Elecia's class: Where to buy small quantity prototyping components Having looked for an OLED display part in Live Class, I wanted to put together a list of where you might want to look for components, especially for the prototype stage.  Adafruit and Sparkfun (and EMSL and a lot of other maker stores). If you are using their code as template or test code, look for their boards to see if you can use them. Worldwide and large components distributors with local distribution: Digikey is worldwide and they resell Adafruit and Sparkfun so if you don't want to start with an “OLED” search on Digikey and sort through the results, well, you can start with easier prototype parts. Farnell is a UK company though they have other names in other locations (Newark in the US and Element14 in Asia and Oceania). If they have your flag, you can probably get cheap shipping. Farnell is usually good for all of Europe. RS Components is also new to me though they seem to stock Adafruit parts as well as general electronics. They have lots of distributors all over the world (including more in Africa than I usually see). AliExpress is huge and worldwide, shipping from Asia. It is hard to find things but searching “Adafruit [part]” or “Sparkfun [part]” and you might find what you want… or a cheaper knockoff. Usually you want results in the Electronic Components and Supplies. Note: if it seems too good to be true it probably is. UK has Pimoroni and Cool Components and OkDo resell Adafruit and Sparkfun as well as other pieces like BBC micro:bit and Raspberry Pi. These may work for European countries. Seeed Studio has a wide variety of parts, the Grove and Components categories have parts that might be interesting. They deliver quickly and cheaply to Oceania and Asia.  DFRobot is new to me but looks great. It was recommended for folks in Asia and Oceania. Their parts are resold through Digikey, Arrow, Farnell (Newark).   Australia: Little Bird Electronics, Core Electronics, and Altronics   Transcript Thank you to our sponsor this week!

Cette semaine, on commence par l'incontournable blockbuster annuel de ce début d'automne, la nouvelle itération du jeu de football FIFA, qui sera le dernier à pouvoir utiliser le nom de la fédération internationale. C'est beau, c'est efficace, mais comment en parler vraiment dans le détail ? On continue avec l'ovni cérébral Last Call BBS du studio Zachtronics, et ses puzzles d'une complexité folles. On termine avec les nettoyeurs de Serial Cleaners qui se prennent un peu trop au sérieux et par la petite histoire captivante de Mothmen 1966.Jérémie Kletzkine, dans sa chronique jeux de société, nous parle de Gutenberg.Pour retrouver les formations proposées par notre partenaire l'Ecole O'clock, cliquez ici.Retrouvez toutes les chroniques de jérémie dans le podcast dédié Silence on Joue ! La chronique jeux de société (Lien RSS).Pour commenter cette émission, donner votre avis ou simplement discuter avec notre communauté, connectez-vous au serveur Discord de Silence on joue!Soutenez Silence on joue en vous abonnant à Libération avec notre offre spéciale à 5€ par mois : https://offre.liberation.fr/soj/Silence on joue ! c'est l'émission hebdo de jeux vidéo de Libération. Avec Erwan Cario et ses chroniqueurs Patrick Hellio, Julie Le Baron et Marius Chapuis.CRÉDITSSilence on joue ! est un podcast de Libération animé par Erwan Cario. Cet épisode a été enregistré le 6 octobre 2022 sur Discord. Réalisation : Erwan Cario. Générique : Marc Quatrociocchi. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Welcome to The ohmTown Daily News Show (ODNS). The show is held live on https://www.twitch.tv/ohmTown/ at 6PM Eastern. I cover a selection of aggregated news articles and discuss them briefly with a perspective merging business, technology, and society. Episode: ohmTown Daily News Show for September 24th, 2022. (Episode 267) Articles Discussed: https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/breaking-prose/f/d/sci-fi-story-ideas-and-writing-prompts/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/breaking-prose/f/d/sci-fi-story-ideas-and-writing-prompts/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/hatchideas/f/d/these-7-states-have-the-least-air-pollution-in-the-u-s/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/hatchideas/f/d/these-7-states-have-the-least-air-pollution-in-the-u-s/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/thedailynewsshow/f/d/its-lower-income-families-who-will-be-hit-hardest-by-fed-rate-hikes/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/thedailynewsshow/f/d/its-lower-income-families-who-will-be-hit-hardest-by-fed-rate-hikes/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/hatchideas/f/d/new-york-is-now-the-nations-busiest-port-in-historic-re-routing-of-trade-away-from-west-coast/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/hatchideas/f/d/new-york-is-now-the-nations-busiest-port-in-historic-re-routing-of-trade-away-from-west-coast/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/thedailynewsshow/f/d/the-fed-says-unemployment-will-rise-these-workers-would-lose-their-jobs-first/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/thedailynewsshow/f/d/the-fed-says-unemployment-will-rise-these-workers-would-lose-their-jobs-first/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/the-word-in-tech/f/d/i-would-rather-eat-an-actual-burger-why-plant-based-meats-sizzle-fizzled/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/the-word-in-tech/f/d/i-would-rather-eat-an-actual-burger-why-plant-based-meats-sizzle-fizzled/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/warcrafters/f/d/zachtronics-combined-tarot-with-solitaire-and-its-my-new-daily-jam/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/warcrafters/f/d/zachtronics-combined-tarot-with-solitaire-and-its-my-new-daily-jam/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/the-continuity-report/f/d/the-witcher-season-3-and-blood-origin-spinoff-get-netflix-release-dates/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/the-continuity-report/f/d/the-witcher-season-3-and-blood-origin-spinoff-get-netflix-release-dates/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/hatchideas/f/d/these-10-cities-have-the-best-pizzerias-in-the-world-see-where-new-york-lands-on-the-list/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/hatchideas/f/d/these-10-cities-have-the-best-pizzerias-in-the-world-see-where-new-york-lands-on-the-list/) https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/stockmarketeers/f/d/outside-the-box-companies-win-when-employees-are-in-the-office-but-threats-orders-and-mind-numbing-work-wont-get-them-back/ (https://www.ohmtown.com/groups/stockmarketeers/f/d/outside-the-box-companies-win-when-employees-are-in-the-office-but-threats-orders-and-mind-numbing-work-wont-get-them-back/)

Marsh and Chris bestow their tepid devotions upon Last Call BBS, Cult of the Lamb, and Hard West 2. Plus: the momentary return of questions, emanating – as they ever have – from questions. Quiverin’ Marsh has been tinkering with Zachtronics’ Last Call BBS. …which leads us to speculate coquettishly about Alex and his MiSTer. [...]

In this episode of the Hack the Planet Podcast: We talk with Zach of Zachtronics, creator of some of the best video games of all time, about his philosophy of … Continue reading "Zachtronics"

On Zed Games this week Maylee and Zahra introduce the newbie Peter S to us all, talk news, and Paul guides us through the Zachtronics fictional nostalgia collection Last Call BBS.

As I type this it is over 30 degrees, and I can't think. So yea, video games. We Played... Euan plays space thriller Deliver Us The Moon, adorable adventure Tunic and, of course, the latest and last Zachtronics joint, Last Call BBS.Calum wishes he could break the actual sun, and instead settles for more Monster Hunter: Sunbreak and watches teens get murdered in video game format in The Quarry Timestamps... 0:30 - Holy crap it's warm9:10 - Deliver Us The Moon12:55 - Last Call BBS16:39 - Steam Deck29:18 - Monster Hunter: Sunbreak31:19 - Fall Guys33:29 - The Quarry57:51 - Music Break59:26 - The Blade Runner remaster is a mess, both in implementation and distribution1:04:45 - No surprises, but a recently announced "Web3" consoles is saying a lot of words and promises that don't make sense1:07:19 - A game dev at the Brazil International Games Festival pulled the greatest bait and switch, changing his talk from "The Future of Game Design" to "Why NFTs are a nightmare" almost immediately.1:08:38 - Ubisoft continues to make bizarre decisions by (temporarily) delisting AC: Liberation and saying it would be removed from Steam libraries.1:12:25 - Unity CEO John Ricitiello had a string of dumb comments trying to backtrack on calling developers who don't use their new monetizing tech "fucking idiots". Intro Music - There It Is - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Outro Music - Honey Bee - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) News Sting - News Intro - Maximilien (soundbible.com) All Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Apoie o projeto e permita que ele continue: apoia.se/nautilus | picpay.me/canalnautilus No Periscópio #84, Ricardo nos fala de um dos seus jogos favoritos desse ano, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge; Lucas também traz um dos seus jogos do ano, um jogo de trabalhar no espaço chamado Hardspace: Shipbreaker; e Henrique fala sobre a Zachtronics e seu último jogo, também o último porque a Zachtronics vai fechar, Last Call BBS. O Periscópio é exibido (quase) toda sexta feira, na twitch.tv/nautiluslink. A transmissão começa entre as 14 e 15h! Participantes: Host: Lucas Zavadil | @lucaseduardrz Convidado: hernique | @herniquetxt Convidado: Ricardo Régis | @RicardoNauts Encontre-nos também nas redes sociais: Discord: discord.gg/FPd6hgE Twitter: twitter.com/nautiluslink

ETAO PODCAST, EPISODE 139. Zach Barth is back to talk about Last Call BBS, which is the last Zachtronics game, and also a collection of eight smaller—though not all especially small!—Zachtronics games, unified by the fictional hardware spec for which they were built and the fictional software pirate who distributed them. It’s a celebration of … Continue reading "Last Call, with Zach Barth"

This week we're serving up a heaping scoop of everyone's favorite summer snack, podcast-cream! Ren and Cado have been deep in the food-court automation mines in Last Call BBS, the final game from Zachtronics, which is an excellent tribute to a specific age of computing and trying to pass on the nostalgia you feel for that time to a person who might've never experienced it. But first, we discuss the resurrection of E3 and what a Reed Pop owned show might look like. Then Patrick takes us on his unexpected journey into the world of online claw machines.Discussed: E3 is Dead, Long Live E3 5:53, Last Call BBS 19:28, Clawee 41:47, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Shredder's Revenge 58:54, Question Bucket 1:10:47, Outro and Announcements 1:21:27. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Pip, Tom F, Chris and Marsh gather to discuss the oldest recipe, what windows are and whether objects are real. Also! Videogames: The Wild at Heart, Citizen Sleeper, Norco and Hellsinger. Also also: the return of Questions from Questions and, thrice-also, a quiz. Zachtronics is shutting down with one more game: Last Call BBS The [...]

Săptămâna asta Paul Atreides și fremenul Edgar se miră de ce mai există Bobby Kotick, SUA în general și Cluj? Nuș, vedeți voi în episodul de astăzi cum se îmbină toate ăstea. V-am pupat, noi ne suim pe vierme și vă lăsăm să ascultați. Timestamps: 0:00 – INTRO 3:02 - Paul s-a jucat The Binding of Isaac Afterbirth 19:38 - Edgar s-a jucat HITMAN 3 (dar tot HITMAN 1) 26:26 – Lupta Abației 44:47 – Activision Blizzard se votează afară din probleme; Diablo Immortal chiar e monetizat agresiv; Ted Cruz e gamer, dar și jeg de om; 56:59 – Roe v Wade și gaming; Cyberpunk 2077 a iesit cum a iesit din cauza clujenilor???; Fallout 76 a fost un dezastru pe timpul dezvoltării; 1:22:55 – Night Dive au scos joc prost; Zachtronics se închide; cel mai dorit joc de care n-ai auzit cere muncă moca; YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/jocsivorbe1416 https://www.youtube.com/c/JocȘiVorbeBits Twitch: www.twitch.tv/jocsivorbe iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-vorbe/id1331438601 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3RFgOJDgyEnpvkUQoSh0Tc Facebook: www.facebook.com/JocSiVorbe/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jocsivorbe/ Discord: https://discord.gg/m5a6DDfBFc Tip Jar: https://ko-fi.com/jocsivorbe Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jocsivorbe RSS și linkuri de download: http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:281506836/sounds.rss

Guillaume découvre Opus Magnum, le classique du studio Zachtronics qui a récemment annoncé la fin de ses activités. On y parle de la perfection du design de ce jeu de puzzle unique de Zach Barth. Opus Magnum est une machine à provoquer du plaisir de créer, d'échouer, de programmer et de jouer, qui illustre la philosophie bienveillante de toutes les productions du studio. Simon découvre Bioshock Infinite, le jeu monstre de Ken Levine. Dans ce troisième épisode de la série des Bioshock, c'est la contradiction du gameplay et de l'univers qui saute aux yeux. Bioshock infinite est un jeu-fantasme, gonflé par les ambitions immenses de son créateur, très attendu par ses fans à sa sortie et issu d'une série primordiale dans l'histoire du medium. Le résultat est un FPS magnifique visuellement mais brouillon, torturé entre trop d'influences pour trouver sa propre voie.

NEWS THIS WEEK  FALL GUYS servers crash for 24 hours on free-to-play launch Here's How To Cheat Your Way Around KOTOR II's Game-Breaking Crash On Switch DIABLO IMMORTAL's China Release Delayed Following Social Media Silencing TONY HAWK'S PRO SKATER 3 + 4 Remakes Were Planned Before Vicarious Visions Was Absorbed Into Blizzard Former Sonic Team lead Yuji Naka confirms that Michael Jackson worked on SONIC 3 Valve update TEAM FORTRESS 2 in reaction to grassroots #saveTF2 campaign  Indie cult-favourites Zachtronics closing its doors following the release of LAST CALL BBS Nintendo shares XENOBLADE CHRONICLES 3 details in dedicated livestream Direct  Youtuber hit with $7.5 million lawsuit from Bungie over copyright controversy NO MAN'S SKY out in October on Switch, will be single-player-only "at launch"  RELEASE RADAR MX VS ATV LEGENDS - June 28 2022- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One FOBIA - ST. DINFNA HOTEL - June 28 2022- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One THE AMERICAN DREAM - June 30 2022- Meta Quest F1 2022 - July 1 2022- PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang & Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER. Join the SIFTER Discord to be part of the conversation Support SIFTER's independent gaming journalism by heading to the SIFTER STORESupport the show: https://sifter.store

Kapsule Pixel est un format de vidéo/podcast qui vous fait découvrir un jeu vidéo en moins de 2 minutes. Je suis le genre de gros nerd qui aime les jeux de programmation. Par respect pour vous je ne vous parle pas de suite de jeux avec de la documentation à lire, mais du jeu le plus accessible dans le catalogue de Zachtronics, Opus Magnum! Venez programmer la fabrication de molécules par l'alchimie!

Jude interviews Matthew Seiji Burns from Seattle. He's a games developer, writer and composer. His narrative game Eliza is about an A.I counseling program, the people who use it, and the people who make it. It's a naturalistic game that Matthew also calls a visual novel and it attracts people who don't normally play games. Eliza was produced by Zachtronics games studio in 2019. Matthew's also worked for some big giant games companies. In Eliza his protagonist has suffered burn out in the high tech industry. There's some autobiographical content in that. Matthew discussed his ideals for games that change society for the better.  matthewseiji.com twitter.com/matthewseiji Here are some current titles and projects that are inspiring Matthew right now: Norco, an adventure game set in rural Louisiana in the shadow of a huge refinery, made by people from the area - http://norcogame.com/ The work of Everest Pipkin, who makes digital and tabletop games and digital art that engages with a variety of topics including ecology, information, and systems - https://everest-pipkin.com/ Glow Up Games, Brass Lion Entertainment, and Outerloop Games - minority-led indie game studios  centering on characters and stories that haven't been traditionally included in mainstream games - http://glowup.games/ - https://brasslionentertainment.com/ -  https://outerloopgames.com   Each week in creative confidential Jude Kampfner chats to an independent professional performance or visual artist about how they survive and thrive. They share details of moving between projects, becoming more entrepreneurial, finding the best opportunities, and developing a signature image and style. Her guests range from lyricists to novelists, videographers to sound designers. A broadcaster, writer and coach, Jude gently probes and challenges her so that whatever your line of creativity you learn from her advice and the experiences of her lively guests. Reach out to Jude:-  Jude's WebsiteJude on TwitterJude on LinkedInJude on Instagram Theme music composed by Gene Pritsker. https://www.genepritsker.com/ Show producer and editor, Mark McDonald.  Launch YOUR podcast here.  

Zapraszamy na kolejny odcinek z serii Mini, w którym opowiemy o trzech bardzo różnych grach, w sam raz na walkę z jesienną aurą. Bawimy się w chemików w grze logicznej Molek-Syntez od Zachtronics, ponownie wcielamy się w B.J. Blazkowicza w fanowskim Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony oraz mówimy „Nie!” swojemu szefostwu (i nie tylko) w Say No! More. Życzymy miłego słuchania! Wersja odcinka z rozgrywką w tle: https://youtu.be/op0G8VWYP_A 2pady.pl | RSS | Patronite | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Twitch Poruszane tematy: (00:00)...Przeczytaj całość

Matthew Seiji Burns is a writer, director, composer, and game designer. With the help of Zachtronics game studio, he created Eliza a visual novel about an AI counseling program, the people who develop it, and the people who use it.Prior to Eliza, Burns worked on a variety of games. He's the creator of the interactive fiction projects Apology Simulator, The Writer Will Do Something, and The Arboretum. He's also worked with Zachtronics to write and compose for titles such as EXAPunks, Opus Magnum, and more.Burns has also worked as a producer at Treyarch, Bungie, and 343 Industries on titles such as Halo 3 & Halo ODST.We talk with burns about our complicated, sometimes worrying, relationship to computers and why he's attracted to interactive novels. Hosted by Phillip Russell and Ben ThorpCheck out Matthew's website here.Learn more about Eliza here.Try out this recreation of Eliza chatbot here.Visit our website: Originstory.showFollow us on Twitter @originstory_Do you have feedback or questions for us? Email us theoriginstorypod@gmail.comCover art and website design by Melody HirschOrigin Story original score by Ryan Hopper 

Mike and Ting talk about solo game developers. The “book club” game is: Death Stranding. Contact us: @lostlevelsclub or mike.and.ting@lostlevels.club Show Notes: Intro Fez (video game) Phil Fish Minecraft: The Story of Mojang (2012) Braid (video game) SpaceChem [2019 TGDF] Making Games in 2019 and Beyond (Jonathan Blow) (YouTube) TIS-100 (podcast episode) Zachtronics: 10 Years of Terrible Games | Zach Barth | Talks at Google (YouTube) Lucas Pope Papers, Please: Theme Song (YouTube) Lucas Pope Papers Please Return of the Obra Dinn Mightier TIGSource Derek Yu Chris Sawyer Transport Tycoon Soundtrack - The 2014 Sessions (YouTube) Chris Sawyer Transport Tycoon RollerCoaster Tycoon (video game) Assembly language OpenTTD OpenRCT2 project RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 - The Impossible Maze (YouTube) A big interview with Chris Sawyer, the creator of RollerCoaster Tycoon xkcd: Honor Societies Flow (psychology) Adam Robinson-Yu A Short Hike (Full OST) (YouTube) A Short Hike Crafting A Tiny Open World: A Short Hike Postmortem (YouTube) Frog Detective Minit Markus Persson Subwoofer Lullaby from Minecraft - Volume Alpha by C418 Minecraft Markus Persson QAnon Conspiracy Endorsed By 'Minecraft' Creator Markus 'Notch' Persson The creator of Minecraft outbid Beyoncé and Jay Z on this $70 million megamansion Topic: Minecraft (alpha) RubyDung Infiniminer Timeline of events PayPal Freezes $750K in MineCraft Dev’s Account Roblox Kan Gao To the Moon - Main Theme from To the Moon by Kan R. Gao, feat. Laura Shigihara To the Moon RPG Maker XP Quintessence: The Blighted Venom Kan Gao: To The Moon and Back Summary Stardew Valley Undertale Cave Story Spelunky FTL Slay the Spire The Binding of Isaac

Hest owes more to SpaceChem than any other inspiration. It's a beautiful little gem of a game, released by Zachtronics back in 2011. SpaceChem challenges you to design, develop, and debug complex systems, with an interface that looks a bit like a node-and-wire visual programming language. But the feel of playing it is wholly unique, and worth reflecting on and drawing from.

Tonight on GeekNights, we review the latest (free-to-play) from Zachtronics with NERTS! Online. It's a live online implementation of the classic card game Nerts, and is worth your while. In the news, a Republican mob led by disgraced president Donald Trump stormed the capitol in an ongoing coup attempt. Twitch rightly removes the PogChamp emote after the person it's based on supported this coup. Twitch replaced the PogChamp with a very cool idea that also reminded us just how racist gamers are. Thankfully, the first new PogChamp is a champ. LucasArts is basically back with LucasFilm Games, and they have announced a nazi-fighting game that we're all excited about. We also have a trailer for Bowser's Fury.

ETAO Podcast, Episode 98. Like Eliza before it, Möbius Front ’83 is a Zachtornics game that longtime Zachtronics fans probably didn’t expect—though also like Eliza, it has more than a few themes in common with the rest of the catalog, and beyond that, Möbius Front ’83 adheres to Zach-like conventions more closely than you might … Continue reading "The Work of War, with Zach Barth"

Rob, Troy, and Jon discuss Zachtronics' Cold War wargame Möbius Front '83. What has it borrowed from the genre's storied past? And what might it have missed from recent years?

Austin and Patrick are on their most Waypoint of Waypoint bullshit: Demon's Souls bullshit. But this time, Rob's coming along for the ride! Join as the crew talks through the remake's aesthetic and mechanical differences to the original, and check in with Rob on his new found fandom. After the break, Rob has also been checking out the latest from Zachtronics, Mobius Front '83, a tactics game that feels sparse compared to Zachtronics games usual complexity. He's also been checking out Destiny 2, and Cado has QUESTIONS.Discussed: PS5 2:15, Demon's Souls 16:51, Mobius Front '83 39:02, Destiny 2 59:18, IO Interactive 1:16:50 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week Dan and Dudley talk more about Zachtronics' Mobius Front '83. They dig too deep with MayHam in Deep Rock Galactic. Dudley started Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and Dan tries to sound enthusiastic.

My guest today is Zach Barth, founder of Zachtronics and creator of some of the best video games ever made, including Spacechem, Infinifactory and their latest, Opus Magnum.We talk about the surprising amount of instinct and chance that goes into designing a Zachtronics game, his love of play sets and miniatures but oddly his hatred of board games, the influence of the TV series How it's Made?, why Solitaire is such a great chicken soup game, the unique struggles of making educational software and how his love of video games has slowly withered while his love of making them has flourished.“Bertha, lovely Bertha. You're such a lovely machine!”PATREON - patreon.com/checkpointsiTunes HERE - SUBSCRIBE / RATE / REVIEWGames discussed: Duke Nuken, Team Fortress 2, Heroes of the Storm, Construction Simulator, Megaman Battle Arena 3, Opus Magnum, SpaceChem, infiniminer, infinifactoryTheme song by Samuel BakerArt work by Craig Stevenson

SUMARIO DEL EPISODIO: 04:23 – Cat Quest. 23:10 – Planet Coaster 43:30 – Opus Magna & Zachtronics games 1:05:50 – Tales of the Arabian Nights 1:27:32 – Inside Último programa de esta convulsa 9ª temporada que, como no podía ser menos, se ha transformado en una piedra difícil de sortear. Grabado en julio, pero emitido […]

In episode #10 of the Zachtronics podcast I'm joined by Keith again, this time to interview Tom Braunlich, one of the designers of the Star Trek and Star Wars collectible card games from the 90s. We talk about designing games for licensed IP, creating mechanics that deeply evoke your theme and setting, a fair amount of sci-fi nostalgia, and the tragic downfall of Decipher. I seem to have conflated Scratchees (the product) with Dr. Scratchov (the product's mascot). They are remarkably difficult to search for online but I managed to find some pictures on BoardGameGeek. The Fajo Collection, on the other hand, is much more searchable. Here's the full list of cards and here's somewhere that you can buy one, still sealed, for a mere $35. I have to admit, I seriously considered buying one while I was editing this episode... The otaku book I was referencing is called Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. I can't say how "true" it is, but Matthew lent it to me and it definitely changed the way I think about modern media consumption. Here's the bluffs card I mentioned, and here are the bluff rules it references. I think this is the only card in the game that uses these rules! While we're at it, here's a full set of rules, along with supplementary rules sheets released with each expansion. When you look at these as a whole it really starts to look more like a roleplaying game. And here's the list of easter eggs that Tom mentioned. I like how the light side "binary droid" has the copyright date written in binary. It can be a little spotty getting images to load for old pages on the Wayback Machine but this seems to be a decent snapshot of the Decipher website. At a minimum you can see their kick-ass raytraced virtual "lobby". If you're interested in playing these games, check out the Star Trek Continuing Committee or the Star Wars Players Committee. Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #10 (71.6 MB, duration: 1:33:02)

After too long, I'm back with another ramble game review episode and to as much my surprise as anyone's, it's of yet another visual novel. Eliza came out back in 2019 but I only got to play it recently. Unlike Arcade Spirits, the story in this game is much more grounded in the real world and is also much more linear than many visual novels traditionally are. This is countered by it being fully voice acted and also having a narrative that is both emotionally moving and that will make you think about some of the technological challenges we may face soon. Buy Eliza on Steam from one of these retailers and help support my content and Extra Life: Humble Store - https://www.humblebundle.com/store/eliza?partner=pxabstraction Fanatical - https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/eliza?ref=pxabstraction Music is from the Eliza soundtrack by Matthew S. Burns. Buy it here: https://zachtronics.bandcamp.com/album/eliza-original-soundtrack Press code provided by Zachtronics.

In episode #9 of the Zachtronics podcast I'm joined by Keith to interview Chris Crawford, the creator of a bunch of historically notable games, including the first commercial computer wargame. We talk about how he started making games, his time at Atari, and his post-Atari career as an "indie game developer" starting in the 1980s. We also talk about the design and philosophy of wargames, and a surprising amount about Arthurian legend... We mention a bunch of books in this episode, so here are some of them: Chris Crawford on Game Design, by Chris Crawford Simulating War, by Philip Sabin How to Make War, by James Dunnigan De re metallica, by Georgius Agricola De Re Atari, by Chris Crawford et al. Interface, by Neal Stephenson LINK: Chris's KIM-1 System (Closed, Open, Main Board, Tiny Terminals, Early "IDE", Tanktics Map) LINK: Chris Crawford's Kingdom (1984) Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #9 (74.9 MB, duration: 1:39:36)

In episode #8 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview Jeff Schader of The Skins Factory, the graphic design studio responsible for most of the Windows Media Player skins of the early 2000s. Although you might think this has nothing to do with games, it turns out there's a surprising amount of overlap; topics covered include skeuomorphic interfaces, the rise and fall of media player skins, taste versus talent, and much, much more! LINK: Zach's Gallery of Windows Media Player Skins LINK: The Skins Factory's Website Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #8 (33.9 MB, duration: 45:18)

Der Vorteil eines größeren Teams: Selbst wenn ein paar Mitglieder in schwarzen Zeitlöchern verschwinden, findet sich immer noch ein dynamisches Duo um die Podcast-Fahne hochzuhalten. In dieser Folge übernehmen diese ehrenvolle Aufgabe Daniel, der in Coffee Talk legale und in Molek-Syntenz illegale Drogen unter die Menschen bringt, und Florian, dessen Durchläufe im Machine-Learning-Textadventure AI Dungeon abstruse Ergebnisse hervorbringen. Nach Exkursen zum alltäglichen #notallmen-Unfug, Gesellschaftsspielen und Gewerkschaftsgründungen befriedigen die beiden ihr Harmoniebedürfnis mit grüner Pastasauce in zwei Varianten - Pesto gut, alles gut. Im Cast besprochene Spiele: Molek-Syntez, Farben, Coffee Talk, A Worker's Guide To Espionage, Not All Men, AI Dungeon

O sétimo melhor jogo de 2019 é uma visual novel que discute tecnologia e saúde menta. Ah, e o minigame de paciência é irado também! Eliza foi desenvolvido e publicado pela Zachtronics. O jogo: http://www.zachtronics.com/eliza/ Versão do programa Eliza (conexão não encriptada): http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm Trilha sonora: https://zachtronics.bandcamp.com/album/eliza-original-soundtrack Twitter do Thomaz: twitter.com/o_Thomaz Twitter do Podcast: twitter.com/expansiongame Instagram: instagram.com/expansiongamepod Site: expansionpack.com.br

ETAO Podcast, Episode 71. Another dose of Zach Barth, this time focused on MOLEK-SYNTEZ, a Zachtronics game that plays a bit like Opus Magnum but was made more in the spirit of TIS-100—which is to say quickly, with extreme focus, and driven by Zach’s primordial need to make games, games forever, games all the time. … Continue reading "Hyper-Focused Antifragile Games as Drugs as Puzzles, with Zach Barth"

In which we finish our discussion of Eliza, a game by Zachtronics. "After abandoning her high-powered tech career and a mysterious three-year absence, Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey resurfaces working as a proxy for a virtual counseling app called Eliza. Her job consists solely of reading a script provided to her in real-time by an AI, leaving her no autonomy over what she says. Is Eliza a technological marvel that brings therapy to those who otherwise couldn’t access it? Or is it an ineffective replacement and another vector for technology companies to gain control over our lives and humanity?" If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: Eliza, on itch.io General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

In which we play Eliza, a game by Zachtronics. "After abandoning her high-powered tech career and a mysterious three-year absence, Evelyn Ishino-Aubrey resurfaces working as a proxy for a virtual counseling app called Eliza. Her job consists solely of reading a script provided to her in real-time by an AI, leaving her no autonomy over what she says. Is Eliza a technological marvel that brings therapy to those who otherwise couldn’t access it? Or is it an ineffective replacement and another vector for technology companies to gain control over our lives and humanity?" If you like the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Links: Eliza, on itch.io General Intellect Unit on iTunes http://generalintellectunit.net Support the show on Patreon https://twitter.com/giunitpod General Intellect Unit on Facebook General Intellect Unit on archive.org Emancipation Network

Marc Matt and John chat about the Sydney Classic Gaming Club, and the games included in the competitions. Plus other games they've been playing recently including the new Zachtronics game Eliza, the not so new Street Fighter 2, and... will Marc commit to buying the newly announced Elvira's House of Horrors pinball machine?! Tune in to find out! Intro music from www.bensound.com PAX Aus https://aus.paxsite.com Super Monkey Ball (2001) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Monkey_Ball C64anabalt (2011) https://rgcddev.itch.io/c64anabalt R-Type (1987) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-Type Mega Turrican (1994) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Turrican Out Run (1986) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_Run Whoa Nellie Big Juicy Melons (2015) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/whoa-nellie-big-juicy-melons-stern Lethal Enforces (1992) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_Enforcers International Track and Field (1996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Track_%26_Field Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (1998) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Gem_Fighter_Mini_Mix Fantasy Zone (1985) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Zone Eliza (2019) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_(video_game) Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (1991) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II:_The_World_Warrior MegaDrive Mini (2019) https://megadrivemini.sega.com Elvira's House of Horrors (not yet released) https://sternpinball.com/game/elviras-house-of-horrors/ The Walking Dead (2014) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/the_walking_dead Johnny Mnemonic (1995) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/johnny-mnemonic Batman 66 (2016) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/batman-66 Black Knight Sword of Rage (2019) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/black-knight-sword-of-rage-pro Lyman Sheats https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/lyman-f-sheats-jr Night of the Living Dead (1968) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead Rob Zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Zombie Aerosmith (2017) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/aerosmith-pro Iron Maiden (2018) https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/iron-maiden-legacy-of-the-beast  

This week we discussed Eliza, a new Visual Novel from Zachtronics about an AI counseling service and the people who created it. We also discovered that intros are hard and closers are even harder. Talking points include: Mental Health, tech culture, human nature, responsibility, and then a lot more about mental health. Intro/Outro Music - Music track: High SpiritsComposer: Bjorn A. Lynne (PRS)License his music from: www.Shockwave-Sound.com

Following years of working on Halo, Call of Duty, and other triple-A franchises, Matthew Burns went the independent route and has now, with Zachtronics, released the arresting visual novel Eliza, a story about the ethical conflicts surrounding an AI therapy program. Find out how a game with so little room for choice was brilliantly designed to say so much about player agency.

ETAO Podcast, Episode 64. Matthew Seiji Burns is responsible for some of the best and least-discussed narratives and soundtracks in games, namely those in the beloved-for-other-reasons Zachtronics works Infinifactory, TIS-100, SHENZHEN I/O, and Opus Magnum—not to mention the generally under-discussed Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, his Twine work, and his past-life AAA work on … Continue reading "When You’re in It, with Matthew Seiji Burns"

[Episode 22] Obwohl wir eher dazu tendieren, kleine und Kleinstprojekte aus den Tiefen von Itch.io ans Tageslicht zu befördern, dürfen auch Major-Indie-Produktionen in unserem Cast nicht fehlen. Besonders wenn sie so interessant sind wie Telling Lies von Sam Barlow und Eliza aus dem Hause Zachtronics, zu denen Daniel definitiv ein paar Gedanken hat. Etwas kleinformatiger wird es bei Wibke, die in Dante's Infernya als Katze Dinge umwirft und in Halen: Ballad Of The Blade Thief Dinge mit ihrem lebendigen Schwertarm kaputt haut. Ähnlich ruppig geht es bei Florian zu, der in Roombo: First Blood erst als Staubsaugeroboter mit Einbrechern aufräumt, bevor er sich doch noch zu einem Happy End in Pencil Heart hinreißen lässt. Dazu gibt es Tipps für cremigen Hummus, Bibimbap-Liebe und Kaffee, der kein Kaffee ist. Im Cast besprochene Spiele: Oxygen Not Included, Telling Lies, Eliza, You Are Jeff Bezos, Dante's Infernya, Halen: Ballad Of The Blade Thief, Roombo: First Blood, Morning Coffee, Pencil Heart

In episode #7 of the Zachtronics podcast I don't interview anyone! Instead, I talk with Keith and Jared (two other members of Zachtronics) about our attempt to play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, how the game design compares to modern Dungeons and Dragons, and some of the things that make it so spectacularly weird. Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #7 (52.9 MB, duration: 1:03:16)

In episode #6 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview David Galindo of Vertigo Gaming, the creator of Cook, Serve, Delicious! and Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!!. Topics covered include cooking shows, unsolicited feedback, save file formats, yet another version control lecture, and much, much more! NOTE: In this episode I mention a link to an article that Keith read about the Minecraft file format. We were unable to find the article, and now we're not sure if it ever existed. Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #6 (76.7 MB, duration: 1:36:58)

We go so far back in the early history of RPGs that we eventually, I think, declare everything post-1980 as obviously bad and inferior. And then we walk uphill to school. In the snow. Both ways.… Continue reading →

Kirk and Jason kicked off GDC 2018 by chatting with Zachtronics writer/composer Matthew S. Burns about how he approaches writing puzzle-game music that you notice, but you don't NOTICE.

ETAO Podcast, Episode 34. Zach Barth is back to talk about Opus Magnum and SHENZHEN I/O, the latest in each of Zachtronics’ semi-distinct trademark genres: games where you make things that makes things, and games where you actually code or script, respectively. We talk about how these two parallel tracks came to be, where their … Continue reading "You Can Feel Great All The Time Solving Problems, with Zach Barth"

We like Opus Magnum, the new alchemy-based puzzler from Zachtronics. So we decided to have a chat with developer Zach Barth about it. We also talk to him about researching life in China, his short stint at Valve and the reasons he sold his studio.

Let's talk about "running away". Ie. games that encourage you to flee from danger, rather than face it. Adam runs from the soldiers of ARMA. Brendan scarpers from poor odds in For Honor. And Alice only *pretends* to run away in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. We also have some Quickfire Questions with Zach Barth of Zachtronics about their alchemy-based puzzler Opus Magnum. Links: How do Alien Isolation's lockers work? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/12/18/alien-isolation-lockers/ Overwatch's cowardly hacker, Sombra: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/11/04/overwatch-hero-sombra-finally-revealed-in-animation/ Outlast 2 review: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/04/24/outlast-2-review/ Have you played... Metal Gear Solid V? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/09/20/have-you-played-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/ Have you played... Company of Heroes? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/28/have-you-played-company-of-heroes/ How Rimworld generates great stories: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/08/12/how-rimworld-generates-great-stories/ NEO Scavenger's scrappy, excellent combat: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/12/06/best-combat-2014-neo-scavenger/ Opus Magnum interview with Zach Barth (article): https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/22/opus-magnum-interview-zach-barth/ Opus Magnum interview with Zach Barth (podcast): https://soundcloud.com/rockpapershotgun/electronic-wireless-show-the-opus-magnum-interview Into The Breach is smart and tense: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/03/01/into-the-breach-details-preview/ Playerunknown's Battlegrounds adds vaulting to test servers: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/11/13/playerunknowns-battlegrounds-climbing-vaulting-on-test-servers-tonight/ Spelunky 2 is happening: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/30/spelunky-2-announced/

This week we're talking guilty pleasures - the games that make us feel embarrassed but not so much that we won't play them to death. Alec feels a bit sheepish about American Truck Simulator, Matt remembers picking flax in a Runescape field, and Brendan attempts to explain the sea-based boredom of Sailaway. We've also been playing Opus Magnum, the alchemy puzzler from Zachtronics, in which we're struggling to make Viagra as fast as possible. Links: Assassin's Creed: Origins hands-on: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/06/23/assassins-creed-origins-preview/ Have you played... Runescape? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/10/09/have-you-played-runescape/ Have you played... Dofus? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/08/22/have-you-played-dofus/ Is Destiny 2's story fun junk or hot trash? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/24/is-destiny-2-story-any-good/ Sailing the Northwest Passage in Sailaway: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/05/04/sailing-sim-northwest-passage/ Alec's baffled office mates and American Truck Simulator: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/04/american-truck-simulator-review/ Opus Magnum's gorgeous alchemy machines: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/20/opus-magnum-alchemy-machines/

Chris, Pip and Tom discuss the new Zachtronics game, the closure of Visceral, A Mortician’s Tale, Shadow of War, and more. Plus: Babe Runner: Pig In The City, the midpoint between The Raid and Watership Down, hot cauliflower facts, inadvisable waffle digressions, and some videogame questions maybe? Jury’s out on that one. Here’s the trailer [...]

Just breathe people, everything is going to be fine. Distract yourself with video games while 2016 works itself out. On this episode... Intermission Music... Jeremy Soule - Neverwinter Nights Main Theme - Neverwinter Nights OST GoG (included with Diamond Edition) We Played... Oxenfree is a stylish and at points genuinely creepy adventure game, who does teenage conversations right when it's not interrupting itself. The new game from Spacechem developer Zachtronics has hit early access. It's called Shenzhen I/O and if messing about with hardware programming is your thing, then you should check it out Being alone in space with an AI that you can actually text chat with makes Event[0] a really unique and effective storytelling mechanic Stardew Valley got a pretty big free update, and more content in that game can only be a good thing If you want to get into the mood for the sequel, Divinity: Original Sin is now even better now that it has had fixes and a whole lot of new voice work. In News... Amazon have left Twitch alone since they bought them, but now they are giving Amazon Prime members a bunch of premium features with Twitch Prime If you were looking to pick up the new Call of Duty game just to sell it back after cashing in the Modern Warfare Remaster, Activision have closed that loophole. The new Skylanders game will let you 3D print your character for a limited amount of time. Looks like Playstation Skyrim and Fallout 4 players will be getting mods after all, just heavily restricted content wise. ...and more! Intro Music - There It Is - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Outro Music - Honey Bee - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) News Sting - News Intro - Maximilien (soundbible.com) All Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Chris and Elecia talk to each other about compiler optimizations, bit banging I2C, listener emails, and small-town parades. Games to learn/play with assembly languages include The Human Resource Machine by Tomorrow Corporation and TIS-100 by Zachtronics. We've been enjoying the Embedded Thoughts blog. And Chris is reading Practical Electronics for Inventors and liking it.  We talked a little about Interview.io's adventure in voice changing. Shirts are gone for awhile. New logo stickers are available at StickerMule if you'd like to support and share the show. 

In episode #5 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview Jason McGann, one of the creators of Zoop, an action-puzzle game released in 1995. Topics covered include English game development, 90's graphic design, why I love Zoop, and much, much more! ATTACHMENT: Zoop Advertisement Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #5 (53.1 MB, duration: 1:17:26)

In episode #4 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview Dan Dixon of Giant Army, the creator of Universe Sandbox. Topics covered include Universe Sandbox, Visual Basic, broken promises, planetary-level extinction events, and much, much more! Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #4 (47.2 MB, duration: 1:08:52)

In episode #3 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview Tim Saxon of Final Form Games, the creators of Jamestown and Jamestown Plus. Topics covered include Jamestown, Lua-based game engines, and much, much more! ATTACHMENT: Tim's Example Lua Code Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #3 (43.0 MB, duration: 55:33)

In episode #2 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview Brendon Chung of Blendo Games, the creator of the upcoming Quadrilateral Cowboy (in addition to many other games). Topics covered include level design, narrative in games, Brendon's lifelong love of first-person shooters, and much, much more! Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #2 (46.8 MB, duration: 1:08:10)

In episode #1 of the Zachtronics podcast I interview Zack Johnson and Kevin Simmons of Asymmetric Publications, the studio behind the long-running Kingdom of Loathing. Topics covered include the history of Kingdom of Loathing, the ups and downs of running an independent game studio, the merits of version control, making money despite our best efforts, colossal screw-ups, and much, much more! Download The Zachtronics Podcast: Episode #1 (46.3 MB, duration: 1:07:33)

Josh Bycer joins Jason McMaster to discuss a slew of early access games. From Project Zomboid to the new Zachtronics game, Inifinifactory, there’s a whole lot of gaming to be had. Though you might have to ignore a few rough edges. The post Qt3 Games Podcast: early access ahoy! appeared first on Quarter to Three.

Josh Bycer joins Jason McMaster to discuss a slew of early access games. From Project Zomboid to the new Zachtronics game, Inifinifactory, there’s a whole lot of gaming to be had. Though you might have to ignore a few rough edges. The post Qt3 Games Podcast: early access ahoy! appeared first on Quarter to Three.