Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | more ccvannorman's comments login

"The path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long"

-- Lao Tzu


It would be interesting to analyze data of "time/complexity spent on game engines" vs "complexity/interest" of produced games.

As a game developer, I expect to see a log curve of diminishing returns of novel games given any simple templating/engine system.

In other words, the better you make your cookie cutting machine, the less variance your cookies will have.


:4 does not go to line 4. Or at least, the line numbers are not correct. No thanks, I'll pass.


It's using relative line numbering, at least for me this is how I've had vim set up for the last 10 years. It makes commands like 10j easier to do because you can just look to the side and see how many lines away the target is.


I've never even heard of relative line numbering! I just thought it was broken.


Same!

I guess I can see the appeal; it's not for me though, I'm swimming in the local minimum of absolute line number dependence :)


That’s so funny, I love relative line numbers, but I had no idea about half the tips in here.

I use relative numbers while in normal mode, and absolute numbers in insert mode. That way you get easy vertical jumps, but you still have a sense of your line numbers.


Another variation on that is relative in both modes, but my current cursor line has the absolute. That's what I tend to roll with!


Another user mentioned this too. I'll be adding settings to let users turn relative lines off.


is the vimrc exposed?

For maximum vimness you could let players mod an empty vinrc from start


I think the library just has key bindings, so it wouldn't even have a vimrc.

The library seems great at the time, but I might need to look into alternatives in the future.


A full vimrc would allow blatant cheating, such as preprogramming commands to do exactly the movements you need for a given case.

It sounds like allowing toggles for a few key options would probably satisfy most people while keeping the spirit of the exercise.


My intuitive assumption, then, is that on Mars they would have come up with a different meter such that π² ≈ 10 "mars meters" / s².

Or alternatively stated, that the Mars meter would be much shorter than Earth's meter if they used the same approach to defining it (pendulums and seconds).


A Martian meter defined by martians should relate their average size, the number of fingers they have on their hands and some basic measure of the planet.

I mean, one meter is defined as 1/10^7 of the distance between the equator and the poles which leads to a round number in base 10.

A unit system is not just something that matches objective reality but something that has some cognitive ergonomy.


> A unit system is not just something that matches objective reality but something that has some cognitive ergonomy.

Beautifully stated!

And that's one reason why I like the US units of measurement better than SI. I mean, the divide-by-ten thing is nice and all. But _within a project_ how often are you converting between units of the same measurement (e.g, meters to centimeters)? You pick the right "size" unit for your work and then tend to stay there. So you don't get much benefit from the easy conversion in practice.

But if you're doing real hands-on work, you often need to divide by 2, 3, 4, and so on. So, for example, having a foot easily divisible by those numbers works well. And even the silly fractional stuff make sense when you're subdividing while working and measuring.

Of course it all finally breaks down when you get to super high precision (and that's probably why machinists go back to thousands of an inch and no longer fractions).

I think there's a little bit of academic snobbery with the SI units (though, it is a good idea for cross-country collaboration), but for everyday hand-on work the US system works really well. I always love the meme: There are two kinds of countries in the world, those who use the metric system and those who've gone to the moon.

I'm an AMO physicist by training and my choice of units are the "Atomic Units" where hbar, mass of the electron, charge of the electron, and permittivity are all 1. That makes writing many of the formulae really simple. Which is what you say: it has cognitive ergonomy (and makes all of the floating point calculations around the same magnitude). Then when we're all done we convert back to SI for reporting.


One example where picking units within a project is still not saving you from cognitive load is e.g. when doing woodworking. Ymmv, but I can add decimals way faster than I can add 7 9/16" + 13 23/32" (numbers picked arbitrarily but close to a precision of 1mm so if you are ok w/ that precision, you don't even need fractions in SI).


Would 100% try and buy a tool like this as I am the target market, but no way I'm going to go out of my way to sign up and pay for something I can't see value in behind a paywall.. "you and everybody else." Try a freemium or something? Good luck.


Addendum: It's not about the money, it's about the complexity. It isn't worth my mental overhead if I can't see a transparent value of the thing I'm buying. (Then I have to cancel, etc.. )


Photoshop hasnt added a feature I need in 10 years, yet I cant use the 10 year old single license I paid for, so now I pay yearly to subscribe. It's still the best on the market for me tho.


As if software from 10 years ago doesn't need to be modified at all and doesn't require any work or maintenance :/


Seconding this: adding "-pix_fmt yuv420p" to your conversion will ensure compatibility, for example if you try attaching a converted MP4 to a WhatsApp chat, it will not show a preview or play unless you include this flag.


A great litmus test for AI is to ask it to write a posteffect GLSL shader for a javascript game engine.

They all fail quite spectacularly at this, at least for my use case (cel shading, outlines, height sensitive fog)


My experience was that they're entirely useless for cases where you can't find examples of that kind of code on the web. They just hallucinate APIs that don't exist to solve your problem. I would suspect that GLSL is rare enough, and different enough from other programming languages to pose problems for the LLMs here.


I’m not sure that’s useful - most of HN would fail that too :-).

Or rather, as I honestly don’t know what a GLSL shader is, and barely know what a canvas is, it would be a bit like the scene from blackadder - I would love for Baldrick to read this book, but that will mean teaching him to read, which will take about ten years.


I am not a fanboy of LLMs or genAI but how is this a great test litmus test for their usefulness? How many humans on earth could do that today? Ten thousand at the most?


That’s the point.

I don’t need an “AI” to help me with something widely discussed, I can simply read the docs. On the other hand I’d love a tool that opens me niche topics in a reliable way.


I'm pretty sure you can find GLSL shader + webgl playground and modify it to make bit different one in like 15 minutes.


Then the LLM is not useful here


Came here to comment the same. I was making fun of my housemates for being addicted to DOTA (a MOBA game), then during a "Use Map Settings" game of Starcraft I discovered and enjoyed playing a mod called "Aeon of Strife" and shared it with my housemates.

DOTA is a direct descendant of Aeon of Strife.

I had discovered the original DOTA, inside Starcraft.


Not your keys, Not your convos


Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: