I'm really interested in gamedev tooling and I'm working on a tool called PixelAid[0] right now. A lot of people are essentially discovering AI image gen as a way to make art for games, but AI is especially bad at pixel art right now. Color palettes, grid sizes, animation drift are some really big issues that basically make those things unusable. I wanted to take a non-AI approach to fix these things with some good ol' math and tools.
I'm trying to build more things around AI pixel art - honestly, I think it's crazy some people out there are charging money for things like this and seeing where I can help (and also just learn more about this stuff myself).
Look up Sprite Fusion as well - it's a very good tool for grid-snapping / palette reduction / etc. and was specifically developed with cleaning up AI assets.
And if No Man's Sky is worse than Starbound then honestly I think I don't want to play it. Starbound is still on the level of "fun at first, but quickly getting repetitive" in terms of procedural generation. It's much more engaging than it was - but that's because authors invested a lot of time in adding non-generated content.
My complaint about all the attempts at procedural generation I've seen so far is that they lack depth. You have plenty of randomized stuff on one level, but obviously repetitive patterns on a meta-level. Take Starbound, again, for an example. Sure, on every planet you'll encounter a slightly different set of creatures - they may differ in sprites, stats or attacks. But after visiting a few worlds you quickly notice it's always the same combo of one non-hostile ground critter, one weak and one strong hostile ground critters, one or two flying critters...
I find No Man's Sky to be much more engaging than Starbound, but I attribute a lot of that to it's newness.
I really liked the concept of Starbound and the games it descended from, but it didn't really feel like it added anything to the formula.
No Man's Sky certainly inherits a lot from that genre, but it feels substantially different and it's been engaging for me in a way that the genre hasn't since I first started playing Minecraft.
I don't think Terraria and Starbound are a great comparison. They're very combat focused, while combat in No Man's Sky is something of an afterthought.
Watsi is a global crowdfunding platform that enables anyone to directly fund healthcare for people around the world.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
We’re a team of developers, designers, doctors, and marketers working at Watsi because we believe that everyone, everywhere deserves access to healthcare. We move fast, take risks, and come to work every day excited about building an organization that matters more than we do.
We’re looking for a full-stack developer to join our six-person team in San Francisco. The ideal candidate is an experienced, product-focused generalist who wants to use their skills to bring healthcare to the world. Some of the technologies we use: Rails, Backbone.js, SCSS, Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, Heroku, RSpec, and Jasmine.
If you’re interested in learning more, please send whatever info you have (linkedin, github, personal site) to [email protected].
Watsi is a global crowdfunding platform that enables anyone to directly fund healthcare for people around the world.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
We’re a team of developers, designers, doctors, and marketers working at Watsi because we believe that everyone, everywhere deserves access to healthcare. We move fast, take risks, and come to work every day excited about building an organization that matters more than we do.
We’re looking for a full-stack developer to join our six-person team in San Francisco. The ideal candidate is an experienced, product-focused generalist who wants to use their skills to bring healthcare to the world. Some of the technologies we use: Rails, Backbone.js, SCSS, Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, Heroku, RSpec, and Jasmine.
If you’re interested in learning more, please send whatever info you have (linkedin, github, personal site) to [email protected].
Interesting acquisition, glad to see authy as a service living in Twilio instead of just using it. Can't wait to see it in the portal. Make sure you read Jeff's post as well.
I got it for my PS4 and I think it controls great.
The only problem I do have is that because it lacks a manual, there is no tutorial for anything. It doesn't take many button guesses to figure out what they do, but it just throws you into the game. Took me about half an hour to realize you can run if you hold R1. But this is not a fault of the game's controls, just a lack of button layout by me.
Awesome, good to know! I was considering getting it on PS4 but I wasn't sure how well the adventure game style actually translates to that. Your comment makes me feel comfortable enough getting it there.
Speaking of manuals, I could swear that I once accessed a manual for a PS4 downloadable game. But I've never since been able to figure out how I did that, to the point where I question whether it ever even happened. But it seems absurd to believe that they decided that games simply don't need manuals. I get that console games are trending towards having a very minimalistic manual in the game box (often just a page with the control layout), but not every game does that.
Gift cards expire after 90 days, at which point the money on a gift card goes to our general fund for patients, so worst-case scenario, someone claims one of these and doesn't use it, the money will still go to patients' healthcare.
Watsi (YC W13, San Francisco, https://watsi.org) is a non-profit that enables anyone to directly fund life-changing healthcare for people around the world. We’re a team of developers, designers, doctors, and marketers who believe that everyone, everywhere deserves access to healthcare. We move fast, take risks, and come to work every day excited about building an organization that matters more than we do.
The engineering team is small, but with big responsibilities, as we’re building a platform that connects donors directly with patients around the world. We’re all full-stack engineers who believe in end-to-end ownership of products, as we manage anything from rows in databases to pixels on the screen. We believe in testing everything from code to design and aspire to create the best experience for all of Watsi’s users. Our stack is Rails, Backbone.js, SCSS, Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, Heroku, RSpec, and Jasmine.
About the job
This is an internship for summer 2015
You will be working in fast-paced environment building the future of healthcare
We’re a small group, so you’ll be interacting with everyone, not just engineers
This is an opportunity to work on interesting challenges and solve problems pertaining to tons of medical data
About you
+ You’re a product-focused generalist who wants to use your skills to bring healthcare to the world
+ You’re able to work on a small team and own projects throughout the summer
+ You take feedback well and put the product and the users first
+ You provide good feedback on ongoing projects
+ You can work on developing beautiful applications
Requirements
+ Experience with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, Javascript, relational databases, and front-end tools such as templating languages and SCSS
+ Be located, or willing to move to the Bay Area during summer 2015
If interested, please send whatever you have (resume, linkedin, github, website, etc.) to:
I was very surprised at the price, but with the ability to play online multiplayer now being a part of Playstation Plus, they can afford this. I was impressed by both conferences, but assuming Holiday season is November, I think the PS4 is looking really good.
Also, Kingdom Hearts 3. That alone kind of made my day.
I'm trying to build more things around AI pixel art - honestly, I think it's crazy some people out there are charging money for things like this and seeing where I can help (and also just learn more about this stuff myself).
[0] https://oscarsanchez.com/tools/pixelaid/