Brett's Footnotes¹: Comments

Comment on "I Should Have Finished... Crash Bandicoot"

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:31:14 -0500

Well... I don't actually own a copy of Pit Droids, through purchase or borrowing, so it's exempt. So, you'll just have to ride the coattails of me not finishing that game for another decade. Consider it a birthday present! ;)

- Brett Douville

Comment on "I Should Have Finished... Crash Bandicoot"

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:08:27 -0500

I look forward to seeing Pit Droids on this list.

- Andrew Kirmse

Comment on "Discussion: Einstein's Dreams"

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:33:11 -0500

Glad you could join us, Lehr, and thanks for your help :)

- Brett Douville

Comment on "Discussion: Einstein's Dreams"

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:11:12 -0500

I finally got a chance to check out the book by David Eagleman you recommended and I must say thanks for the recommendation. It was quite the interesting read.

It took me a while to get to it because I just couldn’t wait till Skyrim’s release to get my hands on it and got a QA position on the project. Hopefully the long hours will pay off for everyone’s Dragonborn experience.

- Lehr Jackson

Comment on "Interview on the Bethesda Blog"

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:01:40 -0500

Awesome interview, it helps me a lot! Thanks Brett :)

I'm really interested in the programming department at Bethesda Studio, and I hope you don't mind shedding some more lights for me :)

- Tuan M. Nguyen

Comment on "Discussion: Einstein's Dreams"

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:26:08 -0500

I wish you luck with your contest, Lehr. Einstein's Dreams is a terrific read -- if you've enjoyed it, consider giving David Eagleman's _Sum_: Forty Tales from the Afterlife a read as well, it's similar in scope and approach by providing a diverse selection of accounts of potential ways we might exist after death.

As for November, well, it'll be here before you know it. It certainly feels like it's fast approaching to me...

- Brett Douville

Comment on "Discussion: Einstein's Dreams"

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:39:45 -0500

Well I just stumbled across this article, I am using this book as the inspiration for an indie game contest I entered at school. The book fit very well with the 3 themes of the contest. Seeing your article makes me think I might have picked a good source of inspiration after all! I just wanted to say thanks for the major motivation boost.

ps. Please make November 11 arrive sooner, I can’t wait to explore Skyrim.

- Lehr Jackson

Comment on "The Falling Frame"

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 07:46:20 -0500

Thanks, Nick! I've been happy with how this little series of posts has turned out. I decided to try this angle for my AltDevBlogADay posts, and I'm glad it's working for you. :) Allows me to blend a little more creative writing with my geekiness.

- Brett Douville

Comment on "The Falling Frame"

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:05:32 -0500

I love these parables you've been doing. I keep expecting your characters to bump into Swayne's at the Foo Bar :)

- Nick

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:12:11 -0500

@SJML I admit, I probably wouldn't have gone straight to the metal if I had had some sort of lesson plan. Instead, it was more like, "Hey, can we spend an hour on this now?" and we dove right in and saw where looking at code took us. In this case, it went into a little culvert of "This is how the machines really work underneath".

My hope will be that he finds some of these little turns on his own and he takes them and runs with them if he's interested. He definitely had the little spark of pleasure of learning things that are fundamental (shift is division), so I'm hopeful that he'll also have the pleasure of finding things out.

- Brett Douville

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:47:05 -0500

@Martin Ha, I know, my color scheme is... well, it works for me. Green tahoma stays, I might have to find another background color. It was meant to evoke "vellum" but it may not be sufficiently subtle. Glad you enjoyed the post.

@Doug I'm lucky to have kids who are interested in what I do at work all day (or at least, what they *imagine* I do at work all day), but I would be amazingly proud of whatever they achieved in whatever interests they pursue :)

@Alex I started with Basic, too, and moved to assembly and a dialect of Forth available for the Apple II at the time; my first games were text adventures and text-based racing (and skiing, that sort of thing) games.

I am approaching all questions of design and how to do things with questions, rather than answers. "You'd like to make a baseball game? Tell me more." It's his project; I'm trying to teach him the basics of what's going on in that computer he's working on, the basics behind computer "science", that sort of thing. General advice is fine. The only thing I've cautioned him about is scale -- I explained that the games we play on the 360 or the PS3 take literally hundreds of years of effort (100 people for three years, say) -- this is particularly because he's learning to code at the same time as he is writing his first games. I think it's likely that when he first runs a working program that he wrote from scratch, he'll be hooked, just like I was and continue to be 30 or so years later.

- Brett Douville

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:37:07 -0500

I think it's interesting how quickly you went to the low level. I've always thought people can grok "real" code more quickly than tutorials give them credit for, but it's still pretty bold to go right into the mathematical basis for it all. Kind of like learning set theory before addition -- a different pedagogical approach that could lead to a deeper and more intuitive understanding of the subject overall.

Another interesting/portable project you may want to look at is Hackety Hack.

http://hackety-hack.com/

I was really impressed with its progress last time I checked it out, but don't know how much it's stagnated since _why's disappearance. :-(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff

- SJML

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:48:48 -0500

I taught myself to program from QBASIC's help files on my mom's computer when I was about eight years old. I wouldn't assume for one second that he's in over his head, especially with a teacher! I think you got him at just the right time.

The very first program I shared with another person was a console-based quiz game with questions based on my social studies book. With a teacher and a couple extra years under his belt, you might be able to guide him through setting up a GUI. The logic is really simple: RNG, a switch statement, matching multiple choice input, and keeping score.

For sure, though, let it be his project, and not your project with his input. He's not too young at all!

- Alex H.

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:25:47 -0500

Very nice. As a father of one daughter who absolutely won't have anything to do with our industry, congrats!

- Doug

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:54:58 -0500

Great article, but good god man, green on yellow?! /asplode. Still, I enjoyed the post.

- Martin D

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:39:02 -0500

@Chris Thanks man, and please say hello to all our mutual friends in Oceania.

@Aras I wish I had it then too. There were inevitably discussions of how all data is stored as zeros and ones, but he hasn't yet asked if that is also true of programs. We will get there if we end up discussing how it is that his Javascript program is running in a browser. :)

- Brett Douville

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:22:17 -0500

This just made my day. "programs are functions that turn data into more data", at age of 10? I wish I had that!

- Aras Pranckevičius

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:19:38 -0500

Awesome. Doubleplusgood.

- Chris C.

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:19:03 -0500

@Tuim Thanks! "Awesome" may be overstating, but I'm tryin', I'm tryin'

@Legend Agreed; if you're in a position to take someone under your wing, do so. :)

@Dennis He would freaking *love* that. My original introduction to assembly-level programming on the Apple II was in something that I think was called Robot War. :) He said something about programming a robot that would beat you at air hockey but dismissed it as "too easy".

- Brett Douville

Comment on "The Apprentice"

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:46:44 -0500

That is really awesome. Maybe I will recruit him to help me program my robots ;)

- Dennis M