Bloodhunt, Battle Royals, and Onboarding

I want to talk a bit about Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodhunt. Let’s put aside for now the fact that this game tries to take Vampire: The Masquerade, a deeply dramatic, gothic horror RPG that deals much more with social interactions and tries to make it about vampires shooting other vampires with exploding crossbow bolts. What I want to talk about is onboarding. Battle Royale focused games are very popular right now. Such games are always on the top spots of Twitch’s most popular directory. The problem is usually with the new ones. Every once in a while, a new one comes out and very few of them actually penetrate and even fewer dethrone the big players, even if just a little bit. And I think it’s rarely about the theme, even more rarely about the mechanics. I think it’s mostly about the onboarding. What do I mean by onboarding? For those not fluent with the lingo, onboarding is “the action or process of […] familiarizing a new customer or client with one’s products or services.” In more plain language, a game’s onboarding is the experience a new player gets when they install and run the game for the first time. It’s the main menu, it’s the tutorial, it’s the first 10 minutes to the first few hours of the game. If you’re a known popular developer, you usually get the latter but, if not, you get the former as the time you have to convince players to actually play your Continue Reading →


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Is there such a thing as a Super Perceptor?

A while back, a good friend of mine told me they’re a super-taster. I’m not sure if he’s officially diagnosed but what he described to me is that everything he tastes is very vivid and he can’t stand any kind of spicy food because even the mildest one is very spicy. Recently, this got me thinking: Is Super-Perceptor a thing? One of the things about me that I find is quite out of the ordinary is my really high perception. I can come back home and, even unintentionally, see what changed in the kitchen and know exactly what my wife had for lunch and sometimes even roughly when. I think this might be something borne out of my martial arts experience. When you train, you’re taught to notice even the subtlest muscle movements so you can counter appropriately at the right time, not too early and not too late. You’re probably thinking to yourself that this sounds like Sherlock Holmes and, yes, what is portrayed in the miniseries with Benedict Cumberbatch comes very close and what defines Sherlock, especially in that series, is that he is the best there is at percieving and analysing evidence. Unfortunately, it’s not all good. I think the same core cause is what also makes me very susceptible to motion and simulation sickness, it’s why touching most organic matter feels very uncomfortable for me, why Mindfulness Meditation just doesn’t work for me, why any subtle movement of the screen I’m looking at feels like a Continue Reading →


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מחוננים – אואטר: זיקית (3), חלק ז’

אואטר ישב על כיסא קשה במשרד מפקד הנוטרים. הוא הספיק להחליף בגדים למשהו יותר נוח למרות שלא היה קל להשיג משהו שמתאים למידות החדשות שלו. הוא לא הספיק להתרחץ או לישון אבל, לפחות, הוא נפטר מנעלי העקב הבלתי אפשריות ההן. לידו עמדו סטטית ומפקד היחידה ושניהם הסתכלו עליו באופן שכבר התחיל להיות מטריד. “ככה זיקית נראית?” המפקד שאל לבסוף. “ככה זיקית נראתה,” סטטית תיקנה אותו. “עכשיו זה אואטר.” המפקד התכופף כדי להסתכל לו בפנים. “אתה בסדר, ילד?” “עד כמה שאפשר, המפקד,” אואטר ענה, עדיין לא מסוגל לקבל את הקול הגבוה. “שיווי המשקל שלי מוזר עכשיו.” “אתה יכול להשתנות לגוף המקורי שלך?” “עוד לא. זה בדרך כלל לוקח קצת זמן להתרגל וללמוד עד שאני מצליח להשתלט על זה.” “אואטר עשה עבודה מצוינת, המפקד,” סטטית הוסיפה. “הוא לקח יוזמה וסיכון על עצמו שמאוד השתלם ו–” המפקד הרים את ידו וסטטית השתתקה. רגע מתוח עבר בחדר כשסטטית ואואטר חיכו שיגיד משהו. “אתה,” הוא הסתכל על אואטר, “לך למגורים. תתרחץ. לך לישון.” הוא הסתכל על שעון היד שלו והחמיץ פרצוף על השעה. “אתה לא חייב לקום לתדריך בוקר. אבל, ברגע שאתה יכול, תתייצב אצל דוקטור ליבנשטיין לבדיקה מלאה. בסדר?” “כן, המפקד,” אואטר אמר חלושות, נעמד ופיהק. “משוחרר. ואת,” אואטר שמע את המפקד פונה לסטטית כשהלך אל הדלת, “אני רוצה סיכום מלא של מה קרה הלילה. ואל תדלגי על שום פרט.” “נו, מה פספסנו?” הדממה שאל כשאואטר הגיע למגורים. הדף עמדה לידו, זרועותיה משולבות, מסתכלת על אואטר. “לא משהו נורא חשוב, אהמ,” איתן כחכח בגרונו, כאילו זה יעזור לו להוריד אוקטבה. “כנראה שסטטית עכשיו מקבלת שטיפה Continue Reading →


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קנאה במקום העבודה

אני חושב שמשכורות זה משהו שצריך להיות פומבי במקום העבודה. בדרך כלל, התגובה שאני מקבל היא שזה יגרום לאנשים לקנא. לדעתי, זה דבר טוב. כי רוב האנשים לא חושבים על זה אבל יש שני סוגים של קנאה. השפה העברית פשוט לא מכילה את המילים בשביל זה. באנגלית, אפשר להבדיל בין Jealousy ל-Envy (למרות שגם דוברי אנגלית לרוב לא יתייחסו להבדל הזה). כשאומרים קנאה, רוב האנשים חושבים על Jealousy. זאת המחשבה שלמישהו לא צריך להיות משהו בגלל שלך אין אותו. זאת מחשבה מאוד שלילית ועוינת ואני מבין למה עדיף להימנע ממנה, במיוחד בין אנשים שאמורים לעבוד ביחד. אבל זאת הגישה הנמוכה והשלילית ואני מעדיף לנקוט בתער של האנלון. Envy היא הרצון גם להשיג משהו שלמישהו אחר יש. ואלא אם כן מדובר במשהו ייחודי (כמו בן זוג של מישהו), רוב הזמן לא מדובר בלקחת לאותו מישהו את מה שיש לו. איך שאני רואה את זה, אם אני רואה שלמישהו יש משהו מגניב שאני אוהב, אני אחפש איפה אני גם יכול להשיג כזה. אם למישהו באותו תפקיד כמו שלי יש זכויות מסוימות או משכורת טובה יותר ממני, אני אבדוק מה אני יכול לעשות כדי שגם יגיע לי, אני ארצה להשתפר. ומה רע בזה? בכלל, מה רע בלשאול את הבוסים ישירות, “מה אני יכול לעשות כדי שיעריכו אותי יותר? מה המדדים פה? תפוקת קוד גבוהה יותר, יותר יוזמה, הצעות ייעול, הדרכה של חדשים? אני רק רוצה לדעת מה חשוב פה כדי לדעת איפה לרכז מאמצים.” אז תזכרו להבדיל, קנאה (Jealousy) זה לא דבר טוב אבל קנאה (Envy) זה סבבה אם זה גורם לכם לרצות להשתפר Continue Reading →


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How to Make a Unity Package (For the Unity Package Manager)

Let’s say you have a bunch of code you want to drag around with you to every new Unity project, or maybe just the next project you’re doing for the same company. Don’t just copy and paste the same directory over and over again forcing you to also copy changes and updates. Create a package instead! Unity has switched over to a package model for a lot of the engine’s capabilities. And it also allows you to import non-Asset Store packages straight from GitHub or even locally. So how do you take what you have and make it an easily distributable package? Follow these steps. In your Project window, below all your regular files is a Packages folder. Right click on it and select Show in Explorer. In that Packages folder, create a new directory and name it however you like. This will be the root of your package. Do remember that the folder name can not contain spaces. Create a new “package.json” file. This page right here explains everything about the structure of the file. And here is an example file. Back in Unity, your new package should be visible with the name you gave it. Clicking on package file will open it in the Editor UI, allowing you to edit it more conveniently so you don’t have to go back to the JSON. In that Inspector window, you can also easily add Dependencies if your package requires it which is a much easier workflow than typing them out. Continue Reading →


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Blegh.

I apologise to anyone who was expecting something from me recently. I’m feeling sick and this might take a while.


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Flash Fiction February 16: Mountain

Everyone has their mountain. You don’t find it. It’s not there to begin with. You have to build it. Some people like their mountains small, easy to build, easy to climb. They top it off in some short time and feel satisfied with themselves. But, as they say, it’s the darers and the dreamers who look at the blueprints for all the tiny mountains and then look away. They dig and scramble and find the parts and the scraps. They design their own mountain. They build it from trash, from non-existence, and from hope. They make it tower over the others and change the skyline. When other people see that mountain rise up on the landscape, they ooh and ahh. Some cheer, some deride. But they are all intrigued. Will this one succeed? Is this one even climbable? Who is that person that built this mountain? How will the climb be? Who will they be if and when they reach the top? Who will we all be? Not all of them reach the top. Usually just a scant few do. But, when they do, they change everything.


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Flash Fiction February 15: Desert

I grew up in a desert. I lived in a desert all my life. Sometimes people came to my desert, mostly to throw sand at me, or show me how cool trees are and that I couldn’t have any. I tried to stay inside my desert, keep away from the edges. A desert isn’t the most comfortable place. I know that. But it’s what I’m familiar with. The outside is more scary. A desert is vast. It’s very hard to see outside of it, when you’re standing in the middle. The sand gets everywhere. It makes everything heavy and coarse and annoying. But if you live in the desert, you stay in the desert. Even though it’s hard, it can be harder to get out. In 2020, a lot more people found their way into their own private desert. I didn’t choose my desert. It found me. But now I’m working my way out. And it’s ok to ask for help.


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Flash Fiction February 14: City

Cities are not concrete and steel. Cities are not stone and wood. Describing a city like that is like describing juice with the design of the bottle that contains it. Planes can fall on it. Busses could explode in it. Buildings could be razed and neighbourhood could be displaced. But the city remains if the people do. It’s when the populous turns on each other, devalues each other, and demonizes each other, that the city falls. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the same can be said of any sub-part of civilisation.


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Flash Fiction February 13: New

I’m a scientist. Just so you know where I was starting from. I’m also a little bit anxious. And, by ‘a little bit’, I mean a lot. But it’s not that strange for a bride to be anxious leading up to her wedding day, right? Yes, what I did about it might be construed as strange. You know how a bride is supposed to have ‘something old, something new, something burrowed, and something blue’ for luck. Well, I wanted to be as lucky as I could be. So, I went to my friends for help. Jackie is a sociologist. She studies society’s relationship with things. I knew she was my first stop. I explained my situation to her and she gave me a simple pink handkerchief with stitched flowers. Why a handkerchief? It was involved in a longitudinal study of lending and burrowing. She said it was the item that travelled the most. I asked how much. She pulled up one of her datasheets to make sure and said, ‘16,522 times’. Next, I went to Stuart. He’s a material scientist and an amateur artist. I enquired as to the bluest thing he has. He said he’ll get back to me. He called me about a week later and said he experimented with sapphire dust, lapis lazuli, cordierite, kyanite, and azurite and managed to produce an artificial gem he now calls Deepest Blue and that I’m welcome to the first prototype. My friend Jen is an archeological anthropologist. She also works Continue Reading →


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