Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones" • Hacker News Board

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#121

Post by texasbigdata » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

Retr0spectrum wrote: post #59

sbarre wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is doing pilgrimages to his house or stealing his garbage or following him around here.. We're just acknowledging that he is an exceptional contributor to our industry, and that his work has inspired a TON of people. To have someone of that stature contribute to your project is exciting! There's nothing strange or creepy about that, and if people want to celebrate that in their own way like printing a Git comm…

I don't take issue with anything listed in your comment. The comment I was originally replying to described: a) Bypassing their own code review processes. b) Creating a contributors list, just so they can put Carmack at the top of it (what about all the other contributors?!) IMHO this crosses a line. Not in a big way, but one worthy of comment.

If he breaks something just go fix it. Would be a funny story.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#122

Post by simias » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #49

delecti wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how the UI looks to other people, because "all in once place" isn't really a complaint I can understand about the Twitter UI I'm seeing. There's buttons and stuff between tweets, but with 280 characters per tweet (140 was definitely less readable) they're not significantly more difficult to read on Twitter than they are in the paragraphs you posted.

The Twitter web UI if you are not logged in is purposefully broken. Every so often, it will just show you "access denied" or "you don't have permission". It is the peak of dark patterns.

On top of that this particular chain is quite egregious because Carmack didn't even bother editing his text to be twit-friendly. It just breaks in the middle of sentences.

It's pretty amusing to me that this modern, high-res, multi-megabyte page has worse usability than when we could just "finger" Carmack's .plan from a terminal 20 years ago.

Maybe we should try to bring finger back. We could pretend that it uses the blockchain to drive adoption.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#123

Post by mraza007 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

Yesterday i just ordered myself a feature phone and now I see this tweet about game development on feature phones

What a coincidence !!! Anyways has anyone still using feature phone, i would love to hear your experience

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#124

Post by dan1234 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #122

stefan_ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Twitter web UI if you are not logged in is purposefully broken. Every so often, it will just show you "access denied" or "you don't have permission". It is the peak of dark patterns.

On top of that this particular chain is quite egregious because Carmack didn't even bother editing his text to be twit-friendly. It just breaks in the middle of sentences. It's pretty amusing to me that this modern, high-res, multi-megabyte page has worse usability than when we could just "finger" Carmack's .plan from a terminal 20 years ago. Maybe we should try to bring finger back. We could pretend that it uses the…

We just need to sell an NFT each time a .plan changes.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#125

Post by newman8r » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

DistressedDrone wrote: post #16

intsunny wrote: post #9

John Carmack writes: > Unlike most emulator projects, Kemulator turned out to be closed source abandonware It is amazing that in the past two decades most emulators transitioned from closed source closely guarded secrets to open sourced and often under a popular license. The preservation is unparalleled.

It surprises me the number of people who thought they could make money selling emulators, in what is and has always been almost exclusively dedicated to piracy.

3dSen seems to have done a decent job monetizing - but they added a lot of value.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#126

Post by kalleboo » Thu, May 20, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

nicetryguy wrote: post #54

GC every frame? Jesus. Gamedevs jump though hoops to avoid it.

These phones had like 1 MB, 2 MB, 4 MB of RAM. And these were 3D-accelerated games running on them. A GC language was definitely the wrong choice for the platform, but J2ME was the industry standard because portable. So if you're allocating a dozen objects in a frame it's best to GC them in the same frame or you're going to lose tens of frames later.

Even in modern times, for the longest time Android Java apps had laggy scrolling due to GC hitches that the refcounting iOS Obj-C apps avoided.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#127

Post by ups101 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #4

The chain all in one place, such that it's readable: > Before the iPhone existed, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones": Doom RPG 1&2, Orcs&Elves 1&2, and Wolfenstein RPG. Qualcomm's native-code BREW platform had better versions, but I haven't seen any emulators and archives for it, so they may be lost at this point. The J2ME (java mobile) versions are still floating around, and can be emulate…

You could also insert the Carmack’y “ah-ehm” between tweets :-)

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#128

Post by ALittleLight » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #113

brianberns wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Twitter's user experience is the worst.

Is it really Twitter or the habit to write everything there, even lengthy posts?

It's interesting to think about why that habit exists. It seems like a low barrier to entry to me. If Carmack had wanted to post to Medium or something he would've had to write and edit the whole essay and get people to come read it.

On Twitter Carmack posts a paragraph as it comes to him. Could do the whole thing at once. Could take days to complete the thread or longer. It could be as long as he wants. One tweet or one thousand. No real expectations of edits. No one would be surprised if it's only a three paragraph thought whereas going to read an essay that might feel a little brief. Nobody expects really profound or serious insight, just the thoughts on top of his head.

Readers also have the same low barrier to entry. No need to go to a separate page or app. Look at the first or first n paragraphs. Scroll by anytime.

The user experience for something like this may not be perfect on Twitter, but I think Twitter has a lot to recommend itself as the appropriate tool for sharing thoughts like this.

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#129

Post by 0-_-0 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

iudqnolq wrote: post #25

david422 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has someone written an extension to aggregate tweets into 1 large tweet yet?

nitter.com is an alternative ui that shows the whole thread on one page without needing js

For example:

https://nitter.42l.fr/ID_AA_Carmack/status/13950892107097866...

Re: Before the iPhone, I worked on a few games for what were called "feature phones"

#130

Post by supercheetah » Thu, May 20, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

jaypeg25 wrote: post #71

wlesieutre wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a bug rather than deliberately blocked. The on-page retry button will continuously fail, but if you go up to the address bar and keep hitting enter it will eventually work. Still embarrassing for a tech company of twitter's size. Displaying a tweet to a logged out user should be the single simplest job their service has, but it's usually broken.

The fact that threaded tweet links like this don't work on non-official apps (I use Talon on Android), to me, is a sign that this is deliberate.

Thinking that it was intentionally made broken, or deliberately broken at some point is rather presumptuous. As has been said before, don't assume maliciousness when incompetence is a better explanation.

That said, I would buy that ignoring and any fix for it is deliberate.