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highCs

828 karma · joined June 14, 2013

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highCs··on Prohibition was primarily the work of one pressure group
I think I understand your point guys. Illegalization and demonization are one way of preventing people from using drugs. What you say is that there is other ways which in addition have other benefits.

Uneducated and influenceable people currently consume heroin, not realizing their act.

I would be tempted to think the fact drugs are rare and difficult to obtain the first times decrease the odds of somebody becoming an addict. Pure speculation but there is some logic still. Say one night I'm crazy, I'm not going to find cocaine right away become hey, tonight is the night. I understand that it's not a proof that it's effective. Just that it might be.

Heroin is comparable in risk profile to morphine

Doctors prescribe morphine, most likely when not using it is worse than using it, which doesn't mean the risk are low. It's just the best of the worse solutions. I understand that when you lost a leg, you can take some hard drug, because anyway, if you don't you're done. I might be wrong again, just telling you the arguments of the common here.

highCs··on Prohibition was primarily the work of one pressure group
When I was 16, I've been given a book which summarized the addiction power of many drugs. Here are those I remember:

LSD: 1 star (if I remember correctly)

Canabis: 1 star

Cigarets: 2 stars (notice how people have a hard time to stop smoking)

Alcohol: 3 stars

Cocaine: 3 stars

Heroin: 6 stars

In my mind, if you try heroin once, you're addicted. Is that close to be correct? Because if it's correct, then the less people try it, the less there's addicts.

highCs··on Prohibition was primarily the work of one pressure group
> the demonization of the drugs

It keeps the number of drug addicts low and then makes the harm and safety problem less important at the same time?

highCs··on Prohibition was primarily the work of one pressure group
> Drugs are actually pretty safe

I don't get it. Heroin for example is a serious threat for physic and mental health isn't? If you sell them legally, uneducated and influenceable people would consume them, not realizing entirely their act no? It's real questions, I'm ignorant here.

highCs··on Unit Economics
I see, that's interesting.
highCs··on Unit Economics
> Games like Candy Crush Saga and Game of War spend absurd amounts of money in acquisition.

I think this is wrong. These games have strong invite-friend mechanisms and have high retention. That's why they are popular in the first place. No source at hand though.

highCs··on Unit Economics
Advise for game developers: that's why you should not do clones or games which looked different but are actually clones - like not-so-innovative 2d platformers. If you think about an innovation for your next game, think about it twice, will it drive sells, really?
highCs··on Why Is Europe Failing to Create More $1B Startups?
Many EU countries got startups during the mass consumption revolution. US however is the only country to have not missed the micro revolution. US got micro startups in 1975, 1983, 1995 and so on. Hard to beat 40 years later as no one has experience nor tech money. Its not that we dont have hackers in EU, its that we dont have Paul Graham. I dont think this - tech experience and tech money - is easily relocatable as it is stated in the article.
highCs··on Is it just me or is networking really hard?
ENet is precise, bug-free and easy to use. There is a python version [0] as well which I find usefull server-side. Love it.

[0] https://github.com/aresch/pyenet

highCs··on Pragmatic physically based rendering: Intro
For those like me who want to learn more in 10 minutes, this link appears to be decent: https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory
highCs··on Yahoo SkyPhrase SDK: Making Apps Understand Natural Language
It says it's good but it's missing data to help believing it. Also, I wonder, what is the output of such a system? Some kind of AST? Or some kind of database you can query?
highCs··on Stuff in Space
Amazing. May I have some info when I click onto something please? Are the lights in night zone accurate?
highCs··on Show HN: IfLoop, a new programming style, designed for mobile phones and tablets
I like it. Example of what's cool:

Syntax is just a theme

You program can look like a python program, a golang program, or any other ones. Each code line can end with ; or not, etc.

Is there program samples somewhere? Is there any lib for it?

highCs··on HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam
Cracking attempt 3

I've proved in the past (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQLiANnRPBU) I can get plenty of traction with a minimal game done by a couple of guys. Moreover, since the RTS is competitive, I can get a feedback and growth loop by organizing tournament with prizes. If the core gameplay works and the updates are substancial, players will come more and more numerous each time.

Here is a video of the RTS (January): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIFd6jxQbY

highCs··on HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam
Haha I know it sounds impossible but I think it is actually feasible. I beleive a game can grow like a typical startup product, you can start with a hundred players interested in a game with a handful of units and grow from there.

Here is a video of the product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIFd6jxQbY

highCs··on HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam
deprecated answer

Thanks Kevin for getting in touch. Yes I am. I've bought 2D graphics on the web which I think are enough good to get say 200K players. I also have a friend I've worked with recently at a game company which has started to help on the design (units, skills). I've talk to numerous players on reddit, that help for the design too. Here is what it looks like (please note this is an old video, a lot have changed since, even the name of the game): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNIFd6jxQbY

edit: oh also, you should look at the following FAQ that may answer some questions.

FAQ:

Q: Why don't you make a mobile game instead?

A: Ordinary game developers think there is some kind of a "game industry" which embodies the promess that if they make some cool content, copy some cool features and drop some names, they can make a profitable product.

Smarter people knows that a tiny fraction of softwares makes all the revenue. There is no exception to that rule, not even for games. Here is the proof: https://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/

If you look carefully, you'll notice that the 10th grossing game on iOS make 10% of the revenue of the first one. The 100th does 1%. And so on.

But smarter people think that games are like cat pictures: you can't predict which one gonna make it up to the top. Some top rated HN users think that, I have the names :)

I believe this is true about games on mobile platforms. Success on mobile is, well, just luck in my opinion. The proof is that it simply doesn't exist a single company right now which has made multiple hits which gross at startup-level (unless it's clones of the first product or others products, even then, the ratios are not the same). Another way of telling this is: I love flappy bird, it's an amazing game really, I've played it a lot, but no one ever would have predicted it would be a success. Same for angry birds.

It is false on the PC platform however. The proof is that some companies succeed to make multiple, if not only, hits which gross at startup-level (ie. blizzard, valve etc.). It is important to add that their games have high skillcaps (more on that later) and they never die: players keep playing them. This is true games like chess and poker and these companies achieve to conceive many of them. That proves you can think rationally about games and make some predictions.

Q: Why don't you make a facebook game then?

A: Beside poker, I've never seen a game on facebook, do you? I'm sure there is some but what I've seen the most are what we call in french attractions. That is roller coasters. So here is how it works. You put some cool banner on facebook. People click on it of course. Then, you put the people in wagons with a cool theme and you run the roller coaster in loop. At some point, you tell them it can go faster if they invite some friends. So do they. Since the friends of a random person on facebook is likely to click on a banner too, it works pretty well. Fine, I've no problem with this. But this is a very special kind of game if that is games at all. Real games have high skillcaps. It means that you can be better than your friend - subtancially better. Great games have even very high skillcaps, which means that you can dramatically beat your friend, also find someone who dramatically beats you and another one who dramatically beats the one who beats you and so on.

So here is the thing: Facebook offers a real nice feature which is the social graph. But it doesn't mean a game has to use it to be an interesting project to invest on.

Q: All right, but what I want to say is, your game is too big to be done by a couple of guys isn't?

A: I beleive this is false. The traditionnal way of shipping a game is to build all of it and then launch it to the world once and for all. I beleive it can be done another way. I beleive I can get 100 players playing it, then 1000, then 10000, etc, I just gonna make iterations. Minecraft did it that way. My game is in 2D for example. It's not top notch for a RTS, but I can get many players with a great 2D RTS. Once I have a great 2D game, I can replace the 2D graphics by 3D ones - it's particularly easy for a RTS technically. If the game is great, it will generate enough revenue to make subtancial iterations/opus, the same way a startup grow.

Q: Have you launched a kickstarter campaign?

A: No. I'm not entirely sure I like kickstarter for early-stage games. It tends to actually bring back the old shipping method: a launch once and for all. I might be wrong. What I was thinking however, and I'm not sure it has be done already, is to launch a kickstarter campaign when the game is quite in a pretty advanced stage. I think that would maximize the success of the campaign. Just thoughts to be polished.

Q: Have you launched your game on steam greenlight?

A: Not yet. Unlike kickstarter for early-stage games, I beleive steam greenlight is an amazing tool. I'm looking forward launching on it very early.

Q: Wait, but have you already made games?

A: Yes professionnally and as a hobby. Most companies in that field totally sux however, imho, so I've never shipped a game you could tell your friends. However this game I've designed from A to Z (I've even made the 3D characters under ZBrush) has been reviewed by Total Biscuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQLiANnRPBU

highCs··on HN Office Hours with Kevin and Sam
I'm making a competitive real-time strategy game like starcraft (which is declining) but without the punitive aspect of the game which is why a massive number of players stop playing it I think. Starcraft is also the only decent competitive RTS on the market right now, a successor can grow at startup-level in the long term I beleive.

I have a solid engine, nothing launched yet.

My question is: why would you not fund this project right now? What could I do to improve my odds of getting funding?

highCs··on Show HN: MapChat – A simple location based chat in 300 lines of code
I would like to see how many people are in there (screen-wise).
highCs··on La Ruche qui dit Oui
I'm happy to read a french startup has access to top talents outside Europe. I wish them the best.

Oh and it's here: https://laruchequiditoui.fr/en

highCs··on Ask HN: How do you deal with overly confident people?
It's called the socratic method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
highCs··on Meteor Raises $20M to Build the One JavaScript Stack to Rule Them All
Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9569799
highCs··on The Paradox of the Proof (2013)
The unreadable paper is here: http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/Inter-universal%20...
highCs··on Balancing Multiplayer Competitive Games (2009) [pdf]
EDIT: I'm updating my profile with an email address, can you please send me an email?
highCs··on Balancing Multiplayer Competitive Games (2009) [pdf]
Good article.

Definition: What is Depth? A multiplayer game is deep if it is still strategically interesting to play after expert players have studied and practiced it for years, decades, or centuries.

We often talk about skillcaps. The more skillcaps a game has the better it is. Ideally, you want a game to have an infinite number of skillcaps. A skillcap is a level of expertise which allows the players in it to dramatically beat the players which belong to the lower level of expertise. The idea behind skillcaps is that, if you, as a player, are in a lower skillcap, it means you're not entirely exploiting all the possibilities of the game. Many skillcaps means that increasing things like reflex is not enough. The player needs to increase its understanding of the game. Incidentally, that game is very deep.

Also, there is a measure for player expertise called the Elo rating system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

Definition: What Is Balance? A multiplayer game is balanced if a reasonably large number of options available to the player are viable--especially, but not limited to, during highlevel play by expert players

Well, not really in my opinion. A game is balanced if you cannot find a single way-of-playing to beat an equally-expert opponent more than 50% of the time when the opponent is not allowed to use that same way-of-playing. (Note we are talking here about robots which automatically play each game with the exact same level of expertise.)

EDIT: oh the author calls that fairness. Fair enough then.

highCs··on Ordos, China: The World’s Largest Ghost City (2014)
The author is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darmonrichter?ty=h
highCs··on Replacing welfare payments with “basic income” for all is alluring, but expensive
A generous basic income funded by very high taxes would be self-defeating, as it would reintroduce the sort of distortions that many of its advocates hope to banish from the welfare system. Loafers could live comfortably without lifting a finger.

Basically, if there is not enough jobs for everyone - the raison d'etre of the basic income - then at some point, some aren't going to do anything: that's the point.

In other terms, the basic income is all about how do deal with the people which does nothing since we have reasons to think they couldn't do anything anyway according to the situation.

highCs··on Show HN: Live-programmable voxel landscape in WebVR
FYI, a voxel (volumetric-pixel) is a 3D rendering primitive which is a competitor of the polygon (yes there is other primitives like elipsoide[0]). A point cloud carrying whatever augmented information isn't in itself a voxel model. Ultimately, a voxel is a voxel when it is rendered as such: when this is the 3D primitive used to support/make the rendering.

So are minecraft lanscapes made of voxels? No, these are polygons.

[0] http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ecstatica/ecstatica2-6.jpg

highCs··on Show HN: Get a personal site on your own domain name in just a few minutes
It's working, neat, well explained, direct and fast. I like it.

A little suggestion: the monthly charge on the billing page could have its own explanation too as does the annual one, I'm not sure.

highCs··on Doom3 is the proof that “keep it simple” works
> The game was a commercial success for id Software; with more than 3.5 million copies of the game were sold.

Wrong/Cheated. It was such a success that they had to sell the company - they sold ID-Software...

highCs··on French civil code now on GitHub
Finalement, le Code Civil, c'est une partie du code source de la France. Et le code source, ca va sur un source control. Point.

Which means - correct me if I'm wrong: "The civil code is like a part of the source code of France. And then, it should be in a source control."

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