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ldd

464 karma · joined April 10, 2014

e-mail me at hn@lddstudios.com
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ldd··on The Forgiver's Dilemma: Can Letting Go Set You Free?
From the article:

  Forgiveness means letting go of anger and resentment towards someone who wronged you. It doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or saying it was okay.
You can always forgive and never trust, or trust less. Or even forgive and never speak to the person that you forgave.

So exactly like you did with your neighbours. Sounds perfectly healthy to me.

ldd··on Building an economy simulator from scratch
Not the author, but I am trying to replicate it[1] without looking at the code (so sort of blackboxing it)

If you just want the javascript file (195 lines of code), let me know too

I'm currently working on Simulation 15

[1]: https://github.com/ldd/economy-test/tree/master

ldd··on A life of splendid uselessness is a life well lived
I really like your saying.

For whatever reason this reminded me of something attributed to Groucho Marx:

> I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member

ldd··on Show HN: Dungeon Map Doodler Beta - Free online map drawing tool
I have never played D&D (despite wanting to) but I really liked what you did.

It seems very well-made, though I bet people would appreciate one or two youtube tutorials (it seems very feature rich btw).You should try posting it on reddit and other sites to get more feedback.

Congrats!

ldd··on On Aging Alone (2021)
As I get older (30 now), and perhaps spend more time alone, I feel that I do not mind this process as much as I thought I would.

Just as usual, I am able to read books and spend time with my dog. I'm only weary of the fact that I do talk to myself out loud every once in a while and there is the possibility that in due time, if it is not already the case, my lonesomeness may eventually be misinterpreted as madness.

ldd··on Show HN: React Routing in 120 lines (including comments)
making React small libraries like these is fun.

I made one myself that was absolutely the simplest I could go for[0]

0: https://github.com/ldd/react-simplest-router

ldd··on Books Become Games
this is pretty dense (in a good way).

I have read a little bit of Schiller, so I was somewhat aware of the "play drive" idea (Spieltrieb) but I really don't recall what it means anymore. All that to say that there are concepts that are not completely easy to understand here.

ldd··on Delightful React file/directory structure
> Finally, in terms of organization, I want things to be organized by function, not by feature.

In my experience, writing a game in mostly React, separating things by feature is more intuitive down the line. Mostly because after some time has passed, finding something is pretty easy and I don't get completely lost in code. And yes, this means having custom hooks in the same file as the actual component sometimes.

I also purposefully let convoluted import statements with lots of '../../../' just exist because my IDE (VS Code) takes care of it and if you really think about it, you never really spend too much time on them.

Then again, I've come to the realization that different things work for different folks. And different projects. If anything, I just encourage more people to try different structures until something 'clicks' with you.

ldd··on How to Remove the Frustration of Reading in Games
I am making a roguelike with bits of story and very early on I added a setting to turn off the story (and by extension, all walls of text).

Some gamers are simple not going to read things, and that's ok.

Then again, I do care about the story and world building in the game, and I still think those aspects enhance the experience, but paradoxically having that setting gives me enough confidence to try things, knowing that at any point anybody can disable the story just to play the game.

ldd··on Roguelikes: The Misnamed Genre (2011)
As someone who is an indie dev loosely making a roguelite (that is more Slay the spire/ pokemon nuzlocke combo) I purposely avoid calling it a roguelike anywhere because some people are obsessively focused on keeping its traditional definition, which is probably linked to the Berlin interpretation definition of a roguelike.

I think in general the term is changing, and in terms of how languages naturally shift it is an interesting case, but I also do not envy the author for the e-mails they are about to get.

ldd··on I Miss RSS
Be the change to want to see in the world!

My indie game has a RSS feed for the monthly updates:

https://www.necromancers-gift.com/feed.xml

ldd··on Let's remove Quaternions from every 3D Engine (2018)
The first sentence in the first slice opens as follows: "I have always found it important to actually understand the things I am using."

I think there is a certain 'magic' in not understanding certain concepts fully. It's probably why I like maths and heavily dislike physics and chemistry. I do not want to make sense of this world. I want to see "the volume of a sphere is 4/3PIr^3" and in some sense see it as an incantation that one would make when casting magic in an RPG. Once you take some calculus, it is a pretty easy formula to derive (integrate?), but there is an allure, an invitation to do some really interesting math just for itself. It fires up our inner curiosity, if you want.

So anyways, I am neither addressing the title's question nor would I really mind if quaternions were replaced in game engines, but I thought it was important to voice the opinion that sometimes it's ok to not understand something.

ldd··on Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?)
I'm making a game, using mostly web technologies: Necromancer's Gift - Think pokemon combat mixed with Slay the Spire map navigation

There's a discord: http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X with mini games like trivia

And a steam page, of course: http://steam.pm/app/1409650

ldd··on Show HN: Write universally accessible SQL, not library-specific ORM wrapper APIs
This may sound odd, but I never understood using heavy classes with relational databases.

I use javascript too, and at most I need a couple of HOF (higher order functions) to do most of the work I need.

Then again, I do use typescript and its type system, so maybe I am not the target audience.

ldd··on My First CSS
Learning flexbox is when CSS started clicking for me. I may abuse `display: flex` everyone once in a while, but it can truly be used for a lot of ideas.
ldd··on Stripe Tax
First time I hear about Paddle. It seems great! Thanks for the recommendation :D
ldd··on Stripe Tax
Really interesting!

I have a very small video game business (emphasis on small) and I already use Stripe to handle non-EU digital purchases. I specifically avoid taking money from EU customers because I briefly looked into the tax requirements and it seemed onerous. The registration process for really small businesses that did online sales was very weird, and unlike Canada or the US, the threshold question seems to be hard to answer (I think you have to pay taxes from day 1 even if you sell 50 euro per year?)

Anyways, I am glad stripe is adding this product, and I've signed up to join, but I am still wondering how complicated and expensive the whole process of registration for vat OSS was. I doubt I'd get more than 50 euro total per year in sales (yes, I mean 50 euro. not kidding).

ldd··on Show HN: Fusebot – Developer bot for Discord and Slack
It was mostly for my channels and discord server to provide a way to collect creatures, trade them, buy and sell items, etc.

I haven't really considered open sourcing it yet, but I can see how other monster taming games may eventually want to implement something like it ;D

ldd··on Show HN: Fusebot – Developer bot for Discord and Slack
I went ahead and did a helper bot for my game using discord.js in typescript.

It even has daily trivia and a currency -- necrocoins.

I think it went relatively well, but I can understand why other people go for serverless solutions.

For those that want to know, google cloud's free tier was and is enough to handle a bot with relatively low amount of active players (around 590 as of this post)

ldd··on Ask HN: What are some tools / libraries you built yourself?
- Visual Tech Trees (React, javascript) [0]

- JQ Live View (VS Code extension) [1]

Both used to create my game, a pokemon-ish roguelite (React, typescript) [2]

-- Links:

[0]: https://ldd.github.io/react-tech-tree/ [0-source]: https://github.com/ldd/react-tech-tree

[1]: https://github.com/ldd/vscode-jq

[2]: https://www.necromancers-gift.com/

ldd··on Free for Developers
yes, I'd personally say that a more interesting group is the subset of people with 10 year old accounts and karma between 50 and 500 points :D
ldd··on Building Rich Terminal Dashboards
thanks so much! There is even a second thread here.
ldd··on Building Rich Terminal Dashboards
Is there something like this for node(javascript/typescript)?
ldd··on Ask HN: What are you working on?
Necromancer's Gift: A game inspired by Nuzlocke Challenges + Slay the Spire

twitter: https://twitter.com/_ldd

discord: http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X

I am very excited about upcoming discord integrations (the discord is really interesting to see. There's stuff like trivia, creating teams already in) and bot AI for turn based combat (it's almost like FF12's gambit system)

ldd··on With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux
very weird to have this as my most upvoted post, but eh. If there is a time to shill out, it's now:

A game inspired by Nuzlocke Challenges + Slay the Spire

discord: http://discord.gg/u64Mg4X

twitter: https://twitter.com/_ldd

mailing list: tiny.cc/dxx5tz

ldd··on With Proton and Steam Play, many Windows games now work on Linux
I was seriously considering adding Linux support for my game, that already has turn-based multiplayer, and this thread was the last thing I needed to convince myself it could work.

Performance may be an issue. I wonder if people would be ok with electron games sold on steam running on linux...

ldd··on A React library to design Diagrams with ease
Not as feature rich, but I did make a React library for tech trees[0].

You should go and check it out!

[0]: https://ldd.github.io/react-tech-tree/

source (MIT): https://github.com/ldd/react-tech-tree

ldd··on The Phases of an Open Source Project Maintainer
The most starred project I have has 45 stars[0] and my second-highest starred project has 17 stars[1].

Thankfully, maintaining them and using them has been great, user interactions have been super friendly and very pleasant.

So, despite me wanting to be popular, it is perhaps a good thing none of my projects made it big and that I can still consider myself at around stage #1

[0]: https://github.com/ldd/gatsby-source-github-api

[1]: https://github.com/ldd/vscode-jq

ldd··on Engineers, not racers, are the true drivers of success in motor sport
This may be a meta answer, but I think it's not really about the race most of the time.

It's either about childhood memories of seeing it, remembering your friends that are far away, or having deep technical knowledge about the cars or something like that.

I used to think I didn't really like sports until I started going to bars to see Starcraft II matches. I still have good memories about it and my friends back then.

And sure, some sports have more action than others, but at the end of the day, people have feelings and sports can deeply affect people. That's not a very logical answer, but I hope others can vouch that it sorta makes sense.

ldd··on Coinbase offers exit package for employees not comfortable with its mission
I will offer a personal take on keeping politics out of my 1-man video game company.

In theory, I am all for it. I do not use hashtags on twitter, or openly support any ideologies.

However, as a light brown dude whose parents immigrated here to Canada, my existence itself is a political statement (in support of legal immigration) that is bound to offend people.

I try, to the extent that is possible, to not say political statements on twitter, but I am only human. And for many humans, existing itself is a political statement.

I sometimes feel like a platypus. There are plenty of taxonomist that want me dead. There are plenty of well intentioned people that will protest for me to keep my rights to exist while never getting close to me.

And all I wanna do is keep platypusing every day. It's just hard to do that in deeply divisive times, I guess.

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