Personal Account - GameDev (former id software) - Armchair Physics - Twitter Prisoner - Light is too slow
Dallas, TX USofA
Joined March 2008
- Tweets30.5K
- Following1K
- Followers1.5K
- Likes34K
Pinned Tweet
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
Dustin Land retweeted
Check out our full doc on our YouTube page! youtu.be/ON404N_Y-z4?is=-tkj…
Dustin Land retweeted
Ex-ID Software Devs who got laid off recently have now started their own studio Hidden Horses.
I am so happy that these guys could spin what was a horrible situation into a positive one and the spirit of ID Software will live on no matter what!
Interview drops tomorrow!
Dustin Land retweeted
Hello anyone who will listen! We have started a new studio: Hidden Horses! We are largely ex-id developers; cross-discipline, employee-owned, looking to bring y'all more of the high octane, highly optimized FPS action you know and love.
Join us!
It’s funny how LLM training absorbed human time estimates for things. Items quoted as multi day efforts often wrap up in minutes.
2
3
284
It's as simple as Valve buying consumer goodwill that's on the table. And it's a cheap way to earn it with a certain segment of consumers. In 3-5yrs revealed preference will paint a different story.
The line of hand made or artisan production lags automation. Most hand made watches for instance are CNC milled pieces being hand assembled. Most couturiers don't make their own fabrics from scratch. In both cases though people will still pay top dollar for that hand made label.
Digital goods are likely to fall into the grooves in the road left behind by all automation.
Been thinking a lot about AI disclosure for games, since it's been a hot topic.
Steam requires disclosure for player-facing content created with the help of AI tools, but says efficiency gains from AI development tools aren't the focus.
Let's say I'm making a tree mesh for my game.
Two obvious endpoints:
• I manually model it in Blender. No disclosure.
• I generate it using Tripo/Meshy. Disclosure.
Now let's interpolate from t=0 to t=1:
1) I model the tree, but use a Codex-written exporter.
2) I model the tree, but use Codex-written UV, LOD and geometry optimization tools.
3) I model the tree, but write some scripts, with Codex help, to automate branch placement, leaf distribution, etc.
4) I automate more of the modelling until I've written a procedural tree generator.
5) I design and write my own procedural tree generator, with Codex helping debug and optimize it.
6) I design the procedural tree generator, but Codex writes the implementation.
7) I give Codex reference images, ask it to suggest improvements to my design, then implement those suggestions myself.
8) Same as above, but Codex implements the suggested improvements.
9) I give Codex reference images and ask it to design and implement the generator itself.
10) I use that generator, manually selecting and tweaking parameters until I'm happy with the trees.
11) Codex operates the generator and chooses the parameters, but I review and approve the results.
12) Codex operates the generator, chooses the parameters, and selects which trees ship, without my involvement.
13) I ask Codex to operate Blender directly and create the trees.
14) I generate the trees using Tripo/Meshy.
Under a literal reading, at every point in that list, the player-facing content was "created with the help of AI tools".
At what point did this cross from AI-assisted development into AI-generated art?
Is this going to be the same for everyone?
After being in idtech for almost two decades I’ve picked up learning Unreal the last couple months. Claude has been a good rubber duck for this considering how large the ecosystem is for it to draw on. Definitely saves a lot of time.
This. Also a lot of game devs became programmers out of necessity. If you get that time back to focus on other aspects of the project it helps create value.
I'm not sure a lot of people understand what game coders actually do. We're not spending 9 hours a day finely hand crafting artisan software and expressing our inner dreams... 90% of the time we are fighting compilers and existing architecture, having to work out how undocumented code works, and tracking down obscure bugs and behavioural issues.
Most of game programming is just difficult, tedious, laborious grunt work, and the cognitive load we have to endure to get anything done is tiring and frustrating. No game coder is doing it for this 90% of the job.
We make games because the 10% that IS actually about making things fun and expressing ourselves is so incredibly rewarding it makes the other 90% bearable.
Now imagine if there was a tool, some kind of AI agent maybe, which could do most of the 90% grunt work for you, leaving you to just make all the decisions and express your creativity. How amazing would that be. How completely revolutionary would that be.
Now officially no longer an id->zenimax->microsoft employee. Today was my last day.
Feeling good about the future. Lot of new adventure just down the road.
4
34
827
Great episode. Nice to hear what Empty Vessel is up to. Also a lot of reminiscing for me on the 2016 days.
We thought we had something special but we truly didn’t know how it’d be received publicly.
Our guiding light was the audience response to the Quakecon 2014 demo.
Podcast out now with @epalalic
We cover his time working at ID Software on DOOM 2016 & DOOM Eternal, working with @Mick_Gordon founding the studio @emptyvesselplay and their debut game @playdefect and more....
youtu.be/hEObKR4Uc_Q
Dustin Land retweeted
I have now created an ID Software Interview/Clip Playlist for people that want to go down the rabbit hole on ID Software.
As I do more ID Software interviews I will add them to this playlist. Enjoy!
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…
Really just seems like the big labs are running up against the infra ceiling while their moats erode so they’re turning to the government to build the moat for them.
If they thought they had a real deployable advantage they wouldn’t surrender it.
All that crunch only to be cast aside like a leper the day before launch. A good portion of the laid off team is still recovering from crunch.
"We had people that worked in Hollywood for 20 years and game development for 10 and said that this was the worst crunch they'd been a part of."
EXCLUSIVE—DOOM: The Dark Ages Revelations Faced ‘Worst Crunch’ in Franchise History
insider-gaming.com/doom-the-…
Was excited to hear this about our former colleagues.
Live service dev gets forced onto a lot of teams that aren’t built for it. It takes the difficult task of making a great game and amplifies the pain and cost in every dimension.
Just because something is ubiquitous doesn’t mean it’s easy. And that ubiquity makes it tempting to just bootstrap to every project.
Harvey Smith and fellow Arkane Austin veterans announce a new studio, Black Pony Immersive gamedeveloper.com/business/h…
5
314
There’s been lots of bad news for games over the last several years. However, signs of new life are emerging. Sheer creative will won’t let some people rest.
4
131
Finally playing Ultrakill. Been in the library a bit. Really good game.
It feels like if you took DOOM Eternal’s aerial weapons juggling combat and steered harder into that formula.
1
3
245