Ben Slinger

Co-host of Bit Storm (@bitstorm), hobbyist game dev, CTO of Podchaser, father of 4.

Ben Slinger boosted:
Lee Constable :breadified:Constababble@aus.social
2024-11-13

#Abortion access is healthcare.

First Orange Hospital, now Queanbeyan... NSW this has to stop.

And we also can't have places that say on paper that they provide abortion but in reality shame and push people away from it against their wishes.

abc.net.au/news/2024-11-13/ema

2024-11-07

Laser Train came 7th overall in the recent
#scorejam
- 1st for Sound and 2nd for Gameplay which is rad!

I'm a little disappointed I didn't get one of the judges picks as I think it would've played really well on stream, but oh well.

Maybe a mobile release in the future?

bslinger.itch.io/laser-train

#gamedev #gamejam #solodev

2024-08-07

New stuff in my (still unnamed) game!

Workers now spawn regularly rather than being an 'upgrade';

Some new enemy art and animation to better show when they're going to fire;

Started on a weapon powerup system!

#gamedev #godot #gameai

youtube.com/watch?v=vrz72wDkoN

2024-07-30

A bit more progress on this game.

Started playing with Behaviour Trees for the enemy AI which has been fun, LimboAI for Godot is a nice little tool, loving the visual debugger.

(It's a bit long, but you'll get the gist in the first 30 seconds)

#gamedev #godot #godotengine

youtube.com/watch?v=bfFVJzySyP

2024-07-28

@ianjs definitely inspirations! Future enemies may attack them so managing them will be part of the gameplay.

You've got me thinking about retro influences though, maybe an enemy that picks them up and carries them away if you don't shoot them down, a la Defender!

2024-07-28

After a long time, I found some motivation to work on this sentry game again and I'm pleased with my progress! It has a real game loop now, with upgrades and a fail state, and I can feel it coming together.

Next steps: try out some smarter enemies, add some different weapon types.

youtube.com/watch?v=BlAxHdr8K9

Ben Slinger boosted:
2024-07-15

We desperately need to start a Slow Software movement. High quality, intentionally designed, low defect software done at a quarter of the pace for the same price. Because we've been destroying the mental health of developers for the last quarter century, and what do we have to show for it but a giant mess?

2024-04-21

Finally found some time to get a bit more done on this game. Explosions, basic enemies, some screen shake - I nearly have all the elements to actually see if I can make this fun!

Ben Slinger boosted:
Erik Uden 🍑ErikUden@mastodon.de
2024-04-09

If you think about it: overpopulation doesn't exist. Humanity can harbour billions more people than exist today, a multitude of those, even! We have (and already produce) more food than would be needed to feed everyone many times over, yet people still go hungry. Additionally, current estimates see humanity's total population stabilize at ~11 billion.

The idea that there are simply too many people nowadays weirdly only came up the moment birth rates in western nations declined — the idea of overpopulation is hence a racist myth. It's a problem of distributing resources, not the amount of people that need or produce those resources!

We have enough food, wealth, and space for everyone, just a small sum of people (billionaires) hoard more than they need resulting in the poverty of the many. When the resources are distributed in a way that only a few get them, you wouldn't claim the problem is the amount of people, right?

For some reason, world hunger, poverty, etc. have always been around. The larger the population grows, the larger this system that distributes resources grows along with it. It's this system of distribution that's wrong and unfair. Simply saying “the people are at fault, we're all just greedy” is counter-productive, because it makes the problem seem unfixable, much rather it pretends as if the problem lies within human nature (which isn't the truth).

There's an economic system that distributes resources in the most unjust manner, the amount of people is irrelevant, and this problem is fixable, despite how incorrect the word “overpopulation” frames the issue.

2024-04-05

@Cheeseness Thanks! I'm looking forward to getting a decent gameplay loop going so I can start iterating

2024-04-05

Minor progress, but I'm trying to stay motivated given I only really get 30-60 mins a day to put in real progress at the moment. Bullets!

#godot #gamedev

2024-04-05

Threw together a mock up to try to capture the general feel of the game I'm dabbling with in Godot, pretty happy with it!

Gameplay will be a cross between Space Invaders, Missile Command and Angry Birds, with a dash of colony management thrown in, with narrative and gameplay driven by storylets.

Screenshot of a game in development - a 2D sandy desert scene with a gray/blue sky, and small pixelated people on a path going by a bunker.
2024-03-31

I've started playing around with Godot to do some 2D game dev - I figure I don't have the time to learn what I need to actually do something useful in Unreal. Enjoying it so far! Built a very basic storylet implementation for an idea I've been stewing on; next, some gameplay.

2024-01-29

@milligna We did, it was great to meet you too!

2024-01-29

This year's Global Game Jam was super productive, Trevor and I are very happy with our resulting game: Emotional Damage. It's a VR escape room with a short narrative.

quixotic-snake.itch.io/emotion

More polish coming before the #melbggj play party in April!

A screenshot of our VR game, Emotional Damage. It shows two consoles in a lab with a variety of controls, and an android head sitting on one of them.
Ben Slinger boosted:
2023-11-21

For Australians - there's an Australian Parliament petition to Call for a Ceasefire and an End to Israeli Occupation (petition EN5622)

Signing only takes a few moments, please consider doing so if you're an Australian resident or citizen

aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petitio

Ben Slinger boosted:
Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮gamingonlinux
2023-10-02

Stop. Putting. Important. Info. In. Discord.

Put it on the actual web, where it is searchable.

Ben Slinger boosted:
2023-07-23

I'm now making a kungfu-roguelite that plays just like in a Jackie Chan or John Wick movie. Follow me for more info :)

Ben Slinger boosted:

The thing that drives me nutso about climate change is that many of the necessary changes could be awesome. A society with more leisure time, cleaner air, closer connections to friends and family who live nearer to you, more exercise, more technological innovation, more jobs, more fairness, more nature… most people would benefit from these changes.

Comic with lecturer listing benefits of climate action and an audience member asking, “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?”
Ben Slinger boosted:
2023-03-02

Here is your must-read article for the day, a profile of @emilymbender, and her efforts to deflate the ridiculous hype around large language models such as ChatGPT.

It's also about the people who are behind that hype, and about what their way of thinking has the potential to do to us.

It's worth reading all the way to the end.

nymag.com/intelligencer/articl

Photo of Emily Bender with a parrot, and the text "You Are Not a Parrot And a chatbot is not a human. And a linguist named Emily M. Bender is very worried what will happen when we forget this."

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