OsrsNeedsF2P

Hey blind folks on Lemmy!

I'm an ex-mobile game dev, and noticed while searching today there's about 45 million fully blind people in the world, but I couldn't find much about games targeting blind folks.

It seems like there's mods on existing games to assist blind people, but in my quick search there's no dedicated groups to making games for blind people as their top priority.

I have a few questions:

First, do you think lots of blind people would be interested in playing games? Think for like an hour or two a day.

Second, what sort of games would be good for blind people? Are there any games you think would be fun if someone made it for you?

Third, how would blind people like to play games? Would they prefer a phone with like one big button (i.e jump) with haptic feedback and sound, or would they prefer something like on a laptop and a screen reader?

Forth, right now I'm thinking about making a competitive math game; you have one minute to answer as many questions as possible. I was planning on using audio/screen reader to output the question, but similar to the third question, I'm curious on what's the easiest way to input the answer.

A few months back, we had a team dinner. My new skip was present, and I sat nearby for a chance to small talk.

She said:

I absolutely hate when people come to me with a problem. It's the worst possible thing you can do for yourself and your career. Only come to me when you have a solution.

In a lot of places, this attitude might come off as not caring, laziness, or harsh. But on a team of ex-FAANG engineers who all came from Ivy Leagues, the bar is a little higher.

I love discussing complex topics with friends, but I too hate when people just talk about problems. How are you going to solve it? If not you, who can solve it and how would they? If not that, what can you do as an individual to benefit from the situation?

The Problem Mentality

A younger friend of mine is going through an emotional relationship. Comments to the tune of "I didn't like your attitude during dinner", or "I don't feel like you're making me a priority".

The problem here is you're identifying issues, but expecting the other person to both make a the solution and execute it. You're running emotionally exhausted going nowhere.

Let's look at a few more examples:

• I can't sleep at night
• We're not going to get the project done on time
• Global warming is inevitable

The Solution Mentality

How are you going to solve it?

Going back to the relationship example, understand no one changes their attitude over night. Now we can clearly see this isn't even a problem the other party can solve; either break up, or focus on a proxy to solve the problem.

It doesn't matter if you're "in a long term relationship", you should do things that make yourself more desirable, and let the natural level of respect you earn go up. Whether this is reaching new goals academically or in your career, or even "hitting the gym", if you feel like your partner doesn't care about you, this will help change their mind. You can also follow the "Golden Rule", and treat your partner better first. On one hand, this sounds like gaslighting manipulation, on the other, "The grass is greener where you water it".

Notice how I'm not even addressing the "why should I do X when he needs to do Y" - That question is a derivative of the Problem Mentality. Go to the Solution Mentality.

Let's look at a few other examples:

• Sister married someone you don't like? Befriend them, you're in for a long ride
• Going to be driven to homelessness due to cost of rent? Start paying "what you can" - it makes eviction harder
• Don't know what to do with your life? Focus on making money so you have the opportunity to decide later
• Became wheelchair bound? Join wheelchair sports

Who could solve it?

Throwing this one in to address bigger questions. Who can solve the failing education system in Canada? How would they do it, and what could you do to help?

These are fun thought experiments that you shouldn't shy away from. Even if your think your answer is stupid, at least you're practicing solution brainstorming.

For fun, let's do this. One way to make the education system better is to pay teachers 300k a year, making it a very desirable job. Now more top (financially) motivated talent will consider a career in education instead, putting more smart people back in schools. Where will the money come from? Quick estimates show there's 400k teachers, so this would 2x the education budget and increase taxes by roughly 10%. Let's be real though; that's a small price to pay if the next generation of kids are all geniuses. To push for a change like this, you could ~~meme about it online~~ contact provincial reps and bring it up.

These examples are silly, but let's entertain them.

• How can we solve traffic congestion? Add friction to car usage so more people use public transportation -> Push for carpool lanes and tariffs on automobiles
• How can we reduce corruption? Hold politicians accountable -> Create a website that tracks politicians' corruption history
• How can we reduce crime? Help people get on their feet -> Donate to local shelters/food kitchens

How can you benefit?

Let's go back to daily life. My girlfriend was talking about the interest rates in the US and how it will ripple throughout the world. While it's interesting to talk about global trade and rent prices, there's one place I made sure to stop by in the conversation.

So what should we do?

"Buy hard assets, like gold".

Good. Actionable advice I can work with. Although I personally think gold is a terrible idea, I can work with the info she gave. You don't have to solve problems to benefit from them.

Let's look at a few more examples:

• Your company is going bankrupt? Network with your coworkers harder; they'll be jumping ship (statistically for more pay) as QoL goes down
• Worried your sports team will lose? Bet against them so you come out on top either way
• Global warming going to ruin your region? Insurance prices will skyrocket, so sell your house and lock in to rent control

Closing Thoughts

We covered practical and silly examples in this post. The key to remember is even when situation is shot, you can always do little things to stack the deck in your favor. It's not guaranteed to work, but over time the effort will leave you in a better place.

While hiking, some neurons fired. If I was offered a billion dollars, would I step off this cliff?

[I would insert an image of said cliff, but iCloud isn't working so I can't]

"Yes". After all - think about how far that billion dollars could go for the causes I support and the people I care about. I could practically yell out a will on the way to the bottom - "300M to Ena! 400M to my mum! Rest to KDE!"

But then I thought about it more. What if I had 10 minutes to decide my will? How would I break it up more granularly? How would I ensure there's as little room for interpreation as possible, as to prevent lawsuits among the claimants?

Much like the Trolly Problem, I naturally assumed everyone would think the same way as me (after all, who wouldn't pull that lever?)

So without even thinking of the original premise, I turned to my girlfriend and said: You get 1 billion dollars for jumping off this cliff. Who do you distribute it to?

My girlfriend looks at me blankly.

"Do I die?", she asked.

"Well, yea..", I replied. I was caught off guard by the question. "Let's say it's 99% chance of dying."

"That's stupid. Why would anyone do that?"

In 1981, during the Cold War, Roger Fisher made a proposal for how the nuclear launch codes should be handled:

"My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being [...]"

Ever since I first heard of this idea, I thought it was brilliant. A simple sacrafice with the potential to save millions. What a great honor that would be.

(As an aside, this quote started my belief that, to ensure a President always put their country - not themselves - first, the president should be voluntarily executed 8 years post-election)

But both of these ideas are continuously met by people asking "Who would do that??". But to be honest, a lot of people. Let's break it down:

• If it costs 50$ to gain 100$, you make money.
• If it costs 50$ to give a loved one 100$, that's probably worthwhile.
• If there's a 50% chance your life ends to give 1,000,000 people a 1% higher chance of survival - You're basically every lifeguard on the planet, combined.

So it may be materialistic, but a 99% chance of death to give family, friends and charities unfathomable amounts of wealth is a damn good bet. Money buys opportunities of happiness and relief of suffering. One life is a small cost to unlock that. Heck, you could probably give 1,000,000 people a 1% higher chance of survival with 1 billion dollars.

Since I would hope others jump (and give me a share!), I have to expect myself to do at least the same. So yes - I would jump.

As an aside, I don't think people really appreciate just how much 1 billion dollars is.

So on to you: Would you jump for a billion dollars?

Maximum libertarian style freedom - no police, lax laws and no control - is obviously dangerous. This is understood, so let's not pretend the US is a "fully free". But the US isn't even the "Land of the Free".

In practice, freedom is being able to do what you want. It's the ability to walk out your door and go places. It's the ability to buy the house you want. You can easily imagine the Founding Fathers thinking, "Everyone should be able to live this way", as they looked out their own windows.

So how do you enjoy your freedom if your too poor to leave your city? The roads in New York were deliberately designed so that you couldn't. Why can so few millennials afford homes? Builders profited off building houses instead of apartments, which doesn't scale. How can you enjoy a night with drinks, if you had to drive to get there? Well this one is just a nation-wide failure of urban planning. The point is, these questions all have explainable answers, but they don't excuse the result.

The result is, freedom was traded for something else at every turn. Now look at Texas; in the name of big homes and trucks, you can't go anywhere without a car. You have no freedom to walk to a restaurant 15 minutes away. Even the most walkable cities in the US, like San Francisco or Boston - are only walkable within the city themselves. Contrast this to Korea, where the entirety province of Seoul is walkable, or Indonesia, where any kid can hop on a moped and travel around.

The US is freedom on paper. They've remained to protect your rights to own (some) guns and yell schizo, but for the spirit of freedom - the ability to do what you want - it does not stand up as the "Land of the Free".

The US dollar (and the dollar of most countries) is not backed by anything. Therefore if the amount of money in circulation is x, and overnight it becomes 2x, that must mean the value of the dollar has halved.

During COVID, the US government injected $4.6 trillion into the economy. If you didn't get at least 13,800$, you lost money.

But the bigger point here is the value of money has significantly decreased - And it's not just what the inflation calculators are saying. Let's look at some examples:

Besides this graph suggesting the value of your salary has halved in 20 years, it begs a deeper question - Where is the money going? Is the economy just bad? Or is there a group benefiting from this?

We could analyze government debt vs inflation (hint: the governments are going bankrupt, and the only way to stop that is a wealth tax), but that's a whole different topic.

Look at the distribution of wealth of the top 5 richest people in the world:

Oh look at that, we found the missing money.

So as an individual investor, what can we do with this information? Well billionaires have most of their value in their assets - Specifically, publicly traded assets.

S&P 500 index:

The takeaway is that simple.

1. Have rich parents
2. If you fail at step 1, try again
3. Buy in the S&P 500

As long as your living expenses are a small enough fraction of your take-home income, you can still stay on top of the curve. Save and invest in index funds.

Finally got around to it and been playing Godot for an hour. I've been following Brackey's How to make a Video Game - Godot Beginner Tutorial and I'm about ~40 minutes in.

First impressions:

• Jesus christ that downloaded fast
• Holy crap that opened fast
• I love right out the gate it let me pick what renderer I want to use (alongside the pros and cons)

UI:

• The UI is a little bit confusing. Having the Script and 2D window be something at the top, but to the right of your traditional window dropdowns - is very jarring
• Mousewheel is a weird default: Control-scroll moves up and down, while regular scroll zooms in and out. I believe this is the opposite of most programs
• Modifying the collision points on TileSets was weird - I would modify one, then any new tile I click would get the new collision points, so I kept accidentally overwriting the collision points on tiles when I just wanted to select. But then I also couldn't copy a previous collision point.. so I had to like carefully plan out which tiles would have the same collision points because I couldn't copy them... I didn't want to get too specific on something minor, but that was frustrating.
• Overall, the UI is still less cluttered than Unity, so despite being a bit unintuitive and having some frustrations, it's worse but not a showstopper

"Let me make a game!" vibe:

• For reference, my base point here is Flash, with ActionScript. The dead simplicity of that framework let developers pump out awesome games in under a week
• Godot seems to have better support for 2D games than Unity. 2D feels "first class", and I'm not getting weird collider issues on corners like Unity does
• When following a tutorial (that is only 4 months old), I already ran into cases of UI changes and deprecated features. That's a big issue with Unity, and not something I look forwards to in Godot
• As far as vibe check goes, this one is also on par or slightly better than Unity

Overall Rating: Good enough

My world has not been shaken - but I'll use Godot for my next game. First impressions have Godot's editor on-par with Unity, but the real win is it comes without the clown show that is Unity Technologies itself. For the first time in a while I'm excited to get back into making games, I just need to make the time 🙃