I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.
I do Clues by Sam every day when I'm walking my dog before I start work, and I was particularly glad to have the daily mental workout this month, as I didn't have time for Advent of Code. Just bought both puzzle packs to support your great work!
Love it, I discovered it last week and bought a supporter pack after two days!
Everytime I get stuck I'm 100% sure you made a mistake... Until I find my own mistake
Thank you so much! Indeed, it's quite tempting to blame the game, but the algorithm that ensures all valid deductions are enabled hasn't been wrong a single time since it was finished in June. Often I don't believe it myself, but it always turns out to be smarter than me!
Oh, and perhaps worth mentioning that today's puzzle is not very representative of a regular puzzle, as usually the grid is filled with different professions and not reindeers!
It's a pretty normal mid week puzzle. They start easy on Monday and get harder towards Sunday. But don't be afraid to use hints to get started with the game! It gets easier with time!
I love it, just purchased a pack.
I've also found that it is a very great tool to test LLM, like take a screenshot of a half resolved game and feed it to ChatGPT with the rules and ask him to select the next target
It's a mix of things. For example, there's an algorithm that ensures all valid deductions are allowed (I'm not smart enough to ensure all of them manually!). But a good amount of manual work goes into each daily puzzle.
I've also tried Gemini 3 for Clues by Sam and it can do really well, have not seen it make a single mistake even for Hard and Tricky ones. Haven't run it on too many puzzles though.
This is a conjencture, even if I do work in the industry but not AAA, but: Following the trends simply isn't part of their business model. Following current trends is a very unpredictable business. Many try, and many fail. AAA had the luxury of somewhat predictable sales. They can make big bets like working years on a game, since they know they will have millions of players. And they know smaller studios can't compete with them in that business.
But, of course, making games is hard, and sometimes they fail. And now the free tools are getting really good, and smaller studios are becoming increasingly competent. Will we soon see the big ones fall? Their only way to survive is to keep going bigger, escaping the smaller studios to a place they can't reach. Now we have AAAA games. But is there a limit where players stop caring how many As a game has?
I'd rather phrase it as "code is straight out of GitHub, but tailored to match your data structures"
That's at least how I use it. If I know there's a library that can solve the issue, I know an LLM can implement the same thing for me. Often much faster than integrating the library. And hey, now it's my code. Ethical? Probably not. Useful? Sometimes.
If I know there isn't a library available, and I'm not doing the most trivial UI or data processing, well, then it can be very tough to get anything usable out of an LLM.
I didn't know the same person was behind both Planescape: Tormentand Fallout 2, some of my favorite games of all time. Torment I actually played only recently (had only played Baldur's Gate 1&2 before) and absolutely loved it. So it's not even just nostalgia.
He's worked on an impressive number of great games. Prey, SW Kotor 2, Fallout New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, Icewind Dale 1+2 and Alpha Protocol (ok, arguably great) jump out at me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone#Works
Also (to my mind) two of the most successful Kickstarted video game projects so far: Pillars of Eternity (a personal favorite) and Torment: Tides of Numenéra.
(He just needs to jump on a title like Numenéra: Into the Planescape to complete the cycle.)
Anyone who overlooked Prey (as I did for years) but loves the Looking Glass Studios games and successors (Thief series, Deus Ex series, System Shock series, Dishonored Series): just get it an play it. Read nothing. Just play it. You won’t regret it.
yep, i remember playing Fallout 2 and Planenscape as well, one of the best summers ever (1998 and 1999). I discovered some glitch in Fallout to get more skill points ;) and Planescape, had one of the best plots ever in video games (IMO BG3 doesnt even compare ;))
In all honesty, the plot in BG3 isn't anything special imo. It's not bad, but neither is it something which stands out from the crowd of fantasy RPGs. Where BG3 shines is the freedom the game gives you to approach things how you like, not so much the writing.
I posted in this monthly thread first time in May when I launched a daily logic puzzle, Clues by Sam. Since then it's grown significantly, and I couldn't be happier!
The game has a farily simple frontend, but there is a fairly complex constraint solving algorithm as part of the puzzle making process. What makes the puzzle quite unique is that you can't "guess". You can only make guesses that are provable by logic. The algorithm ensuring this has worked flawlessly for months now (though I've manually inserted some silly mistakes once or twice).
Today's puzzle is one of the hardest to date. The difficulty resets on Mondays, and then gets harder again towards Sunday.
I recently started it on Deck. At first I thought it was ok, perhaps a bit blurry and hard to read. Then I put it on the TV and oh my when those pixels came at me! I don't consider myself a hifi person, I really don't care much about such things. But that pixel mush was borderline unplayable! And I couldn't up the quality without making the game run unbearably slow. I don't understand why everyone is saying it works great or even fine on SD. Perhaps others don't really use an external screen for it? But now I can't get comfortable looking at it on the small screen either...
I've implemented my lisp/scheme based on Three Implementation Models for Scheme and also Lisp in Small Pieces. Both make a CPS transformation, which, after finally wrapping my head around it, is great for many things. For example it makes implementing async/await very easy (without implementing call/cc which I find too powerful). I use them a lot since I use the language for scripting games, where asynchronous structures really shine.
Good question, but I'm not yet experienced enough in language design to give a coherent answer. And I'm not very familiar with delimited continuations. But I think it boils down to keeping the VM simple. Now it's just all closures, and I can focus on optimizing closures. Adding first class continuations would reauire me to also optimize those. Also having continuations makes optimizing closures harder, since it prevents certain assumptions. As long as closures and CPS enable everything I need, I'm not tempted to add another, more powrful structure.
This is interesting. I've been playing with the idea of dynamic binding for my own scripting language (designed for gamedev). Though I keep coming back to the idea of passing an implicit context object instead, preferably immutable. It will cover all of my most common use cases. I'm especially a big consumer of coroutines, and it's seems unclear how dynamic binding would work with those. With a context object there are less surprises.
I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.
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