Kingsley Hopking

Kingsley Hopking

@beardyking.bsky.social

Personal | Engine programmer | Tinkerer of triangles | 🏳️‍🌈 💼 - Activision, Central Tech 📌 - Manchester, UK 🐀 - Keith gang 💭 - Opinions are my own 🌐 - https://sharkwithlegs.com/

1K followers501 following268 posts

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Feeling pretty smug right now about all the TVs in our house being from ~2006. I do wonder how much consumer appetite there is for a decent modern panel running a stock android TV w/ no google ad services. Bet you could just advertise how scummy every other vendor is as a sales pitch.

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Kingsley Hopking reposted

Freya Holmér
@freya.bsky.social

it really does feel like they just got away with unprecedented amount of theft of expertise, and are now profiting off of it while replacing the professional opportunities for the very crafts and humans it trained on I never thought I would see the concept of expertise get so devalued

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 19: Confused for #inktober #inktober2026 (Sketches waiting for my train to arrived confused as hell that there is only 1 train an hour while the tram lines are being fixed for 2 weeks!!!)

Kingsley Hopking reposted

Walaber
@walaber.com

Would you believe our game is built from basically just 1 texture?

Kingsley Hopking reposted

kukyuk
@kukyuk.bsky.social

Fruit feast from my mouse fall stickersheet 🍂 #art #artist #illustration #illustrator #little #mouse #fall #halloween #fruit #apple #pear #plum #sticker #stickersheet

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 17: Contraption for #inktober #inktober2026 All this just for an average cup of coffee.. Humm maybe 1 more doohicky to this contraption will improve its flavour.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

People who know the C# eco system for games/engineering what is this “BRUTAL” lib actually solving for devs? I looked over it but doesn’t do much? I get that it’s a framework but it doesn’t do frameworky stuff??? No vk render graph, data pipeline, no trivial serialisation, few data structures??

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

This probably came off as snarky but it’s not meant to, I just genuinely don’t understand. If you are inclined to write your own tech stack as a way of looking behind the curtain of engines, maybe just sit down and design your stack? Even if it’s bad you will learn so much.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

This is such an awesome thing to do!

Chris Kerr@kerrblimey.bsky.social

I also want Vertical Slice to evolve beyond the confines of a traditional paper. That's why I'm launching The Repository, a growing (free) collection of pitch decks and design docs donated by generous contributors including @kitfoxgames.com, @outersloth.com, and @outerloopgames.bsky.social.

verticalslice.newsWelcome to The Repository: A burgeoning (totally free) treasure trove of dev documentsSharing is caring.

Kingsley Hopking reposted

Oscar Goff
@theoscargoff.bsky.social

That this bot, which posts random stills and clips from the thousands of hours of VHS transfers on archive.org, landed on *this specific frame* feels like finding the monkey at the typewriter that managed to write Hamlet.

VHS Vault@vhsvault.bsky.social

Funland (VHS) : 4143s

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Been thinking about a fun way to recover from fatal errors in editor/dev mode. If an assert / access violation is hits in the script code detect it store the stack, log it to dev console and long jump back to the script callback loop and just go to the next script in the loop.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Initial thoughts are what if things are left in a bad state from script to engine But as all access is via calls to engine via idx I could create a copy / track the data it modifies / calls out to and then after the func cb has finished apply the changes. In ship just don’t do the extra work.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 11: Rescue for #inktober #inktober2026 This was quite a common scene growing up, cluttered boxes/books and a cat who’s perched on something precarious. This would obviously be coupled with a myriad of meows.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 10: Mystical for #inktober #inktober2026 Was planning do draw something through the eye of a druid / pagan stone like the ones we see throughout the UK and thought what if the eyes of the stones are actually just used for cooking instead. So here’s that rendition.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 9: Ram for #inktober #inktober2026 Originally I was going to draw a stick of ram from my 90s power PC Mac. But thought Its been a while so I should try drawing an animal again. Second day using a inking pen, it drys much faster than watercolour so I have less time to unify a coloured area.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

The first game was hugely influential to myself & set me on the path of learning to make games. Very excited!!

Amanita Design 🔧@amanita-design.net

Seventeen years later… The time has come for Machinarium 2 🦾🔧 Wishlist NOW on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/1619280/...

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Now I have mostly finished my level serialisation, I’m starting to think about open address asset packaging. Levels hold lists of required asset hashes. I will bundle up all the assets in an append only file. In a separate file I’ll store a flat hashmap of every bundled entry’s offset & type.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

In dev/editor this table will just continue to grow as things are loaded in and out of the editor. For release I can scan over all the level asset lists and only bundle these files Maybe in dev there could also be a path stored so if it’s in the table but not bundled (yet) it can be loaded loose.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Gonna be real. Traditional large scale games companies are so fucked when this next recession hits. Existing console hardware with lower than expected adoption, games with price tags that are more than a weekly shop & next generation hardware likely priced outrageously due to supply shortages.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

PC remains great during hard times for consumers, large back catalog and often new software designed to target hardware that is 10 years old. Not sure what devs do when everyone is seriously broke, maybe a tightly curated list of indie games on console just because AAA is too expensive.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 7: Panic for #inktober #inktober2026 Switched out the composition I had in my head last minute, was originally planning a deer in car headlights, But mouse ideas keep popping up in my head, and ofc when that happens you must follow it through. He’s a little elephant coded but that’s okay.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 6: Ogre for #inktober #inktober2026 Saw some interesting dark area hatching on the internet recently and wanted to give it a try, I think that it could be an interesting effect to use projected around a light source. Which I would like try another day.

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 5: Smack for #inktober #inktober2026 Sketched this one over lunch, was originally planning on drawing a boat but decided against it as yesterday’s sketch included clouds.

Kingsley Hopking reposted

ShizuokaBen🌱
@shizuokaben.bsky.social

Day 3 - Miniature Only day three and I’ve already drawn a frog. This was a little tricky given how small my sketchpad is. #inktober #inktober2026 #art #イラスト

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

Day 3: Miniature for #inktober #inktober2026 Really happy with how the little mouse came out for this one, the character is from a game design doc I made a few years back and I’ve been dying for an excuse to re draw them!

Kingsley Hopking reposted

Luis Roding
@luisroding.bsky.social

For this Inktober, I matched a selected group of prompt words to a scene from an original story: Complex City. A science fiction novel in which individuals are treated as disposable assets by groups of power, but will someone rebel? #inktober2026 #inktober2026relic #inktober #complexcity #luisroding

Kingsley Hopking
@beardyking.bsky.social

It’s been a long time since I’ve participated in #inktober publicly, but I believe it’s more important than ever to just make shit with your own hands! (Micron 0.03)