Karl Schmidt

Starting a new project? Turn on and enforce the following right now: -sRGB for all rendertargets and source textures. -premultiplied alpha in both textures and blending. -fixed-point world time and world position. Retrofitting these after the fact is a giant pain. Learn from my (repeated) fail!

Saw "Strong Son" and "I Play Rocky" at VIFF this year - both were good.

Excited by the results of the Vancouver elections - and excited to see the newly-elected officials deliver.

Actually maybe we should gatekeep video game development youtu.be/aEPrK2ppFd8?...

Might as well share publicly, while I have a bunch of experience/expertise with Unreal Engine over the last 8 years, for the last 3 I've been tinkering with Godot. Godot is my engine of choice right now.

If I were a tech company I wouldn't start my blog posts with "Programming is too hard for me, so I stopped doing it" store.epicgames.com/news/epic-ga... #ue5 #gamedev

When AI inevitably gets stuck, you can't afford to remain blocked. Learn the skills to keep going: debugbetter.com

Flamegraph CPU profiling is likely the most efficient way to investigate performance issues in complex distributed systems like Apache Flink. Instead of guessing why something is slow, measure it.

DASHR - Dynamically Animated Skinned Heightfield Rendering Short video for now - I might do a longer one later? youtu.be/-Su9YrcazRk But there's ALL the details in the paper, and you can always Use The Source, Luke for the really deep info. github.com/tomforsyth10...

Huge market opportunity for FPS titles coming soon. I'll make a few.

BC has a new time zone abbreviation: PCT. PCT stands for Pacific Time, BC’s single year-round time zone. It replaces PST and PDT, providing a consistent way to refer to BC’s time zone in schedules, systems and communications. No falling back this November.

I recently wrote about my experience and learnings as a fCTO for the last 3 years: www.karlschmidt.net/About-Fracti... #fcto #fractionalcto #fractionalexecutive

"After COVID and with the rise of AI, the internet we once loved is gone, and with it my passion. " - SteamDB co-founder, upon acquisition www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-internet...

I overhauled my "About me" page karlschmidt.net/about-me/! 🎉 I also updated my services. If you have feedback or know someone I could help, please email me. I'll be announcing why email tomorrow... 💡

@steventerheide.bsky.social I'm curious about the game industry in France (looking to move there in the next few years) and heard you might be someone to ask about it? Would love to hear your thoughts on the industry there. (would DM but can't :) )

Same, even requested it (successfully) from THQ back when I was at Relic

In case you missed it, I recently passed the 3-year mark for my consultancy business. I wrote about the experience so far and my future plans on my website. 📆 Check it out! www.karlschmidt.net/Business-Ann...

I recently passed the 3-year mark for my consultancy business. I wrote about the experience so far and my future plans on my website. 📆 Check it out! www.karlschmidt.net/Business-Ann...

It’s been 11 years since the passing of Nintendo President and Game Developer Satoru Iwata. He left a legendary legacy. I never got a chance to meet him. Please enjoy his GDC talk from 2005: “Heart of a Gamer”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMrj... #ThankYouIwata #IwataDay

The greatest lesson I’ve learned over the too many years I’ve been doing this is to compartmentalise the shame I feel over promoting stuff. There are two Mikes: the Mike that thinks posting promo more than twice a day is cringe, and the Mike who wants to keep making games for a living, so fuck it

I am so tired of people who can't code telling me about how AI helps them code to 1% of the ability of a professional, which sure is 10x for them. It's like me telling people that the invention of music theory will make actual musicians obsolete because now I, too, can write chords that sound OK.

Happy belated 4th to my American friends!

Oh just FYI we've crossed the 10K threshold for number of people in the games industry laid off so far this calendar year. only 11 layoff waves shy of the total for 2023. 6 months to go.

Regarding PlayStation and no more physical disks: 9 years ago: "XBOX One S All-Digital Edition Console does not play physical discs." www.xbox.com/en-US/consol... It's like Xbox mass layoffs are cover fire for Sony to make this move?

Agreed. UE6 is clearly aimed at Fortnite becoming more like Roblox. This is not a path for developers/studios who want a game engine to make games with. It's a path for making games on Fortnite only.

Console prices are rising, Steam Machine pricing is higher than originally planned. Look at RAM/SSD prices for a new PC. We game developers need to focus on performance and efficiency more than ever. Not just for the games, but our tools.

Unreal Engine 6 thoughts: Blueprints going away. This is an opportunity to maintain support in a branch, since engine source is provided (easier said than done, I know). It's also an opportunity for a 3rd-party solution to continue support. 🤔

These look REALLY GOOD

Thinking more about Verse + UE6 announcements... generously seems like Engine->Platform, but also like chasing Roblox.

Good overview. This reminded me that I haven't found anything like "shelf" or "stash" in the Lore docs - I'm guessing to review changes, you have to work in a branch and propose it to be merged.

Sad that I can't legally buy + play this nor The Path of Neo anymore. I had the PS2 version of the latter but my aging PS2 laser was too weak, wouldn't boot the game. I tried reaching out to WB to do a remaster several times, never heard back

Been using Godot for years now, because 1. It's good 2. Unity and UE trends So if you want help, let me know.

Determinism in Box2D box2d.org/posts/2024/0...

GitHub PR stuck "Checking for the ability to merge automatically" for 30+ minutes, GitHub Status says all is well... is this normal now?

I find the framing of "if you aren't using AI for coding you must be some artisan craftsperson or luddite" really confusing. There are IDEs and lots of automation tools and assistance that have and will continue to be used and evolved. Stuff that is actually efficient, deterministic, and ethical.