blog.erwintang.com

I have been playing the game Jedi: Survivor, which coincidentally was made by another team at the same studio I currently work at. The game is great and I want to point out a few small design decisions that help it be great.

First, is that in this sequel, they didn’t make the character start from scratch again. Many games and their sequels find a way to knock the character back down again in the second game. This might happen because the character was really powerful or skilled at the end of the first game and the designers just don’t want them to be that high level for the sequel. Thus, you need to build your character back up again from almost the beginning.

Jedi: Survivor doesn’t do that. For the most part, all the skills and equipment you accumulated in the first game carry over and are available to you right at the start of the second game.

One piece of equipment that you have right away is the Jedi rebreather, which is the Star Wars universe version of scuba equipment. First seen in use by Obi-Wan Kenobi in The Phantom Menace, it’s just a small piece of equipment that goes into the mouth that allows your character to breathe indefinitely underwater.

I also want to talk about the tired game design trope of underwater exploration for a bit. So many games have this mechanic where your character can swim underwater but as soon as you do, there’s an oxygen meter that appears and starts to go down. If you start to run out of air, you start to take damage and if you don’t surface, your character dies. This design trope has been around for decades. At this point, I find it so tiresome. Designers usually put the chest you need to get to or the next underwater cavern at a point where your air is almost exhausted, it’s so predictable. Also, since your exploration of the underwater space is limited by this mechanic, it’s a chore to try to scour every inch of the water. You go down, look for treasure, then have to come back up for air, and then repeat ad nauseum until you’ve looked everywhere. It’s such a chore.

In this game, the rebreather allows you to explore underwater at your leisure, without the need to surface for air. I don’t think the game suffers because of that. I’m not constantly thinking, oh man, it’d be so much more fun if I had to surface for air.

Anyways, it’s a great game, for lots of reasons.

The Bank of Canada raised the prime interest rate again last week and it didn’t take long for my mortgage company to send me a notice that my mortgage payments are increasing yet again.

I didn’t even read the notice in full. I knew exactly why they were sending me a message. I really regret not locking in a fixed rate sometime in 2020 but I’m a moron that doesn’t know how the economy works. Now I’m wondering if I should lock in right now to insulate against further hikes but who knows if it’ll continue to go up. Knowing my luck if I do lock in, the rates will just slide in the next year or so. Also, though, if I don’t lock in, it’s almost guaranteed we’ll be looking at 15% mortgages in a year.

I say all of this with the context that I know some people can’t even be in a situation where owning a home is possible, so this might be a first-world but nonetheless, a valid problem.

About a year ago, my parents requested that I help them buy a portable, at-home blood pressure monitor so they could monitor their health conveniently and without having to go to a pharmacy or a doctor. I got one from Amazon and when I brought it over, I tested it on myself to show them how to use it. The unit I bought was really easy to read the results, along with the typical numbers used for blood pressure, it also colour-coded your results to green, yellow, and red. My result was in the yellow, which sorta surprised me.

I know blood pressure readings can be inaccurate at times and can vary depending on time of day, if you’ve been active right before the reading, and even your posture while doing the reading. I chalked it up to that and didn’t think anything of it.

That yellow result never really fully left my mind though. I left it to simmer in my memories and with some feet dragging a few months passed. One day, I just decided to get my own blood pressure monitor from Amazon. I needed good data to figure out if my worry warranted or not.

When my own monitor arrived, I read the instructions carefully. I followed them exactly so I would get a proper reading. I made sure I was sitting and not doing anything for about ten minutes before taking a reading. I made sure that any caffeine I had earlier had been many hours beforehand. I also ensured that my arms were on a table, feet flat on the ground.

I took three separate readings, to ensure nothing was weird about each reading. For my unit, there’s three levels of green, one level of yellow, and three levels of red. All three of my readings landed me in the middle level of red, which according to machine meant that I had “moderate hypertension”. Obviously that was not good.

At that point, I decided that I’d try to reduce the amount of sodium in my diet and try to get more exercise. I’d try that for thirty days and see if there was any change. If there wasn’t, I’d go talk to my family doctor.

Reducing the amount of sodium in my diet wasn’t really difficult. I tend to think that I have a reasonable amount of sodium in my diet but I tried really hard to cut it down even more. I do mealkits for a few days of the week and where the recipe called for added salt, I added none. When the recipe said to add ingredients that I knew had salt in it, I added half the amount. For processed or off the shelf food, I just made sure to look at the nutritional values and avoided super salty foods. I’d say that over the course of a month, almost every day had me under the suggested sodium consumption levels.

As for exercise, it’s my belief that I get quite a bit of it already. I lift weights every other day and I get cardio everyday. I try to get a walk in during the workday, almost five days a week. I felt like I didn’t need to do more, I just needed to continue to do it.

So a month went by and probably based on fear, I didn’t take any BP readings during the month. I wanted to be surprised, either in a good way or a bad one. I was hoping for the best but when I took the new readings, very little had changed. I was still hovering in the first two levels of the red section, which was not good.

I promised myself if nothing changed, I’d go talk to my doctor, so that’s what I did. We had an appointment over the phone and I gave him the numbers from the readings, before the thirty days and after. He decided that I needed medication immediately, so he prescribed me a diuretic, at the lowest possible dose. He explained to me this very common medication will pull sodium from my body and that’s how it’ll lower my blood pressure. I asked about side effects and he said that I might notice I’m urinating a bit more, which makes sense since the drug is a diuretic.

I’m supposed to take these meds for about two weeks, monitor my blood pressure every few days, and then report back to my doctor. I hope it works!

I just paid my yearly renewal fee for my hosting package. It costs me just over $3 USD a month to have this little dog and pony show hosted somewhere. All I know about the datacenter is that it’s somewhere in the United States.

I’m not sure if there’s a cheaper hosting plan elsewhere but even if there was, I don’t think I’d want to go through the hassle of moving hosts. I did that once before, I don’t want to do it again.

All the windows in my apartment are covered by venetian blinds which is what the developer installed when the building was completed. These things are dust magnets and I think I’ve cleaned them twice since I bought my place.

Cleaning blinds are a pain in the ass and I’ve only cleaned them in place which I realize now is a super inefficient way of doing it. The best way to do it is to remove them from their bracket and then dump the whole thing into the bathtub. You can then use the hand wand to spray water all over the blinds to wash them. I suppose you could also fill the tub with water and soap and do a soak as well. I think you might need to avoid getting the metal mechanism at the top wet but I’m not sure.

The issue is that I need to buy a new step ladder to reach the top of the blinds. My windows go all the way up to the ceiling and I only have a step stool that goes two feet off the ground. I’m short, so I need something taller. I see Amazon sells metal step ladders for around $60, so I’ll get one of those.

I do wonder though how easily these blinds will dry. I may need to put down a tarp in my living room and then use a towel to dry off as much water as I can. Well, I can try this with one of my blinds as a test.

A few years ago I stopped drinking Coke products. Before that I had whittled down my carbonated beverage consumption down to just Coke Zero. Personally, I find Coke is the most delicious out of all the carbonated beverages. Realizing that drinking copious amounts of sugar was bad for me, I switched to Coke Zero for many years. It tasted almost exactly like regular Coke but without sugar. I then decided that maybe drinking sugar substitutes wasn’t great either, so I stopped drinking Coke Zero as well.

As some of you know though, a few months ago, I started drinking Coke with coffee as a little “treat” from time to time. A few things are keeping my consumption of that low. First, it’s sold out frequently in almost every store that stocks it. Second, it’s expensive at over $3 for a single can in most stores. In comparison, you can almost get six cans of Coke in some places for $4.

One day last week, I was looking for some Coke with coffee but they were all sold out. My eyes wandered to the regular Coke selection and I saw a six-pack of these small Coke Zeroes that had no caffeine. They have these 222ml cans now, which is great if you want just a small hit of Coke without committing to a whole 355ml can. Anyways, I decided to buy this little six-pack. It was the first time I bought a six-pack of Coke in probably over half a decade.

In the course of about four days, I’ve had two of these little cans, so it’s not like I’m crushing a six-pack in a single day. I’m not sure if this is just a one-time thing. I’m hoping maybe it is. I don’t really need more soda in my life.

I was nearly pooped on by a crow this evening. After dinner, I went for a walk and I had stopped by the river to watch the traffic cross a bridge. I was letting my mind wander when I heard a massive splat that was about a foot and a half away from me.

I looked down and there was a large, wet, and slimy pile of bird poop on the ground. It was very liquid and green. It was disgusting. I looked up and I just happened to stop very close to underneath a power line. A crow had been perched almost directly above me.

I took a step back and checked my shoes, my legs (I was wearing shorts), my shirt, and my head for crow poop. I luckily saw none and but that definitely my signal to keep walking.

Crows are smart and it’s very likely that crow knew I was below him and it purposely pooped to try to hit with it.

It was a public holiday today in the United States as it was Memorial Day for them. Since my American co-workers had the day off, it was day with no meetings and ample time to do focused work without any distractions. I wrote about this before but I haven’t changed my opinion, such days are great work days. I’m able to get lots done.

Since I had no meetings to rush back to, I was able to go out for lunch. The local parks in my area have opened their concession stands for the entire summer now. I’m a sucker for their burgers and hot dogs. Today, I walked down to the waterfront park and I had a burger, fries, and a drink while sitting next to the river. My entire lunch cost exactly $10 which is a steal in these times.

After lunch, I took a leisurely stroll in the sun back to my place. Before long, it was already the end of the work day. I actually thought to myself that I didn’t want the day to end, it was so peaceful and productive.

It’s not often a work day is so pleasant, but today was one such day. I can’t wait for July fourth!

This week was a tough week for some game developers working for studios that have a Vancouver presence. Layoffs occurred at both Relic Entertainment and Kabam. Lots of people good people lost their jobs and many of them I’m proud to have worked with them before. Some of the people who were affected have decades of experience, so it didn’t matter if you were a junior or veteran.

In recent months, I’ve heard more about layoffs than I’ve heard about new studios or hiring blitzes. Companies are still hiring though. I just had two recruiters contact me last week about opportunities. The question is, are there enough jobs out there for everyone that has been laid off? I don’t know the answer to that.

As a veteran of several layoffs, I can tell you that the majority of the people who get laid off were not selected based on their ability or how well they did their jobs. In fact, I’d say most people did exactly what they were told, helped make the best games they could, and despite all of that, they lost their jobs. That’s the part that’s most unfair. I would guess that there were many software engineers who were laid off this week that are much better engineers than I am. Yet, I still have a job. It’s totally random, unfair, and inexplicable sometimes how things happen.

Many decent folks are looking for their next job right now and I hope everyone is going to be ok sooner than later.