Sometimes I make video games

Itch.io

  • 1 Post
  • 62 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 26th, 2023

help-circle
  • The friggin’ dogs in Resident Evil.

    I have a kind of funny story about that. I was too young to be playing RE when it came out, but that didn’t stop me from sneaking it out of my dad’s collection of grownup games to try it anyway.

    So there’s this well known jump scare, probably in the first fifteen minutes as you say where you’re running down a hallway and suddenly some dogs jump through these glass windows. I screamed, fumbled the controller, and was eaten by dogs. Might have been the first jump scare of my life.

    So I hadn’t hit a save point, so you have to start the game over. So I decide to just leave the mansion through the front door instead of going out that way. And you get a cutscene where a dog jumps through the door and you have to wrestle it away.

    I still haven’t played the game since.

    But my wife and I are a big fan of the series, so eventually we decided to marathon them on the condition that she plays RE1. She’s playing the remake and goes into the room where the dogs jump through the windows and I’m holding my breath waiting for it to happen. Only it doesn’t.

    So I’m a little disappointed, but I figure it’s a remake so maybe they’re switching things up a bit and going to put the jump scare somewhere else in the mansion.

    Sooner or later you have to backtrack through that corridor though, and on like the third time going through this “safe” corridor the dogs jump through the window. She screams, fumbles the controller, and is eaten by dogs.

    Seven-year-old me was vindicated that my adult wife also got punked and I’m not alone.



  • I’ll take a crack at this one. For what it’s worth, I think the first couple are just loanwords from another language which sometimes gets used incorrectly, and the last three are uncommon words in conversation. Know your audience.


    “This isn’t a meeting about the budget per se

    “This isn’t exactly a meeting about the budget”


    “The victim met their demise vis a vis poodle attack”

    “The victim met their demise by way of poodle attack.”


    “Steve’s a real erudite.”

    “Steve’s a real reader.”


    “Tom and Jerry is a fun cartoon because of the juxtaposition of the relationship between cat and mouse.”

    “Tom and Jerry is a fun cartoon because of the oppositeness of the relationship between cat and mouse”


    “I don’t understand, can you elucidate on that?”

    “I don’t understand, can you explain?”


  • I was fortunate to not only have a typing class in school, but also the only computer game my grandma had was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Now I type for a living, so hey, I guess it must have paid off.

    If you’re already a hunt and peck typer, your brain wants to look at the keyboard to confirm where the key is before you press it. When learning touch typing, you’ll want to shift your focus from the keyboard to the screen.

    There are formal methodologies for learning where the keys are in relation to your fingers, but imo the most important thing is to not look at the keyboard. No matter what you end up typing, it’s pretty easy to find backspace and try again. Your eyes verify on the screen if your fingers are giving the correct output, and your fingers find their way eventually.

    Many students did benefit from having their hands visually obscured from them when typing. If you find you keep looking at the keyboard then you might want to look into that.

















  • If this was a single occurrence, I’d try not to read too much into it. Maybe they were discussing something private and got all weird when interrupted. Maybe the greeting was non-verbal and you missed the cue. If it’s the beginning of the day, they might not be all awake yet, I dunno.

    But if it’s a pattern, or this ever happens and it bothers you, you can try to make the most of it. Imagine they wished you their fondest greetings in a Muppets style voice. It costs you nothing and you can’t change anyone else’s behaviour anyway, might as well do something to put a smile on your face.