Game Designer, 3D Artist, and Jugger. Director and Lead Developer at @100StonesGames working on Memory's Reach.
Melbourne, Australia
Joined February 2010
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Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
100 Stones now has an account over at the other place. (direct link in reply).
I will continue to post here for some time yet, but will begin cross posting other there as well until Twitter finally implodes once and for all.
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
The Memory's Reach demo has been updated to the latest version shown at PAX Aus this year. Featuring graphical improvements, new hidden pickups, and other changes. Check it out on Steam! (link in reply)
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
A NEW WRITER APPEARS
@Valkian24 killed it with his first article - a recap of the indies that appeared at @PAXAus he felt everyone should check out.
Go show the article some love <3
mobpopculture.com/post/returโฆ
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
One thing that blew my mind is how Metroid Prime's re-master credits have over 300 people and take six times as long as the original credits that only had 60 people. Even a re-master has giant teams from around the world. That's the cost of asset production in games now.
One of the most important issues in the video game industry right now? Team sizes.
Countless veteran game developers, sick of teams swelling into the hundreds or thousands, are going smaller. It's *the* story to watch.
My latest feature: bloomberg.com/news/articles/โฆ
My feed has a lot of people criticizing this, but I've always found it weird how American news outlets endorse political candidates. I don't see how you could trust any reporting - about either candidate - after an endorsement.
An endorsement of Kamala Harris was drafted by Post staffers but had yet to be published, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The decision not to publish was made by The Postโs owner, Jeff Bezos, according to the same sources. wapo.st/3Uqm5K9
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
Video interview with @tuesdayreviewau from PAX. I had a lot of fun doing this and showing them the new area. Check it out! (And try to spot the parts of the footage where I'm using cheats to skip them ahead to the end of the level ๐)
New Video!
In this video we catch up with @100Stonesgames to discuss upcoming games "Memory's Reach" and get the chance to play a new level and discuss the changes since last year's level and more!
watch it here: youtu.be/h1dp4vl9baQ
#paxaus #pax #gaming #videogames
One again this PAX when people asked what engine I'm using I asked them instead to guess. The results:
Unreal: 19
Unity: 6
Custom: 1
I don't know if this is more positive for Unreal or Unity, but I do appreciate the vote of confidence from the person who said I made my own ๐
Breaking down the demo data from PAX Aus this past weekend. Similar results to previous shows (as expected), but some surprises where changes to the demo were made.
With PAX Aus over for another year, its time to look at the data from the show ๐ As with previous PAX shows, I recorded basic analytics in the demo, and here's the results!
Lets go through them in detail...
#PAX #PAXAUS #PAXAUS2024 #indiedev #gamedev
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
PAX third and final day is underway! Come check out Memory's Reach in the indie section ๐ ๐ธ
#pax #paxaus #paxaus2024 #indiegames
Arrived and setup for PAX mere seconds before the doors opened because the Melbourne marathon cut off all traffic from the southside to the conversation centre, turning my 15min drive into a 1hr 15min drive ๐ฉ
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
24 hours until #PAXAus 2024! Super excited to show off what I've been working on over the past year. Come check out our booth at the show ๐ช
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
Setup and ready to go for PAX Aus tomorrow! And I think it looks pretty good with my fancy new green table cloth ๐
#pax #paxaus2024
Ben Droste ๐ฎ @bendroste.bsky.social retweeted
TL;DR: Both low frame rates AND high frame rates are an accessibility feature. One person lost headaches at 120fps->24fps (decrease), a different person lost headaches when 120fps->480fps (increase)
It is very human dependent. For some humans, we found a motion-sickness uncanny valley at 48-120fps. Less motion sickness at 24fps and at 480fps.
This is because intermediate frame rates (~120fps) can be smooth but still motionblurry (1/120sec) on modern sample and hold displays.
Raising frame rate to 480fps 480Hz fixed motion sickness for someone tested; But converse is true; I also helped an office worker fix motion sickness by configuring his display to 24Hz.
Many cannot use VR because of the flicker even for Comfortable rated apps. On the Quest headsets, they use 0.3ms pulsewidths. The 0.3ms MPRT requires 1000/0.3 = 3333fps 3333Hz for same persistence without flicker.
Last night, Trista was playing a third person 3D platformer game (Pumpkin Jack) and started to feel a little sick. I suggested cutting the max frame rate from 120 to 60 in settings, and that made it better.
Simulator sickness tends to come from high quality rendering of smooth angle changes that you arenโt directly controlling. Skillfully playing an FPS yourself has your brain expecting every angle change, but a third person camera that is only loosely coupled to your actions can be a problem. Closely watching other people play can also be a problem.
We first saw this after I got glQuake running on SGI hardware, and SGI invited us to their Dallas headquarters to try it out on a high end Infinite Reality system. A 3DFX could run 640x480 30 fps, but this system could run 1280x1024 60 fps. The room was dark, and I was playing the game on a big monitor at a quality we had never seen. Michael Abrash, watching behind me, got so sick he had to go sit down.