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Jamie Fristrom
Creator of Spider-Man 2, Schizoid, sixty second shooter, and other games.
Recent Activity
Unpopular opinion: std::unordered_map is usually a premature optimization
And therefore just a little bit evil. Before I got the gig at Mojang Studios I interviewed with some folks at Amazon and in the whiteboard code I used an std::map. If I remember how it went down, the interviewer... Continue reading
Posted Jul 13, 2021 at GameDevBlog
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My Journey Into The Jungles Of Haskell...so far?
I have a strange crush on Haskell. I first dabbled with the language back in, oh, 2007 or something, and it was enlightening. I thought I was the sort of person who obeyed the Don't-Repeat-Yourself principle, who didn't duplicate data,... Continue reading
Posted Jun 2, 2021 at GameDevBlog
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Tips On Hearthstone Battlegrounds and Life
I wrote a long article crowing about how the new ranking system in Hearthstone Battlegrounds revealed that I was a much better player than I thought I was, but at some level I still couldn't believe it, googled around, and... Continue reading
Posted Oct 5, 2020 at GameDevBlog
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Adventures in Test First Development with Roblox
As _Dungeon Life_ gets old - I've been working on it for over two years now! - I have been starting to feel the bite of manual testing. As your product gets larger the number of cases you have to... Continue reading
Posted Aug 24, 2020 at GameDevBlog
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Best Practices for Roblox Development
Once upon a time I was lucky enough to run into an investor who was willing to fund me to make games for Roblox. For me that was a little like being paid to play with Legos. I did it... Continue reading
Posted Mar 8, 2020 at GameDevBlog
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The Insufficiency of the X Card And Story Games Safety
I have, I believe, a unique perspective on story game safety because when I started playing I had no triggers--or was in denial of having triggers--but for the past few years I get triggered quite easily. So I've been on... Continue reading
Posted Nov 29, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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The Evolution of My Story Game Preamble
At the various story game meetups in the Pacific Northwest we often begin giving a talk that starts something like this: "So we're here to play a game that is somewhere between Dungeons & Dragons and improv theater. What makes... Continue reading
Posted Nov 27, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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A Little Trick For Avoiding Negativity Bias In Performance Reviews
Because of my previous post about feedback and the comments (on twitter and off) I sat down to write this blog post and then remembered I'd already written it. Thank you Google for finding it for me again. Won't be... Continue reading
Posted Sep 26, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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My Year In Positive Psychology 3: Notes on Creativity, Inc and Feedback
Continued from Part 1 & Part 2. So now I'm on to Creativity, Inc (I may be consuming these faster than I'm able to blog about them) and - back the truck up! Pixar's CTO invented the z-buffer!? Why, he... Continue reading
Posted Sep 13, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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My Year in Positive Psychology, Part 2: Notes on Essentialism
Continued from Part 1. The last book I attempted to digest was Essentialism by Greg McKeown. In a nutshell, Essentialism says to cut your life down to the bone, keeping only what is absolutely essential. Some positive psychology books are... Continue reading
Posted Sep 8, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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My Year in Positive Psychology, Part 1
Why do you think I named my company Happion Labs? My first and foremost priority with it was happiness, not money. Happiness unfortunately doesn't always come that easily to me (though a lot easier to me than some), and Happion... Continue reading
Posted Aug 28, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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Easy To Implement Wall-Running
Did you know I open-sourced Energy Hook? As you'd expect, I'm proud of parts of the codebase and mortally embarrassed by other parts, but I'm getting over my embarrassment for anyone who wants to check it out. You can download... Continue reading
Posted Aug 27, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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AB Testing vs Baseline Testing
Continuing my posts about n00b game design data science: https://www.gamedevblog.com/2019/07/a-n00b-does-game-design-data-science.html https://www.gamedevblog.com/2019/08/finally-ab-test-victories.html Talking to the tech director of a fast growing up-and-coming always-online game I asked if they were doing AB testing with their live population. They weren't, and he said... Continue reading
Posted Aug 23, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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Finally, AB Test Victories
Continuing my n00b data science. With most of the AB testing I've been doing on Dungeon Life so far the only thing I've learned is that my ideas for making it more engaging or happy-making don't seem to have any... Continue reading
Posted Aug 16, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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A N00b Does Game Design Data Science
Posted Jul 26, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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Sorted sets in C# and performance. A mystery remains.
Posted Jul 23, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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My Roblox Years: Dungeon Life and New Product Science
After fourteen years I'm throwing in the towel as an indie game developer. Now that I am quitting as an indie I can make blogging more of a priority. I've been feeling that itch to write, to communicate with other... Continue reading
Posted Jul 15, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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Have I really not blogged in three years? So sad.
Have I really not blogged in three years? So sad. Continue reading
Posted Jun 19, 2019 at GameDevBlog
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It's a wrap. Energy Hook launching July 5th!
It's finally done. I've been at it so long, building hype over so many years, that I barely know what to say at this point. Swing! Wall-run! Do tricks! Build combos! Race! All the stuff I say here: Just five... Continue reading
Posted Jun 30, 2016 at GameDevBlog
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I Made A Thing
Posted Nov 27, 2015 at GameDevBlog
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Energy Hook Mini-Update: Steam Controller Support
Just got my hands on my Steam Controller a few days ago and after a little head banging managed to get it working to my satisfaction in game. It takes some getting used to, but I think it's the best... Continue reading
Posted Nov 11, 2015 at GameDevBlog
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New Energy Hook Update Is Here: Run!
Posted Oct 21, 2015 at GameDevBlog
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New Energy Hook Update Coming Mid-October: Run!
Posted Sep 18, 2015 at GameDevBlog
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Energy Hook Then And Now: Coming To Steam Early Access August 13th
Sometimes it gets me down that there's so much I want to do with this game that I may never have the time to do. But it helps to look at how far the game has come. Remember this trailer... Continue reading
Posted Aug 2, 2015 at GameDevBlog
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New Energy Hook update - Alpha 4.31
Hey everybody - after a bunch of false starts I got updated builds onto Humble that I believe aren't rubbish. Alpha 4.31, codename Mukor. One of the biggest changes in the new update is the MUKOR cheat - anywhere in... Continue reading
Posted Jun 17, 2015 at GameDevBlog
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