iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 1h

Another trivia - it's the project he had the most creative control in, and it didn't perform well

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 12h

Shmups will create the coolest character designs and will show them for only half a second

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 12h

Konami needs to bring back Airforce Delta. Strike while the "flight action game" iron is hot.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 13h

Shmups will create the coolest character designs and will show them for only half a second

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 13h

Shmups will create the coolest character designs and will show them for only half a second

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Mechwarrior 1-4 I don't think even Nightdive can untangle their complex control schemes (these games expect you to have a joystick setup). But I know the Microsoft/FASA conflict have trapped them in permanent limbo.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Using Ace Combat 8's release as excuse to show off my t-shirt

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

TIL There was a Puyo Puyo Competition in Asian Games. And it was won by an 11 year old.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Part of the gamer aesthetics that has formed in the country.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Dissidia NT walked, so Xenoblade 2 could run

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Watching documentary about storytelling in games. They are talking about me, the big brain gamer

"Game play seems to be associated with that quality which we have clumsily attempted to measure with brain size, intelligence, and ability to learn. This correspondence cannot be attributed to accident; clearly game play is an important component in the development of many creatures."

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

My mind just blanked out lmao.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

They nailed the melancholic, "far away magical land" vibe from the start. I want whatever Team ICO was on in 1999-2001.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

How are these ICO Concept are SO GOOD?! @gend

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Me anticipating Onimusha comparison article

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

More than that. Capcom Engineers are doing implementation of Microsoft's tech BETTER than Microsoft. And making them all open source. I can't stress enough, just how impressive Capcom Engineers are.

So the fastest JSON serializer for .NET now is developed by CAPCOM as part of their game engine that powers Resident Evil /Biohazard

I did not see that coming lol

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Capcom Engineers are building tools that aren't just Game Industry leading, but Tech Industry leading. And making it open source. But this will neither get coverage or apprication. Instead people will blindly fall for clickbait.

They’re also doing their own memory-management work underneath this. Instances are managed in 64 KB pages, with page reference counting plus cache and GC optimizations. The goal seems to be reducing the cost of managing huge numbers of objects while improving locality and avoiding some of the fragmentation problems they’ve had before.
This also makes CAPCOM’s REDox project much more interesting.

REDox is their open-source .NET serialization/data library, with JSON, CBOR, MessagePack-style structured data handling, lazy decoding, streaming, compact token storage, etc.
At first glance it just looks like a standalone .NET library.
In context, it looks much more like the kind of infrastructure they can write and test normally in C#, then feed into this RE:Runtime / RE:C++ pipeline and ship as native engine code.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Many components in RE Engine are not just game industry leading, but TECH INDUSTRY leading, by Capcom Engineers. But will this get coverage? Will people celebrate the incredible achievement of Capcom engineerings doing more with less?

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I love that my saves from 2015/2016 are still intact in Witcher 3. It's like seeing what 10-year-ago me did back in college.

My witcher 3 saves from 2016 on Witcher 3 remastered

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Item loaning is a fun idea, dimension hopping is done really well, ending was surprisingly emotional, last third is bit bloated. I'm still not as hot on Legend Of Zelda franchise as western gaming fandom is. Need to play more (esp 3D ones).

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Finished : Legend Of Zelda A Link Between Worlds (3DS) Fun, creative video game. Like, the puzzles and secret hunting is so well constructed. Very polished. Though I don't feel strongly about it as others. 2nd LoZ I finished after Minish Cap in 2013...

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Make time stop for just a few days

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This sounds horrible, HOLY SHIT! Some of best Ubisoft games had people working in terrible conditions. (from the same video)

I started as Test Engineer for Ubisoft during the development of Far Cry 3. I was in charge of the "encounters and navmesh" which is basically the AI behavior in all sorts of situations and states + the pathing. I did a lot of the cover placement as well by the end of it. Workday used to end at 6PM but we used to do overtime until 10PM and work 9 to 6 on weekends, and be very happy for it.
A Test Engineer used to be paid with roughly £200 per month at that time. A Senior Test Engineer with a bit over £300. Overtime was paid at 2x rate and we would get 1 free meal if we worked the full 12 hours. That was enough to cover the rent, bills and transportation. Not the food, no entertainment, no unforeseen expenses and God forbid even thinking about saving anything. We even had a running joke on the salary day that in translation sounds like this "BOYS AND GIRLS, TONIGHT WE EAT MEAT!!!" :D
As much as the permanent fatigue was draining the life out of us, we had that one free meal from the company and all that shared hardship created a very tight community.
Why am I telling you all this?
Because by the end of Far Cry 3 development, most of us were not 18 anymore, and some started looking for a sustainable living situation. By the end of Far Cry 4 half of us got hired by other companies for more than 2x the salary. By the end of Far Cry 5, nobody in our community was working there anymore, not even myself and my wife.
If you're not picky, you can roughly compare the quality of the content with the % of experienced staff still working on the project. And please keep in mind that it was the same for the developers, design artists, even utilitary teams that keep the lights on like HR, IT support and Facilities.
Ubisoft was great because of the young and innocent, passion-driven staff they acquired before and during the development of Far Cry 3. But the leadership at that time was malicious, old-fashioned and downright conter productive. Towards the end of our stay we had an…

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My favorite comments are ex-gamedevs sharing stories and why series/companies do the things they do. This was under a Far Cry retrospective

As an ex ubi dev (see my vids for proof), you nailed a lot of this video. You probably spent more time on this video than we did on some of our games lol.
For the past decade ubisoft's primary indicator of success wasn't review scores or reception, it was average hours played. This led to endless large repetitive open world games of today, designed to waste your time that people hate.
To make it worse, the game design philosophy also became everything must be emergent gameplay where the player makes their own fun. So less crafted intentional design decisions, more sandboxes with more and more toys.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Tasted m&ms first time yesterday and I was shocked just how low quality it felt compared it its Indian knockoff.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Friend stopped by to meet our house celebrity

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Mario (from Super Mario 64) : "🎶Thank you for playing my game ☺️" Me (fully gown adult) :

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Game credits acknowledging/thanking player has to be Top 5 Best Things Of All Time

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Shout out to the Indian classic - GTA Punjab, with a frankly really nice cover art.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

One of the kids in my college hacked the college internal website with black page with a similar slogan and this image of Andrew Scott

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Only game where you get a Creamcast

Screenshot from Rent-A-Hero Dreamcast version. Dialog says "Anyway, I'll also give you this game machine called the "Creamcast"."

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is one of the "experts" in the infamous Mortal Kombat/Night Trap Video Game violence conference

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Not history, but I came across book written by a professor of Miami who was trying to understanding the kids and video games. But the cover art is the most bizarre outside of some Penguin Classics

Video Kids

Making Sense of Nintendo

EUGENE F. PROVENZO, JR.

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

We live in a timeline where Kojima can direct Halo

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I love shy characters in boxes

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Gabriel Knight games were so "pulp horror"-y, they turned into actual novels. Adventure games from this era seems to take loads of inspirations from books. It's all gone now...

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MegaApple @megaapple18.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

DOS RPGs (stuff like Gold Box games, Westwood RPGs, older Ulitmas) felt like Paperback Fantasy

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