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Sam Bloomberg

@xbloom.io
51 followers 86 following 156 posts

Principal Gameplay Engineer Formerly 1047 Games (Empulse, Splitgate Arena Reloaded), Xbox/SQTech/343i (Halo Infinite)

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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 03/10/2026
Just thinking about marathon a bunch recently, as the final cryo archive weekend of the season rolls is here... I really do think that in a slightly different situation the game would have been a much bigger success. Naysayers about the genre aside, I think Marathon was a victim of particularly bad
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 02/10/2026
Working on yet another blockout...
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 30/09/2026
Finally finished a bunch of more underlying technical work, so starting on a new blockout. Wanted to make something more open-ended and with canals/waterways for this one.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 22/09/2026
Basic art pass for this level mostly done. With the new light-based stealth mechanic. youtu.be/BHfxbrXHv4s
youtu.be
Level 3 Art Pass
YouTube video by siliex
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 21/09/2026
And now... Thief-like light detection. Wasn't originally planning on implementing this but it solves some situations where I felt I shouldn't be visible but enemies could spot me anyway, without having to adjust level geo or add manual visibility blocking volumes.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 20/09/2026
Starting on another quick art pass for a third level.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 19/09/2026
New ranged enemy! And some other miscellaneous polish - dead bodies (which enemies can see and investigate) weapon switcher HUD elements, and some new audio implementation.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 17/09/2026
Doing just enough of an art pass to give this level the right vibes I think. Also got room-based reverb and acoustics working for first-person sounds (footsteps/weapon fire), it really makes a difference in making you feel like you're in the space.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 16/09/2026
Starting to do a basic art pass on a second level now.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 16/09/2026
If anyone else is annoyed by the lack of "play from here" in the godot editor, here's a quick and dirty solution that gives you a toggle for playing from your camera. gist.github.com/redxdev/86e2...
gist.github.com
godot play from camera plugin
godot play from camera plugin. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 16/09/2026
Physics interaction just begs for physical keys you have to bring to physical doors.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 14/09/2026
I decided to just throw this script up because it's simple and standalone, so why not: gist.github.com/redxdev/4bc5... Bring back the flickering lights you know your game needs.
gist.github.com
source engine-style light flicker patterns
source engine-style light flicker patterns. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 14/09/2026
Did a whole bunch more work this weekend: directional damage indicators, fall damage, some audio implementation for enemies, and basic impact vfx, implemented the basics for wwise acoustics (rooms + portals), among 20 other more hidden things.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 10/09/2026
I think this is coming along pretty well, if I do say so myself. Though with the environment now being more medieval, I should probably replace the pistol with something more appropriate...
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 07/09/2026
Having a lot of fun working in a BSP editor again. Working on little details at low fidelity with simple and easy tools really is nice.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 06/09/2026
Doing some exploration on the art side of things. Playing with low-res textures that still use the full PBR featureset.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 02/09/2026
Getting some asset pipelines setup, figuring out a good workflow for mesh collision authoring, and playing with sprite animations. xbloom.io/2026/09/02/g...
xbloom.io
Getting an asset pipeline together
Getting brush texturing and meshes working has taken a bit of figuring out, as I'm relying on an external BSP-style editor (TrenchBroom 2025.4) for levels so everything needs to be compatible with tha...
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 31/08/2026
It's impressive how bad fab is at being a "trusted" place to sell assets. You see horrible listings like this one (www.fab.com/listings/5ce...) which is made up of ripped models from Pragmata (without even changing the names) and you can't even report it for what it is without filing a proper...
Image from fab showing a bunch of blatantly ripped models of pragmata weapons, without the names even being changed from what they are in-game.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 29/08/2026
Getting a basic game loop together, with progression from level-to-level.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 29/08/2026
Finished Resonance (the new plague tale game), I think it's my favorite in the series despite being a prequel following a side character. I loved the previous games, but resonance manages to both feel like a new thing and also feel like it fits into the series really well.
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Boner Vivant @dougtilley.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Rest in peace to one of the best to ever do it.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 24/08/2026
Something is wrong with my doors
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 24/08/2026
Tired after traveling all week, but rest can wait - physics-based interaction won't implement itself!
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 23/08/2026
Been traveling nonstop for the past week, it's been fun but I'm excited to get home tomorrow and get back to working on my own little projects... My laptop just had to die right before this trip or else I'd be working on cool stuff™️ right now ugh.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 29/07/2026
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 28/07/2026
Have knife, get cake
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 21/07/2026
Working on a project in godot for the first time in a while, having a pretty good time. It's been years since I've last used it, and previously I stuck with C# while this time I wanted to try gdscript. Honestly a nice little language - I have some minor quibbles...
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Innsmouth Looksmaxxing @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Fucccck they got him with the Gun That Makes You Italian
Zohran Mamdani making a face that makes him kinda look like Robert De Niro
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Joe Wintergreen @joewintergreen.com · 22/06/2026
This "ai code/art is already everywhere and impossible to avoid so you should just relax about people using it" shit has to stop, it's not remotely true. Same exact shit as "it's the inevitable future!" or "you can't put the genie back in the bottle!!" We can literally do whatever the fuck we want
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 18/06/2026
As someone who makes standalone games, and is not interested in building games for someone else's platform (nor building my own "platform"), there is nothing I care about in UE6.
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Aura @aurahack.ca · 17/06/2026
all of the UE6 stuff is really exciting news if your idea of a videogame is turning it into shitty Roblox-core slurry for Fortnite otherwise it's a pretty catastrophic misreading of the room, after indies successfully jumping ship from unity with the promise you actually care about developers
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Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
the reason I have such a distaste of AI is precisely *because* it's useful that is, if you would like to save time and money, to make hollow creations deprived of humanity, and you're morally okay polluting the world with creatively uninspiring husks to hurt the artists whose work trained your toy
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Ty 💀 @tys.work · 22/03/2026
I was in multiple rooms at GDC where management of games studios let their hair down and said "everyone's using it, gamers hate it so we just have to hide it now", but none were actually able to explain if and how AI were making games faster to develop or better at all
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McNutcase @mcnutcase.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
"I don't know how to make this" is an opportunity to fucking LEARN.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 12/01/2026
we have been way too tolerant of cowards: we should be demanding that far more people in power who claim to be against the murderous evil of MAGA meet the standard currently being demonstrated by Jerome Fucking Powell
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 03/01/2026
1. Headlines everywhere today read "Grok apologizes." This is bullshit. A chatbot is not something that can apologize. Pretending otherwise is simple laundering these companies' bullshit about what AI is, while diffusing blame away from the human beings that developed and released this system.
LA Times: Elon Musk company bot apologizesNewsweek: Elon Musk's Grok ApologizesInternational Business Times: Grok Issues ApologiesThe Hill: Musk's AI chatbot Grok apologizes
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 30/11/2025
1/ An annoyance for me right now: if you're against the current and future state of AI, stop giving credibility to companies claiming they're laying off thousands of people because AI will replace them. Because no, they didn't - they laid people off for normal greed or stupidity related reasons.
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 26/11/2025
God damn, the protomen are not missing with act 3. Light's Last Stand (and the rest of the album) is incredible.
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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 24/10/2025
Wrote a long technical dive into some internals of Unreal's world partition because I've had to go quite deep into this stuff in the last couple of years. Basically none of the internals are documented, so maybe this will be helpful to someone. xbloom.io/2025/10/24/u...
xbloom.io
Unreal's World Partition: Internals
This is a sort of stream-of-consciousness document explaining how world partition works under the hood. This is not a general overview of world partition, nor is it an explanation of how to use world...
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Sam Bloomberg @xbloom.io · 23/10/2025
Dispatch is great. That is all.
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Tom Forsyth @tomforsyth.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
Working my way through @edzitron.com 's article about the AI bubble. It's fantastic. I do kinda know all this stuff peripherally, but to see it all laid out very clearly with hard numbers is incredibly useful. Thanks Ed! www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-aga...
wheresyoured.at
The Case Against Generative AI
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - First It Giveth Before we go any further: This is, for the third time this year, the longest newsletter I've ever written, weighing in somewhere around 18,500 wo...
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mcc @dryad.technology · 03/10/2025
So I'd like to show a demonstration of what this "waffles" thing is. Here's a conversation between *this site's* CEO, some random guy, and the cofounder of "Tangled", a GitHub clone built on top of Bluesky's protocol. Please take a moment to really think, about the shape of this thoughtlessness.
Jay.bsky.team:

Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.

Steven:

Then you should probably stop trolling your user base.

Anirudh Oppiliappan:

bro got mad at waffles
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Alex Bertram-Powell @alexbpart.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
It's getting harder and harder to deny that AGI is a near certainty. This kind of rapid expansion, this level of investment and infrastructural shift, this amount of *risk* - it doesn't happen without astronomical reward. The other day I saw a big barn, which can only mean one thing: giant horses
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eevee @eev.ee · 29/07/2025
saw someone refer to "itch's social-media team" and i guess people are still not grasping the size of organization here i am 90% sure the itch twitter/bluesky are run by the CEO, who is also the guy who wrote the website and continues to write the website
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one dozen bats at a keyboard @panasonicdx4500.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
“The New York Times collaborated with a white nationalist eugenicist hacker and agreed to keep his identity a secret to publish a Zohran Mamdani hit piece” is a way bigger story than “18 year old Zohran Mamdani ticked ‘African American’ on his Columbia application because he was a citizen of Uganda”
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Amanda Litman @amandalitman.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
I am not a Social Security recipient but even if I was: Why am I getting an email from SSA celebrating this legislation? How is this an appropriate use of that ostensibly massive database?
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Ilhan Omar @ilhanmn.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Hands off Social Security. Hands off Medicaid. Hands off veteran care. Hands off our kids’ education. Hands off our rights. We’re going to fight like hell to defend our democracy from Donald Trump. #HandsOff
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