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> The consequences for me were devastating. I was briefly prescribed anti-psychotics at my lowest point. I experienced migraines, complete with terrifying tunne

> The consequences for me were devastating. I was briefly prescribed anti-psychotics at my lowest point. I experienced migraines, complete with terrifying tunnel vision, blackouts, severe depression, anxiety, panic attacks, paranoia, hallucinations and thought insertion. That sounds pretty terrifying - wonder if there's a way to be resilient to this or if everyone is affected this way given enough time.

newobj 10y ago
I was working on a system that was doing CSG of AI nav meshes. If enough floating point error crept in, eventually the a shared of edge of a navmesh would split apart and you'd be left with the AI walking around non-existent obstructions. Spent an unimaginable amount of time trying to deal with this. One night when I was walking back to my apartment, I walked over a section of the sidewalk that had plywood laying on it. The edges of two pieces of plywood had about an inch gap between them, and I remember my heart jumping in panic as though I was "seeing the bug" again - basically hallucinated my work problem into real life. That was towards the end of working in the game industry...
- chillingeffect 10y ago
  Under good conditions that can be a fun thing. I once spent a whole evening changing parameters, drawing black and white fractal trees. When I walked out into the night, I perceived RL trees as the software would render them. I wonder how much of this overlap goes on without us even realizing it :)
  - newobj 10y ago
    True! Though in this case, after months of fighting the problem, not so fun, and more a sign of my impending mental collapse :P
  - eru 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
  - mapt 10y ago
    * Desert Combat mod for BF1942 * Fairly competitive player for that era * Helicopters lurking over the crest of the next hill being a frequent threat * Terrain being indestructible * Definitely took cover behind a DC bus stop shelter from the threat of missiles raining down on me from a traffic helicopter
cableshaft 10y ago
I was hallucinating driving home before after a barrage of 70-80 hour weeks at a gamedev startup. Of course it was on a completely empty road and it was minor things in the periphery (the sky looked like giant evil monsters duking it out), but I probably shouldn't have been on the road. But I was at the office for 16 hours already, and there was nothing but my desk to sleep at at the office. Before too long I ended up in the hospital for a heart attack scare (it wasn't a heart attack, but it seemed like one), and work stopped asking me to put in so many hours for a while. The games I spent so much time and energy on didn't do so well for various reasons (unrelated to the quality of the games, I had polished them up as well as I could considering the shifting demands and firm deadlines), and the company ended up biting the bullet.

newobj 10y ago

I was working on a system that was doing CSG of AI nav meshes. If enough floating point error crept in, eventually the a shared of edge of a navmesh would split apart and you'd be left with the AI walking around non-existent obstructions. Spent an unimaginable amount of time trying to deal with this. One night when I was walking back to my apartment, I walked over a section of the sidewalk that had plywood laying on it. The edges of two pieces of plywood had about an inch gap between them, and I remember my heart jumping in panic as though I was "seeing the bug" again - basically hallucinated my work problem into real life. That was towards the end of working in the game industry...

chillingeffect 10y ago
Under good conditions that can be a fun thing. I once spent a whole evening changing parameters, drawing black and white fractal trees. When I walked out into the night, I perceived RL trees as the software would render them. I wonder how much of this overlap goes on without us even realizing it :)
- newobj 10y ago
  True! Though in this case, after months of fighting the problem, not so fun, and more a sign of my impending mental collapse :P
- eru 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
- mapt 10y ago
  * Desert Combat mod for BF1942 * Fairly competitive player for that era * Helicopters lurking over the crest of the next hill being a frequent threat * Terrain being indestructible * Definitely took cover behind a DC bus stop shelter from the threat of missiles raining down on me from a traffic helicopter

cableshaft 10y ago

I was hallucinating driving home before after a barrage of 70-80 hour weeks at a gamedev startup. Of course it was on a completely empty road and it was minor things in the periphery (the sky looked like giant evil monsters duking it out), but I probably shouldn't have been on the road. But I was at the office for 16 hours already, and there was nothing but my desk to sleep at at the office. Before too long I ended up in the hospital for a heart attack scare (it wasn't a heart attack, but it seemed like one), and work stopped asking me to put in so many hours for a while. The games I spent so much time and energy on didn't do so well for various reasons (unrelated to the quality of the games, I had polished them up as well as I could considering the shifting demands and firm deadlines), and the company ended up biting the bullet.