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> It's like I'm answering the questions correctly minus one, so I'm disqualified. That's been pretty almost every interview for me. The ones I get further are

> It's like I'm answering the questions correctly minus one, so I'm disqualified. That's been pretty almost every interview for me. The ones I get further are the ones where I can answer every question right (or are a bit more relaxed, which has been the exception, not the norm). If I get a single question wrong (or struggle somehow) but otherwise did well, I often don't get the benefit of the doubt and get passed over. Fastest and most obvious 'getting disqualified for giving one incorrect answer' was when I was called for a technical phone screen for Facebook (many years ago, probably a decade ago at this point) by someone who sounded like they didn't understand anything technical, just had three trivia cards provided by someone on the engineering team with the question and a single term answer. I was told 'correct' after my first two questions, then after the third question, I answered it in a general sense but without using the term that was apparently printed on their card, was told "Wrong, the answer is blah, thank you for your time." And I got a rejection email a few days later. I was only asked those three questions, nothing more. I don't remember what the answer was anymore, but something like "toll booth messenging" something like that, it was for an iOS position, I was a lead developer of a small team and had released a half dozen games and apps on the app store already, including one I developed from scratch[1]. Still quite proud of a platforming game called Tracklapse and wish the company was still around and the game still on the store[2]. I don't really do iOS development much anymore, except working on a Swift game for a while that I eventually abandoned (working on something cross-platform now), so I don't really remember what the answer was anymore. A quick google search didn't bring up anything obvious. [1]: https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE [2]: https://youtu.be/BJ3NNLnKPdQ https://youtu.be/BJ3NNLnKPdQ

petercooper 4y ago
As a huge fan of Dice Wars style games (I find Risk a bit too much nowadays), I have no idea how I didn't encounter Proximity. Is there still a usable version out there on any platform or a similar game you'd recommend?
- cableshaft 4y ago
  TLDR: The original Flash game of Proximity is still playable on Newgrounds (via an emulator)[1], but that's it from me out there at the moment, but I'm working on new versions. You can probably find some unofficial versions of the game made by other devs in the meantime, though. I'm working on new versions now but I keep changing scope and platforms when I should just focus on getting something out there again. Proximity 2 iOS code would require too much reworking of the graphics (2D pre-Retina) and the codebase to be worth it at this point. I also released Proxmity 2 on Xbox Live Indie Games on the Xbox 360, but then the XNA framework died (I probably could have released Proximity 2 a couple of years earlier even, but I got a job working for a small video game publisher that was considering publishing Proximity as an official Xbox Live title, but while I did end up working on an Xbox Live game as a producer while working there (Double D Dodgeball), it wasn't anywhere near as well received, for various reasons, one of which being that it relied heavily on its online mode and we had unexpected network issues at launch that weren't present when testing on Xbox's sandbox network[2]. I left Proximity 2's code dormant for a long while, then a couple years ago I tried converting it to Monogame and was surprised how easy it was to do so, spent some time upgrading various things in it (upgraded from 720p to 1080p graphics, localization support, 6 player support, reworked map selection screen, some other enhancements). I was getting a little frustrated with scaling of the 2D graphics for different resolutions, though, and eventually decided to just make the leap from 2D to 3D and rewrote it from scratch with that in mind. Wanted to rework it to be friendly for Twitch streamers (let hundreds of people play in Twitch chat along with a streamer), but that just ballooned the scope again, trying to just get what I've got working with pass and play or bot players like Proximity 2 and get it up as an alpha game on Steam. Proximity 2 probably could be released on Steam in the meantime I guess, but it wouldn't have some features people would probably expect from Steam games, like achievements and whatnot, because I really don't want to sink too much extra time into it considering the 3D version is coming along and should eventually have all the same features (and more). I also have a basic Pico-8 version I never quite finished so I didn't release (I probably should do that) and I spent a weekend porting that to PlayDate, but I'm holding off on releasing that until I get my PlayDate console shipped to me and try it out. The graphics on it are extremely basic though, I kind of feel like I should spend more time on them, especially with other quite pretty puzzle games other devs had made on the Playdate already, but I should also not just sit on the game either, like I did on all the other platforms. I also let myself get distracted with working on a Unity version for a little bit, because I really wanted to make a VR friendly version, and came up with a bunch of clever things to make the game deeper (multiple territories, resources, supplies, squads with special troops, etc), but I decided that's just asking for another couple of years of development and I can always do that after I get the other game out there. Also the success of Wordle (and my day job making React apps) made me want to make a simple web version again. One of these weeks I might sit down and knock that out. Not sure if I should use Phaser game framework or try to just use javascript and CSS like Wordle did. It's easier to manipulate square grids with CSS than hex grids, though, so I'm leaning towards Phaser. Part of the reason it's been so long is I spent about 5 years pursuing board game design instead of coding games in my spare time. I struggled to find publishers willing to sign my games, though, despite being a finalist in a couple game design competitions. I did get one game signed a few years ago, but the pandemic threw a monkey wrench in things and it could be another couple more years before it comes out. Anyway, I don't need a publisher to release video games, so I finally switched focus back to those again. I need to get a proper online multiplayer version at some point too, but that's again just too much scope for the moment (I was trying to bypass it a bit with the Twitch and or Discord chat support instead, so I could put that off a bit longer). [1]: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 [2]: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/double-d-dodgeball-review/1900-6194922/ https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/double-d-dodgeball-review/1...
mikro 4y ago
Maybe it was a question about Grand Central Dispatch? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DISPATCH https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DISPATCH I also feel the same way about getting all but one question. I usually make it all the way to the end of a really grueling process before getting rejected.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  Good guess, but I think I found what it actually was: Toll-Free Bridging[1]. Basically how you can use many Core Foundation types and NeXTSTEP classes interchangeably, like CFLocaleRef and NSLocale. Never really had to use it myself, at least IIRC, but I was aware of the concept generally. But because I didn't answer by saying 'Toll-Free Bridging', I was done. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/CocoaEncyclopedia/Toll-FreeBridgin/Toll-FreeBridgin.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ge...

petercooper 4y ago

As a huge fan of Dice Wars style games (I find Risk a bit too much nowadays), I have no idea how I didn't encounter Proximity. Is there still a usable version out there on any platform or a similar game you'd recommend?

cableshaft 4y ago
TLDR: The original Flash game of Proximity is still playable on Newgrounds (via an emulator)[1], but that's it from me out there at the moment, but I'm working on new versions. You can probably find some unofficial versions of the game made by other devs in the meantime, though. I'm working on new versions now but I keep changing scope and platforms when I should just focus on getting something out there again. Proximity 2 iOS code would require too much reworking of the graphics (2D pre-Retina) and the codebase to be worth it at this point. I also released Proxmity 2 on Xbox Live Indie Games on the Xbox 360, but then the XNA framework died (I probably could have released Proximity 2 a couple of years earlier even, but I got a job working for a small video game publisher that was considering publishing Proximity as an official Xbox Live title, but while I did end up working on an Xbox Live game as a producer while working there (Double D Dodgeball), it wasn't anywhere near as well received, for various reasons, one of which being that it relied heavily on its online mode and we had unexpected network issues at launch that weren't present when testing on Xbox's sandbox network[2]. I left Proximity 2's code dormant for a long while, then a couple years ago I tried converting it to Monogame and was surprised how easy it was to do so, spent some time upgrading various things in it (upgraded from 720p to 1080p graphics, localization support, 6 player support, reworked map selection screen, some other enhancements). I was getting a little frustrated with scaling of the 2D graphics for different resolutions, though, and eventually decided to just make the leap from 2D to 3D and rewrote it from scratch with that in mind. Wanted to rework it to be friendly for Twitch streamers (let hundreds of people play in Twitch chat along with a streamer), but that just ballooned the scope again, trying to just get what I've got working with pass and play or bot players like Proximity 2 and get it up as an alpha game on Steam. Proximity 2 probably could be released on Steam in the meantime I guess, but it wouldn't have some features people would probably expect from Steam games, like achievements and whatnot, because I really don't want to sink too much extra time into it considering the 3D version is coming along and should eventually have all the same features (and more). I also have a basic Pico-8 version I never quite finished so I didn't release (I probably should do that) and I spent a weekend porting that to PlayDate, but I'm holding off on releasing that until I get my PlayDate console shipped to me and try it out. The graphics on it are extremely basic though, I kind of feel like I should spend more time on them, especially with other quite pretty puzzle games other devs had made on the Playdate already, but I should also not just sit on the game either, like I did on all the other platforms. I also let myself get distracted with working on a Unity version for a little bit, because I really wanted to make a VR friendly version, and came up with a bunch of clever things to make the game deeper (multiple territories, resources, supplies, squads with special troops, etc), but I decided that's just asking for another couple of years of development and I can always do that after I get the other game out there. Also the success of Wordle (and my day job making React apps) made me want to make a simple web version again. One of these weeks I might sit down and knock that out. Not sure if I should use Phaser game framework or try to just use javascript and CSS like Wordle did. It's easier to manipulate square grids with CSS than hex grids, though, so I'm leaning towards Phaser. Part of the reason it's been so long is I spent about 5 years pursuing board game design instead of coding games in my spare time. I struggled to find publishers willing to sign my games, though, despite being a finalist in a couple game design competitions. I did get one game signed a few years ago, but the pandemic threw a monkey wrench in things and it could be another couple more years before it comes out. Anyway, I don't need a publisher to release video games, so I finally switched focus back to those again. I need to get a proper online multiplayer version at some point too, but that's again just too much scope for the moment (I was trying to bypass it a bit with the Twitch and or Discord chat support instead, so I could put that off a bit longer). [1]: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 [2]: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/double-d-dodgeball-review/1900-6194922/ https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/double-d-dodgeball-review/1...

mikro 4y ago

Maybe it was a question about Grand Central Dispatch? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DISPATCH https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DISPATCH I also feel the same way about getting all but one question. I usually make it all the way to the end of a really grueling process before getting rejected.

cableshaft 4y ago
Good guess, but I think I found what it actually was: Toll-Free Bridging[1]. Basically how you can use many Core Foundation types and NeXTSTEP classes interchangeably, like CFLocaleRef and NSLocale. Never really had to use it myself, at least IIRC, but I was aware of the concept generally. But because I didn't answer by saying 'Toll-Free Bridging', I was done. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/CocoaEncyclopedia/Toll-FreeBridgin/Toll-FreeBridgin.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ge...