5 ms·

Videogames that teach you stuff

53 points by filiph 3y ago

Terr_ 3y ago
Anecdote: Small client-side scripts for Starseige:Tribes were probably important in leading me to software development as a career. There's a certain poignant sadness to how that era of relatively open modification has vanished--no longer can you customize a crosshair simply by replacing a bitmap file.
- filiph 3y ago
  The first time I opened a hex editor, it was to give me better stats in X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I was about 16 and had no idea what I was doing. But, at the very least, binary files stopped being some incomprehensible magic. They were just data that you can change, if you know what you're doing.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > The first time I opened a hex editor, it was to give me better stats in X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Ditto, although to be honest it didn't stop being "incomprehensible magic" for a rather long time. What really mattered was the surprised realization that this was magic within my reach, something I could freely cast even if I couldn't (yet) create entirely new spells.
    - filiph 3y ago
      Agreed. I _still_ don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but there was a barrier that I overcame back then as a young dude trying to cheat at a videogame, that most people don't. And to add to your point about crosshairs as bitmap files. When you install a game nowadays, half the time you don't even know where the files are, and even if you do, they're in the part of the file system we've been conditioned never to touch (for good reasons). When everything was "somewhere at C:", and you ran games by literally cd'ing into the game's directory and running that one executable there, modifying the game was a lot more "in your path".
fnordpiglet 3y ago
The most influential video game in my life of learning was probably Robot Odyssey. https://robotodyssey.online https://robotodyssey.online https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey

5 ms·

Videogames that teach you stuff

53 points by filiph 3y ago

Terr_ 3y ago
Anecdote: Small client-side scripts for Starseige:Tribes were probably important in leading me to software development as a career. There's a certain poignant sadness to how that era of relatively open modification has vanished--no longer can you customize a crosshair simply by replacing a bitmap file.
- filiph 3y ago
  The first time I opened a hex editor, it was to give me better stats in X-COM: Enemy Unknown. I was about 16 and had no idea what I was doing. But, at the very least, binary files stopped being some incomprehensible magic. They were just data that you can change, if you know what you're doing.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > The first time I opened a hex editor, it was to give me better stats in X-COM: Enemy Unknown. Ditto, although to be honest it didn't stop being "incomprehensible magic" for a rather long time. What really mattered was the surprised realization that this was magic within my reach, something I could freely cast even if I couldn't (yet) create entirely new spells.
    - filiph 3y ago
      Agreed. I _still_ don't know what I'm doing most of the time, but there was a barrier that I overcame back then as a young dude trying to cheat at a videogame, that most people don't. And to add to your point about crosshairs as bitmap files. When you install a game nowadays, half the time you don't even know where the files are, and even if you do, they're in the part of the file system we've been conditioned never to touch (for good reasons). When everything was "somewhere at C:", and you ran games by literally cd'ing into the game's directory and running that one executable there, modifying the game was a lot more "in your path".
fnordpiglet 3y ago
The most influential video game in my life of learning was probably Robot Odyssey. https://robotodyssey.online https://robotodyssey.online https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey