Hey everyone! Figured I would do an AMA to kick off some activity in the IAmA community over here. Feel free to throw down some questions below and ill answer them
I’m currently a student in university and have been doing both web development and game development recently (web for internships, game on my own). Out of the four admins ive been the one mainly handling community creation and managing in the instance to make sure everythings running smoothly
Some other misc topics that I can answer about: I compose music & make pixel art, and my favorite games are minecraft, SCP:SL, everhood, battlerite, and metal slug 3
If anyone else wants to do an AMA feel free to start one up in the community (assuming it fits the instance). Any activity helps get the ball rolling for getting it active
why validating registration? when I registered , I had to wait for approval, very unusual
Thats our current way to prevent waves of spam bots. Its been an issue for the instances currently around lemmy where someone will just spam create accounts in different instances. The captcha that was built into lemmy in version 0.17 was not great and there currently isnt one in 0.18 until the next version so we cant rely on that (and it doesnt stop bots that well either)
Is there any any lack of resources except financial?
Theres not really a lack of stuff currently except maybe time. Theres a bunch of features I want to try to add to lemmy so having some people to help develop those to get them into the instance would be great. Some things that I’m wanting to get in are: flairs, better code blocks, admin + mod permissions that are better adapted to the instance so I dont have to be a mod in all of the communities, and some visual changes so that users can do things like change the community icon shape if they want to differentiate communities and users
- Tabs or Spaces?
- Favourite IDE or text editor?
- Favourite Libraries and / or frameworks?
- What is an open source project you think is interesting?
Tabs due to accessibility
Favorite one currently is VS Code (been using it for everything except for developing in godot (in which I use the built in one) and work (using intellij))
React, date-fns, dotenv, forever.js, discord.js
Im a huge fan of a bunch of open source stuff (godot, inkscape, gimp, lemmy, blender, etc.) but one that I think is interesting that is a bit less known is a mod loader for godot https://github.com/GodotModding/godot-mod-loader . Its been making the modding community for godot games way better since it basically just lets devs drop it into the game and its functional with then dealing with dependencies, mod handling, steam workshop support, etc. Ive already used it for making some mods for dome keeper and its been getting implemented in different games (brotato, luck be a landlord, dome keeper, etc.)
Mod-loader certainly looks interesting! I have dabbled a little with gamedev and one thing that always struck me as challenging was building modability into your game. I’d like to see an extension that helps to build scripting via LUA or something similar into your games too. Thanks for sharing.
What security concerns do the admins have regarding operation of the instance? How have you dealt with them?
Out of the things I can talk about the main issue has mostly been the threat of spam + upvote bots from other instances due to federation. We have an application process to stop bots but since we federate with everyone by default someone can spin up an instance or hijack a lower security instance and just fill it with bots to then interact with posts here. It hasnt happened yet thankfully but if it becomes a problem we will likely have to start defederating with botted instances (someone made a nice tool to call out suspicious ones that I dont have the link to on me right now but it exists) and in the future I might be able to get in some sort of mechanism on the site to auto detect botted upvotes
What do you think of this community so far?
What type of game (and engine) are you building?
Thanks for all the work you have been doing!
The community here has been awesome. From the posts and comments ive looked at everyone has been really friendly and ive been really enjoying building up the space cause of it
In terms of game ive been mostly working on some games for game jams recently. The latest one ive worked on was an arcade-type game similar to spy hunter and rally bike for the brackeys jam. The main overarching game ive been working on (very slowly) is a roguelite platformer heavily focused on modifying your weapons (so you can start with a sword and then turn it into a rapid firing dagger that smites enemies using different modifiers on it). I use both unity and godot with unity used for most jam games I do in a team and godot for solo jam games and my personal games
Yeah, this is pretty much my favorite place on the internet right now.
I’m an FFXIV player. I never thought about creating my own game until my son turned 5. I’ve been using Scratch because he really likes watching me create something specifically for him. I’ve been toying around the idea of doing a project for my portfolio though.
Thanks for the AMA!