Shengyu Liu

Neoclassical: Chromaticist | artist | game developer | publisher. Sunset-Sway

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

When I bought too many books for my little bookstore . The game becomes a game of packages. #Indie #IndieGameDev #gamedev #books

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

Neocalssical: Chromaticist Trailer
See you on steam! Add to your wishlist!

https://t.co/c6bKZvMhGI

A game by Shengyu Liu
From Sunset-Sway media lab.
#steam #indiegame #indie

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

https://t.co/c6bKZvLJRa

Neoclassical: Chromaticist is going to be out. A new release. See you in June! Add wishlist.

#indiegame #SteamGames #steamnextfest #sunsetsway #gamedev

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

Have to mark this

[Jonathan Blow @Jonathan_Blow]

I read this article about software development, which I knew about because I saw Prime reacting to it:

https://t.co/oXYuMTRXs0

For the most part I think it is fine: a relatively young programmer is doing the healthy work of introspecting on what he should really be doing.

But there's one part of the article that I think is a deep mistake, and the author doesn't know it's so wrong because he has never experienced the alternative:

"Software doesn’t stay solved. Every solution you write starts to rot the moment it exists. Not now, not later, but eventually. Libraries deprecate. APIs change. Performance regressions creep in. Your once-perfect tool breaks silently because https://t.co/KC2vCoIkWK is now https://t.co/KC2vCoIkWK.2. 2

I have had scripts silently fail because a website changed its HTML layout.
I have had configuration formats break because of upstream version bumps.
I have had Docker containers die because Alpine Linux rotated a mirror URL.

In each case, the immediate emotional response was not just inconvenience but something that moreso resembles guilt."

Yes, this is true in much of the programming world. But there is another world in which people build things that last much longer. I have done it many times. I shipped a binary for this game Braid in 2009 that you can still download and play on Steam 16 years later. If you are pretty young (like 35), you can run binaries on Windows that were compiled before you were even born, which is amazing given how hard they have been trying to f up Windows lately.

On an emulator like MAME, you can play arcade games programmed in 1979. If today's software "technology" is so much better, why does it fall apart like tissue paper?

The author is not wrong about the cited decay. But this decay is not inherent to the practice of software. It's due to choices made, usually foolishly, by the people designing the systems being interacted with. And, it's due to a lack of knowing better, non-exposure to the sector of programmers who are very concerned with their code lasting a long time, actually.

The way you make code last a long time is you minimize dependencies that are likely to change and, to the extent you must take such dependencies, you minimize the contact surface between your program and those dependencies.

The actual algorithms you program, the actual functioning machinery you build, is a mathematical object defined by the semantics of your programming language, and mathematical objects are eternal, they will last far longer than your human life. The goal then is to avoid introducing decay into the system. You must build an oasis of peace that is insulated from this constant bombardment of horrible decisions, and only hesitantly interface into the outside world.

This means, for example: If you are shipping on iOS, you only reluctantly use any functions iOS gives you, because when you use them, Tim Apple will come along and break your program next year for arbitrary pointless reasons, because Tim Apple does not respect you or anyone you know.

This means a program cannot last forever on iOS, because Tim Apple likes breaking your things and watching you submissively clean them up. But the core of your program, which could be 95% of the code, is fine, and you can deploy it elsewhere.

This means you have to insulate from Linux userspace, because of all the jackass decision making that introduces constant incompatibilities while somehow never making the system better.

Using a library dependency to do font rendering or sparse matrix math? That dependency gets checked into your source tree, a copy of exactly the version you use. Ten years later you can pull down that source and recompile, and it works, because your program is a mathematical object. If you want to upgrade to something newer that has bug fixes and so forth, you are free to do so, but you are also free not to do so, and your program still works. (And how many of these bug fixes do you really need? Your program worked correctly when you shipped it to the greatest extent you could measure, because you are a skillful software engineer who wants to ship things of a high quality).

Everyone who got into programming for the joy of it knows, at some level, that the magic of programs is that they represent complexity that is replicable over time (and thus they exist outside of time). But the trashy programmer culture of the past 20 years stopped aspiring to this, and now has forgotten it is even possible.

And so long as people have forgotten, decisions will continue to be made that make the problem worse.

There are programmers who only write glue code, and who think that's what programming is; to these people what I have written above will not make sense. But the good news for that contingent is, they can always just stop writing glue code and start doing something else! If today's software "technology" is so good, why do you think it needs so much glue? Maybe there is a stylistic problem.

So if you are looking for what to do in the world of software that can represent a lasting contribution, maybe this is food for thought.

@NotAShelf @ThePrimeagen

[Jonathan Blow @Jonathan_Blow]

Happy #screenshotsaturday, everyone!

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

Wow

[Math Cafe @Riazi_Cafe_en]

MIT's "Gödel, Escher, Bach" lectures

https://t.co/XPIgW3m2eb

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

My cat look at me like this.

[Didier 'Dirac's ghost' Gaulin @DiracGhost]

You can also check out, on the internet archive, ''An Introduction to the theory of groups'' by Alexandroff, a book which was aimed at teaching group theory to beginners and high school students.

This is a text full of intuitive and explicit examples, a perfect starting point for any self learners, beginners or mathematics enthusiasts.

[syn @SyntheVisuals]

Free fonts for your next project:

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

@fermatslibrary @Jonathan_Blow My feet are younger than my head. That’s why I always feel getting older.

[Jonathan Blow @Jonathan_Blow]

No lie detected.

https://t.co/RxnrTrhA1q

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

@OpenAI So after this…. UI designers must learn to be AI friendly, which means agent interface. Something like SEO.

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

Drawing when waiting in @Apple

[howie.serious @howie_serious]

deepseek 大战 o1，深度思考能力测试实例：“语言腐败导致思维败坏”的LLM 证据？

看到海内外狂赞deepseek r1，想起o1 在语言上的超群表现，忍不住把最近一个 o1 prompt发给了deepseek。

答案让我不敢相信自己的眼睛。我完全无法理解发生了什么。deepseek 内部的心理活动是什么？

你们自己看吧！这得学了多少xx，语言才能腐败、思维才能混乱到这个程度🤣

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

@g_engineering_ @Jonathan_Blow After too many hours I still haven’t kill Witness by myself…. 500h seems a nightmare to me. But I would still love to see it.

[Jonathan Blow @Jonathan_Blow]

"Gap in Resume" often means "Worked for Company for <= a year, got fired for cause, doesn't want you to know".

The problem is an employer can't tell the difference between a genuine gap and the above scenario, so disfavoring gaps makes sense.

https://t.co/Ql5nheYL8i

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

Making a good game is similar to education; the efforts of players should be recognized and acknowledged, not trampled upon. The best reward for a player's effort is personal growth.
#indiegame #gamedesign #gamedev

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

Players can feel whether your game offers a prison or freedom.

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

This is a fundamental value in game design—it’s a guiding principle for creators. Each creator has their own principles, and while they won’t necessarily determine whether your game is good or not, they will shape how you connect with players and what kind of experience they have

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

I’ve been hooked on ShoGun Showdown for two days… When I pick up my Steamdeck, I think about opening many games, but in the end, I can’t resist going back to ShoGun Showdown.

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

I was so blamed for playing Shogun Showdown for 3 days…. I’m not a fan of rougelite game (and somewhat tired of this), but… well done Shogun Showdown….

However, I was somehow regretting after playing it….I blamed myself for being so addicted. That’s not a good feeling.

[Shengyu Liu @_ShengyuLiu]

This isn’t to say the rougelites I mentioned aren’t great games—on the contrary, I deeply respect them and learn a lot from their designs. But I would never want my players to feel regret after playing my game. Everyone’s time is precious; we shouldn’t waste it.