Austin Hicks

blind. Programmer. Opinions are my own.

Mostly here to promote my projects; don't expect quick responses to dms and mentions.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@bcherny Hey. Not super active on twitter but I saw this through thezvi's weekly posts. I'm a blind coder, and a few of us have been trying to get attention on accessibility. Lots of easy wins in terminal apps, Claude could just code this stuff. https://t.co/XlhEPrfrCp

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

So! Sudden revival of this account. I'm blind. I have won Factorio multiple times via a mod called Factorio Access, now my coding side project. Going to stream on the 6th at 4 PDT, maybe turn that into the demo video for our readme. Link:
https://t.co/C8J6f0rF93

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@BryanSmart Yes. I don't expect that we are going to go prove that every sound is good. That is unreasonable. But look all the WoW music is...not.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

Doing the Mist World intro/tutorial stream on Wednesday 6:00 EST. I'll drop a link here and a couple other places tomorrow sometime. Will be via Twitch.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

Looks like the Mist World people are working on dealing with the piracy concerns. Credit where credit is due, though it will take them some time.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@BryanSmart Clearly, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

Disgusted with the audiogames community right now. Mist World didn't just steal from big companies, it apparently took from other audiogames too, including Swamp. Everyone is okay with this, making excuses, or acting slowly. Wtf guys.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@BryanSmart People can get around the encryption. I'm pretty sure they can't get around watermarking/fingerprinting though: they'd have to know how I did it, and because math I can possibly do it in a way that'd require destroying the asset. TBD.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@BryanSmart I'm not okay with two of those on both legal and ethical grounds to be clear, and the thing is there's so much stuff that's properly free that people could use.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@BryanSmart Yeah. It's one thing to use free sound libraries everyone uses; another to grab from games that are so big they'll never care about us or enable blind people; and a third to steal from other people who also have your problems because it solves your problems.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@ppatel But also even if it was only https://t.co/yLhWebqKxV there's nowhere else to promote your work that I know of, save spewing it at random places, anyway.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@ppatel https://t.co/ABmrGYZtCh but also their discord, which I left. https://t.co/ABmrGYZtCh has now gone as far as someone involved in the translation saying they're fine with it and also have evidence of Swamp stealing, etc etc. It's a clusterfuck.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

To be clear, not a specific sound library, just "well maybe the original asset came from some sound library somewhere who knows, until we know it didn't whatever" but you can never prove it didn't, that's impossible.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

As a dev who is working toward stuff, I'm just sort of feeling defeated right now. When it's my turn to be stolen from, apparently people are just going to make excuses like maybe I got it from a sound library so it's fine.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@blindndangerous @stirlock Surprisingly, they just decided to remove and replace all game music. Sorta impressed that they responded quickly; not impressed they did it in the first place.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

Looks like Mist World is directly ripping music from WoW, and so tomorrow's stream is cancelled unless I get good answers on this topic. Sorry, guys.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@blindndangerous @stirlock They addressed one of them after I said something last night, so maybe they'll fix this. Here's hoping.

[Austin Hicks @ajhicks1992]

@blindndangerous @stirlock The coding side of this is hard enough that they need a senior-quality dev somewhere. Could be a kid. We do have a few senior-quality kids I guess. But if you're wondering why I didn't go there, that's why.