Ian Schmidt

Civ 7 UI+audio programmer, formerly @ EA. I geek out over music, synths, weather, retrocomputing, sportsball, and genre fiction. Opinions are mine alone.

[truthache @truthache68]

💾😂 It’s actually wild that Gen Z has never experienced the pure serotonin of watching MS-DOS DEFRAG do its little block dance.

Your 4GB 386 is choking on life? Just run DEFRAG and stare at it like it’s 1993 Netflix.

Don’t fight the hypnosis… become one with the pixels.😵‍💫

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

@Cat_Merc @IanCutress @ogawa_tter Agents work primarily on the CPU, and only hand off the actual “thinking” to the model on the GPU. Claude Code and Codex collect and preprocess the data the model needs to know and then apply the results, often using short Python scripts. That can eat significant CPU time.

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

@JoshDWalrath There’s a BIOS emulation plugin for EFI that lets you run DOS, Win 3.1, and Win9X bare-metal on Zen 5 systems. A guy on YouTube posted several videos recently. Not super practical, but it is fast.

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

@lauriewired It worked, too! C code compiled for the Sega Saturn (SH-2) was around 70% of the size of the same code built for PlayStation (MIPS).

[Atari @atari]

Congratulations to the Artemis II team on a safe landing! 🚀

[Marco Tinè @StriderCT]

Hideki Sato, the hardware designer behind all #SEGA consoles, has passed away on February 13. A modest man, he said of Dreamcast's demise:

 “The most important thing is the attractiveness of the contents we will supply. Game hardware is just a box to deliver those contents.”

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

This update completes the touch support rework I've mentioned with previous updates: pinch-to-zoom and two-finger rotate now work on the Steam Deck! I didn't do the engineering on this one (had my head down learning @solid_js), but it completes a feature I advocated for.

[Sid Meier's Civilization VII @CivGame]

Update 1.3.2 lands today in #Civ7, introducing...

⬢ Gilgamesh - free for all players!
⬢ Nested Tooltips
⬢ New Appeal Lens
⬢ ...and more!

Full notes - https://t.co/ilDiR98qwX

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

This looks like CPU thermal paste.

[Robert Patrick 🇺🇸 @robertpatrickT2]

The resemblance is unsettling

[Alex Hollings @AlexHollings52]

There are over 1,000 billionaires in the United States and none of them are funding an Airwolf reboot.

Disgusting.

[古代祐三 Yuzo Koshiro @yuzokoshiro]

←The best YM2203 music ever made.
→The best YM2151 music ever made.

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

1.3.1 also has more touchscreen goodies! A long press now shows tooltips on anything where a mouse hover would. And I completely rewrote the native Linux (Steam Deck) touch support to bring it up to par minus pinch and rotate gestures (those hopefully in the next patch).

[Sid Meier's Civilization VII @CivGame]

Update 1.3.1 drops today in #Civ7

Read the full notes here - https://t.co/ilDiR98qwX

[Larry Hryb, Gamer Emeritus 📱⌨️🖱️🎮 @majornelson]

Holiday reminder: if you’re gifting a PS5, Xbox, or Switch to a younger player, carefully unbox it, get it online, install updates, preload a game or two, then rebox it.
It spares them from spending their big moment staring at a progress bar.

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

@JonathanDoe1949 @equinox654 @colin_k Yeah, Cleared Hot looks fantastic!

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

@JonathanDoe1949 @equinox654 @colin_k We did the Saturn version of Soviet Strike at Tiburon. There was supposed to be a 32X game that bridged the original Strike series to Soviet but it got cancelled for obvious reasons. Fun fact: the SStrike terrain streaming was first solved by us and back ported to the PS1.

[Action Retro @ActionRetro1]

RIP @burgerbecky Rebecca Heineman and thanks for all the wonderful games 😢

[PC Master Race - PCMR @OfficialPCMR]

Whoever designed this, has a reserved spot in hell.

https://t.co/scplbJLTp8

[Eugene | Katanaut @VoidmawGames]

Hi, I’m Eugene. I finished my first game, Katanaut. It hit 52k wishlists in 10 months… and I released it between Silksong and Hades 2.

Average peak players: 11.

AMA.

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

Not mentioned in the update notes, but I added full support for multitouch on Windows, including pinch and rotate gestures. Go wild on your Surface or ROG Ally!

[Sid Meier's Civilization VII @CivGame]

Update 1.2.5 is here, and releasing now in Civilization VII.

Read the full update notes - https://t.co/ilDiR98qwX

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

@JoshDWalrath 3080Ti. I haven’t been sufficiently impressed by the performance bumps after that to go further (and have to mess with the melty power connector).

[Ian Schmidt @therealian]

It's PC upgrade time for the next 5 years! AMD 9950X3D, MSI X870E Carbon WiFi, 64 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB, cooled by a Thermalright Frozen Prism 360 (CPU stays 78C or below on all stress tests I've run). My new favorite build I've ever done.