Tim Watts

Interactive/realtime/visuals/games/tools/dev
@timboc.bsky.social

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Doing visuals at Glasto for Bonobo using our software - sweet! 🥳👌@ExperienceVolta

[Jonathan Blow @Jonathan_Blow]

The free demo for Order of the Sinking Star has been going great -- people really like it! We will upload Part 2 for you on Friday morning, but if you haven't tried it yet, you may want to get in there and play before the new puzzles drop!

https://t.co/z4KE9ENEEc

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

This! Especially if dirt rally sim is your vibe, definitely pick it up.

I was fortunate to briefly work with the (very small) team who are lovely and have been working mega hard on this for years.

Wishing them every success.

[🧃Thomas Reisenegger_xcx @Olima]

this brutal & realistic rally sim on space planets is made by a tiny dev team (2-person core team)

- inspired by brutal off-road rally like Dakar, Baja etc
- no roads. no authored racing line. just you and a stupidly powerful rover
- career mode, car & stage editor, leaderboards

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

@JayWeston Wow, massive milestone, congratulations!

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Hobby project in the process of going rogue 😅- why not create a quick web app that can interpolate vectors via sdf representations, warning of laser cutting issues like islands and too small bridges with tooling to fix

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

@pvncher @OpenAI @romainhuet @RepoPrompt Wow, congrats @pvncher ! I'm sure it'll be an exciting chapter!

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Portfoilo: https://t.co/yCQlE7UUUY

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Looking for work again in case anyone's willing to signal boost!

Mostly C#/Unity/@threejs but interested in all interactive things that move ✨

Finally updated my portfolio (small threejs site of course) - link in thread 🙏

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Bit of experimentation, messing about making some brush inky thing in @threejs 🖌️

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

The Win32 calls we all LLM our way to are fine, but there is nuance around DPI, input capture etc (that a lot of us can ignore).

It feels like a place where engines could reasonably step in and finish the abstraction.

Until then, hopefully this was a useful summary!

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Fullscreen Exclusive
- Avoids the Windows desktop compositor
- Historically made significant difference to latency - much less so these days
- Effectively the default for Consoles
- Monitor & OSes can take a very long time (seconds) to switch resolution and refresh rates - Pain

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

✨Wrap-up✨

Borderless windowed mode isn’t niche — players and streamers actively want it.

The APIs are old. The OS rules are subtle.
The hard part isn’t calling the functions — it’s understanding how the OS actually behaves.

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Adding a top region (or button) mouse-draggable area becomes necessary - unless an immovable window was the goal!

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

🧵 Unsexy Game Dev #1

Display modes — notes from Streetdog

Most PC games today default to borderless fullscreen.

In practice, on Windows 10/11, this means:
“a top-level borderless window, sized to the desktop, presented through the compositor.”
That detail matters👇

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Windowed - Borderless
- Usually requires manual Win32 api calls
eg SetWindowPos(hWnd, https://t.co/ipu2Oc7snx, 0, 0, w, h, SWP_FRAMECHANGED | SWP_NOMOVE);

- Timing can be a bit tricky in conjunction with using Unity APIs (wait a frame after calls to eg SetResolution)

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Windowed mode (who actually wants this?)
- Esp useful for streamers and multi-taskers
- Can help with some multi-monitor setups
- BUT, damn that window chrome is ugly

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

What FullScreenWindow means on Windows (Unity & Unreal)
- A borderless HWND
- Sized to the desktop resolution
- Managed by DWM (the compositor)
- Looks fullscreen, still a window
- No monitor res/refresh-rate switches so fast and alt-tab friendly
- Immovable and on top by design

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

https://t.co/upNctVWKu7

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

Streetdog BMX is live! @yeahusgames has totally smashed this out the park with this one - if Nintendo did BMX - all support greatly appreciated (steam link in reply)

[Tim Watts @timboc_]

@JonasTyroller I'm not sure if I can answer that 😂 but here's the original link: https://t.co/vJsy1Ff2Vb