If Twitter does die, I will miss it. Amidst the wailing lie certain gems, like this thread of developers sharing confessions and cheeky tricks from across their careers. We’re talking cobbling rat-tunnel ducts together to form a makeshift flare launcher in Dishonored, or using the bottom of a bleach bottle as a stand-in for a light fixture. I’ve picked out some of my favourites – come and revel in them with me.
First off, here’s that bottle: a galaxy brain play courtesy of Valheim VFX Artist Andi Jorgensen.
this one might be my fav (my old twitter handle mentioned)https://t.co/RcSeRFrbR4
— Andrea – cohost.org/Andicraft (@AndiJorgensen) November 19, 2022
In the same vein, here’s Dishonored campaign director Dana Nightingale’s flare launcher. Flawless work.
I liked Antoine Henry’s short tale of working to a rushed Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 schedule, where a need for additional mini-games resulted in the creation of one that simply asked players to “Concentrate to score points” then handed them out randomly. (Players confidently reporting their winning strategies reminds me of that fun study about superstitious pigeons).
Shaun Finney contributed another ingenious way of dodging time constraints, sadly not usable in this era.
Wallace & Gromit was an early XBLA game and was required to launch from memory cards. There was a crash bug when launching off 256mb cards, but not 512mb cards. So we just added a 20mb sound file to the game, making it too big for 256mb cards. Passed cert no problem after that! https://t.co/qftHxiPu75
— Shaun Finney (@shaunfinney) November 19, 2022
There’s plenty more to enjoy, from deliberately impossible endgames to a texture that contains somebody’s full credit card info.
A whole lot of devs cop to sneaking the Loss meme into their games, too, which is neat but not half as good as bleach bottle light fixtures. Props to Danny Sweeney for kicking off the fun, though. Peruse the thread for yourself, if you fancy.
