@Cheeseness@mastodon.social cover
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

Cheeseness

@[email protected]

I write, make, draw, play, game, and do handsome faces. I made Hive Time. Currently making Fossil Sweeper (a game about digging up fossils), Winter's Wake & Icicle (and a stack of side things).

My avatar is a stylised self portrait with short messy hair, set within a hexagonal shaped slice of cheese with holes in.

Art, game dev, and gaming videos posted to @cheeseness

#nobridge should not be necessary -_-

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar grumpygamer , to random

I've updated the Terrible Toybox contractor agreements to include language that AI may not be used if the result is any code, art, music, or other assets making it into the game without express written approval.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@grumpygamer I've been looking at doing the same. Spent some time yesterday drafting up a "canary" page committing to not allowing the use of such tools in my projects and asking to be held accountable if that ever changes.

@static@aus.social avatar static , to random

Still amazes me that the Coles and Woollies paper bags are made in Vietnam. Obviously is costs less to have them made, printed and then shipped from Vietnam to Australia, than to have them made onshore. Wild.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@static It's stunning. I used to work at a retail place where I was given the understanding that some of the paper we sold that came from Russia was made from Australian pulp.

When something "costs less," it's often more about the costs we choose to ignore, hey?

Cheeseness ,
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@static Yeah! Similar for privatising public infrastructure, etc.. It all feels symptomatic of short term thinking that ignores the impact on communities/society, local ecosystems/the environment, local/national economies.

When we push stuff offshore that we "can't afford" to do here, we ignore the load we put on other people, and the incentives we create for practices and working environments we wouldn't allow locally. Making it somebody else's problem doesn't make the cost go away :/

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@static Going back a little further, I remember hearing about the Commonwealth Bank being privatised (change seemed bad, though I was a little too young to have a good handle on what it all meant), but Howard's privatisation of Telstra toward the end of the 90s felt like a big turning point. It's a road we've been on for a long time, I think

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@static Going back a little further, I remember hearing about the Commonwealth Bank being privatised (change seemed bad, though I was a little too young to have a good handle on what it all meant), but Howard's privatisation of Telstra toward the end of the 90s felt like a big turning point. It's a road we've been on for a long time, I think.

Seems like as Australians, we collectively vote for "sacrifice the future" policy and don't seek/demand restoration when we decide to change governments.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@static Yeah. Liberal party ideology for public infrastructure often seems to be driven by "My mate could be making money off this instead..."

I struggle to accept that communications infrastructure in particular should be run as a business (incl AusPost). In my mind, they should be a public service, a perk of citizenship that the entire populace is empowered by, and benefits doubly from the socioeconomic boost they provide.

Privatising any aspect of Telstra wouldn't have made any sense to me.

@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar deadsuperhero , to random

One pain point here is the fact that Spectra has more than 1,000 users, but about a dozen or so accounts use the most storage space. The biggest offender takes up over 1TB of our object storage quota.

I'm tempted to start setting data caps, maybe to sell an additional allocation of storage space, but I'm only really comfortable with doing this after addressing the community and reaching out to the people who use Spectra the most.

Cheeseness ,
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@deadsuperhero Yikes. I've been feeling anxious about stream archives I haven't deleted yet. Good reminder to get to that now!

Cheeseness ,
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@deadsuperhero Totally understand. Hoping things settle enough and I can donate before the year is out🤞

I generally aim hold onto my archives for a week or so in case there's something I want to refer to or download to use in a video later, but it's easy for me to forget and leave them up.

Twitch had an auto-delete-unless-you-explicitly-save-it type policy for stream archives. I guess with the way live videos work in PeerTube, there's no distinction between a stream archive and a regular video

@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org avatar deadsuperhero , to random

General question: someone on Spectra reached out to me about whether it was possible to integrate their PeerTube livestreaming state with a chat bot to announce when they're going live.

This led me to think about Webhooks, with the realization that PeerTube doesn't seem to support them yet. In fact, the only support I've seen is through a plugin that's five years old, and hasn't been actively maintained for that long.

What's a good way to automate the announcement of "Going Live" on a stream to followers and community members? I know PeerTube itself generates a follower notification, but that might not be enough here...

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@deadsuperhero As a workaround for, maybe the channel RSS feed might be usable by some bots.

Although, it doesn't seem that PeerTube does anything when a recurring lives begins? (my RSS feeds, and the ActivityPub feed for my account/channels only include the first occurrences of my recurring lives)

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@deadsuperhero Oh interesting! Is that spectra.video/feeds/videos.xml? I don't see my most recent recurring live in that one ( https://spectra.video/w/smSzcihk53KskXkdKV31pr about 6 hours ago)

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

@deadsuperhero Ahoy there! I'm using the same avatar for Spectra.video account, and to help differentiate, I added a little badge of the Spectra logo in the upper right.

I couldn't find any logo usage guidelines, and wanted to double check whether that would be cool. If not, no stress!

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

Ants are out and about. I saw their little waterbreaks on the entrances to their nests. They know rain's coming

Ants scurrying around through dappled shadow on a gum tree where the bark is separating from the trunk
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@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

Last stream on Twitch is starting in a sec (imminently moving to PeerTube \o/ ). Sandwalkers, week 12. This week, the 19th caravan will meet its demise...

A screenshot of a combat encounter in Sandwalkers. A human with a large sword, a flawen (frog person) holding a staff, an armoured oriflan (elephant person), and a robed birgorn (snail person) face off against some vicious looking hyena-like beasts on a stretch of desert dotted by protruding rocks, some of which have been carved into giant elephant statues
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@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

Find hope. Share hope.

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

My little bee game turns 6 today! To celebrate, I've shipped a wee patch that adds a new chat command and includes some misc optimisations 🐝 🎂 🎉
https://cheeseness.itch.io/hive-time/devlog/1140885/hive-time-turns-6

A screnshot of a modest Hive Time hive, with an in-game chat bee (me!) reciting one of the Beepedia's bee facts, which says "True bee fact #14: Like many other insects, bees have special comb-like structures in their joints on their front legs that are used to keep their antennae clean."
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@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

Oh, how wonderful

An excerpt from PayPal's upcoming privacy statement revision (effective January 2026), saying "AI and Automated Decision Making. We may use Personal Information to train our artificial intelligence (AI) models that power our Services and help us deliver more secure, efficient, and personalized services. PayPal also uses Automated Decision Making to provide our products and Services, conduct risk analysis, fraud prevention and risk management to protect our customers and business, including to prevent fraud against our Partners and Merchants and strategic ventures. Please see AI and Automated Decision Making to learn more."
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@memoriesin8bit@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar memoriesin8bit , to random

Just saw the title for a video essay "How Valve built the only good tech monopoly"

I swear to god, one day I'll snap.

There are no good monopolies.

That "Steam release" has replaced "PC release" should say as much. But people will defend the multi billion dollar companies.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@memoriesin8bit I've always been amazed at how many players have an immediate "you're making things harder for me" type reaction when I tell them one of my games is only on Itch.

Their default assumption is that I'm asking them to commit to making an account, to using a platform, to installing a updater/launcher, etc., when I'm guaranteeing them the opposite - Itch lets you buy and play games without making an account, without extra software, etc., but almost nobody wants to hear about that.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@memoriesin8bit Super user friendly, and super developer friendly!

I only wish we had more distribution platforms like that (would love to also be on an Australian-owned/operated equivalent with the same functionality/philosophies)

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar TomF , to random

I'm teaching myself how to do pixel art, and I got Aseprite, which is fantastic. So I have the game already - and it's fun - but it's using art I "borrowed". But that gives the right idea on size - I can go a few pixels over or under.

Anyway, I was sketching away in Aseprite and I got a reasonable looking outline (no shading yet), and I thought "how far off am I on size?"

My sketch: 96x40 pixels.
Game needs: 24x12

Derp. You have no pixels. None. It's all in the shading. Make every one count.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@TomF Might we worth doing an unfiltered upscale before uploading - a lot of what's there is getting lost. Digging the vibrancy, though!

Cheeseness ,
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@TomF I find that stuff often changes without warning (had to upload a video 4 times today to try and find what the new default size limit is since it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere). It's a bummer

@jitspoe@mastodon.social avatar jitspoe , to random

Ludwig played my game, Goop Loop, last week, so I jumped ahead on my dev stream highlights to post a special Twitch Affiliate Anniversary video to show how I ended up in front of 6000 people wearing a princess hat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvtn3bNSACA

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@jitspoe Congrats on Quint-B

Edit: Sorry, quintessential A

@stux@mstdn.social avatar stux , to random

When you launch something on expect a flood on mails from "streamers" who want a free game key for a "review"

Chances are big those keys end up on marketplaces for "cheap games" and such

If these super popular streamers cannot pay the 0,99 cents and 4,99 for my game I'd rather they do not review it

It would be fun if one of my games got popular but it's not a requirement :nkoShrug:

Cheeseness ,
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@stux For Steam stuff, remember that Curator Connect is an option and doesn't give transferrable keys https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/curators

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@stux YMMV, but it at least becomes a way to separate people looking for keys to sell from people who're actually interested in your work

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@stux No probs!

@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar grumpygamer , to random

I'm not a Streamer so I don't know what Streamers need in terms of features to turn on and off to make streaming easier. I watched someone streaming Death by Scrolling and they wanted to turn off looping SFX because they got in the way of talking. If you stream a lot are there others things? Happy to add them.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@grumpygamer Everybody I know gets grumpy when games mute on focus loss while streaming (makes it harder to adjust capture volumes, and results in dead air that makes the game look bad when alt+tabbing to interact with chat, etc.)

Cheeseness ,
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@KarenKasparArt@socel.net avatar KarenKasparArt , to random

A sweet little bird from me to you!
Have a lovely day!

Black and white pencil sketch of a European Robin sitting on a branch, by Karen Kaspar.
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Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar
@jplebreton@mastodon.social avatar jplebreton , to random

What's the current state of "hybrid" mobile-desktop devices + OSes, a la the Ubuntu Edge concept from ~12 years ago? It seems like between typical mobile CPU + GPU power and USB-C bandwidth + wide availability of hubs that can connect a phone, a monitor, and mouse + keyboard - the hardware is basically there, but the software-side work to support it is significant. I'm guessing there's already a wacky Linux out there doing this. Have Apple or Google made any noises about this kind of thing?

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@jplebreton The idea of a employers being able to expect to use employees' phones as work resources feels pretty gross (back when I had a mobile phone, I wouldn't even give the number to my employer - if they wanted to reach me out of work hours, they could try my landline >_<).

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@jplebreton Ah, right right. Fewer/more flexible work devices could improve a lot of lives, I imagine.

I'm generally against employers expecting employees to take work resources home and be contactable/do work outside of work hours too (people should own their own time!), but I get that it makes sense in many contexts.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@Doomed_Daniel @jplebreton Yeah, nothing against working from home (especially in this pandemic context) if employees are being compensated/supported adequately and have strong delineation between the time they are sacrificing for employment and the the personal time they're keeping in exchange for that sacrifice (fundamentally a messed up proposition, but that's the world we live in)

@mcc@mastodon.social avatar mcc , to random

Somebody should invent a kind of battery that does not explode

Cheeseness , (edited )
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc It is absolutely wild how eager we are to stick batteries in everything given that we don't know how to make or dispose of them responsibly.

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random
Cheeseness OP ,
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@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

That's a lot of legs, you've got there, friend (there were two hiding under there, and a third up on the nature strip)

That same masked lapwing walking along the kerb, with a baby running alongside

That same masked lapwing walking along the kerb, with a baby running alongside
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@lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar lritter , to random

all species are "invasive". the idea of native species is fiction.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@lritter The words might not align well, but the idea - that an organism an ecosystem isn't acclimated to the presence of is distinct from those that comprise an ecosystem - is worthwhile, and having a term for it makes it easier to identify, communicate, and address problems that deserve attention.

Totally open to a different term (ideally one that conveys that it can take many hundreds, even thousands of years for an ecosystem to adapt to/recover from the impact) but the idea is important.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@lritter I suspect then that you also have a slightly skewed idea of what an ecosystem is? (that's the long-term network of relationships between co-existing species)

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@lritter Cheers. Don't really have time to spare at the moment, unfortunately (work's more important right now).

Where I live, there are some pretty real cases where we have a choice between preserving life unique to this corner of the globe or accepting the disruption of recently introduced species that have gained a foothold. Lots of use-cases across the drink in New Zealand as well. The terminology/concepts you're refuting have tangibly helped us make important headway.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@lritter Yeah, absolutely - we can only be participants in systems we're not isolated from. I'm not sure I can get onboard with the idea that it makes sense to view domestication as the only way that can manifest though? (I recognise that I don;'t have the context of the source you provided though - perhaps "domestication" means something different to you)

Out of interest, do you feel the same about terms like "food web"?

@SteamDB@infosec.exchange avatar SteamDB Bot , to random

Are you seeing our posts? Is 🐘 still alive?

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@SteamDB 👋

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

I went for a little walk today, and stopped at a bench to have something to eat. A bunch of superb fairywrens came to say hello.
I'd never been that close to one of these little friends before. The one in the first photo was maybe half a metre away (within arm's reach)

A juvenile male superb fairywren without the bright blue and iridescent plumage of the previous male, standing on sunlit dirt beneath a park bench. They have faint blue showing on their tail and the top of their head
The first male superb fairywren again, standing in grass
A male superb fairywren standing on the crest of a hill, looking out over lower grassland

A male superb fairywren standing on the crest of a hill, looking out over lower grassland
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@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aeva , (edited ) to random

do you still use the same username you used back in the 2000s?

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@aeva I feel lucky to have been "Cheeseness" more or less from the beginning of my internet life in the 90s.

Prior to that, I'd made up random names when visiting chat rooms, and up to that point hadn't had interest in interacting with anybody more than once.

It feels more like "me" than the name my parents gave me. If I cared what the state thought my "real name" was, I'd fill out the forms to change it.

@_elena@mastodon.social avatar _elena , to random

Dear Fedi friends, I need your help!

We are working on motion graphics for the Fediverse promotional video... and we would love to do a sequence at the end with a mosaic of people's profile photos. For that, I need your consent.

If you'd like to have a small cameo in our video, can you let us know if we can use your profile pic?

Thanks! 🙏

Can you please boost this?

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@_elena I'd be happy to contribute ^_^

@eniko@peoplemaking.games avatar eniko , to random

honestly i'd probably be happier if we had a publisher cause i hate most of the "running a business" parts of making games but also i don't trust publishers and i'm a control freak lmao

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@eniko I can strongly relate

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

Seeing someone demand a developer write walkthrough for a puzzle game that's been out for 8 hours reflects some pretty sad stuff about the way people engage with creative works - especially puzzle games that invite players to think outside the box.

Everybody has different tastes/needs/aptitudes, and that's super valid, but I sure wish there was more mindshare for the ideas that experiences can be better when savoured and getting stuck/feeling lost can be an integral part of an experience.

@lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar lritter , to random

it's telling, and sad for them, that the only way the entirety of the conservative right can bond is through its prejudices. in fact, that appears to be its defining feature. otherwise, its members have nothing in common. and if they knew that, the whole thing would fall apart.

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@lritter It also foreshadows the ultimately self-defeating fragmentation that will whittle their structures down iteratively over time as each current focus of ire is destroyed and whatever portion of the in-group that happens to fit the new focus of ire is ostracised and expelled. Just sucks that there's so much damage done along the way before it grinds to a halt.

@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar Cheeseness , to random

Just finished my first playthrough of Kingdom (Classic). Thanks to @noio and co for a fun and challenging adventure and for support. I find it fascinating how it's not quite a fully fledged strategy game and not quite a fully fledged base builder, but the intersection ends up revealing a kind of hidden almost-management-sim inside.

A screenshot of the Kingdom classic "the crown is safe" game over screen at day 35. In the background is a woman in a blue dress on a black horse, wearing a crown. A stone keep with blue and white banners hanging from it sits behind a large fire, and archers mill about in front of stone walls.
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@lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar lritter , (edited ) to random

Been unhappy with the use of "parent/child" to describe relationships in tree data structures for a while, for many reasons: anthropomorphism, mixed metaphors, may sound confusing and unsettling to the uninitiated.

So I've been looking for an alternative. Stick to the tree metaphor, you get crotch/branch, which is ... not optimal.

The latest one that i liked is hub/spoke, borrowed from terms of wheel construction. It was monosyllabic and celebrated engineering culture.

you preferred:

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@lritter crotch/branch 😙 👌

@mcc@mastodon.social avatar mcc , (edited ) to random

Hello, if you care about Servo, the alternative web browser engine that was originally slated to be the next gen Firefox but now is a donation-supported project under the Linux Foundation, you should know Servo announced a plan to as of June start allowing Servo code to be written by "Github Copilot":

https://floss.social/@servo/114296977894869359

There's a thoughtful post about this by the author of the former policy, which until now banned this:

https://kolektiva.social/@delan/114319591118095728

FOLLOWUP: Canceled! https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114376955704933891

Cheeseness ,
@Cheeseness@mastodon.social avatar

@mcc I thought your entire post was well written and on point.

I don't use GitHub these days, but I'm glad to see others sharing things that align with my outlooks. Thank you for taking the time/effort!