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Editor’s note: I’m back from vacation. I missed writing to you all, I was tempted to but I have some good content queued up for you.
Yesterday we lost one of the all-time greats. I don’t know how anyone could miss the news of the passing of such a huge sports and cultural icon but we lost Kobe Bryant, the soon-to-be Hall of Fame-inducted 5-time NBA champion. Kobe was one of few players to come directly out of high school and play pro basketball. He was famous for his insatiable work ethic, game-winning shots, and overall epic performances over his storied career. This is one of my favorite Kobe stories about how when he was training for the Olympics, he went in one morning, trained in conditioning, lifted weights, then stayed until he made 800 shots. (scroll down to “How Kobe Bryant Made it to the Top”). It’s worth a read.
Hundreds of athletes have come out in the last 24 hours to talk about what Kobe meant to them. How he inspired them in whatever sport they play. The world lost a legend.
RIP Kobe
The Inner Game of Fortnite – When Epic Goes Dark
In my day job, I build iPhone apps. I’ve worked on cryptocurrencies and built apps for the web too but I primarily work on mobile apps. Building great software takes times. I’ve never worked on a game but I’m positive that this is true for games as well.
The funny thing about computers is that when you write code, computers do exactly what you tell them to do. You have to be precise in your instructions. You have to think of edge-cases and what happens if things happen in certain orders sometimes. If you don’t, you can end up with bugs and unintended results.
As the user of a piece of software, it’s easy to get angry at the people who make the software. “How did they not think of this?!” “Did they even test this before they shipped it?” “What are they doing over there?” We didn’t do it maliciously. It’s embarrassing for us to and we just want to fix it as soon as possible. In a perfect world, we would snap our fingers and fix that thing we messed up.
Developers constantly have to juggle deadlines, the expectations of their bosses, working with their teammates in different departments, and a complex codebase with legacy code (read: legacy issues).
Again, great software takes time.
When Will Season 1 End???
If you’ve been involved in the community in these last few weeks, starting sometime before Christmas, when they extended Season 1, people have been asking this question. It often comes with accusations of malicious intent like, “they just want to sell more Christmas skins so they’re pushing it back so we buy the Battle Pass too.” That may be true, but probably not.
On Friday, Epic announced that Season 2 will launch on Thursday, February 20, but first:
Beginning with the release of the 11.50 update in early February, Fortnite will be moving to Unreal Engine’s Chaos physics system. (Source: Epic)
First of all, that’s huge! A new physics engine is an incredibly complex piece of engineering effort and porting one of the world’s most popular games to it is no small feat. To make sure that everything is smooth and that your favorite game still feels like it has for the last two-plus years, Epic is going to have a two week period beforehand to iron things out, test it with small groups, and generally work out the kinks.
When companies all of a sudden seem like they’ve stopped updating something or the next expected release is taking longer than their normal cadence, there’s a reason for that. 95% of the time that reason is because they’re working on a big new update with lots of complexities, maybe a code rewrite to make future development easier. The other 5% is that the company ran out of money or ideas or is shutting down or being acquired.
Fortnite has its cadence. The end of Chapter 1, Season 10 and the end of Chapter 2, Season 1 both took much longer than the normal 12-ish week season we’re used to. We’ve seen massive updates to Fortnite in the last few months. Epic is positioning the game for the long term so yes, while this season has gotten a little stale, they haven’t forgotten about us.
My bet is that this is the “offseason.” Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, all gearing up for Season 2 and beyond, a World Cup again this summer, the expansion of Creative, and probably some other cool stuff that Epic has up their sleeves. I trust them.
Remember, great software takes time.
Sub-Skill Drills – Cone-Ceiling-Ramp Away
Watching Nickmercs a few days ago, he did an interesting move that I’ve been practicing and using that I really like. He was on a ramp, an enemy ramped at him and had one or two layers of height on him. Without missing a beat, he put a cone and a ceiling above his head, turned around and double ramped in the opposite direction, moving the same direction as his opponent, before pulling a 180 and re-taking height.
Let’s practice that:
Hop into Creative like we do.
Ramp up one or two layers and peek over, like you’re shooting at someone far away.
Slowly, add two layers of over overhead cover (a ceiling and a cone).
Then pivot 180 degrees, and ramp up in the opposite direction with a ramp over your head and one below you.
After a few ramps, add an additional ramp below your feet, turn 180 degrees, adding walls for protection and then ramp back the way you came.
Continue from there however you like.
Practice this for 10-15 minutes so you’re ready for someone ramp over you and how to react.
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That’s it for today!
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See you Wednesday