Nathan Babcock

We've released a small auxiliary data set for a collaboration we've been working on with the Stanford Graphics Lab. It includes simplified versions of two Call of Duty® multiplayer maps containing collision data, spawn points and the navigation mesh, from a subset of the Caldera map we released late last year. https://lnkd.in/eHGBTm9D

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I watched a talented coder waste 6 months jumping between Unity and Unreal, only to quit game dev entirely... This guy was brilliant - had solid programming fundamentals and could solve any coding challenge anyone threw at him. But every week he'd message me about switching to a new tutorial or engine. One day Unity was "too limiting" - next week Unreal was "too complex." He'd start projects with enthusiasm then abandon them halfway through, convinced the next framework would finally be "the one." By month 6, his GitHub was a graveyard of half-finished games. When he told me he was quitting game dev altogether, I wasn't surprised - just disappointed. The reality? The difference between those who make it in the game industry and those who don't isn't talent or passion. It's the ability to finish what you start. Look, I get it. The endless options are exciting. But this "tutorial hopping" and "engine switching" creates an illusion of progress while actually killing your momentum. When we built Outscal's curriculum, we intentionally created a rigid, structured self-paced path with deadlines and accountability checks. Not because we're mean, but because we've seen what happens without it. Our most successful students aren't always the most talented - they're the ones who stick to the system and ship completed projects, even when they're not perfect. Ask yourself honestly, how many unfinished projects are sitting on your hard drive right now? I help people upskill and land jobs in the games industry. You can start your free game dev trial here: https://lnkd.in/gvq3gYVh #games #gamedev #jobs #career #unity

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11 Comments

When I first saw Tuomas Artman's post about Fixing Bugs First at Linear (link in comments), I nodded a bit, and then a lot. I'm so glad Thorsten Ball and I radically adhered to this from day 1 when building Amp at Sourcegraph. Here's what I've learned: • Fix Bugs Now (not First): The overhead to file an issue, prioritize the issue, assign the issue, and update the issue is often greater than the time it takes to fix it. Just Fix Bugs Now, right when you hit them or hear about them; don't bother filing an issue. The reporter need not be the fixer, but you must confirm it's going to be Fixed Now before you let go of it. • Backpressure: You will never be drowning in bugs if you truly Fix Bugs Now because you won't have time to build new features that would introduce new bugs. If you're drowning in bugs, it means you're insufficiently adhering to Fix Bugs Now, and new stuff is sneaking through. Fix that. Cut scope immediately if needed, no matter how painful. • Go Direct: When fixing a bug, devs talk directly to customers. No middlemen. Fixing Bugs Now for a real person you're talking to is rewarding and effective; anything else is grunt work that requires a lot more motivation and management pep talks. Plus, customers love talking to devs. • The 15-Minute Rule: From the moment a customer reports a bug, you need to be able to ship a fix to them within 15 minutes. Some fixes take longer, of course, but let's say it's a simple one-line fix: 15 minutes to the customer's screen. If it takes longer, you break the customer's flow, so they won't bother reporting most bugs (since they wouldn't benefit from the fix in their current task). Also, you kill the reward loop for your own devs and kill their focus, since they'll keep mentally tracking the bug until it's resolved. And if it takes days to ship a fix, then you'll need a process for tracking and communicating fixes, and so on, and all of a sudden the overhead dominates the time to code the fix. • Repeat Repeat Repeat: Fixing Bugs Now is so radically different that your team won't believe that you really, truly mean it at first. Or even after you've repeated it 10 times. You need to say it in every single team message for it to stick. Even knowing you need to repeat it more than you think, you won't repeat it enough. • The Stick: Yes, praise your team for Fixing Bugs Now. But for 80% of devs, the reality is you'll need to (at least once) give them direct, constructive feedback when they stray (with good intentions) from Fixing Bugs Now. You need to use the stick for it to stick: "I know you had good intent in building xyz feature while ignoring bugs, but that is not how we build here, and I need you to not do that again." • Sorry and Thanks: Bugs are a fact of life, but that doesn't make them OK. Call me old-fashioned, but I think you should apologize to customers when they hit a bug and thank them for raising it. Knowing you appreciate it, customers will give you more feedback.

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Big changes coming to Rig soon! We just merged 15 PRs over the last 2 days and are hard at work on ensuring that it remains a truly first-class Rust library for agentic work. Some stuff on the short-term roadmap: - A replacement for `DynClientBuilder` - Splitting Rig into proper core crates (including the `rig` crate!) - Updated documentation across the board and more examples We are also getting relatively close to releasing the first iteration of the Rig playbook, which aims to help you get to production quickly with the library. It'll be completely free open source that anyone can use and contribute to. We are looking to hopefully release the first iteration before Christmas. Thanks for reading!

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3 Comments