What do you nerd out over?
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Just came here to say that I love how engaged people are with their hobbies. Keep going!
I feel like I've found
️my people️ -
game editor UI or maybe generally UI design as well.
once I learned about dear imgui I realize and could easily spot so many engines and desktop app built with dear imgui.
I think I've also seen a game engine, clearly built with dear imgui, but styled to look like Visual Studio.
There's someone written custom stylesheet for the CryEngine Sandbox editor to also make it look like Visual Studio. Speaking of which CryEngine used to be built with Windows MFC UI until CryEngine 5.
Then they switched to Qt, I assume the LGPL version because then maybe one of the reason they sort of "open-source" the engine (not really) probably because they attempted to comply with LGPL? but idk. But since version 5.6 the source code isn't updated anymore.
Although Lumberyard was a fork of CryEngine 3.x.x (uses MFC), Lumberyard eventually switched to Qt and so today, O3DE is also in Qt.
O3DE on linux nowadays is pretty stable, but I've only used it for rendering, not scripting games. admittedly I haven't had time to geek out on O3DE's UI
Godot editor is built on its own UI tooling. Probably not edited on the editor, I assume the UI tool can be worked via code. There's so many desktop app that also built using Godot, like Material Maker, and few 2D pixel art tool I forget its name.
Like Godot, Unreal Editor is built on Slate, their UI framework. The engine has 2 UI tools. Slate and UMG. For in-game UI, UMG is probably easier since it can be built in the editor and Blueprint. Slate UIs is built via C++, but is also used for complex game UI such as inventory. etc.
I also used Unreal Engine 3 via UDK and the editor is cool too.
I used to really like & follow Battlefield in BF1 era. The Frostbite Editor looks really amazing. I really want to touch the editor but o well there's no way to try a proprietary engine. DICE used to show off Frostbite a lot from 2009 to 2017 and showing Battlefield runing in the editor. I don't really see much newer Frostbite videos/screnshots.
Frostbite-era Battlefield does have a few modding tools and they tried to mimic the Frostbite Editor look. It looks pretty. I'm not sure the UI toolkit used.
Refractor editor for BF2 is meh though, and hard to use. Goes the same with Age of Empires IV Essence editor, looks meh. I think both are built on Windows UI tool.
Source's Hammer.. I like Source 2 Hammer but since it cannot be used on Linux I've yet to try it. Hammer for source 1 and goldsrc is okay, and hard to use.
Finally, Unity is what I've used more generally. But I really never dig up what the editor is made of somehow
I assume it's their own UI like Unreal & Godot. But I have no further clue to say.I like UIs because they look amazing. especially game editors because it looks complex. I guess it's like people who like seeing trains. I do like trains as well but I never go out birdwatching a train.
I also like UI styles like Aero or Liquid Glass. Although I may have bias towards Aero due to nostalgia effect.
There's other game engine that have its editor made to look like MS Office UI with ribbons lol. It was NeoAxis engine and I think Stride/Xenko used to look like MS Office too. It looks unique.
Blender also have interesting history with its UI. Few overhaul in 2.5 and 2.8. but the latest Blender have the best UI. Sometimes I feel nostalgic with 2.79 because that's what I started with.
Lastly here's my fav editor UI (visually) in order. may not be 100% accurate to my actual feeling. feeling is super subjective amd can quickly change
- Frostbite Editor
- Unreal Editor 5.x
- CryEngine Sandbox 5.x
- Unigine Editor
- Unreal Editor 4.10+
- S&box editor
- Godot 4 Editor with passivestar's theme
- O3DE
- CryEngine Sandbox 3.x
- Hammer Editor 2
- Unreal Editor 3/UDK
- Unity Editor
- Defold Editor
- Godot 4 editor (default style)
- Overwatch's editor
- Stride editor
- Godot 3 editor (default style)
- NeoAxis
- Age of Empires IV/CoH/Relic Essence Editor
- Crysis Sandbox
- Flax Engine editor
- Fyrox Engine editor
- Hammer Editor 1
- Refractor (BF2) Editor
I made a little desktop app in Godot once for sorting through D&D monsters, can't really release it tho because it requires you to have the whole official monster manual saved as jpegs for it to work
I was able to get the layout pretty nice, but it still kinda breaks with some resolutions because I didn't write any custom layout code
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Locally running AI models is interesting to me - do you have any recommended links or tutorials where to start?
(I looked into radio transmitting a couple month ago but it was way too overwhelming and I settled for a different hobby lol)
ollama is the usual one, they have install instructions on their GitHub i think, and a model repository, etc
You can run something on your cpu if you don't care about speed, or on your gpu although you can't run any more intelligent model without a decent amount of vram
For models to use, I recommend checking out the qwen distilled versions of deepseek r1
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I made a little desktop app in Godot once for sorting through D&D monsters, can't really release it tho because it requires you to have the whole official monster manual saved as jpegs for it to work
I was able to get the layout pretty nice, but it still kinda breaks with some resolutions because I didn't write any custom layout code
Sounds cool! making adaptive UI for so many aspect ratio is sometimes hard. I've made UIs for games in Godot, Unreal and Unity. It's mostly easy if the UI is just anchored to any corner, side, or center. it'll mostly work for any aspect ratio above certain resolution.
But I've never made apps in game engine myself. The most complex UI I've made is inventory UI in Unity. But I didn't make it to be adaptive to the aspect ratio. It only have fixed width & height.
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Mechanics in nature.
There's a protein that's basically a tiny little mobile suite that literally walks along microtubules.
Some bacteria propel themselves with a literal electric motor.
Your ears are more something that belongs under the dashboard of a helicopter than something growing organically... they can literally detect an air-pressure change caused by a pin dropping on the other side of the room, by allowing that pressure to beat on a drum connected to a chain of bones that transmit pressure into a little snail that squirts little jets of fluid over a tiny little field of grass stuck to the inside of the snail shell, and depending on how much grass wiggles, it sends a jolt over to your brain as an interpretation of pitch. AND IT DOESN'T STOP THERE! Connected to that snail are three little hula-hoops made of bone, each oriented to a different plane, and also filled with tiny grass and fluid; and when you move your head along that specific plane, the tiny grass wiggles and that's how your brain knows which way you're moving / gives you a perception of balance.
There's a type of grasshopper with gears in its legs.
I love this shit.
Speaking of interesting sensing capabilities there's also the sea turtles that can detect magnetic fields, although I don't think people understand the actual mechanical parts yet
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Locally running AI models is interesting to me - do you have any recommended links or tutorials where to start?
(I looked into radio transmitting a couple month ago but it was way too overwhelming and I settled for a different hobby lol)
wrote last edited by [email protected]Like i said, look into GPT4All. At least for text gen. Open source and really simple. Download, install, choose a model (for mediocre laptops 4-8B ones are a good size) and chat.
For radios, there are some cheap beginner devices as starting point. Look for the rtl-sdr blog v4 usb dongle for about 40€. You can receive ~1-1700mHz with it, which are loads of interesting frequencies. You can buy a 30€ quansheng uv k5 or uv k6 (which is the same model somehow) with custom rom for a great handheld vhf/uhf radio. You can buy a 30€ SI4732 based ATS-Mini as "world receiver" also with custom roms like hjberndt's.
You could invest some more and get a flipper zero for around 250€ which is a neat tamagochi like IT-Swiss-Army-Knife.
Or a portapack H4M (the new cliffort heath version for the best hackrf one clone) for about 200€. Its the "big brother" of the flipper zero with fascinating capabilities like scanning surrounding ships and planes.
Dont forget proper antennas which can escalate quickly.
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As in plumbing vents or piezometers?
As in wet/dry systems to get water into builds for firefighting.
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Talk nerdy to me
A thing i love to nerd out about is kink, og how the community around it works. But thats fairly 18+ ^^"
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Mechanics in nature.
There's a protein that's basically a tiny little mobile suite that literally walks along microtubules.
Some bacteria propel themselves with a literal electric motor.
Your ears are more something that belongs under the dashboard of a helicopter than something growing organically... they can literally detect an air-pressure change caused by a pin dropping on the other side of the room, by allowing that pressure to beat on a drum connected to a chain of bones that transmit pressure into a little snail that squirts little jets of fluid over a tiny little field of grass stuck to the inside of the snail shell, and depending on how much grass wiggles, it sends a jolt over to your brain as an interpretation of pitch. AND IT DOESN'T STOP THERE! Connected to that snail are three little hula-hoops made of bone, each oriented to a different plane, and also filled with tiny grass and fluid; and when you move your head along that specific plane, the tiny grass wiggles and that's how your brain knows which way you're moving / gives you a perception of balance.
There's a type of grasshopper with gears in its legs.
I love this shit.
I love this shit too. Take a wombat: only animal known to shit in squares.
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Speaking of interesting sensing capabilities there's also the sea turtles that can detect magnetic fields, although I don't think people understand the actual mechanical parts yet
