GameDev

Manjaro + Unity

I’ve run into issues with manjaro and unity in the past. I thought I’d just get a post together on what I’ve done this time around to get it up and running again. This time around it took me a little less than an hour to get it working but I don’t want to keep hunting for the problems I’ve solved in the past.

From a fresh install (with proprietary drivers):

Enable AUR in package manager. Install yay. Do a little update.

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S base-devel
sudo pacman -S dotnet-sdk
yay -S unityhub

When selecting how the dependencies compile… Choose All and None (or All if you care about the diffs)

Launch unityhub.

Download whatever version of Unity is required in the hub – I’ve been using 2021.3 for awhile.

First launch of Unity failed… or never really started and hung on an asset refresh. I recalled having to deal with bee_backend last time I did this, so:

cd ~/Unity/Hub/Editor/2021.3.45f2/Editor/Data
cp bee_backend bee_backend_real
vi bee_backend

#! /bin/bash
args=("$@")
for ((i=0; i<"${#args[@]}"; ++i))
do
    case ${args[i]} in
        --stdin-canary)
            unset args[i];
            break;;
    esac
done
${0}_real "${args[@]}"   

chmod +x ./bee_backend

Launching Unity again I was faced with “compilation” errors because libssl wasn’t found.

Install openssl-1.1 but… I had to do this using the package manager and the AUR.

Download Rider for Linux

… and that was it! I hope!

Website

Static WordPress

I moved all of my WordPress install to a local linux machine running on my home network. It has no access to the outside world. This is the first post I’m creating on this new instance too!

I think used some inspiration from https://osric.com/chris/accidental-developer/2024/01/converting-a-wordpress-site-to-a-static-site-using-wget/ to kick off my process. Oh, and Claude helped too.

Awhile back I noticed my Ubuntu host running on Lightsail was frequently in need of restarting. After this process the only notable thing running on the instance is apache. I stopped mysql, I removed php, I cleaned up other sites, rules in my config, etc. I also don’t care who accesses it any longer (so those naughty things in my access log looking for xmlrpc.php don’t matter any longer!)

If you’ve been thinking about building up a static WordPress, I highly recommend going with it. Just a little bit of elbow grease and you’ll have a working publishing system in no time. I’ll publish my simple code to GitHub and come back to provide a link here when I do.

Uncategorized

Claude

I started tinkering with Claude Code and I’ve found it to be an excellent rubber duck. You know, like the rubber duck you have on your monitor that you talk to and explain your code and ponder the meaning of it all?

Claude is like the rubber duck but you can get a response back that will almost always be helpful. It might not be the right answer but I have yet to find a case where it doesn’t put me on the right track to the answer I need. And sometimes I even ask Claude to implement something for me, say, a method for checking if a point is inside a wedge.

Is AI going to make us all irrelevant? Hardly. It’s going to make some of us really good at what we do. Potentially more productive too. Don’t buy into the hype. Take the scientific approach. Test the waters. See what it can do and where the edges start to fray. I am very satisfied with Claude Code. Your mileage may vary. Find one that works for you.

GameDev

Debuggery

I was having a terrible time finding if a sword slash hit a barrel or not… which, it clearly did not because the barrel did not trigger a collision. After numerous attempts to figure out what was going on, I started on a path to debug … well … the path the collider was on! So I wrote a script.

I’m using box colliders since everything I’m doing does not require precision. This makes it easy to script up something to highlight the path my colliders have been on.

Continue reading Debuggery →
Website

Updated

I haven’t been doing a good job housekeeping my website. I recently discovered I was running a very old version of Ubuntu so it was time to dust off some linux skills and get crackin’ at porting my site to a new image.

One of the most tedious things about setting up a new site is making sure you have everything covered. I don’t have a script to automagically port one site to another. Instead, I’m going to dig through my bash history and capture everything I just did here.

Continue reading Updated →
Uncategorized

Friday post for the new year

I thought I might try a series of posts on Fridays this year. Maybe not every Friday, but as we used to say… a post will be here on A Friday.

Lots of things going on lately, chief among them is I started a new job. Really happy I did and you can hit up my LinkedIn profile if you’re curious where I went, whether I’m happy about the move, or if we’re hiring. (here’s a hint: I’m very happy about I love the new gig)

I’ll make the first one brief. I’m not really sure what I’ll cover in these posts yet. I could cover some technical bits (like how I’m ramping up at work – doing bug fixes by first creating end-to-end tests that confirm the bug, and implementing the fix!) or I could talk about some social agenda bits that are going on around the Pacific North West (you should consider supporting Hope Link). I could talk about hobbies I don’t have enough time to do such as painting, brewing, … or guitar. Or I might even cover a video game or two (the new Pokemon for Switch is just great btw).

I’ll leave it here for now. The exercise is to just get posts going.

Website

Up and running with Lightsail

It happened yet again… I went back to the billing console in AWS and I realized my reserved instance was no longer reserved… my bill was double. Yay.

So I opted to check out Lightsail. It’s an AWS service that makes virtual private servers on the cloud easy. I opted for a relatively small instance to run my website and now I’m only paying $10 a month. I went with an Ubuntu image and it was easy to move all my bits from my previous reserved instance over to Lightsail. Now I’m not going to worry about my monthly bill surprising me next time!