Intuitive Education Games Nic Barker 2021-11-08 | Intuitive Education Games are video games that are carefully aligned with real world systems, so that by playing them and having fun, the player subconsciously learns something relevant to real world knowledge or skills.I've just released a new intuitive education game called "Matcha", which is a puzzle game based on the Korean writing system, Hangul. You can find out more about it here: delphiniumgames.com/matchaThe ideas in this talk were originally inspired by this wonderful video from Jonathon Blow, "Talk: Video Games and the Future of Education"youtube.com/watch?v=qWFScmtiC44
Why Is Math So Hard To Learn? Nic Barker 2023-11-15 | Some of my thoughts about why math is one of the most feared subjects at school and why so many people say "I'm not a math person". Very little prior math knowledge is required to understand the concepts in this video, as long as you've got basic arithmetic you're good.If you're interested, there is a scientific paper that investigates the confusing that the concept of "minus" introduces among new students titled:"The Role of Mathematical Symbols in the Development of Number Conceptualization: The Case of the Minus Sign".I also make educational games, check out http://delphiniumgames.com/matcha if you're interested.
Untitled Game - Dev Log 2 Nic Barker 2023-09-28 | I've made some good progress since the last update, including completely overhauling the look and feel into a "cloud mining" game. I'm super please with the direction the game is heading in, and I'm aiming to move on to getting a nice game loop completed next.
Practical CPU Optimisation For Games Nic Barker 2023-09-13 | The creation of this talk was generously sponsored by my employer CerebralFix (cerebralfix.com)I originally gave this talk at NZGDC 2023. It gives a high level overview of what makes the CPU go fast and slow, and provides some practical examples of how simple techniques can give you big performance returns in your games.It draws a lot of inspiration from:"Data Oriented Design And C++" by Mike Actonyoutube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc"Practical DOD" by Andrew Kelley:vimeo.com/649009599
Untitled Game - Dev Log 1 Nic Barker 2023-08-30 | The first developer log for a new game I'm working on, which combines Terraria with algebra. It's been a blast to work on so far, and I've got a small prototype together that I'm now starting to flesh out.I usually post daily updates on my work on this game on my Twitter: twitter.com/nicbarkeragainThe game "Matcha" I'm referring to at the beginning can be found here: delphiniumgames.com/matcha
The Logarithmic Brain & The Rarity Paradox Nic Barker 2022-02-11 | This video is about our flawed human perception of numbers, and how our inability to correctly reason about large numbers can manifest in our life and society.scientificamerican.com/article/a-natural-log
Designing Difficulty in Video Games Nic Barker 2022-01-10 | A talk about the concept of "Difficulty" in video games, what makes games easy and what makes them hard, and a look at the different types of difficulty you can use to create engaging challenges in video games.
Programming - The Single Source of Truth Principle Nic Barker 2021-12-29 | A technical programming talk about a rule of thumb called the "Single Source of Truth Principle".In summary:You should only ever have one copy of mutable data.If you have multiple sources of truth, eventually you'll modify one and forget to modify the other.It's ok to have copies of immutable data, but they won't necessarily stay that way.
Intuitive Education and the Mental Warehouse Nic Barker 2021-05-14 | This talk examines two broad types of education - intuitive and explicit - and the way they are taught in the education system and the workplace.
Programming - Naming Things Is Easy Nic Barker 2020-11-28 | This is a talk about naming things in software. The title is a joke - of course naming things is hard. BUT - "If you don't create the thing, you don't need to name the thing".The easiest way to name something well is to not name it. Ask yourself - "Is this abstraction or factorisation worth the complexity of the name that I'm giving it?"Every variable name, function name, file name, directory name, class name, interface name, argument name, type name etc that you add to your codebase is increasing the cognitive overhead and making it harder to understand and maintain.So be careful when you add new names!
