And so joins the 3rd BScotch Brother. Questions?

bscotchAdam

I wrapped up 4 years of grad school with a successful dissertation defense* and am now with Butterscotch FULL TIME! You'll be hearing from me more and more as I get adapted to the BScotch way of life, but I figured this was a good place to introduce myself and take any questions you may have, about anything (Reddit AMA-style). Ask away!

Much Love,

Adam, The 3rd BScotch Brother

* Entitled in an intentionally-vacuous way that makes it sound like Real Science™: "Quantitative single-cell imaging reveals insulation of morphogenic signal transduction"

bscotchseth

WELCOME TO THE TEAM, ADAM!

bscotchAdam

@BscotchSeth‌ Oh thanks, bro!

fatbard

In a 3-way brawl to the death between you, Seth, and Sam who would win, and why? Also who is the best at video games?

bscotchAdam

@PattyC I can answer both questions at once: In Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Sam and Seth would take turns winning, probably with Seth winning more often, and I would lose EVERY TIME.

fatbard

Favorite game of all time? Don't think you mentioned it in your bio from that other forum thread. Keep in mind I will fully judge you based off your answer  

bscotchseth

I'm pretty sure Sam would trounce both of us at Smash Bros Brawl... He's been practicing for YEARS.

bscotchAdam

PattyC said:

Favorite game of all time?

Half-Life 2. No question.

fatbard

@BscotchAdam‌ Well played. I remember buying a whole new computer rig in college just for that game. Actually ended up playing a ton of CS: Source as well as HL2 death match/CTF after the main solo game. I was at my peak competitive gaming with Counterstrike. I was the 20k/0d guy who everyone claimed was hacking. Also that was the only time in my life I was really involved in a clan, aside from a few MMO stints in high school.

Ah video game memories....

bscotchAdam

@PattyC I also upgraded my PC for HL2, but sadly I did so a few months before it was supposed to come out. It then got delayed by a year, and so my rig was no longer top-of-the-line. Still good enough, though!

Never did really get into CS, or any other competitive game for that matter. Probably for the same reason I sucked at sports: I could never figure out why winning mattered! I prefer the co-op styles of Left 4 Dead and Borderlands.

fatbard

Yeah nowadays I mostly co op with a buddy over Steam. My competitive days are over, and MOBAs really helped drive that nail home, no offense to all the LOL and DOTA 2 folks here. Currently I'm playing Divinity Original Sin. It's freaking awesome, if you like RPGs and have someone to co op with DO IT.

CyberKlown28

Why aren't you making a Super Smash Bros-like game after Crashlands?

bscotchAdam

@CyberKlown28 Well, uh... we don't actually know what game we're making after Crashlands. But we'll probably need several more games, to get a broader array of playable characters, before we have our characters all fight to the death!

fatbard

How bout just a brawler game where there's just 3 characters: you guys. Then folks can play as Adam and get sweet sweet revenge.

Ulnarevern

What will you do on Crashlands?

And on a scale from 1 to badass, how succesful was you dissertation defense? (also, congrats! I believe it's quite an achievement, right?)

CyberKlown28

Worth a try.

When is Crashlands coming out? We know you got the inside knowledge!

bscotchAdam

@Ulnarevern‌ Somewhere around the badass mark, I SUPPOSE, since the committee didn't even deliberate before unanimous agreement  .

At the moment, I'm starting with implementing shaders. I did most of my dissertation research using automated microscopy, for which I wrote programs to identify cells within microscopy images and then measure all kinds of image-based properties of those cells. So I'm porting that skillset over to shader development, which is just another kind of image analysis. I'll try to post some results around here soon.

Otherwise I'll just be solving problems as they come along. In particular, there are a bunch of laborious tasks that I think can be automated (such as exporting sprites from Sam‌'s giant Inkscape files), and we need to get some server stuff set up to PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE.

@CyberKlown28 Nope, no inside knowledge here! I mean, I know when we think it's going to come out, and the game is already in an amazing state so I think we'll be on schedule. I won't jump the gun until we've all agreed to announce, though (sorry!). Seth and Sam have done amazing work, and I'm pretty sure this game turned into something way bigger than they were expecting.

Ulnarevern

Somewhere around the badass mark, I SUPPOSE, since the committee didn't even deliberate before unanimous agreement

That's really badass! Congratulations!

Now, you can go for ULTRABADASS with your bros!

And about your cell identifying project, a friend of mine worked on a similar project with a reasercher in France. He told me it was way harder than he though (he is 20, but already takes part in some crazy projects that sounds awesome). I don't remeber what happened next. However that sounds pretty similar.

Another question: even if you don't have a precise project for the future, what future would you like to write with your bros for Bscotch? (I know there are some elements of answer about multiplayer n stuff but i would like to know more)

bscotchAdam

Ulnarevern said:

Another question: even if you don't have a precise project for the future, what future would you like to write with your bros for Bscotch? (I know there are some elements of answer about multiplayer n stuff but i would like to know more)

At the moment, I can't really say. One of the key things I learned while in grad school, and from learning programming prior to and during that time, is that one must become completely immersed in a system before being able to see the ways in which that system can be manipulated. In the case of programming, non-programmers have no idea how useful programming can be, because they cannot be aware of its utility without already being able to do it. Same deal with doing science: you can't ask useful questions until you become deeply familiar with the methods of your field. Seth and Sam have some plans for the future of Butterscotch, and I'm going to help pull them there, but I'll need to be immersed for a while before I start to think about changing the system.

That said, there are a few things that I would like to have happen in the coming years. The most important is multiplayer gaming, since nothing is better than playing games with other people. The next is a move to non-mobile systems. While the limitations of mobile platforms give us some useful constraints, those limitations are beginning to be a problem. Crashlands is a big game, and it will run on mobile, but there are many cool concepts that had to be scrapped in order to make that happen. So I see a future where we spit out short mobile games a few times a year while we work on larger games for more powerful platforms.

CyberKlown28

So your next 'major' game could be PC?  

bscotchseth

It COULD!

fatbard

Question: will Adam be moving to STL? Wondering if I'll see you more in physical form instead of digital.

bscotchAdam

@PattyC Eventually! My wife just stared year 2 of a 3-year residency program (she's a pediatrician) here in Dallas, so I'm stuck until she's finished. The goal is to move to StL right after, so we're hoping that she can find a fellowship that she likes (and that likes her back) at WashU, SLU, or some others.

In the meantime, I'll be traveling to StL with some frequency, a frequency that will increase with the success of the studio so that we can afford more air travel!

Ulnarevern

@BscotchAdam Thanks for the answer!

Please tell me that even if you consider creating multiplayer games you won't stop making awesome solo games. Soooo... In you future plans, if you create multiplayer games, will it still be playable alone?

bscotchAdam

@Ulnarevern‌ I have no idea! Going from single to multiplayer adds a lot of extra development difficulty and time,  in the same way that going from 2D to 3D does. So, we'll probably try to add minor multiplayer components to most games, but I doubt we'll go full-multi for all games.

Ulnarevern

It's a big weight off my chest.  

CyberKlown28

What are your favorite bands?

bscotchAdam

@CyberKlown28‌ I listen to nearly anything and rarely even know who is singing what I listen to. Pandora has been fantastic for this reason, since I can just sit back, have random music play, and then just declare that I like or don't like things. My main Pandora station is based on Muse, but now contains a diverse array of genres (including dubstep, classical, various rock flavors, and a smattering of rap). Otherwise I generally enjoy listening to unique or really spectacular female vocalists in any genre.

CyberKlown28

Is a Crashlands announcement coming soon?  

B3A5T

What is it that you do as part of the Butterscotch team?? 

bscotchAdam

@CyberKlown28‌ UHHHHHHH. I'll let @BscotchSam‌ or @BscotchSeth‌ take that one.

@B3A5T I answered this a bit in an earlier comment. In short, I'm getting shaders figured out so that we can add some neat visual effects to Crashlands and future games. I'll also be working on analytics, since Seth and Sam have not had time to do so. I'll likely take a more general coding role on whatever game comes post-Crashlands.