https://madned.substack.com/p/a-talk-with-computer-gaming-pioneer

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qc00bp/a_talk_with_computer_gaming_pioneer_walter_bright/

https://news.ycombinator.com/newest at about 5:29 AM PST

Now on the front page at #6

https://news.ycombinator.com/

On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:13:37 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> Now on the front page at #6
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/

Btw I ported it to D2 some time ago. Do you want the source?

On 10/20/2021 9:13 AM, Basile B. wrote:
> On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:01:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> _"Eventually, my clandestine activities were discovered and the computer division demanded that I be reprimanded"_
> 
> very cool anecdote.

Having upper management go to bat for me against bureaucratic fiefdoms was very gratifying.

On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 20:33:50 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 10/20/2021 9:13 AM, Basile B. wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 20 October 2021 at 13:01:21 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> _"Eventually, my clandestine activities were discovered and the computer division demanded that I be reprimanded"_
>> 
>> very cool anecdote.
>
> Having upper management go to bat for me against bureaucratic fiefdoms was very gratifying.

I mentioned this anecdote to a friend of mine who is aiming to work in aerospace, he didn't actually believe me. Totally unimaginable today with all these finite element solvers available that run really fast on commodity hardware, although I think the art/intuition of sitting down and actually doing the maths on some mechanical component might be going the way of the dodo.

Hi Walter --

Very nice interview. I have to admit to long knowing about, but never playing, Empire. I suppose I will have to remedy that someday!

~Brian

On 10/20/2021 3:47 PM, max haughton wrote:
> I mentioned this anecdote to a friend of mine who is aiming to work in aerospace, he didn't actually believe me. Totally unimaginable today with all these finite element solvers available that run really fast on commodity hardware, although I think the art/intuition of sitting down and actually doing the maths on some mechanical component might be going the way of the dodo.

In the flight controls group, I was probably the first engineer to use a computer. I wrote my own programs to do things like matrix inversions.

The rest used calculators, and a method of using mechanical drafting tools to do calculations, which I had no idea how to do.

The 757 was the last airplane to have a full size wooden mockup built. The mockup was to check clearances so that two assemblies didn't occupy the same space. Internal space is awfully tight on a jet, and everything has to fit in somewhere.

Computerized drafting was coming, but it wasn't good enough at the time. Pen and ink had its last stand with the 757.

On 10/20/2021 4:53 PM, Brian wrote:
> Very nice interview. I have to admit to long knowing about, but never playing, Empire. I suppose I will have to remedy that someday!

Don't start if you have a deadline looming!

On 21/10/2021 5:50 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> In the flight controls group, I was probably the first engineer to use a computer. I wrote my own programs to do things like matrix inversions.

Ugh, I've been working on fixing bugs/improving my matrix struct recently. With the bug fixes for inversions/Gaussian elimination.

The latest bug was with floating point, multiply one number with another *should* result in another and it even writeln's to that value! But it wasn't that value. Which of course meant... the resulting multiplication was like E-6. Tiny but it threw off everything with chromatic adaption.

Honestly? If I had fixed point or IEEE-754 to choose from, I'd probably go with fixed point every time.

Anyway hearing about all this is quite interesting!