🎲 Issue #8 - If I Crash, Ask Becca

Here’s a holiday weekend tip for you, free of charge.

IF you have a small block of free time coming up and IF you plan on redoing your office space (this could be for any reason, or because you have to stash a new cat there because she can’t be alone at work for a week while you’re closed), then -and this part is no IF, but DO- listen to your wife/spouse/husband/pet/houseplant when they remind you to pick up all the shit in the middle of your floor as you stagger around shifting furniture.

Or, as a random and super non-specific hypothetical, you could trip and bang your pinky toe on a ten-pound kettlebell, followed by an aluminum green screen storage crate, and finally into a metal ammo canister.

I knew my holiday weekend would be filled with spectacular red and orange hues, but I had expected sunsets, not an array of bruising. 🌅

Anyway. If you’re reading this via email, check the small SECRET NOTE BELOW.

Creator Stack

Outdoors

If, for some reason, Becca and I found ourselves in one of the typical "start of a survival game" scenarios where the plane crashed and now we're on some deserted island somewhere type deal - hands down, she'd survive longer than me.

I can't even fucking swim. So I'm a little screwed if we land in open water.

But even besides that, while there's a lot I can do that she can't, like some of the strength-based shit or adapting to a variety of temperatures (like a lizard, she only functions under a heat lamp), I'm absolutely screwed in one of the most basic and impactful of ways. What the fuck would I even eat?

I know every guy thinks he'd be taking down deer and elk and rabbits and just basking in a meat glow, but if you've ever watched Alone, you know that shit is hard enough even with the proper weapons or tools.
But you know who has it SO EASY when it comes to food?

Becca.

She'll eat fish, and I won't. That gives her a far better shot at protein (assuming she has access to a body of water) than I'll have. Actually, she also loves eggs, so possibly turtle eggs could be on the menu. Hmm.

But the far larger part of her diet is plants. And plants can't even run away from you. Provided she doesn't eat the wrong ones and off herself (and obviously depending on climate and season), she could be surrounded by not only a host of food, but also medication. And! Plant parts can be used for clothing, gear, and more.

If you're the type to munch on plants and berries in the great outdoors (helllooo wild raspberries!), check out the Black Forager. Alexis, an OH native (how wild would it be if I somehow stumbled across her while out on a hike??), has an entertaining AND informative platform and can be found on YouTube and Instagram. She even did a TED Talk! Her video series POISON or SNACK is pretty awesome.

So, yeah, if I ever take a solo flight and disappear, reach out to Becca. Make sure she knows I died doing what I loved: panicking and refusing to eat sea creatures. (Minus king crab claws and lobster tails, but I ASSUME I will have a hard time finding those, wherever I crash land.)

Gaming Thoughts

So, Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney finally addressed developers always pointing the finger at the engine, saying that most of these UE5 performance issues aren’t on Unreal, they’re on the devs. His point: too many studios build their shiny game for high-end rigs, then only bother checking how it runs on mid-tier hardware at the very end.

Unreal’s a beast, sure, and it’s not without its quirks and shit, but the whole “you need a NASA computer to run UE5” line has gotten old as hell. (I am tired of fucking hearing it, for one.) It’s become the go-to excuse for games that run like shit. I’ve seen it play out enough times: game launches, it’s running like ass, players complain, and the devs just shrug and say “that’s Unreal for ya.”

Look at Skye: The Misty Isle and especially The Gold River Project. They’re always throwing around sky-high requirements (TGRP is clearly optimizing now, since the requirements seem to have come down from the original 64GB of RAM and crazy-tier GPUs) and acting like UE is the villain. And yeah, they’re a two-man team, but there are literal solo devs out there doing better optimization on their own.
A small team doesn’t mean you get a free pass to ignore performance until you’re backed into a corner.

That said, there are fair points from the other side. Folks on Reddit have pointed out that UE5 isn’t blameless: the engine is heavier by design than UE4, and some of its flashy features like Nanite and Lumen can tank performance if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even if you disable them, there’s still overhead baked in. So yes, sometimes the engine itself is clunkier than it should be.

But here’s the thing: show me on the doll where folks are asking for games to run on grandma’s laptop with 2GB of VRAM.

There’s gotta be a middle ground between “runs on a potato” and “needs 390293293 gigs of RAM just to open the menu.” Pretending that gap doesn’t exist is what drives players nuts, and blaming Unreal every time just makes it worse. (And start optimizing your shit sooner.)

I had planned to add new content this week, but I ended up focusing on housekeeping instead. Some parts of the Hashtag onboarding process, and even a bit of the content, had reached a point where it was easy for folks to get lost or stuck on what to check out next.

I built a new About Page on the website, updated the newsletter landing page, and rewrote the confirmation email text. (That landing page is the one you’d want to share if you’re talking us up. You can send people to the main archive too, but it only shows the last six posts — so if they want the full thing, they’ll need to sign up anyway.)

I updated the tag cloud and changed a sidebar (formerly ‘Popular Posts’) to the top five most commented posts, which will hopefully lead to folks commenting more! (You can find this down the main page on the right-hand side.) I also popped around to many of the SUPER IMPORTANT posts, like the 5 Pillars, and cleaned them up: fixing dead links, linking to newer pieces of content that expand on ideas/stances, etc.

The goal is to make sure new eyes can get to the solid posts faster and understand what we’re about without wandering around confused. So, if you've noticed any stumbling blocks in your personal onboarding to Hashtag, let me know?

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be back to adding Upcoming Games, since I think I’ve finally wrestled most of the backlog: both Hashtag-related and for new folks discovering the project.

So, let me throw it back to you: what’s the biggest survival gaming or EDC problem you’re currently trying to solve?

- Jordan