Published in Cotten.IO·Jan 25Desktop Safari Still Hates instanceof TouchEventPicturdle Dev Journal: When TouchEvents Attack — How to lose 20 minutes of development time in Javascript: referencing TouchEvent when doing, well, pretty much anything in Safari on a MacBook. Yes, it’s 2023 and some builds of Safari still don’t include TouchEvent. I was working on Picturdle’s button events (fixing swiping/sliding), when one of my interns…Java Script2 min readJava Script2 min read
Published in Future of Gaming DAO·Jan 5Making Metaverse NFTs a Little More TrustworthyCritics of Non-Fungible Token (NFT) have some good points. There *are* some serious flaws in the vision for decentralized digital assets that current Web3 standards don’t address. Why don’t we take a lesson from Web 2.0 and at least fix an easy, low-hanging fruit: making NFT metadata a little more…Gaming13 min readGaming13 min read
Published in Cotten.IO·Dec 4, 2022ChatGPT Isn’t Magical Witchcraftand isn’t coming for all our jobs. — I know lots of people are very excited about the viral posts showing how well ChatGPT can emulate text adventures, MUDs, and Linux VMs, but how well does it really hold up under a cursory examination? Frederic Besse & Jonas Degrave have been sharing some super interesting stuff that’s been…AI5 min readAI5 min read
Published in Cotten.IO·Oct 3, 2022That Time We Burned Down Players’ Houses in Ultima OnlineUltima Online is celebrating its 25th anniversary! You know what that means, right? Story time! In the spirit of #gamedev and inspired by the classic UO postmortem video by Raph Koster, et al, I thought it’d be fun to share a few stories from the middle years of Ultima Online…Ultima Online13 min readUltima Online13 min read
May 26, 2022Member-onlyBehind the Red Line is Where Children Stand to Avoid a Shooter’s…I was helping my wife clean up her classroom at the end of the school year when I noticed the red strip of tape in the corner of the room.Gun Violence1 min readGun Violence1 min readAmerican Children Are Taught To Stay Safe from Gunfire By Avoiding a Shooter’s Line-of-Sight from the Classroom DoorwayBehind the Red Line is Where Children Stand to Avoid a Shooter’s…----
Published in Cotten.IO·Mar 21, 2022GDC 2022 React. Metaverse Games: State of Play and OpportunitiesReactions to Dom Tait’s (Omdia) talk on current and future developments in Metaverse/VR technology, including reviews of games like Fortnite and Minecraft. Defining the Metaverse Dom Tait begins by providing a fairly abstract definition for the Metaverse, calling it: “A virtual shared space where users can do everything they’d expect from the real…Metaverse6 min readMetaverse6 min read
Published in Cotten.IO·Jan 1, 2022Member-onlyWhy I Quit My Job On New Year’s(to Found My Startup) — Hi! I’m Tim “Draconi” Cotten, a veteran game developer from the days of Ultima Online, and I decided to quit my comfy CTO job writing enterprise software and create a new Metaverse startup called Scrypted. But why on New Year’s Day? Because it’s my birthday — my 40th birthday —…Startup7 min readStartup7 min read
Published in Cotten.IO·Dec 23, 2021Member-onlyA Christmas Miracle: Justin Kan and Fractal Team Donate $150k to Scam VictimsThe Fractal Team, led by Justin Kan — creator of Twitch — donated $150k out of their own pockets to victims of the infamous December 21st, 2021 Discord hack. In an incredible turnaround for the Fractal Team — whose community suffered a Discord hack that tricked more than 330 fans…Blockchain3 min readBlockchain3 min read
Published in Cotten.IO·Dec 21, 2021Member-onlyThe $150k Discord Crypto HackHow 370 Crypto Fans Lost it All in 10 Minutes — On December 21st, 2021 the Fractal Team’s Discord server was compromised: the official #announcements channel advertised a malicious link claiming to reward loyal fans with a special NFT Airdrop. Within minutes an automated script had stolen more than 862 SOL (approx. $154,590) from the community. Justin Kan — creator of…Hacking4 min readHacking4 min read
Published in Cotten.IO·May 6, 2021Member-onlyPHP Bugs: Property ProblemsPHP Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$TrackDetails in /app/vendor/fedex/SoapTrackClientStatus.php on line 58 PHP doesn’t mind very much if you try to access a missing property (member variable) from an object. It just throws you an E_NOTICE and returns NULL, confident that your logic will properly handle its falsey nature. But much like…Programming5 min readProgramming5 min read
