behind the scenes

AppWizard
July 27, 2025
The author played the game "Kaizen: A Factory Story" during a 45-minute subway ride, which involves optimizing product assembly lines set in 1980s Japan. The gameplay includes solving puzzles to create items like binoculars and camcorders by connecting various components using gadgets and automating their functions. The author faced challenges in assembling a camcorder, particularly in integrating a tape deck, and found inspiration for a solution while walking to a bar. The game emphasizes the decline of handcrafted goods in mass production and celebrates the creativity of engineers behind the scenes.
AppWizard
July 19, 2025
Five years have passed since the initial leak of the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake. Ubisoft has not provided concrete updates on the remake or Splinter Cell during its recent Annual General Meeting. Chief Financial Officer Frederick Duguet indicated that the Sands of Time Remake is slated for release in Ubisoft's 2026 fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2026, with speculation suggesting a potential holiday 2025 release.
AppWizard
July 12, 2025
The Minecraft Movie is in development and aims to capture the essence of the game while introducing a narrative for both gamers and newcomers. The film will explore themes of adventure, friendship, and imagination, featuring familiar elements such as crafting, building, and exploring. A talented team of writers and directors is working on the project, which includes a mix of seasoned actors and rising stars in the cast. The film will utilize cutting-edge visual effects, feature a lineup of voice actors, and include an original music score. Anticipation is building within the gaming community as the release date approaches.
AppWizard
June 27, 2025
Warren Spector clarified his role in the creation of Deus Ex during a video for the game's 25th anniversary, stating that he did not create it alone and expressing pride in its lasting impact. A remastered version of the game's opening cutscene for the PlayStation 2 was recently unveiled, indicating renewed interest in the franchise. The future of Deus Ex is uncertain following the collapse of Embracer Group's deal, which halted several projects, but there are possibilities for a revival, including the potential involvement of Nightdive Studios with the original title and Invisible War.
Tech Optimizer
June 24, 2025
The task involved querying a table named user_events to retrieve the most recent event for every user. A conventional SQL query was used, which performed poorly in production despite returning correct results. The inner query groups the entire table by user to find the latest event time, requiring Postgres to scan 100 million rows and perform 5 million aggregations, resulting in a temporary table with 5 million rows. The outer query then checks each row against this large list, significantly degrading performance due to the repetitive evaluations across the vast dataset.
AppWizard
June 19, 2025
Valve is enhancing Steam's in-game frame rate counter by transforming it into a comprehensive overlay that displays frames per second (FPS) and provides insights into CPU and GPU status, including utilization levels, clock speeds, and temperatures. The new beta version of the Steam app introduces this performance monitor, currently available only to beta testers on Windows PCs, with plans to extend similar capabilities to other platforms like SteamOS in the future. The overlay can be customized to show only the FPS counter and allows users to adjust its transparency and positioning on the screen. It will help players identify if frame generation technologies, such as Nvidia's DLSS, AMD's FSR, and Intel's XeSS, are active and highlight instances of micro-stutter. This update aims to simplify the process of understanding game performance metrics for gamers, reducing reliance on third-party tools.
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