✅ Isopod touched

one of the worst parts of #Minecraft to me has always been inventory management. I haven’t been able to figure out any kind of systematic way to do it. as soon as I have things nicely sorted out, I’ll pick up some new items and those will throw my inventory organization into chaos. and mods like Inventory Tweaks help a bit, but not nearly enough

but I just tried Inventory Profiles Next and omg I’m in love. it lets you lock slots so that they’re visually distinct from non-locked slots and aren’t affected by sorting - which I’m going to use to mark items that I want to keep with me. it also lets you tell Minecraft “whenever I pick up an item, try to put it in my inventory first and not my hotbar” which is going to help me a lot with not feeling overwhelmed by my own hotbar lol

it also seems to have a system for switching between different inventory profiles, where different items go in different slots depending on which profile you’re using - which solves another huge problem that I’ve had in the past, of how to quickly and consistently change my hotbar depending on my current task

anyway idk I’m so excited to use this thing. I feel like it’s singlehandedly going to solve my single biggest pain point in Minecraft and turn the hectic chaos of inventory management into something manageable and even fun

(also it’s completely clientside! I love that. so you can play on a vanilla Minecraft server with Inventory Profiles Next and it won’t cause any issues)

@Shivaekul ooh I hope you have fun!

Reminder to everyone on the TL for 2026: It’s going to be another tough year. Don’t forget to have some fun, and don’t feel guilty for it. You need it to survive.

@fargate omg you actually go to TTRPG conventions and demo systems? that would absolutely terrify me lol but I bet you can meet a lot of really cool people that way! and you must be so comfortable using TTRPG systems (not to mention improvising and roleplaying) to be able to do that

@fargate oohhh - the concept of a tutorial NPC for a TTRPG is so interesting to me. I don’t think that ever would have occurred to me as an option. and I really like their character design too - I get a real sense of who they are just from how they look and pose

thanks for tagging me btw! 💙

I just thought of a really good metaphor that explains why using Unity feels so bad to me, despite the fact that I usually enjoy writing code (when I do it on my own terms)

(I just read Thing Explainer so please pardon how weird my word choices are lol - I’m really enjoying writing in this style)

so, when I write code it feels like I’m building a beautiful machine. I get to pick out all of the parts that go in it and if I can’t find the perfect part I get to make that part myself

sometimes I put other people’s parts into my machine, but those parts are always one of these:

• parts that do something so simple that I could make them myself, but I just don’t want to
• boxes that do something really ugly that I don’t want to think about. on the outside of the box, there are buttons and levers that let me understand the ugly thing in a really simple way instead. and I can understand the really simple way very deeply so I still feel like I’m in control of what happens

after I’m done building the machine I can feel really proud that I made it all from scratch. I know what every piece of it does, and I’ve tested all of them, so I know for sure that it will always work. I have to know that my machine will always work or I can’t feel proud of it

it also feels good that I was in control of how every part of the machine works. I don’t have to build it in the same way that everyone else builds similar machines - I found my own way to build it that’s beautiful to me

but when I’m using Unity - it doesn’t feel like I’m building my own machine. it feels like I’m living inside a really big machine that someone else built, and I don’t understand how it works. inside the machine there are tons of buttons and levers and switches and they’re all labeled vague things like “play particles” or “stop particles” - or they’re labeled really confusing things like “secondary axis”

the Unity machine is way too big for me to ever understand. I’m not sure if anyone really understands it - though lots of people probably understand parts of it

if I want to do something in the Unity machine, I need to press buttons and pull levers until I figure out a combination that works. and once I’ve figured out the combination, I can be proud that I made the machine do what I want, but it doesn’t feel like I built my own machine. it doesn’t really feel like I understand how the buttons and levers work either. it just feels like I eventually found some levers and buttons that are working okay for now, but later the whole machine might break because I used them

if I want, I can make my own small machines to push buttons and pull levers for me. but those machines actually go inside of the Unity machine. so instead of building a machine out of other people’s small parts, I’m adding my own small parts to Unity instead

so I don’t feel in control at all - it’s actually the opposite. Unity is in control of my own machines, and I don’t get to tell Unity what to do with them. I don’t even get to control how I build my own machines, because Unity has to be able to use them, so I have to build the machines to please Unity instead of myself

I also can’t figure out for sure if my machine will always work, because I would have to test all of Unity to be sure, and nobody understands all of Unity. so I can’t ever be proud of making a working machine because I can’t know for sure if my machine will always work

so instead of feeling proud and smart because I made a machine, I feel small and lost while I try to please someone else’s machine that I don’t understand

I’m worried that Unity will always feel like a big scary machine that I’m lost in. that I’ll never feel like I get to control what it does - and I’ll never be able to prove that what I make will always work - so I can never feel proud of what I make

I’m also worried that if I want to make a machine that other people will want to use, I’ll always have to make it inside of a big scary machine like Unity. I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel safe or comfortable doing that - let alone enjoy it

I really hope I’m wrong about this though because I’d love to be able to enjoy making software that’s useful enough to be used by people other than just me

like I want my favorite hobby to be actually good for something, without it also being a joyless slog

I’m starting to think that most of the time, writing software is actually really unfun

I’ve just been in a bubble where I use languages that I like to solve problems that I find fun, and the code only has to work for me

There's a special place in hell for people who post the closed captions in all capital letters. When you are reading braille, whether a letter is capitalized or not is indicated by a capital sign, and if everything is in THERE are multiple capital signs that take up a bunch of space on the braille display and when you're working with only 40 cells and eight of those cells are taken up with information relating to capitalization, it is incredibly frustrating! Anyway, these are the things that I think about during #DeafBlindMovieNight

@fargate hehehe! I’ve definitely said that before - and I think it’s very applicable here

@helenaisvibing @ShadowJonathan that’s when you get some slaps and cover up the ads

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