303: Spaceships Built for Cats

Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod.

Nice Segue, LLC

Smart Phone, Society & Culture, Ios, Apple, Amazon, Smartphone, Tesla, Tech Pod, Tech, Phone, Technology, Space, Android, Google, Microsoft, Science, Videogame, Video Game, Games, Electric Car, Techpod

4.8 • 521 Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2025

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For years, Blendo Games has been releasing its unique brand of systems-driven games on open source id Software tech, most recently with this year's Skin Deep running on a modified version of the Doom 3 engine. Sounds like a Tech Pod topic to us! We're delighted to be joined by Brendon Chung and Sanjay Madhav this week to dig into all the ins and outs of their process making Skin Deep, including working with 20-year-old code, making smart use of features that existed in the original game, restoring algorithms whose patents have since expired, figuring out what to enhance and what to rip out, and plenty of other intriguing subjects.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You ever think about what words mean sometimes, Brad?
0:03.5	I try. I know someone who talks for a living. I try not to. So the other day I told my daughter she was having a problem with something. I was like, well, here's another way to do it. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Mm-hmm. And she was like, wait, what the hell did you just say? Why are you skinning cats? Here we go. All right. This is a
0:21.8	Gen Alpha crusade against animal cruelty. I guess we're doing now. All right. Go ahead. And then I thought about it for a minute. I was like, wow, that is truly a horrifying thing to say. I guess. I did not like really and truly. Why would you skin a cat, Brad? Never really thought about where came from before actually. Yeah, I don't want to skin a cat. I don't like I think this is a country thing
0:22.7	probably. Probably, I don't want to skin a cat.
0:58.1	I don't, like, I think this is a country thing, probably. Probably. I mean, that's pretty universally used or understood, right? I mean, like, you know, young people notwithstanding who have just never heard it before, but I always thought that was a pretty universal kind of idiom, right? Okay, so I'm going to the Bellevue News Democrat, which is a newspaper from I don't know where.
0:58.7	And it says that it's a centuries old thing that people used to say.
1:04.2	Okay.
1:04.5	So from 1840 and earlier, 1678 is the first time that they found a recorded version of this, which was,
1:11.9	there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging.
1:14.3	Whoa.
1:15.0	This is good God, man.
1:16.8	I'm not going to make any more flip jokes about animal cruelty, actually.
1:20.9	Well, I wonder if they were talking about like a scurvy sea dog at that point in 1678.
1:25.9	Okay.
1:26.1	Well, those guys just have it coming.
1:44.4	Yeah. Look, this is, this is, there's a lot going on here. I feel like this is dangerously close to an old Saturday live bit from like 1977 or 78. Sure. But yeah. So anyway, I'm not allowed to say, you don't, there's more than one way to skin a cat now. You know, that's probably for the best.
1:49.9	Also, especially given the nature and the starring roles of the game that we're about to talk about on this podcast.
1:51.2	Yeah.
1:52.7	Maybe we should be nice to cats.
1:54.7	I think the cats are okay, man. Yeah. I'm . I'm .
2:01.6	I'm Welcome to Brad and Will made a tech pod.
2:25.3	I'm Will.
	...

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