jonas, Shapez.io looks good! I added it to my wishlist and will give it a go once I finish some current games. Thanks for the recommendation.
Lucas: No new games for a while. I should really do a Ludum Dare event since I almost always come out with something worth the time, although in the last year or so I've felt more attracted to longer-lived "care and feeding" kinds of projects than the "unhealthy weekend" kind. So my video game work has been of the form where I write pages of notes on game mechanics in some notebook before bed. That's less fun for people other than me (as the paper is unplayable) but I like to think that when my brain truly sponges over in my old age I'll just be able to live off the prerecorded creativity in those books and ideas.txt, etc..
William: Most of the emulator code I've worked with has been pretty annoying. It might be a combination of the fact that the hardware being emulated is itself pretty annoying (so there are all these weird special cases and hacks) and the way those projects tend to develop. I only have significant experience with NES, but I did spend dozens of hours ripping out needless stuff from FCEUX and cleaning it up for my purposes, basically turning it into a library. (i.e.: Try to hide the stuff you don't need behind a layer of abstraction.) This both reduced the minor and major annoyances of working with it, and also gave me a lot more familiarity with what was going on under the hood! I don't know if it's the kind of tip you're looking for, but I will say that a lot of this stuff just ends up being a grind, and that figuring out how to successfully suffer through those grinds (whatever works for you!) is indispensable. Maybe there are some people out there for whom it's effortless, but it certainly isn't for me.
If you're asking about my programming work, I honestly don't think books were/are that influential. I do like to read non-fiction but for computer stuff, I think that books always seemed a bit out of date, and I think the best source of inspiration was either (a) trying to figure it out from scraps of code and text files pre-internet in the 90s, (b) classes and (especially) stimulating colleagues during college and grad school and then the same later at work. But, outside of programming (or more abstractly influential), some that randomly come to mind are "Thinking, Fast and Slow", "Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy", "Inadequate Equilibria", and the full anthology of SIGBOVIK proceedings. |
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Unfortunately Esace is not working on my MacBook M1 Big Sur :-( |
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I just tried to read the memory address of a game boy advance emulator so I could store the data structure of a pokemon into some python shitpost, and I'm finding it to be really tedious. Any tips on how to make working with emulators not painful?
Also, do you have any recommendations for books that influenced your work? |
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Have you written any games lately? I was flicking through your YouTube hits and noticed you had performed a bit in Ludum Dare events. |
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Might I recommend you the timewaster called shapez.io? This is a single-player video game played with keyboard and mouse that is an open-ended sandbox simulation game where you build factories that make abstract shapes. I recommend it not for its sandbox aspect, but for the two nontrivial puzzles that it comes with. These are your types of puzzle: ones where part of the difficulty is that the game doesn't quite tell you what all the rules are, and you have to figure out the remaining ones using experimentation. The first part of the game is the tutorials that teaches you most of the other rules. The game runs in browser. You can play the free demo version at https://shapez.io/ . The demo does not unlock all the tools for the sandbox part, but it unlocks enough that the rest of tools don't change the nature of the two puzzles. (After the speed upgrade screen changes so it no longer asks for the first 15 upgrade shapes, it will require three final upgrade shapes. Making the second and third shapes are the two puzzles. In the non-demo version, these also unlock level 20 and 26.) |
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13779. Tom 7 (pool-74-109-237-238.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
31 Jan 23:14:47
[ November Rain ]
Thanks Tom 2! :) Don't forget about SIGBOVIK if you can't find any nerds to read your next project! |
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13778. Tom 7 (pool-74-109-237-238.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
31 Jan 23:12:55
[ Happy halloween! ]
I fixed the typo in the rules!
Thank you anonymous! I regret that I have not made a computer font in many years, but I'm happy that people are still finding and enjoying them :) |
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Aha. I believe all the levels are listable by visiting the special world "all0", which then links to "all1", etc. |
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jonas: I'm sympathetic about the gravel, but I'm sure glad the scar is on the knee (basically cool) and not somewhere prominent. When I wrote this post I was worried about this cut on my face, although by now even if doesn't get any better than it is, it's fortunately not that bad.
Anonymous: And to you!
andrea: hi |
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I'm glad you enjoy Spelunky 2. It's indeed a well-designed and enjoyable game.
Falling on gravel is something of a personal nemesis to me, ever since around eight years old. Admittedly I fell from a bicycle, and not on my face. I got a big wound and permanently clearly visible scar on my left knee from it. |
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i mean the level files. if a level is not linked by another level, then we don't know it exists. if you decide to remove this game someday, we cannot access these levels any more. but if there is an index of literally all the levels even if they are not linked, then everyone could backup them |
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They are public, right? Everybody edits the same game world. |
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any plan to make user levels data public? |
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13768. Tom 2 (cpe-74-64-245-65.nj.res.rr.com) –
21 Dec 2020 09:03:54
[ November Rain ]
Me and a cross-country buddy of mine have been loving Spelunky 2's online multiplayer. It is indeed a fantastic game.
I wanted to say: your YouTube videos inspired me to finish a programming project and an accompanying analytical writeup. It pertained to Magic the Gathering, and a bunch of nerds read it and said nice things. It was very gratifying, so thanks for that! Now I just need your video editing and illustration skills. |
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13767. Sophia (69.149.123.73) –
06 Dec 2020 12:03:02
[ November Rain ]
DFX IZ UNDEAD |
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13766. Anonymous (197-234-184-239.cipherwave.net) –
20 Nov 2020 02:52:22
[ Happy halloween! ]
I just discovered your fonts after searching for some stuff on the internet. Thank you so much for all you have done. Your fonts are amazing! |
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13765. jonas (catv-176-63-12-45.catv.broadband.hu) –
13 Nov 2020 09:14:12
[ Happy halloween! ]
On the Pac Tom website, in "http://pac.tom7.org/rules.shtml", "In do take advantage" is a typo for "I do take advantage".
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It is easier to run on an emulator for sure, and the mapper is in fact unique. The "NTSC" version does not work well on NTSC hardware (despite there being a publicly available "NTSC" version of the ROM) the real NTSC prototype version was never released and the current owner of the EPROM is not willing to sell because they still hope to make a legit working copy. Here is a link to the "NTSC"(in name only, it really needs a PAL emulator to be fully playable) version. www.elitehomepage.org/nes/index.htm |
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"This is WRONG. It will CORRUPT your precious HASHES"
Accidentally modifying hashes is a mandatory part of learning git. It introduces you to `git reflog`! |
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13762. jonas (catv-176-63-12-25.catv.broadband.hu) –
01 Nov 2020 08:27:29
[ Happy halloween! ]
A short film that you'll prepare about the Pac Tom project? And it will include footage of you running in a Haloween costume? That sounds very interesting. Are you planning to make the film recommended without an age limit, or are you making it realistic and include pictures of your foot with lots of blood instead?
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13761. Tom 7 (pool-74-98-228-161.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
01 Nov 2020 00:06:53
[ Happy halloween! ]
Oh, it is also possible that I accidentally "posted" this one instead of "save as draft," which locks in that juicy timestamp. Rest assured that this one was completed naturally within the month of October E.D.T.! |
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13760. Tom 7 (pool-74-98-228-161.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net) –
01 Nov 2020 00:04:12
[ Happy halloween! ]
What the heck now? The server does not agree with reality on the current time. Could maybe be bad karma since I solicited bug reports. :)
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AFAIK there would be no reason that wouldn't work (as long as running at 6/5 speed or some frame-dropping/telecine would be ok), although the emulator would have to support the game. Sounds like it may have some fancy mapper if it's doing 3D rendering, so that's not a given! Probably much simpler to play on an emulator on the computer though :) |
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