I still think it'd be really fun to putting my virtual pet project on a dedicated device, and that would make it feel more "real". So I figured I'd try getting a 128x64 LCD screen and plugging it into a Raspberry Pi Pico, and have at the very least some sort of cool desk toy that way (like how I u...

I've been feeling like the levels in Nova the Squirrel 2 could look better, even though people tell me they look just fine. So I've been looking at different SNES and Genesis platformer games to see some good examples of how other games decorated their levels. I thought it'd be interesting to share my notes and thoughts here.

During the Scott the Woz charity bonanza last year I got the boxes that had a random SNES or Genesis game in them with a new label and a lot of other goodies. Scott previously did these with NES games, and called it "The Mysterious Game of Crypticism" so these are "The Return of the Mysterious game of Crypticism." These were supposed to ship in January or February but they took until very recently to finally get here.

Because I do game dev as a hobby, that means it's fueled by me wanting something to exist so badly that I put in the time and effort to make it real. So with that in mind I mostly want to make stuff that either doesn't quite exist (either in the form I'd like, or at all) or I want there to be more of something I'm passionate about.

For Nova the Squirrel 1 on the NES I used the MMC1 mapper (by default; you can build it for three other choices) because I wanted wide emulation/flashcart support, and MMC1 seemed like the simplest hardware that was guaranteed to have the emulator provide extra RAM, which my game needed. Unfortunately MMC1 is not great.

I have a bunch of colored blocks in Tilemap Town's default tilesets that are supposed to be used like the wool and concrete in Minecraft (like for pixel art). But the set I have feels like it's missing some useful colors?

Tilemap Town is very permissive with its maps, where anyone can place tiles and delete tiles, whether or not they're logged in. I like that, because someone can hop on without even making an account, wander the world, and leave a mark on it by building something neat.

That obviously means there's a lot of room for vandalism, but in practice I've only had to clean up bad stuff from the map a total of twice. But I'd still feel better about things if there were some tools beyond just restoring from backups (which I make every time I notice something new has been built, or just every so often).

In the past, Gandi (the domain registrar I'm currently using) offered a whole free blog with every domain, which was really good value. I decided to use mine mostly to post really weird reviews, because I guess that's what I do when I'm given free hosting space. I reviewed things like college vending machine food, abstract concepts, and things that don't exist. A lot of it was actually my genuine thoughts on stuff, though probably of limited use to anyone else.

I've worked on a lot of stuff I started on and then didn't finish for whatever reason (for whatever "finished" means, which may be vague). Some of them I'd like to get around to later on and some of them probably weren't a good idea in the first place. This post covers a lot of them, but definitely not all of them. I have way more stuff I worked on as a kid that I'd have to track down (if it still exists).

I've noticed I have a tendency to want to work on way too many things, and I have to try and limit myself to only working on a few at once if I want to ever get anything done. But it's still fun to think about what I might want to work on in the future, whether or not I ever get to it...