In Resident Evil 4 during the radio chat cutscenes it's actually a 2D panel with the 3D models behind. Many other games do this too.#GameDev

In Duck Hunt the NES Zapper worked by blacking out screen & drawing white blocks around targets when you fire, for a couple frames. The diode in the Zapper detects the change in light intensity and tells the computer if it’s pointed at a lit target. #gamedev #retrogaming

In Metal Gear Solid 1, another reflection trick. Water puddles are just a transparent texture with the geometry of ceiling and walls duplicated and inverted below the ground. That's why we can't see Snake reflection in puddles. #gamedev

In Prince of Persia (1989) animations looked fluid & realistic because @jmechner used Rotoscope. He filmed his brother doing the stunts, took pictures with a camera, had them developed at Fotomat and then traced them, frame by frame. #gamedev

Sega Saturn used Quads instead of triangles (the industry norm) for rendering, which is good for 2D but not as practical for 3D, devs had to work around that, so games like Tomb Raider had to be built to support quads on Saturn and triangles on PlayStation #gamedev

Paper Mario uses a transparent mesh to simulate door shadows instead of relying on heavy shadow calculations. #gamedev

In Dead Space menus and UI is all made with particle systems so it can sort during render, glow so that they could place it in-game and be more immersive. #gamedev

Katamari Damacy only has support for closed circular paths, so to handle spawn and despawn of falling boulders, they make them travel beneath ground to start point! Also memory efficient. #gamedev https://twitter.com/JasperRLZ/status/1289960052250435584

This is easily one of the best, on OG Xbox, Elder Scrolls III would occasionally reboot the Xbox if they ran out of memory. The user would just see a longer then usual loading screen. #gamedev

I've now got back exits, save/load, and three difficulties in Cavez.

Easy takes out the dragon, shows room numbers. Halves your score.

Medium is normal game.

Hard increases the kill chances, scores for monsters, so it's more worthwhile to burn an item on killing one.

I'll do another build process tomorrow, I need to look at the Windows thing some more. But it's on gitlab if you wanna run from source.

#gamedev #scheme #lisp #lispgames

Normally I intentionally keep my games medieval, escapist, kind of light, the few back in the '00s that had music were Enya-ish, despite my reality being more angry anarchist cyberpunk metal.

I might be letting a lot more of that out in the coming years. I should finish/2.0 Corporate Jungle RPG & videogame, for sure.
#gamedev

Despite FUCK I did bang on Cavez code a little bit, improved item distribution so there's no guaranteed-lose runs. Will fix tunnel backtracking tomorrow maybe?

I have to figure out how save/load will be designed. You can't do it anywhere or you'd just save-scum. Probably save points around the tunnels.

I'd like to move more game logic into the objects/monsters instead of the verbs, but working code > aesthetics.
#gamedev #retrocomputing #scheme #lisp

"It's very easy to start a game, it's very hard to finish it. I think I've started 1000 games, and I've finished FOUR. … I made a level! All right, make 10 more, ah, tomorrow."
"Now do a front end, do a back end, play it endlessly for 8 months and don't get sick of it."

👀 Most seen I've ever been.

https://intotheverticalblank.com/2020/03/29/s3e3-dan-kitchen-interview-part-2-the-first-pro-brew-game-developer/

#gamedev #retrogaming #atari

#lispyGopherClimate https://archives.anonradio.net/202411060000_screwtape.mp3 000UTC Wednesday!
#climateCrisis d-day writing by @kentpitman https://climatejustice.social/@kentpitman/113432757278072314
Unreleased track by @sigrid #music
#lispGameJam @mdhughes sigrid^ me! @awkravchuk
https://appdot.net/@mdhughes/113413503867705163
https://itch.io/jam/autumn-lisp-game-jam-2024/rate/3085473
https://itch.io/jam/autumn-lisp-game-jam-2024/rate/3084545
https://lispy-gopher-show.itch.io/lispmoo2/devlog/828749/my-very-own-computing-revolution
#gamedev

mdh remembers a video about the future of 3D clustered search results with relevance (on #gopher of course) with 10 views from 2001 here:
https://appdot.net/@mdhughes/113429730867306625

Alt...

Sigrid and an ominous looking lisp alien nose and eyes. The gopher smoking in the bottom right 1970s-90s chic LISPYGOPHERSHOW anonradio.net 000UTC

Partial evidence for Windows, thanks to gwatt's hint in IRC:

Turns out I was running 32-bit i3nt not 64-bit ta6nt version. OK, fix path:
C:\Program Files\Chez Scheme 10.0.0\bin\ta6nt

and now the game runs from source, and if I compile… it still doesn't run.
This version of Z:\CodeChez\build\windows\cavez\cavez.exe is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information and then contact the software publisher.

Pfft.
#gamedev #microsoft

Tasks still ahead, but sure as fuck not today:

- Get my Scheme compile script to do packaging like the zsh one does.

- Figure out why Windows is a piece of shit (left as an exercise for the reader).

- Get shared folder & clipboard copy to work on Ubuntu VM, I had to transfer everything through my gitlab because there was NO other working way to talk from host to VM (may also be impossibly hard).

- Get my SDL2 stuff working on anything but Mac. I had it on Windows a few years ago.
#gamedev

Cavez 1.0 is live:
https://mdhughes.itch.io/cavez

Amazing. Please vote me for GOTY. I am the greatest game developer since Howard Scott Warshaw.

#gamedev #lisp #scheme #lispgames

Ubuntu 22 LTS is less openly broken, at least. But I dunno how long this shit's gonna take.

#gamedev #linux

Alt...

Make the most of the web installing Firefox

By contrast to shoestring budget can't-run-a-server Microsoft, Ubuntu has ISO downloads that seem to work. Takes a while, tho. I've got 120, 140 MB/s down? Ubuntu's giving me <11 MB/s.

I have an old Slackware VM but I'd like to compile on something shipped this decade, and I suspect nobody can use those binaries.

I don't like Linux any better than Windows, they're both garbage.

…
Ah, there's the Linux User Experience I expected.

#gamedev #linux

Alt...

ugly magenta screen unsupported hypervisor

FUCKING WINDOWS. Everything compiles, then fails out because… 32-bit fixnums on Windows? Even then I dunno, that looks <2^31 to me.

My VM is 64-bit. Scheme is 64-bit, allegedly. This works anywhere else.

Arugh. Guess this is a fail.

I guess if you want an OS on Windows, you run WSL.

#gamedev #microsoft

Alt...

<compiler messages> Exception in fx*: 1730682087 is not a fixnum

Windows is the shittiest Linux. You don't know how hard it is to install a program and UPDATE A FUCKING PATH.

Now, problem is I wrote my compile script in zsh. Unlikely I can rewrite it in BAT. I have a Scheme-in-Scheme compile script, but it doesn't do packaging right. Argh.

And this VM's a time-bomb.
#gamedev #microsoft #notevenonce

Alt...

cmd.exe with a PATH containing Scheme 10.0, scheme runs.

Fuckin' up early to finish making binaries, and goddamned Windows:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/

> Due to ongoing technical issues, as of October 23, 2024, downloads are temporarily unavailable.
<

MICROSOFT, YOU USELESS SHITS. The one time I give a shit about your garbage "OS"/virus loader, and it's not available.

Guess I'll see if I can load the expired VM.

#gamedev #microsoft

I just saw the most vapid ad for a mobage, historical figures with no connection (Abe Lincoln! Ada Lovelace! Leonidas I!) recruited (shitty low-chance IAP pulls) for some dumb Civilization-ripoff wargame.

But there's a spark of an idea there. Collectible historical figure "romance" sim, by way of Bill & Ted. Send Atilla the Hun on a date with Eisenhower to the Galleria Mall. All the Spice Girls have beef with Charlemagne's court, resolve it by dance-off, Scary steals Durandal.
#gamedev

And there we go, kill & cast work!
(ignore all the debugging cheats in [])
(also got lucky the weapons weren't destroyed, they often are)

Need to do maybe a title screen?

Will do packaging shit in a bit.

#gamedev #scheme #lisp #lispgames

Alt...

> kill bat with sword You slay a terrifying large bat with the sword Excalibur!

Alt...

> cast u with hat Your magic missile from a pointed wizard's hat destroys a fire breathing dragon!!!

I now have treasures and monsters (you can detect them a room away… but which room‽)

Tomorrow I make fighting work, then I can ship, just in time.

Restricted. Scope! Lets! You! Ship!
#gamedev #scheme #lisp #lispgames

I decided that I may as well do LISP Game Jam after all.
https://itch.io/jam/autumn-lisp-game-jam-2024

But I have 3+ work-in-progress games, so clearly my ability to start, stop, ship is compromised when I make the project bigger than a command-line toy, perfectionism kicks in.

SO. I'll make a command-line toy. What's the least game I can do? THE LEAST? Some kind of Wumpus or Caves thing, right? Text-only, not even ANSI (I use stty for that, which doesn't work on Windows).

% mvim caves.ss
#scheme #lisp #gamedev

Some progress:
#gamedev #scheme #lisp #lispgames

Alt...

% ./caves.ss Caves 1.0 © 2024 by Mark Damon Hughes. All Rights Reserved. https://mdhughes.tech/caves Initialized! 'help' for instructions. You are in a deep void. There are broken sticks here. You see exits: North South Up > n You are in a sloping natural cave. You see exits: East South West Up > s You are in an irregular natural cave. You see exits: North East South West > e You are in a room of stone bricks. There is a creek here. You see exits: North South >