my retro-style, static website is starting to look p neat! feedback welcome: somero.live figured i needed a persistent home for my works #indieweb

Level 2 of Cosmo's Computer Adventure is more of a traditional Cosmo platforming level, albeit with previously-unseen dialogue bits with enemy characters. screenshot from my custom-made level editor #solodev

Level 1 demo of my narrative mod for @apogeeent.com's Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure: youtu.be/aT73Fl-bylQ?... ...along with a helpful pinned comment! #retrocomputing #gamedev #solodev

took a little selfie

rkgk

here in Retro Game Jam there sure are a lot of omoshiroi gadgets.

in the TIGSource Forums era, we were discussing how far game engines are gonna go eventually. there was a vision that someone would just write a prompt and a complete game would come out, followed by contemplation about what it will mean to make games if that's ever possible.

i changed the default message you get in Cosmo when hitting a damaging object for the first time. forgot there was a second part to the prompt too

boutta spend the weekend at Retro Game Jam here in Oulu. greatly enjoying the aesthetic of a remote forest dwelling containing forgotten tech. #retrocomputing #gamedev

sneezed so hard i jumpscared myself

they're called numbers cause they make you numb.

life is putty to me

finished a build in time for #LDJam, but i plan on continuing the story further. >> verysoftwares.itch.io/gathering << featuring hand-drawn art and full voice acting for the first time in a verysoftwares production! #gamedev #solodev

#LDJam game's looking like this at the moment. it's very functional, there's little friction left for implementing the story beats. you can see for yourself, i've just cleaned up the codebase: github.com/verysoftware... #gamedev #love2d

first screen of my #LDJam creation silly narrative game with hand-drawn artwork #gamedev #solodev

top minds of reddit: "don't make this kind of game! the market is saturated!" which market? where is that market? merely a personification of data. no, out there are only unconnected individuals, waiting to explore your take on interactivity.

since i'm making progress on my Cosmo mod i went ahead and made a public repo: github.com/verysoftware... feast your eyes on C code predating ISO standards, and weird EGA tricks with Assembly routines #solodev #retrocomputing

glitch jumpscare when a familiar level suddenly didn't load properly

for my Cosmo modding project, i've been working on a level editor. i can read and display the game's map data now, which is pretty awesome, but nothing is actually editable yet. glitch art ensues at the end #gamedev #solodev #retrocomputing

alrighty, debug screen's looking pretty sharp! i spent a lot of effort on this, and while it's not a critical gameplay feature, it let me 1) practice structure for 80s C code, 2) get to know Cosmo's mechanisms better, and 3) write useful handlers i'll need later anyway. #retrocomputing #solodev

my brilliant attempt at a debug screen for displaying all Cosmo entities by ID

bang! broke 400 followers on itch. there's been an influx of new attention, i suppose 'Jimi can not read' got picked up by some streamer again?

with the help of the reverse-engineered source code by Scott Smitelli, i got Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure modded to an extent, changing the title screen and music. this combo seems like it could be from an actual shipped product

very much the same with game genres, i don't start out with a ready-made pitch like "i want to make a zombie FPS", it's always a process of discovery starting from some fundamental oddity like "how to measure health without numbers". maybe this means my games are more fun to make than to play.

"what genre of music do you make" i don't know. i just wanted to make music, to play with shapes of sound. i didn't stick to a template from some tutorial video, i figured out what works for me by making a lot of weird experiments. sometimes a track aligns with a genre but that wasn't the goal.

i was going to make a post, but a big account also made one, so i've chosen to delay mine.

a little chiptune from 2016 called "never o'clock" it's not gonna be on the album but it's a good composition (original .xm file available on modarchive: modarchive.org/index.php?re...) #chiptune #trackermusic #milkytracker

I rediscovered an archive of my tracker tunes from 10 years ago 😁 it's 2½ hours of material that I barely even remember composing. I started polishing the best ones for a coherent release.

You can now watch me gush LIVE about the most obscure Windows 98 games: www.twitch.tv/softmagus

Having creators and their output quantified by followers, likes, view counts and such always makes me feel like I'm competing against others and losing. It's a feeling I need to consciously fight when browsing a site like Bluesky.

Trying to make an updated avatar for my character, Leftfield the lynx.

Presentation is key, I announce, as I ship another game using less than 10 distinct assets.

everyone knows Very Softwares™ is on the bleeding edge of graphics technology

The average developer is not competing directly with Silksong, but trying to satisfy their own existing audience. Delaying a near-finished game risks losing the hype you've built.

Authentic textmode teaser for my upcoming Cosmo mod.

I've finished reading through cosmodoc.org, which is not only an *extensive* resource for modding Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, but also contains general topics for those who want to learn about DOS era programming. Armed with all this new knowledge, I can surely make the mod of my dreams!

Going for that 100% completion in Bugs Bunny: Lost In Time, even if it kills me. Welcome aboard regardless of whether you've watched my previous #AugustFTW streams! 🥕🐇 www.twitch.tv/softmagus

The speedrunning-themed GO FAST is now available on my Itch. verysoftwares.itch.io/go-fast Comes with 3 levels so far, play in browser to see what times you can get! #tic80 #gamedev #solodev #speedrun

How to become good at an activity: - do the activity until you become good at it

My very first Windows 98 stream for the #AugustFTW event, kicking things off with Bugs Bunny: Lost In Time. youtu.be/AnqMT5lFyo4 I had fun, so much so that I ended up playing for 3 hours.

Updated my home page with new content! somero.live Of particular interest is the roadmap section, somero.live/games/roadmap/, which spoils my upcoming commercial game projects!

❌ having a future ✔️ Turbo Assembler

❌ working on a commercial project ✔️ making the weirdest mod for an obscure 33-year-old game

I seem to have immediately been thrown into the deep end when it comes to Cosmo modding. Well, nobody said it was going to be easy, and this is all too well documented to complain. cosmodoc.org

Going down the rabbit hole of DOS game modding. Discoveries: * Many of the custom tools have been made recently * Commander Keen has an active modding community * Jill of the Jungle has a hidden level editor * There's exactly one (1) Bio Menace mod ever made: pckf.com/viewtopic.ph...

Found out there's a Win9x streaming event going on and set up a virtual machine. Got a couple of cool games I wanna explore again after a long while.

Psst... hey kid, you wanna make a DOS game? I'm hosting a DOS(ember) Game Jam! All details are at the attached link. Please feel free to join in – no experience necessary!

Made a website again! somero.live It's entirely text and images.

tic80.com/play?cart=4295 3 levels of GO FAST now playable on the TIC-80 site. ...Yeah the game is literally just called 'GO FAST'. ...And that's what you do. #tic80 #gamedev #solodev