It's a new release of #OpenCrystalCaves, and levels 5, 6, 7 are now complete! https://congusbongus.itch.io/opencrystalcaves/devlog/1114309/level-5-6-7 There's also a bunch of features and game mechanics added, like Milo exploding after shooting the […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

For #screenshotsaturday we wanted to show one of our 8 weapons in #AlabasterDawn: the hammer! Combine it with an element and swing away with these different kinds of attacks! #pixelart #indiegame #gamedev

The bigger they come, the deeper they sleep? Completed the elephant boss in Super 2D Noah's Ark, including death/sleep animation. Elephants breathe as slow as 4 times per minute when resting! #CDogsSDL #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #opensource #pixelart

Completed level 7 in #OpenCrystalCaves, which looks like an overgrown jungle full of vines and moss and hazards like spikes (same colour as the moss), an inert rock which looks exactly like a rock monster seen earlier, and for the first time, a wall […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Finished drawing the head and head-parts of the elephant boss in Super 2D Noah's Ark In order to shoehorn this unique character in the game's systems, the ears are a type of hat, and the tusks and trunk are collectively a type of facial hair, which […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Made another #guitar track https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1IPeeARYEs This one's fairly simple compositionally, a straightforward #pop instrumental piece based on my noodlings, but I decided to just go with it and see how nice I can make it, and I'm pretty pleased with the result! #music

And now for something completely different - the 3D maze screensaver from Windows 95, ported to a few modern platforms, including macOS (by me) https://github.com/headshot2017/3dmaze It's also playable! But I gotta admit I’m no good at 3D mazes! […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

I love #music, games, and #gamemusic, so it breaks my heart when good music is done poorly. How you may ask? Read my #blog post and find out! https://cxong.github.io/2025/10/great-music-done-poorly Whether it’s technical/budgetary limitations or poor integration, sometimes an awesome track is […]

Did some more EGA pixelart today for my DOS fan game (instead of working on the actual game). I fear it’ll become a slide show—but then again my code is so over-engineered, it already is on slower machines 🙈 #ega #pixelart #dos #retrocomputing

Hey #PortfolioDay! I'm a hobbyist #OpenSource #gamedev all-rounder, I make games like #CDogsSDL and #OpenCrystalCaves https://congusbongus.itch.io/opencrystalcaves I also make #chiptune #music, #PixelArt, sometimes at the same time […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

#CrystalCaves has a lot of humour and this really shows in the death animations. Implemented one in #OpenCrystalCaves: hitting the air tank and exploding! Also, Mylo’s helmet flies off! This is peak 90s, the myth of humans inflating or exploding in […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

I participated in a #dnb / #jungle #music compo with my track Shuffle https://mobiusdisco.bandcamp.com/album/agdg-2025 Check out some oldskool breakbeats, there are real bangers here and it's free!

This instalment of Super 2D Noah's Ark dev update features body horror! It's the work in progress elephant boss character, only with the body done. It's just a chonky quadruped, but with the big ears and long nose it'll come together I'm sure... #gamedev #opensource #CDogsSDL #screenshotsaturday

I had the chance to make another #jungle track with #milkytracker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GO-O4vtjKk It's far from a genre I'm familiar with but it's so fun because breakbeats are cool! #music #tracker

today's software preservation task one of the great crimes of the 21st century was that Mark Jones' (Core Design) Darkmere - an isometric adventure-RPG for the amiga - was poorly visually documented by the usual places like lemonamiga/mobygames/etc. perhaps for […] [Original post on dialup.cafe]

Strange things happen in #gamedev, like reverse causality: in level 6 of #OpenCrystalCaves, the presence of the reverse gravity sign causes the level’s gravity to be reversed! And with this level 6 is complete. It’s memorable but otherwise quite […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

The next boss I need to implement for Super 2D Noah's Ark is the kangaroo, which requires a lot of work because it's unlike any existing character. To start with I made the head, which uses a seal head (which is a sheep head without ears) and rabbit […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

#Pixel_dailies theme #fox for @pixeldailies.bsky.social Palette: "Welder DAZW" by Equis-Santiago3 ko-fi #pixelart #horror

Implemented hidden crystals in #OpenCrystalCaves I wanted to make this sooner but it turned out harder than expected, as it’s really 3 features in one: bump-able platforms, spawning items on bumping said platforms, and finally the hidden crystal […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

It’s back to familiar territory with my latest track which can be described as "shmup #chiptune" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU9_2d2zoCA I mixed in some distorted guitars for some extra crunch, which makes it more catchy! #music #tracker #radtracker #opl3

Made another bugfix release for #CDogsSDL, fixing a crash when loading classic campaigns https://cxong.github.io/cdogs-sdl/release/2025/08/23/c-dogs-2.3.2.html But for this release I also managed to sort out a long-time CI issue where win64 releases […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Fleshing out mechanics in level 5 of #OpenCrystalCaves - implemented the falling rocks. One thing we're doing differently than the original #CrystalCaves is ensure the rocks aren't spawned harmlessly outside the play area, so the tension is always […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Made an out-of-band bugfix release for #CDogsSDL https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl Other than that progress is slow but steady. I spent more time reverse engineering and documenting the music tracks in Super 3D Noah’s Ark. It is nice to come […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

I recorded an #instrumental acoustic guitar piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzO7URzTQhI I can't believe it's been 2 years since my last #guitar composition! It was hard to get used to at first because I usually do electronic music, so everything I played sounded off beat. Just gotta do […]

Level 5 of #OpenCrystalCaves is now “complete”; as we’ve implemented most of the level loading, this came together much faster than before - instead of months per level, this took only a week. Now we focus on unique game mechanics. Look closely and […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Implemented the episode 3 boss of Super 2D Noah's Ark, Melvin the Monkey! Melvin may be small but is quite scary as he's fast and throws dangerous coconuts! The arena also features lots of antelopes and ostriches which add to the challenge. #GameDev […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

way back in 2017, jackson lango started writing a dev log about his passion project: an ascii/ansi adventure called Terminal Rain. i was instantly in love with his lighting and animation. in an era overloaded with knockoff cyberpunk aesthetics, he had a keen eye […] [Original post on dialup.cafe]

Made a new release of #OpenCrystalCaves! https://congusbongus.itch.io/opencrystalcaves/devlog/984248/040 This release includes playable levels 1 & 3, both with unique mechanics, as well as features like sound! The game has likely hit an inflection […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Slow but gradual progress on Super 2D Noah's Ark - made this monkey character, who's the boss of episode 3 #CDogsSDL #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #retrogames #opensource #pixelart

Made a midtempo dance track; due to having extra couch time lately I revisited #garageband for this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mmf_aq8bF8 It turned out alright despite my efforts: as I often find, creative works have a way of getting away from your original vision and taking on their […]

Working on some bug fixes and polish for an upcoming release of #OpenCrystalCaves, such as having the green "bigfoot” monster chase the player on hit, or tweaking the hurt boxes so that trick jumps work - they have to be just right! #GameDev […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Implemented the ox in Super 2D Noah's Ark. I got lazy and used a recoloured antelope, with a nose ring! I also fixed secret level logic. Frustratingly #wolf3d games don't have a standard way of specifying secret level tiles and warps. Different games […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

This #blog post was decades in the making, spawned from my early years playing classic multiplayer #FPS games like #CounterStrike, #TF2 and #EnemyTerritory. How do these games use level and #GameDesign appeal to different kinds of players, focus the […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Level 3 of #OpenCrystalCaves is fully playable and the game is ready for another release. Progress has picked up so as well as building out features, I've been working on polish as well. Now that the game allows dying, I actually died several times […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Earlier in Super 2D Noah's Ark I added an antelope, which is just a sheep with longer legs and horns. Now I've added a giraffe, the boss of episode 2, which is just an antelope with a longer neck, and instead of horns they're called ossicones - a word […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

This time I decided to take it easy and make a simple tune that's been floating around in my head for years and see how it turns out. It was a nice fun break for a change! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROXV1CVf-rE #music #tracker #radtracker #adlib #opl3

While updating osgameclones.com I came across xu4, a faithful #UltimaIV recreation. It's quite a unique project, beginning way back in 2002, hitting version 1.0 in 2022 (18 years in beta!) and still actively developed to this day, with enhancements […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Implemented a few mechanics in #OpenCrystalCaves, including being able to die (just restarts the level), the reverse gravity powerup, and the stop enemies powerup. To improve over #CrystalCaves, the stop powerup makes enemies blink, to hint that they […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Implemented antelopes in Super 2D Noah's Ark - for expediency they are just taller sheep Also adjusted the sleep animation so that larger animals like camels and ostriches breathe slower than smaller ones like sheep and goats. Realism in a bible game! […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Progress is picking up for #OpenCrystalCaves, level 1 is largely done and moving on to level 3. #CrystalCaves has a lot of wacky features, like this air pipe that sucks the player in and can kill you, or this red mushroom which makes the player […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Drew the head and hence (almost) completed this silly ostrich enemy for Super 2D Noah's Ark! Although at these tiny resolutions I've noticed it can also pass as a giant duck. Be afraid #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #pixelart #opensource #CDogsSDL

Found some time to blog lately and wrote about map distances being misleading, how the sense of space is much more about travel time than the physical distance https://cxong.github.io/2025/04/the-map-is-not-the-territory This seems obvious but time […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Added light switches for #OpenCrystalCaves. The OG #CrystalCaves did this cleverly: being limited to the EGA palette, they did a palette swap, changing lights to darks and darks to blacks, resulting in this atmospheric cave-like effect that is quite […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Working on the ostrich enemy in Super 2D Noah's Ark. The model is actually based on the human characters but super deformed and knees bent backwards like a tzimisce monstrocity. Also I have yet to make head sprites for it, so you can all enjoy this […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

Made a marching tune for a fictional 16-bit RPG! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w-3Bcrr8co This was quite challenging as it's a very new genre for me. There's other music like this and the composers truly worked some magic in making symphonic music work with FM synths; I can only hope to […]

Implemented some features in #opencrystalcaves including the triceratops and this roly poly thing which sleeps occasionally But what I'm really happy about is refactoring some of the loops so that the programs no longer burn my lap #gamedev #opensource #CrystalCaves #screenshotsaturday

Super 2D Noah's Ark's first episode only has three levels - this is rather short for a Wolf3D clone but it is biblically accurate, since the "real" ark also had 3 levels. But the game has 5 more episodes with 4-7 levels each. My headcanon is that the […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

While updating osgameclones.com I came across another surprising discovery: the open source #MTG clone Forge now supports an adventure mode, where you explore a world map, collect new cards and abilities and challenge other AI opponents […] [Original post on mastodon.gamedev.place]

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