There’s probably a whole wiki entry on this. But crawlers leaving the dungeon losing their abilities is a whole thing I can’t stop thinking about.

I'm going to post semi-random dev materials from Age of Empires 1 every day from today until the end of the KS campaign (www.kickstarter.com/projects/gab...) for my book about the creation of the game. First up, the cover and a page from one of lead designer Rick Goodman's earliest design docs.

Sundays are for mentoring the hackathon and then curling up and finishing book 7 of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's possibly my favorite book in the series so far.

Saw this reddit post and it hurt a bit. Grandfather's books? Okay a lot. I still tell people to read them both. Understanding compilers and C gets you a good foundation. But now... I'm just going to go have a whisky.

It’s absolutely incredible that one of the largest Japanese-run Go servers, which has been running since 1992, is still accessed entirely via Telnet. And while most players use GUI clients that use Telnet under the hood, you can still connect manually and get ASCII graphics streamed to you

Arrrrghhhh. Some of you keep on yelling about why I shouldn't like this or that. It's not up to you what I like or dislike. If I say I like something, please stop telling me I'm wrong.

Someone has documented the entire source code for Elite and explained how every line works, plus included deep dives into various functionality. Covers all main versions like BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and NES. You can also play online in browser. elite.bbcelite.com

What in the actual f?

It's an unusual week at Pad and Pixel, LLC, we have a bit of downtime as we await contract renewels. If you're looking to start an editorial-driven campaign, want to launch a podcast, or are interested in how to capture an increasingly fragmented audience for your game, tech, or toy, reach out.

It was pretty clear today that the Bluesky outage was a DDOS attack. It's easy to jump on this as an AI issue but it's wrong to do so. Focus that anger instead on who or what force focused significant effort to bring down your voice.

I really like that term “Blessed are the peacemakers”. Good Star Trek episode title. Also, good Pope quote.

I see that book 8 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series now says “8 of 8”. I was going to pause for a bit once I finish book 7 (awesome book, possibly best in the series) but now… I’ve got to see how all this ends.

A new version of the Conveyor Kit has been released adding; junctions, more details, crane, screens and more! As always this package is completely free to use in any of your projects, enjoy 🎁 kenney.nl/assets/conve...

One day there will be a whole day of good news. But that day was not today. We used to have these days more often, before email, before social media, before we all had "calendars" to help us be drones and GPS tracking our every move. We used to have a lot of good days then.

Frak! Nothing but bad news today. And always for the silliest reasons. "Our license to distribute Star Trek: Resurgence has come to an end, so the game will no longer be offered for sale." The game isn't even two years old! May 2024. 🙄 I haven't even started writing an article about the ships yet.

We live in a time when pictures snapped ON ANOTHER PLANET get posted every day to social media. I mean. Wow. That’s a dot in the night sky, here’s nice high resolution pixels from a few hours ago taken on the surface.

Bella is home!

Countdown Standard xkcd.com/3232/

Vet called. They are keeping Bella for more tests. 😢

Absolutely awesome.

Have you ever wanted to make a video game? on your OWN computer? Computer illuminary Tim Hartnell has just the book for you. (Source.)

Just dropped Bella off at the vet. She's getting a cardiogram, she's got a murmur and it's been a couple of years since her last heart check. Dropping her off, even for a few hours, is so hard. Counting the minutes until she's back home this afternoon.

If you're going to post AI generated slop and claim it's from the Artemis mission I'm going to block you. You literally have thousands of incredible REAL pictures to choose from and yet you think somehow some AI crap is better?

My wife tells me that Bella starts to cry when I leave for the day to go teach. I'm heartbroken about this.

I always preferred this more grounded design for the SHADO interceptors. From Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX no 53

Same question from me, but for the video game industry. I want that flame to still be there in everyone’s heart.

"These are the artists, illustrators, character designers, environment designers and other technical specialists responsible for the look of Marvel’s film and television productions. Many had been with Marvel for a decade or more." Short term vision, as usual. 🤷

This seems like a mindbogglingly self-destructive move.

New Bella card dropped! (end of slide deck for card making deck)

Tomorrows class is make a game with this grab bag of stuff. Easy right?

Today's class is on prisoner's dilemma, trolly decision, guard riddle and then rock, paper scissors for good luck. I'm still haunted by some of these decisions I've made in games.

I will install Linux on a 10 year old Chromebook and be happy before I subscribe to cloud computing.

I love how tech people say Windows, GitHub, Office, PhotoShop and so forth can't fail because they are entrenched. Tell that to Netscape, MySpace, AOL, WinAmp, SGI, Sun, DEC, Borland, Lotus and so on. Everything fails. Nothing is forever. Thank goodness.

Out walking today after an inch of rain and before more rain. We had to investigate a possible snail, or frog, or lizard, or .. well it was a very important investigation and results are pending more walks tomorrow.

Before all this craziness I could buy a 16TB hard drive (renewed) for about $160. Yeah, that's super cheap. It was a good time. Now? Over $400.

What’s that little tinge I feel? Is that a bit of hope? Omg. I forgot what that felt like.

Now do America. #hungary

Fact.

Dev: “look at my ai coded thing that will change the world!” Me: uh huh. Me (a while later): what happened to your thing that was going to change the world? Dev: “What thing?” Me: the ai thing? Dev: “oh. I forgot about that!” This is the problem with stuff you don’t write yourself.

Look at the women at NASA. They are the ones pushing the boundaries of science, solving problems most people can’t even understand, and carrying this country forward, while our politicians right now posture and stumble through talking points. And they are doing it all with joy.👇

It’s funny how on For All Mankind they make retro iPhone look big. I still have my first iPhone and it’s so so so tiny compared to the bricks we have today. iPod Touch is still peak technology.

Excellent overview of some easy mistakes you can make in your deck builder game. I really liked how this was presented.

And if people missed it, I think NASA was sending a very clear message with the last person interviewed in n their splash down coverage and her words. And to be clear she is also the right person for her job and qualifications but this was too perfect to be an accident.

If you're celebrating the destruction of the Star Trek Academy and Strange New Worlds sets today... that's not cool.

Peace. Science. Love. Equality. Oh, what we could do...

Watching a movie (Lou). Reagan was president and denying dealing with Iran. Gas was cheaper.

Gosh darn it. I have a new idea for a game. Instead of “Slay The Spire” it’s “Heal The Spire” where you play a healer treating all the monsters these nasty “heroes” are hurting. Monsters pay you in gold and ingredients to make different potions.

Splashdown! Vehicle is stable and upright. “A perfect bulls-eye splash for Integrity and its four astronauts!” #Artemis

Here we go. Godspeed Integrity.

I chatted with Cuba's indie dev about making a game while his country seems to unravel. You can read my latest here: