sunday roundup 1
in Blog / Misc
things i’ve been up to
I’ve seen this style of post on various other blogs I follow, so I thought I’d follow suit and share some of the things I’ve been playing, making, reading and enjoying recently! I’ve titled the post Sunday Roundup, but we’ll see if it ends up being every Sunday or just the occasional one, hehehe!
What I’ve Been Playin’
- I’ve been pretty much been exclusively playing UFO 50 this entire week. I mean, it’s fifty games for a very reasonable price, made by a bunch of extremely talented game developers, and built as an anthology piece about an imaginary 1980s home computer. It could not be more targeted to my interests. I’ve even been piecing together a spec for the various iterations of the fantasy computer so that I can at some point write a game “for the system”.
- I’m not sure if they had a rigorous spec themselves, but aside from a few bits here and there it seems that they very faithfully stick to the limitations machines of the time had. I mean, sure, the LX-II could have had some registers dedicated to horizontal scrolling of two vertical halves of a foreground tile plane independently but… probably not what I would be making the hardware division focus on, heheheh!
- Anyway. I’m not nitpicking - just bein’ silly - and the project’s execution is genuinely incredible. A game design masterclass, each game has so much depth; some more than they initially appear to, and some right off the bat. And it’s amazing what you can do with just 6 buttons!
What I’ve Been Makin’
- Work continues apace on Bean to Me; the game itself is done, with only minor tweaks here and there from feedback. The demo went live recently, which I posted about on Cohost before its unfortunate demise, and there’ll be a larger announcement through the Very Evil Demons socials when the next Steam Next Fest kicks off. I’ve been spending some time writing emails and sending keys to press, so we’ll see if that helps the visibility on a game with £0 marketing budget, hehe! I’m setting my expectations realistically; I think we’re probably likely to get double-digits sales, but I don’t think there’s much more than that. It’s been a great project to prove to myself that I can scope, build, integrate with Steam, and release a game in under a year, something I wasn’t sure I could do. I’ll be more than happy to break even on the Steam registration fee, hehe!
- I may or may not have started writing a Gameboy Advance port of Pingolf from UFO 50. It’s extremely early on, mostly just loading the requisite tileset for a level layout. There isn’t much to show of it right now, but I’ll post about itagain if it doesn’t drift to the bottom of the projects pile.
- I’ve been working on a first-person 3D platforming kinda-rocket-jumping thing. I haven’t touched it for a few weeks, but I want to get back into it now that Bean to Me is moving towards a release-and-support phase. I might start doing development streams, because that’s something I used to do and have totally forgotten to get back into.
What I’ve Been Readin’
- The Blue McDonald’s - A short post about a McDonald’s that isn’t the colour you might think it is.
- hey i’m Hawken here - Musings on the state of Hawken in 2024 and its contemporary peers in mid-generation shooterdom.
- id Software’s Tile EDitor v5.0 - Information about and documentation from the level editor used for tons of iD Software and Apogee’s games, of which the Commander Keen games lie very close to my heart. I remember messing around with a version of this once when I was trying to get into the Commander Keen modding scene in like, 2008. Maybe I should go back to it and make some cool levels for Keen? And I’ve always wondered about writing a fangame using Lutra or something…
What I’ve Been Enjoyin’
- My film photography explorations have been continuing, and I just recently picked up a restored 1979 Olympus OM10, one of the earliest affordable beginner SLRs. I’ve really been enjoying shooting with it, and I’ve been learning a lot using the 50mm Zuiko lens the camera came with. Expect to see some photos from the new camera soon, once I’ve gotten through a few rolls!
- Before you see those though, I’ll be sending off some other rolls I shot on my Lomourette - and an ancient point-and-shoot (a Polaroid Easy Zoom EZ1700) with battery corrosion I saved from some boxes my folks gave me from my childhood bedroom. Who knows how long this thing has been sitting there?! I can’t find a source for when it first went on sale, but judging by the silver plastic with rounded edges design, it’s got to be from around 1998-2002, right before digital cameras took over. It has absolutely no features whatsoever aside from a very slightly adjustable lens to zoom in on things; no timer, a flash that is either on or off. Definitely the kind of camera used for birthday parties and holidays though - and I found that it had an exposed roll in it. The roll is probably completely fogged by now, having sat around exposed for years, but… who knows?
- Been drinking pour-over coffee rather than metal-filter aeropress for the last couple of days for a change and it’s been fun tasting all the differences with the same beans! Yum!
That’s about it from me for this week - and I hope you all have a great one next one!