Posts by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #B1OQdbHoo5OMpOWCkC by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2025-12-19T01:05:01Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
The Frog Fractions Cinematic Universe is cheap as heck during the Steam Winter sale: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15726/Frog_Fractions_Cinematic_Universe/You can get a slightly better deal on Itch, and the sale lasts one day longer. Suck it, Steam! https://itch.io/s/176336/winter-sale-2025
(DIR) Post #B1urqx2WQFMyLdQWUy by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-01-02T20:02:01Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
It's the countdown to full price! If you're excited about the Frog Fractions Cinematic Universe but want to wait until it's more expensive so that you can give me more money, your dream comes true in less than three days!https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/15726/Frog_Fractions_Cinematic_Universe/
(DIR) Post #B2U8HDJ5MbBWuvBOj2 by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-01-20T18:11:51Z
3 likes, 1 repeats
I found out recently about Bunnyrom, the program that every knock-off Tamagotchi runs. https://bunnyrom.neocities.org/I love the mystery of it, how despite its ubiquity, nobody seems to know its provenance.I hate that it's ruined the mystery of the unplayed knock-off. Before I knew about this, I could look at a knock-off Tamagotchi on the shelf, or in an online store, and wonder about it. Yes, of course it'll be bad, but it might be bad in a new interesting way??Nope, it's just Bunnyrom again.
(DIR) Post #B2nq4h37H6KAhVL16W by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-01-30T05:49:55Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
The Magnavox Odyssey 2 (released 1978, a year after the Atari VCS) could have 16 sprites onscreen at once. Four of them were "user-defined sprites," meaning the game designer could draw them. 12 had to pull from the pool of 64 preset characters in the BIOS ROM.The intention seems to have been that you would do the gameplay with the custom sprites, and draw text, the score, etc. with the ROM sprites, but a lot of games relied heavily on the ROM art. It's an interesting design constraint.
(DIR) Post #B2nq4l9I25dhPoG0HY by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-01-30T06:20:29Z
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Something like half the games on the Odyssey 2 were made by one guy, Ed Averett. He churned out a game every couple months for years. My favorite of these is "Computer Intro." It came with a thick manual detailing the history of computers, how they work, how your game console is a tiny computer, how to program it, the CPU opcodes and display registers.The game itself was just a hex editor allowing you to write arbitrary bytes into RAM, then transfer execution to them.
(DIR) Post #B2y0gWjl0QR8qPYrdw by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-03T18:43:00Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
Looking at the state of video games today, I would never argue that the old ways were better because the old way was the arcade. The arcade was basically a casino for children. What saved the arcade from being as harmful as casinos is the stakes were lower -- the quarters in your pocket. What saved arcade games from being as harmful as modern games is the science of user addiction wasn't as advanced. (And you couldn't carry around the arcade in your pocket, dinging for your attention non-stop.)
(DIR) Post #B2y0gdDktnzuxBduEa by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-03T18:50:18Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
In Gauntlet your health would drain non-stop regardless of how well you played, but you could put in another quarter for more health. In 1985 that was the gosh darn darkest pattern they could come up with. Isn't that just adorable?
(DIR) Post #B3CkzA86bDV0KsDGqm by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-11T07:11:28Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
This game, about listing as many animals as you can, is shockingly well-considered and polished for such an apparent shitpost of a game ideahttps://rose.systems/animalist/
(DIR) Post #B3KmnwFzakwrIVMDdQ by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-15T04:01:54Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
RE: https://mastodon.social/@mogwai_poet/116067616657592631What's your favorite "explore a maze where weird shit keeps happening," or XAMWWSKH? (Pronounced "exam whiskey")Trying to define by example:- Town of ZZT (and many more ZZT worlds)- Zork- Animal Well- Most roguelikes don't fit but Nethack and Binding of Isaac do, because they emphasize unique events and interactions- Glittermitten Grove fits, but Frog Fractions and the Frog Fractions Hat DLC are too linear- Insanity (1989) by New Era Software is possibly the defining example in my mind
(DIR) Post #B3Kmo1J0oxKoxJoCXI by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-15T04:03:08Z
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Not sure whether Blue Prince and Dark Souls qualify? Part of me thinks that they're too grounded in reality, that the maze needs to be more abstract and idealized to get across that dream-world feel. King's Field probably fits. Most of From's post-Dark Souls games are out because they're too linear to count as a maze.
(DIR) Post #B3UoTfGdByuwIniRAu by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-19T23:56:36Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I just found out it's illegal to mod your EV to have custom engine noises. For "safety reasons." But realistically, how enforceable is that? If you get pulled over when your car plays a looped sample of Snoop Dogg saying "this Volt is in reverse," what's to stop you from claiming that Snoop Dogg was in the passenger seat doing live commentary, and ran off on foot?
(DIR) Post #B3Ur4GU2V4uy3lZEx6 by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-20T00:46:04Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@foone Right now you can just hang a couple coconuts from your bumper but once they start enforcing that law, your off-brand noisemaker will get you thrown in jail
(DIR) Post #B3XA6VESvFQ1pJz1qy by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-01-30T19:42:58Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@mdhughes Yeah, very different GPU from the 2600. Very interesting set of capabilities.I was never able to make head or tail of Quest for the Rings back in the day. Wasn't there supposed to be a board game component? A wildly ambitious idea for the time
(DIR) Post #B3XADDVXDkFisjAXDM by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2025-12-20T05:50:54Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
For several years now I've been making a small game each holiday season, to send to friends and family. A sort of playable Winter Solstice greeting card. This year's game is just about ready to go. #pico8
(DIR) Post #B3XADItTCBMxaPPDiS by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2025-12-20T05:51:29Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
It's the sequel to Bouncy's Winter Solstice Ride from a couple years ago: https://twinbeard.itch.io/bouncys-winter-solstice-ride
(DIR) Post #B3XADOBjVhwu0UzNNQ by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2025-12-20T07:48:05Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Gonna show those bozos at Remedy how you do an SCP-inspired game
(DIR) Post #B3XAEj974kAdIPOxJg by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2025-11-12T23:35:52Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
The big boy book of There Is No Antimemetics Division is available now.https://qntm.org/antimemeticsIt's extremely good, because the original work is extremely good. I was hoping rewrites and the professional editing process would improve it significantly, but the changes are mostly neutral. There's an audiobook, which is nice.The work, in any of its available forms, comes with my highest recommendation. One of my favorite works of fiction of the past 10 years.
(DIR) Post #B3XB3Q6dcohr0tPrJg by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-12T00:56:23Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Looking at the Notepad++ update hack and wondering when we're going to come around to the realization that not updating is, on balance, safer than updating
(DIR) Post #B3gyPiTWeaxOX21RCq by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-02-25T21:20:46Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
I was reminded of Casey Muratori's "Handmade Hero" video project where he shows you how to write a game in C from scratch without using any libraries. It's a cool project, but, hear me out here, libraries are great! You can walk in there and they've got desks and/or computers for you to use, and you can tell the librarian about how you want to make a game from scratch, and they'll be like "that sounds rad" and you can walk out with an armful of game programming books and a spring in your step
(DIR) Post #B6NSPTjj6qiqJpHsBs by mogwai_poet@mastodon.social
2026-05-17T03:20:17Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
It just occurred to me, Glittermitten Grove (2016) contains AI generated content, and I never disclosed it. In TXT World, if a bomb goes off near one of the decorative fish, you get a message saying "You killed [name]!" with names like Stephepoa, Jasquosius, Dovanice and Jixandlia, which came from a list of baby names generated by a Stanford student messing with neural nets.