zarfeblong

zarfeblong, 6 days ago to random

Aw yeah June 25th

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN1TQm942_U

#Myst #Riven

Never mind the books, it's the music that sends me there.

EDIT-ADD: My quick thoughts on the blog. https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/06/riven-release-date

zarfeblong, 9 days ago to random

It appears I’m going to XOXO in August. Kind of a whim but maybe it’ll be fun. I’ve never been to Portland.

(Subtext: maybe I’ll run into somebody who’s got a bunch of money to hire me for some kind of crazy hypertext/MUD/IF hybrid system.)

zarfeblong, 9 days ago to random

Oh look, political news leads to doombrain regardless of whether the news is bad or good. Surprise

brettwitty, 10 days ago to random

Urgghhhh. This final (?) boss in Animal Well is tedious. The real boss is "the wheel of items" and manipulating that.

zarfeblong, 22 days ago to random

This year, the Werewolf web page is exactly as old as I was the summer I learned Mafia and wrote the Werewolf web page.

https://eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html

(Mafia is about a decade older than Werewolf; I am about a decade and a half older than Mafia.)

Also, one of us lies, one of us tells the truth, and one of us is a… well, you know.

zarfeblong, 23 days ago to random

“Microsoft cancels next surprise hit game”

https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/05/surprise

zarfeblong, 25 days ago to random

According to Apple’s app report, someone has installed Meanwhile and Hadean Lands (the iOS versions) onto an Apple Vision Pro.

I’d love to know how that worked out. Sadly the chance that this person is a Mastodon user is slim.

zarfeblong, 27 days ago to random

This week’s quick project: a tiny little photo-tagging app. You recall I asked about photo tagging solutions a couple of months ago. Didn’t see any answers that really fit what I wanted, so I wrote one.

Doesn’t work well yet. More news after I optimize some Python code, but first: new Dr Who.

hanakogames, 1 month ago to random

for absolutely no reason, Capture The Flag With Stuff suddenly leapt into my mind as a dim memory of a long-ago internet thing.

http://www.hrsfa.org/photos/lotze/ctfws/harvard-rules2.html

... wonder what became of Tom Lotze, we were in vague contact back then but I haven't looked him up in years...

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

On last retwoot:

This is a deeply experienced discussion on game development in Rust, and also game development in general. Great context re “what we actually spend our time doing”.

I have only made two tiny projects in Rust (neither a game) but I can see some of this already and I can smell the rest blowing beyond the horizon.

https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

Glitch pharmacy

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

I see that we’ve lost Daniel Dennett. https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/

Huge influence on how I think about thinking (old joke), and AI, consciousness, all the fun stuff. I read many of his books in the 80s and 90s; I think they still hold up. Even in these times of LLMs, which make the old Turing Test debates seem so naive.

I once went to a book signing and had him sign my copy of Julian Jaynes “Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. He was happy to.

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

Solving the problem of my luggage looking like everybody else’s luggage on the belt.

That’s good ol’ Testors model paint.

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

Latest round of puzzle games. By pure coincidence, these are all easy puzzle games, and three of them are bite-sized. (Beyond Horizons is longer, but not because it’s more difficult.)

• Skaramazuzu
• Boxes: Lost Fragments
• Botany Manor
• Between Horizons

https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/04/spring-puzzle-games

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

Well, that was a pretty good four months.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-distributed-studio-possibility-space-abruptly-shut-down-by-prytania-media

zarfeblong, 1 month ago to random

Teaser music track from upcoming Riven re-make

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyAaC4gH4mU

Robyn Miller isn’t trying to imitate his 30-year-old self, but this still has the vibe.

zarfeblong, 2 months ago to random

I guess the takeaway from the xz backdoor situation is:

If you’re an open-source project maintainer, and somebody starts getting on your case for not doing enough free work for them, you reply “big Jia Tan energy there” and then block them forever.

zarfeblong, 2 months ago to random

SF fans who follow me have already read up on the Hugo finalists (good list!) but game-dev fans who follow me may not be aware that the Hugos now have a “Best Game or Interactive Work” category. This is new, although there was a trial “Best Videogame” category a couple of years ago.

The finalists:

Alan Wake 2
Baldur’s Gate 3
Chants of Sennaar
Dredge
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

https://glasgow2024.org/hugo-awards/2024-hugo-award-finalists/

zarfeblong, 2 months ago to random

I have a folder of 1500 photos that I’ve downloaded off my phone since I first got a smartphone.

Wondering what a good tagging UI would look like that’s open-source and has a decently long service history. (And saves tags as text or JSON, but that goes without saying.)

zarfeblong, 2 months ago to random

Today in “you didn’t look at the plain-text section of your email to make sure it matched the HTML section”