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  • in music
  • 4 min read

Grandmother's Country Music, Honky Tonk

Hank Williams Sr

I couldn't begin to tell you what a modern country song sounds like or who the artists would be. I scarcely remember the names of 90s country artists I heard as a child from my mother's radio, which I regularly listened to with my cousins and family.

By age 13, I had completely discarded county music. I moved from punk rock, to hardcore, to emo, to ska, to dancehall, to vaporwave, to witch house, to cloud rap, to hyperpop. You name it, but the point is, I left country music in the dust as soon as I was old enough to do that.

Recently I've been experiencing a return to my familial roots. Except it's not my mother's country that I'm here to tell you about. I want to talk about my grandmother's country music.

  • in hax0ring
  • 11 min read

Fun with Retroarch on Linux

RetroArch Game Library with Thumbnails and Screenshots

Retroarch is a frontend for emulators. It basically merges multiple systems into a customizable interface with unified settings. I'm going to show you how I build and configure my classic game box and we'll look at the scripts I use to get roms onto it. By the end we will have a complete collection of games, thumbnails, screenshots, and database info about every game ever released for multiple classic gaming consoles. Then we'll do some other fun things like organizing a random game picker.

period blood scooped out of a public toilet used by taylor swift

period blood scooped out of a public toilet used by taylor swift

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Availability is as scarce as the authenticity of this once-in-a-lifetime offer.

Are you ready to uncork the truth?

  • in gamedev
  • 7 min read

Using Tiled Object Layers with Defold Tilemaps

Defold is great, but when it comes to designing levels, integrating an external tool like Tiled can significantly enhance your workflow. Tiled is a free, open-source map editor that supports a wide range of formats and allows you to create tile-based game worlds with ease. It's snappy, fast, highly extendable, and its been around for as long as I can remember.

Tiled Layers

What's even better is that out of the box, it supports exporting Defold tilemaps and collections. What's slightly disappointing is that after getting Tiled-pilled, you realize there's a lot of things it would be nice to specify in the level editor that you can't because Defold tilemaps do not support those features.

I'm going to show you how I set object spawn positions in Tiled, export them as JSON, and load them with Defold.

  • in gamedev
  • 4 min read

Started A New Platformer Prototype

It's been over a half month since I released Fester's Torment and went dark on this blog. But I haven't been idle. I already have a new prototype.

It's a fast paced, momentum based platformer that is a cross between Super Mario World and something like Megaman.

The influence is pretty apparent from the gameplay. Something similar to P-speed affects the height of your jumps. You fall fast when you let go of the button and you're floaty when you hold it down. You can get consecutively higher jumps by chaining jumps together without dropping momentum. It's a lot of stuff like that, where knowing the physics allows you to get that really crazy jump.

  • in gamedev
  • 3 min read

Fester's Torment Version 2.0 Beta Release

Fester's Torment Version 2.0 Beta Release

This game started as a clone of Halls of Torment but transmogrified into a Shoot 'Em Up style hybrid. It features a day and night cycle, in which waves of enemies are more aggressive during the day, and at night you have time to prepare for the next wave. The goal is to survive for 5 minutes.

Play the Game on itch.io

Or try it here if your screen is big enough. I'll talk more about the release below.

  • in gamedev
  • 7 min read

My Complete Defold Render Script

If you're planning to modify the render script yourself, expect to find only partial examples online. You’ll need to combine techniques from various scripts and spend time with the render pipeline manual and the render API. This process involves a lot of trial and error, so be prepared to dig into the code and make sense of it.

Here’s my consolidated Defold render script—a mix between the example script from this light map tutorial by UnfoldingGamedev and the default render script.

While I didn’t write most of this code, I’ll indicate the parts that I did, and otherwise how I got here.

  • in meta
  • 1 min read

Follow on Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon

Stay up-to-date with all the latest updates, insights, and stuff I share! While I strive to write detailed articles, sometimes the quickest way to share something new is on social media. Follow along on your preferred platform below, or subscribe via RSS (see footer) to never miss an update.

  • in gamedev
  • 3 min read

Throw Your Game in the Trash Thursday

Working on the game has been pretty frustrating lately. It's one of the reasons I started writing in this blog: I was looking for something more relaxing to do as a diversion. But of course eventually I got back to the game, and while I have made some progress, I've spent a lot of time fighting to make progress.

In this post, I'm going to run through latest features and then I'm throwing this POS in the trash for the rest of the day. And possibly tomorrow.

  • in music
  • 2 min read

Song of the Year: Mario Kart Contigo

Sometimes the algorithm blesses you with the digital equivalent of finding buried treasure in your backyard. This time, it wasn’t some cursed creepypasta or another YouTube conspiracy deep-dive. I’m hit with Mario Kart Contigo by LAURASAD.

  • in gamedev
  • 6 min read

Is This a Fester's Quest Spiritual Successor?

Fester's Quest for the NES

Wow. You really clicked on this didn't you? Welcome to my gamedev blog I guess.

Introducing my Game, Fester's Torment

This project was intended to be a cross between Halls of Torment -- a Vampire Survivors clone featuring an infinite, wrapping map that spawns hordes of enemies -- and Fester's Quest, the infamous NES game based on the Addam's Family character. I say was because the direction of the game changed halfway through making it.

And I'm honestly not sure if the end result has any connection to Fester's Quest at all.

  • in gamedev
  • 6 min read

How I Accidentally Built 4 Games While Avoiding Work

From the Web to Games

I’ve spent most of my time as a developer working with Django on Linux systems and focused on backend challenges. I knew enough JavaScript to enhance my applications, but beyond using vanilla JS to solve specific frontend problems, I rarely explored it further. Eventually, I realized that if I wanted to get more out of working on the frontend, I should aim to create things that couldn’t be done on the backend at all.

These small projects were just an excuse to break out of the usual web development tasks and experiment with something fun. I wasn’t trying to make fully-fledged games; it was more about exercising a different set of skills and enjoying the process of building polished, interactive experiences, no matter how short of being real games that they were.