I made Pac-Man: Play | Source I’ve been inspired by a few indie game developers on the internet. In no particular order: Anthony Salter, a fellow Ultima Dragon breathing new life into a fantastic classic with Ultima 7: Revisited. Ben at Dev Duck makes balancing all aspects of life look simple. Game Endeavor who I thought fell off the planet, but I’m glad is back–with a demo! Keone, a crazy nutter solo-developing an MMO called Elegon, and making progress!
Play Here Adventure Communist is a game by Hyper Hippo, and by all accounts I shouldn’t know what it is. However, a few years ago, after testing positive for Covid (probable false positive) and stuck in a hotel room for 10 days with nothing but a phone, bad cable television, and no symptoms I started downloading any and every game that looks interesting. After being released, I stopped playing them all… except Adventure Communist.
Long story short, I was feeling defeated. I wanted to build something, anything, to prove to myself I can. The Project I call it Orter for two reasons: It’s retro in reverse It’s short for “ought to”, and you ought to retro It’s missing some quality of life features; but, hey, this is an MVP! My hope is, those familiar with a retrospective can just start using it, but there is a getting started guide to explain most features.
I use GNUCash for my personal finances because I don’t trust services that require me to give up my financial institution’s username and password. Not only does this feel wrong, it might be a terms of service violation. Either way, it seems like a security kerfuffle waiting to happen, so keep track of my finances locally. Yes it’s a lot more work, but I really feel like I have more control over what I want to see and a better understanding of what it means.
Long ago, back in my bachelor days, I had built some 8-bit NES sprites out of Lego and hung them on the wall. Recently, my wife asked me, “What happened to those?” and “Why did you never hang them up here?” She doesn’t realize it, but she just gave me permission to nerd out for the next few weekends. This weekend I pulled out the old Legos and learned more than I expected.
I decided to dive into Phaser 3 and Tiled with my next game project. I was looking to make a room change similar to Link to the Past (the SNES Zelda). The implementation is simple and the result was pleasing so I wanted to share. Playable demo! I’ve used Tiled a little in the past but this is the first excuse I’ve really had to dive in to it. If you’re not familiar with Tiled, there are a million ways to learn more.
A short post about a game I made about a year ago for a class at the University of North Texas, CSCE 4210: Game Programming 1. I took the class because I heard the professor, Dr. Ian Parberry, was good at teaching game design and was an interesting fellow (I heard right on both counts). I cannot claim all credit for this game because I worked with a partner. He was awesome and the only reason I don’t mention him by name is because I didn’t tell him I uploaded this and no longer have his contact info.