Richard

Richard

@benjymous.bsky.social

'Veteran' from the AAA games industry, building small games and geotechnical engineering software. he/him. sing-song ding-dong, and Triston, both available now on play.date/catalog and itch.io

843 followers1.2K following2K posts

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

Also, from a sample set of 4, I have come to the conclusion that Tom isn't quite sure how to finish writing his name, so one day he may be stuck forever in an infinite-em

Richard reposted

Tom Cox
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

FUCK IT. Let's give away 2 more signed paperbacks of my latest novel. Repost/reply to enter! You might like it if you like: Folkloric creatures Old records Intricate psychedelic stories The idea of circular time All shares much-appreciated. PS YOU GET A FREE LINOCUT OWL BOOKMARK TOO IF YOU WIN!

Richard reposted

Tom Cox
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

Isn’t it amazing the way life can seem too short, and intrinsically magical, yet at the same time feel like a long, uphill road, potholed with fuckwits?

Richard reposted

Lego Lost At Sea
@legolostatsea.bsky.social

Among the old plastic washing up from the seabed this week was this fragment - does anyone know what these letters might once have said? Google lens suggests bar of soap (definitely not), bread tag, masonic token, belt dressing (?). We wondered if it might be some sort of badge or nameplate?

Richard reposted

Bookshop.org
@bookshop.org

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

40 years since my family's drying washing was forever immortalised on a shiny disk for all to see!

The Centre for Computing History@computinghistory.org.uk

We are getting ready for tomorrow’s big day! 🙌🏼 Domesday at 40 - come join us in celebrating 40 years of the BBC Domesday Project! The full itinerary is available to see on our website, book your tickets and find out more here: www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/77318/Do...

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

Sage: At long last, we have created the Talkie Toaster from sci-fi series Red Dwarf. Would anyone like some toast? What about a crumpet? Croissant?

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

It was dark. So dark that my senses that don't rely on vision also stopped working. My nose got lost behind the sofa. I couldn't remember where my fingers. My tastebuds were still in London, and I hated that sentence. Worst of all I couldn't see my eyes, it was so damn dark.

general counsel foggy bottom jeans, esq.@robt.fm

if you read this synopsis, you may be entitled to financial compensation

Richard reposted

Tom Cox
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

FUCK IT! Who'd like to win a signed book from me & Jim? 3 of these going to 3 randomly selected people who repost this & pop a reply below. YOU MIGHT LIKE IT IF YOU LIKE: Weird stones Bookshops Mysterious pensioners Badgers The devil fungi Deer Pixies Sample story here: www.tom-cox.com/the-date/

Richard reposted

Tom Cox
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

Thread (pls read it all) FUCK IT. I'm giving away another 5 signed copies of my latest novel, Everything Will Swallow You. To enter, simply repost this & pop a reply below. You might like it if you like any of these things: Community Knitting Folklore The sea Dorset Silliness Old records CONTD...

Richard reposted

Tom Cox
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

THREAD/ORIGINAL ART GIVEAWAY This hare linoprint is by my mum, Jo. I'll be sending an original of this to one randomly chosen person who reposts this link to my recently updated website & pops a reply below. www.tom-cox.com The offer is open worldwide. I also have some more art to give away...

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

Both of my #playdate games are on sale for a limited time! play.date/games/studio...

rae@rae.wtf

augustravaganza 2026 is live NOW! #playdate it's a nice big community sale to ring in the new month. 2024 and 2025 went great, and we have over 80(!) games participating this time! if you wanna see all the participating games, visit catalog on your playdate, or head to: 🟨 play.date/games/tags/o...

Richard reposted

Mike Bithell
@mikebithell.bsky.social

This is blowing up with creative, interesting games. If you see this, please take a moment to look through and wishlist any that pop for you. Finding an audience is hard at the best of times, but weirdos and freaks like us need you more than ever. Go look at these games (And also Vampirium: 1997)

Mike Bithell@mikebithell.bsky.social

Getting a lot of eyeballs at the moment, so, if you’ve also announced an indie game recently, reply here and show off your wares with a trailer. If you’re reading this later, go checkout these games and get them wishlisted (you know, just like you’ve already wishlisted Vampirium: 1997)

Richard reposted

Playdate
@play.date

Heads up! We’re about to make some shifts to Playdate’s production — no, none to Playdate itself — which means a factory pause. Soon, Playdate will be temporarily "sold out”. Once we're back up, more stock will start to arrive later this year. But if you want a Playdate soon… now's the time to buy!

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

So, in my little #playdate game Triston, when you complete a level, it has a little throwaway feature where it shows you the name of the place you've helped discover. #gamedev #indiegames

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Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

The final data is saved out as a Lua table, which takes about 200k of memory in the game (which could be considered wasteful if memory was tight), but the algorithm is fast enough that it doesn't cause a big delay to generate.

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

So, in my little #playdate game Triston, when you complete a level, it has a little throwaway feature where it shows you the name of the place you've helped discover. #gamedev #indiegames

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Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

Here was a slow manual process - splitting each name into chunks. I could stop here, with my list chunks and just pick them at random, but that would give some very strange combinations, as it would take no account for how *common* parts are (there are a lot of -tons, but not so many -throps)

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

Back to the code - it counts and dedupes the chunks, outputting a list sorted by frequency and how many items came before it. There were originally 24k lines in my source, so I can pick a rnd 0 .. 24k, and find the chunk where before <r. Repeat this for each type or chunk, and out pops a place name.

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

So, in my little #playdate game Triston, when you complete a level, it has a little throwaway feature where it shows you the name of the place you've helped discover. #gamedev #indiegames

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Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

Then comes the hard bit. If you know anything about UK place names, then you'll realise that the vast majority of them have some sort of historical pattern, usually based on the geography of the area (or rather the geography a long time ago) www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspir...

english-heritage.org.ukThe Origins of English Place NamesIn this article, we’ll give you a brief history of how English places got their names and highlight the origins of some of our favourites.
Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

So, Exmouth, that's Ex mouth. The mouth of the river Exe. Likewise Cambridge. Bridge over the river Cam. Prefixes or suffixes - *North* Berwick, Barnard *Castle* - can be separated out too. Names can be split apart into chunks, giving us the building blocks to generate new names.

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

So, in my little #playdate game Triston, when you complete a level, it has a little throwaway feature where it shows you the name of the place you've helped discover. #gamedev #indiegames

View full thread
Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

To crunch this down into something our humble Playdate can use, first I wrote a tiny bit of C# that extracted all the city/town/village names into a text file - that gets us down to ~24k lines, or ~340kb of data

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

So, in my little #playdate game Triston, when you complete a level, it has a little throwaway feature where it shows you the name of the place you've helped discover. #gamedev #indiegames

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

How does it create these? Certainly not using any modern AI techniques - Procedural Generation is quite different from GenAI - it's actually a very simple algorithm, powered by a good chunk of manual brute force.

Richard
@benjymous.bsky.social

People seem to be mentioning icecream

Playdate@play.date

⑤ Triston is a Match 3 puzzle game with a town building twist. Build roads! Discover settlements! Reroute water ways! Build Bypasses! Beware of the forests! Deliver Icecream! Disregard the fog! 🗺️ play.date/games/triston/