Chop the Viking

@bentaels.taels.net out of curiosity, do you know any good references for UI/UX in text-based mediums when it comes to games? I'm thinking things like Adventure/Roguelikes (literally), Zork-likes, and MUDs from the past where there are narrative but still systems like inventory and shops and stuff?

Out of curiosity, I know Epic has said they plan to do anti-cheat for Linux (mostly so they can get Fortnight onto handhelds)... but given their recent public statements, how many people are actually going to trust them enough to install pseudo-kernal-level anticheat that they vibe coded in 2 days?

Alright, I think my DURF hack is at a point where I can playtest it... I'll let you know how it goes! rofl #DURFJAM

Sooooooooo maybe I'm a little psychotic... but I'm working on a hack of a TTRPG I've never heard of for a game jam... DURF Jam 6... #DURFJAM Making random tables is fun... 🤣

#NZGDC was really inspirational. Starting to make plans for messing around with my engine of choice that will lead to a bigger project and whatnot. Blah blah blah vague stuff. The real big question is going to be whether to mess with 2D or 3D for the first real project...

First panel for the day! Lessons from making physical games.

store.steampowered.comCosmorons on SteamThe Overlord demands you Conquer the Universe! Grab your friends in a 1-4 co-op roguelite shooter and deploy as grappling robot Drudges. Battle the alien swarms, complete missions and destroy the Cosm...

Second panel! Library Building.

Panel 3!

Just got to play a demo of this and talk to the devs, it was a lot of fun. Movement is fantastic and it’s fun to just fling yourself around 🤣 #NZGDC store.steampowered.com/app/2590750/...

Imposter Syndrome Round 2! Riding the bus system here in Auckland for the first time down to #NZGDC for Day 2. Full slate of panels and presentations for today. Got a couple breaks to sneak in and play some stuff being shown off.

Fought through imposter syndrome at the opening day of the New Zealand Game Developer’s Conference. It began with an amazing pōwhiri and keynote. Went to a couple of great presentations. And saw a bunch of great looking games I cannot wait to get my hands on over the next couple days.

21 Sept

Ugh. Why does the mess and clutter always sneak up on you? 🤣 So I've got some progress on a couple projects to make this week, but the primary focus right now is getting my office cleaned up and re-arranged so I can actually use more than just my computer here 😂 Time to get started... woo?

14 Sept

So weird idea. Is it possible to hook something like a BBS up to LORA stuff and getting access to it over something like Meshtastic? Because MysticBBS + Meshtastic sounds kind of amazing...

14 Sept

Is it just me, or do you also remember that JK Rowling decided to publish under said name because they didn't want people to know they were a female writer?

4 Sept

hey @hypernode.bsky.social - Any thoughts on where to potentially find an ascii/ansi artist to do artwork for splash screens and menus for a BBS (probably Mystic)?

4 Sept

As someone who was born in North America, one of the only downsides of moving to New Zealand is the lack of access to good Mexican food or a large number of the ingredients necessary to do it your damn self. But hey, there’s Old El Paso 😂🤣

5 Aug

Wow. I can't wait to see the reaction from Conservatives and Veterans. There will be a reaction, right? Right? ...right?

The Lincoln Project@lincolnproject.us

Draft dodger cosplays with stolen valor

9 July

It's fucking sad to be friends with the offspring of people I grew up with on social media, and watch them spouting a bunch of bullshit that falls in line with the shitty right wing talking points. I think I'm going to start taking bets on how long it's going to take him to block me. 🤔

8 July

Woo! Just booked my tickets for #NZGDC in October! I miss the first little half day, and I doubt I'll be able to attend any of the after hours stuff this year. But it's a step forward.

25 May

I just finished Between Horizons by @digitalesgames.bsky.social beautiful game. I highly recommend it. It's definitely got the creative juices flowing. I wish there were more stories on the Zephyr.

10 May

It's funny to me how so much Alien Contact SciFi is drenched in the whole idea that their technology is so vastly superior to humanities. It's hard to imagine anything breaking physics enough to stop something like a super-sonic projectile.

13 Mar

Had a conversation the other day that I think is interesting: Do you think a slow-burn, quasi-free-form, puzzle game like The 7th Guest or Myst would be able to succeed in today's gaming market? Could an audience spend weeks on a single puzzle? Or would it be ruined by guides and walkthroughs?

It's weird that the best, most advanced military in the world with the best, cutting-edge technology at the forefront of their arsenal cannot manage to keep themselves from blowing up a school full of kids... much less four of them.

You know, in the grand scheme of things, I wouldn't object to mandatory service in the Armed Services for all children and relations of American politicians that are of legal age. No blowing up foreign countries unless your own family and bloodline is on the ground.

The concept of the .hack games is rather fun. It's an MMORPG that doesn't exist. I feel like there's a lot of really good room to play with some of these ideas in the game dev world. 1/

It's an interesting liminal space in games right now. I'm not sure how its final form looks. But I think if you can figure out a way to restrict the chatbots down so that they stick to the actual lore of the game world, you could make a really interesting "fake" multiplayer world. 5/

And that's an interesting story to be told, potentially. And in that vein, .hack was way ahead of its time. And something people should take a look at for ideas on how you can dream bigger than you can fully accomplish, but you can wrap up a world in that idea and let players run with it. 6/6

The concept of the .hack games is rather fun. It's an MMORPG that doesn't exist. I feel like there's a lot of really good room to play with some of these ideas in the game dev world. 1/

Personally I wonder if LLMs could ever actually re-create human behavior, if this idea would be interesting to players. A fully fleshed out virtual world where all of the NPC are basically "players" in terms of how they act in the world. 3/

It's a weird space. Replacing players with "Ai", but I think there's a lot someone could do with a story when it comes to those things. A good story about isolation and authenticity that ties into the gameplay. 4/

The concept of the .hack games is rather fun. It's an MMORPG that doesn't exist. I feel like there's a lot of really good room to play with some of these ideas in the game dev world. 1/

I know a lot of it spawned from the fact that the first games were made for the PS2, and really FFXI was the only real MMO out there that had console representation. 2/

7 Feb

All I want for Christmas is to hear the entire stadium at the Super Bowl chant "FUCK ICE".

2 Feb

There's a fun movement of people who want to make the internet weird and more personal again. I think this is a fantastic idea. Now how do we run with this theme...?

16 Dec 2025

Okay... things are in the works. I'm jumping off of the cliff next year and doing as many Game Jams as I can in 2026. They are going to be longer to actually be able to work with my schedule (or lack thereof) - but let's get to making a bunch of weird stuff and have fun! Woo!

13 Dec 2025

How is anyone supposed to take LinkedIn serious when their choices of adding "instant messaging" contact information for your profile only lets you select from: Skype (dead), ICQ (dead), Google Hangouts (dead), QQ, and WeChat?

28 Nov 2025

So a week or so ago I dropped into an #AucklandMakesGames co-working thing at Grid/AKL and it was a lot of fun. Really inspiring talking with other people trying to work on games and seeing what people are working on. Makes me really want to work on stuff! Let's go!

So I have realised I've hit a weird milestone in my move outside of the US. We have been here for over 2 years. Which doesn't seem like a lot to me, but for my kids? Who are now 8, 8, and 11? It's probably difficult to remember times before they were here. So when I read books to them... 1/🧵

I don't want them to live a life where they're constantly deleting themselves and their experiences and replacing them with the perspective of a male. It's one of the many "weird" things I have been working to de-program myself of so that I can give my girls the best advantages I can. 7/🧵

I cannot wait to see what they end up doing and accomplishing. They will never have a bigger cheerleader than this guy right here. And I love every minute of it. Let's go! 8/8

talking about a character in a kid's book whose gender is never explicitly mentioned. I've made an effort to go out of my way to stop myself, and flip that expectation. I want my daughters to default to assuming characters in books are female like they are. 5/🧵

This is going to sound weird, but I really want them to have that subconscious experience I had growing up, where the protagonist matches my gender whenever they read a thing. It is valuable for them to read a bunch of different POVs. 6/🧵

I need to read *BOTH* the Imperial *AND* the metric measurements. *MY* brain might understand what 10 feet is, but might kids might have no clue. However, they might immediately clock in on what "3 meters" is, where I would have to translate that in my head. 3/🧵

So there's an interesting divide that is building up, my kids are going to be metric-centric, where it's going to be difficult for me to deal in those numbers without a mental translation first. Ironically, this whole thing reminds me of when I noticed that my braid defaulted to "him" when 4/🧵

There is this funny barrier that I recognise... Imperial vs Metric measurements. My brain pretty much operates in Imperial. Feet, Inches, Miles, Pounds. Yep, that's how my brain thinks about things. But my kids? I have no fucking clue. So when I'm reading their books to them, I realize... 2/🧵

19 Nov 2025

What I wouldn't give to hear a Whitehouse reporter ask Donald Trump in an oval office press conference, "Who is Bubba?" ... Can someone please make this a reality? It will totally be worth whatever stupid babbling name he tries to call you.

15 Nov 2025

Imagine a world where Bill Clinton posts a video online of him saying, "I did not have relations with that man." 🤣😂💦

10 Nov 2025

Since it is November 11 where I am, and November 11 is Veterans Day in the US I would like to wish a Happy Veterans Day to all of my fellow Veterans, especially the ones who haven’t turned traitor. Enjoy your free food today. 🫡

pixelheim.comthe end of octoberSo I've been doing a lot of thinking about "progress" lately and what it means in the various aspects of my life. And writing this now feels…

4 Nov 2025

It's that time again, a progress (or lack thereof) update on the projects we have on the table. More to follow in the near(ish) future: pixelheim.com/index.php?po...

30 Oct 2025

Hmm. Since the people who made Bluesky came over from Twitter to rebuild Twitter, have they made a Bluedeck (Skydeck?) application yet? Twitter was garbage to use without Tweetdeck. Has anyone made something like this yet? Since it's an open platform, it means basically everyone can do it. Hmm.