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Untitled Space Game: Dev Diary 2

I decided to go with Twine because it's (fairly) easy to pick up, and it reminds me of making way too many text adventures in BASIC on a Commodore +4. I knew going in that it was (in theory) mainly designed for interactive fiction, and you had to sort of bash things into shape in another direction if you wanted to make a game - or at least something people more readily associate with a game. First time around, I just couldn't work out how to make it do what I wanted. When I returned, there were now multiple versions galore. The default version, Harlowe, seemed to have more features. I just sort of vaguely assumed it would now be very easy to add additional elements like audio and visuals. Whoops. As it happens, I realised about 40 locations deep that actually I should probably be using the version called Sugarcube. Why search desperately for code that allows me to save and load games, which may not even work anymore, if it does this in Sugarcube by default? Why struggle with au
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Untitled Space Game: Dev Diary 1

 It actually does have a title, but I'd rather reveal it with a nice logo and not some terrible web font. It's taken me a good few years to getting round to making a game, because putting it off indefinitely is easy. All 6 of you reading this can rest easy that if all goes to plan, there'll be an actual finished game out there in the wild...eventually. One of the biggest time wasters was figuring out which platform to make the game on / with. I know my way around some code, but I'm certainly not a coder. I can do visuals (rusty visuals, because I'm very rusty). I can do music. I like stringing together narratives that have a definite end point but include a lot of wiggle room for doing something entirely unrelated. About eight years ago I had a play with Twine, decided it couldn't do quite what I wanted it to, and continued to not make a game. Now, at the grand old age of a lot, I'm back and digging it out again. I could spend forever messing with the innard
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Goodbye hellsite, I'll miss you

I have indeed decided to leave Twitter for the time being. It's going in a direction I can't say I'm massively enthused about, and Mastodon seems like the better alternative for the time being. If there's a dramatic about face in terms of leadership, or some sort of solid sense the whole place isn't going to collapse then I expect I'll return at some point. For now, I'll see you round.
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Back in business

Who knew it'd take Twitter going down in a ball of fire to get me back to posting on a blog. Anyway, welcome to the very distant past. I don't even remember how to change the incredibly dated template to one of a dozen other incredibly dated templates, so good luck with that.
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Oh hey, HTTPs finally works and I remembered I have a blog

I pretty much stopped posting after realising Blogger were possibly never going to enable HTTPs on custom domains, because I figured what's the point when I'm gonna be shunted out of search results? No reason to be penalised by Google for not having HTTPs when they wouldn't let me use the damn thing. Anyway, TL;DR is they finally enabled it as an option and after some fritzyness, I'm back and ready to post nonsense about junk. Hooray.
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Andromeda Redux Boogaloo

I've now completed Mass Effect: Andromeda, and here's my follow up post to this . Do I still like it? Got bored? Fed up with a thing? Time to find out! Random thoughts ahoy, no major spoilers but maybe some mild ones: * The final mission(s) was great. No spoilers, but everything major you worked towards in some way paid off - or not - throughout the long last leg, and made for a dramatic conclusion. * The story does, eventually, move on from "help us live on all these planets" but even then, you'll still be better equipped to deal with the finale assuming you keep on with the whole Pathfinding thing. Part of me wishes writers wouldn't rely on magical ancient space alien tech as the quick fix for a story (good thing you ended up in a new galaxy with gigantic terraforming / atmospheric processors everywhere, huh), but having said that, you don't need to use them to make the planets habitable. Still, this feels like a missed opportunity to go in har
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Thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda

Yeah, I saw all the bad reviews and laughed at the hilarious wonky animations. I've discovered ways to make Ryder either do a crab-walk shuffle or look like she's on rollerskates. Sometimes I load up the Tempest and she's vibrating up and down while team mates stand on tables. My biggest concern was that after having played an hour or so of Andromeda's demo, I didn't like it. The introductory planet feels wanky, with vision obstructing grass and awkward to climb rocks all over the place - not what you want when trying to get to grip with a new game and its mechanics. The combat seemed like some weird throwback to ME1 where everything is floaty and underpowered. Once you get past the first not particularly well done first hour or so, the game opens out into something I'm finding to be hugely enjoyable. It's gonzo ME1. It's all those Mako planets from the first game, but jammed with stuff to do on them. If the original ME, which felt like a lost s
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