Archive

Full Post List

Dec 11, 2024: It’s unfortunate that itch.io got taken down because of an escalating set of automated processes and overreactions– but it’s got me โ€ฆ

Dec 10, 2024: Finished Listening: The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle ๐Ÿ“š

Dec 10, 2024: Currently reading: Game Magic by Jeff Howard ๐Ÿ“š

Dec 10, 2024: Finished reading: Light It, Shoot It! by Graham Chaffee ๐Ÿ“š Honestly this felt a little rushed, it was over before I had a chance to really care about โ€ฆ

Dec 8, 2024: Finished reading: The Arab of the Future 3 by Riad Sattouf ๐Ÿ“š

Dec 7, 2024: I decided I was tired of faking my way through Inkscape, so I grabbed this course on sale a few days ago. I’m about an hour into the course, but โ€ฆ

Dec 3, 2024: Finished reading: The Arab of the Future 2 by Riad Sattouf ๐Ÿ“š

Dec 3, 2024: Nora Reed says you should have a website If you don’t want to learn to use technology, other people will use it for you, and they will use it โ€ฆ

Dec 3, 2024: I’ve submitted Pinball Putt to the 1-Button Game Jam. A mini-golf/pinball mashup where you need to earn enough points to pass a level, without โ€ฆ

Dec 1, 2024: OK, I’m pretty happy that the dethrace project exists so that I can play Carmageddon natively on linux.

Nov 30, 2024: My “chill mini golf game” for the 1-Button Jam is coming together– though I don’t think I’ll be done for the 5pm โ€ฆ

Nov 28, 2024: I had hoped to complete a couple more obstacles/gadgets today, but only got this pinball-style bumper working. I’m happy with the mouse graphic โ€ฆ

Nov 27, 2024: I’ve added an “attract mode” bot that plays plausibly but seldom successfully. It can’t really deal with obstacles yet.

Nov 26, 2024: I’ve migrated fediverse following/followers over to my profile on mastodon.gamedev.place. ross.karchner.com will now cross-post to that account. โ€ฆ

Nov 26, 2024: Working on a chill mini-golf game for the 1-Button Jam. [image or embed] โ€” RossK (Nellee Hooper Edit) โ€ฆ

Nov 20, 2024: Finished reading: The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf ๐Ÿ“š

Nov 16, 2024: The Smithsonian has a model of the ship from Close Encounters of the 3rd kind. If you look closely you can find R2D2 and a couple of other Easter โ€ฆ

Nov 13, 2024: Another year in your feed I was on the fence a bit, but I allowed my yearly micro.blog subscription renew today. There are a thousand ways to put a site or blog up online, but โ€ฆ

Nov 10, 2024: Finished Listening: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle ๐Ÿ“š

Nov 8, 2024: Finished reading: Delights: a Story of Hieronymus Bosch by Guy Colwell ๐Ÿ“š

Nov 5, 2024: I had a couple of ideas for the Github Game Off, but I’m kind of feeling more motivated to work on SpinDoc– though I think my plan this โ€ฆ

Nov 5, 2024: Currently reading: Empire of Normality by Robert Chapman ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 31, 2024: Not much obvious has changed since my last post about SpinDoc– I did rework a lot of how the wands work behind the scenes. I had been rotating โ€ฆ

Oct 28, 2024: Finished reading: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 26, 2024: Finished reading: Little Black Book by Jeff McComsey ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 25, 2024: Finished reading: Medea by Blandine Le Callet ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 23, 2024: Currently reading: Medea by Blandine Le Callet ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 19, 2024: Maybe it’s time for for a little station ID? Even though you might be seeing this on Mastodon, Bluesky, or elsewhere– you’re reading โ€ฆ

Oct 17, 2024: Finished reading: Air Volume 3 by G. Willow Wilson ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 11, 2024: Who wants to start a news show with me?

Oct 11, 2024: Finished reading: Air Volume 2 by G. Willow Wilson ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 8, 2024: SpinDoc Some progress on “SpinDoc”: “rings” (aka, dots you can only use once) enemy wands that can move to appropriately colored dots โ€ฆ

Oct 8, 2024: Finished reading: Air Volume 1 by G. Willow Wilson ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 5, 2024: Finished Listening: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 4, 2024: Finished reading: Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore ๐Ÿ“š

Sep 25, 2024: Finished reading: Marvels ๐Ÿ“š

Sep 25, 2024:

Sep 23, 2024: How to Read Superhero Comics and why Finished reading: How to Read Superhero Comics and why by Geoff Klock ๐Ÿ“š This was more academic than I was expecting (full of words like โ€ฆ

Sep 21, 2024: I’ve been working through Firebelly’s new course: Create a Complete Grid-Based Puzzle Game in Godot 4 with C#. Why? I learned a ton by โ€ฆ

Sep 21, 2024: It’s nothing to be too proud of yet, but I’ve made some progress on my Spin Doctor remake/tribute/spiritual successor/what have you. This โ€ฆ

Sep 21, 2024: Don’t worry about the smoke

Sep 11, 2024: Currently reading: How to Read Superhero Comics and why by Geoff Klock ๐Ÿ“š Recommendation from Robin Sloan’s newsletter.

Sep 9, 2024: Abandoned for now: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville ๐Ÿ“š I got about halfway through, but it’s been a few weeks since I picked it up– just too โ€ฆ

Aug 30, 2024: The kiddo and I have been playing some Warcraft 2. It’s early yet, but I’m a little surprised by how “scorched earth” some of โ€ฆ

Aug 25, 2024: Postmortem: Quack Circuits / Godot WIld Jam 72 The ratings are in, and Quack Circuits… ranked near the bottom in most categories (there were 156 submissions). Getting 21st in โ€ฆ

Aug 25, 2024: Planet of the All My Apes Gone This morning I was thinking back on some videos I’ve watched (like this) about abandoned NFT games, and it occurred to me that such a virtual โ€ฆ

Aug 24, 2024: Finished Listening: The Sign of the Four by SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE ๐Ÿ“š

Aug 18, 2024: So, I had a serviceable puzzle game. The feedback in the Karchner household was pretty much: That’s boring. You should make the game less โ€ฆ

Aug 17, 2024: I’ve updated the deployment pipelines for Pong Wars and the current WIP to use Godot 4.3. While I was at it, I updated the Pong Wars pipeline to โ€ฆ

Aug 16, 2024: Despite previous predictions, I haven’t gotten a chance to work on improving the art and adding sound, music, polish, etc yet. I’ve got โ€ฆ

Aug 16, 2024: If Sour Patch Kids made a beer, it’d taste like ‘Volcano Sauce’. (please send more volcano sauce)

Aug 15, 2024: Currently reading: Policy as Code by Jimmy Ray ๐Ÿ“š

Aug 14, 2024: Finished Listening: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle ๐Ÿ“š (I’m actually listening to Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, read by โ€ฆ

Aug 12, 2024: It’s not a game yet– but it’s interactive! By tomorrow night, I should be able to have a couple of playable levels, and that will โ€ฆ

Aug 10, 2024: A feeble #screenshotsaturday for my Godot Wild Jam work in progress. The current idea is something like Pipe Mania meets Snap Crcuits. This screenshot โ€ฆ

Aug 9, 2024: The theme is out for Godot Wild Jam #72. It’s a good thing I spent time last night finally figuring out how to make 2D lighting and shadows โ€ฆ

Aug 6, 2024: I decided to dip into Threads a bit over the last few days: it’s mostly people talking about Twitter, Elon Musk, and the new Deadpool movie. One โ€ฆ

Aug 6, 2024: GWJ72 When I was writing this post, I almost committed to sitting out game jams for a while, in order to focus on a small number of longer-term projects. โ€ฆ

Aug 4, 2024: The previously seen water shader, applied to a sphere (by request):

Aug 3, 2024: Finished reading: In Perpetuity by Maria and Peter Hoey ๐Ÿ“š

Jul 25, 2024: Finished Listening: How To Write Funny by Scott Dikkers ๐Ÿ“š

Jul 25, 2024: Switched the blog theme to Sumo by Matt Langford.

Jul 25, 2024: Finishing up Godot 4 Shaders: Craft Stunning Visuals, here are some 3D shaders:

Jul 23, 2024: I’m enjoying Kaan Alpar’s Godot Shaders course, and finished the 2D section last night. In this video, the animated background, greyscale, โ€ฆ

Jul 21, 2024: Currently listening: How To Write Funny by Scott Dikkers ๐Ÿ“š

Jul 19, 2024: Finished Listening: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport ๐Ÿ“š

Jul 16, 2024: What's next for games? Two years ago, while my son was attending an event at the library, I spent some time flipping through a book about the Unity game engine (maybe this โ€ฆ

Jul 15, 2024: I’m working on a tech-company name generator for a project, some examples from a recent run: Vibrant Institute The Logic Company Urban Mammoth โ€ฆ

Jul 12, 2024: In the NYT top 100 books of the 21st century, I’ve only read the two graphic novels and a book about comic books authors…

Jul 9, 2024: Currently listening: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport ๐Ÿ“š

Jul 8, 2024: Finished Listening: Moonbound by Robin Sloan ๐Ÿ“š It’s been a while since I’ve had the sensation of being sad when a book ends. I want to โ€ฆ

Jul 6, 2024: Currently reading: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville ๐Ÿ“š Not my first time starting, but maybe recording it here will motivate me to finish.

Jul 6, 2024: Finished reading: Further Explorations: 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A Reed ๐Ÿ“š

Jul 4, 2024: Currently reading: Further Explorations: 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A Reed ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 28, 2024: Finished reading: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 26, 2024: Got tickets for Fredericksburg Comic Con.

Jun 26, 2024: Currently reading: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 26, 2024: Finished reading: 50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon by Aaron A Reed ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 24, 2024: Currently listening: Moonbound by Robin Sloan ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 22, 2024: Ever since I started tinkering with gamedev (and Godot specifically), one thing I’ve periodically attempted is a recreation of the mac game Spin โ€ฆ

Jun 22, 2024: Finished Listening: Whole Earth by John Markoff ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 22, 2024: I’ve been waiting my whole life for this email.

Jun 20, 2024: My excellent son Benjamin(10) has created BenKardian, his two-player take on the classic solitaire game Accordian.

Jun 19, 2024: Sometimes I play games I still haven’t entirely kicked the Marvel Snap habit, but I feel like I’ve made peace with it. It’s a thing I enjoy, so I โ€ฆ

Jun 18, 2024: Currently reading: 50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon by Aaron A Reed ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 18, 2024: Finished reading: The Snare of the Tree, and Other Perilous Seductions: Essays on Dangers in Game Design by Alexis Kennedy ๐Ÿ“š Much shorter than the โ€ฆ

Jun 16, 2024: Currently reading: The Snare of the Tree, and Other Perilous Seductions: Essays on Dangers in Game Design by Alexis Kennedy ๐Ÿ“š

Jun 16, 2024: Finished reading: Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations by Alexis Kennedy ๐Ÿ“š Good stuff, I’ll probably go back to the more practical โ€ฆ

Jun 13, 2024: Current view:

Jun 10, 2024: Finished reading: Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers ๐Ÿ“š I skimmed some chapters, but will definitely keep it around for โ€ฆ

Jun 9, 2024: GameDev.tv jam results for The Last Stan: I’m happy to have gotten #59 (out of over 1000) in the mechanics category, and a decent showing โ€ฆ

Jun 7, 2024: I don’t like this new world where swiping your credit card at a business automatically signs you up to receive their marketing emails.

Jun 4, 2024: “The Last Stan” is live on itch.io and submitted to the gamedev.tv jam. It’s a platformer, with typing. It’s not my favorite โ€ฆ

Jun 1, 2024: Hey, an actual #screenshotsaturday : For the gamedev.tv jam, I’m working on a platformer where you escape alien ships and defeat ground-based โ€ฆ

May 30, 2024: I spent the first part of my life in the Hazleton, PA area. Here’s a really cool 10 minute video about the “city under the city”, a โ€ฆ

May 29, 2024: I never thought I’d say this, but… I get too many emails from Run the Jewels.

May 28, 2024: Whole Earth ๐Ÿ“š Currently listening: Whole Earth by John Markoff ๐Ÿ“š A year or two back, I listened to Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, โ€ฆ

May 28, 2024: Finished Listening: The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2 by Steven L. Kent ๐Ÿ“š

May 24, 2024: I think I’ll try to make something for this year’s gamedev.tv jam(which kicks off tonight), if the theme is interesting. Ten days to work, โ€ฆ

May 19, 2024: I’ve made a few minor fixes to Zummoning recently: Cards get dealt in a smoother, less jerky manner Help text now stays on screen for as long โ€ฆ

May 19, 2024: Currently reading: Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations by Alexis Kennedy ๐Ÿ“š

May 18, 2024: Star Trek: Deep Space 9, or The Continuing Adventures of Miles O’Brien.

May 17, 2024: Orchestrator I spent some time last night and this morning learning about Orchestrator, a visual scripting plugin for Godot. I was mostly taking a look to see if โ€ฆ

May 15, 2024: GameOps I used the Pong Wars deployment as an excuse to try out GitHub actions. It’s nice! Almost too nice, like the fact that it’s free makes me โ€ฆ

May 13, 2024: Pong Wars I’ve published my Godot re-creation of Pong Wars by Koen van Gilst on GitHub (and embedded it below!) It’s not exactly a game– more โ€ฆ

May 11, 2024: People who think the web is dead or dying haven’t used the Domino’s Pizza Tracker.

May 10, 2024: I recently updated my /games page so that each game has video.

May 6, 2024: Finished reading: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris ๐Ÿ“š

May 5, 2024: The kiddo and I had a good time at NOVA Game Developers Meetup this afternoon! It was fun to play games, show what we’ve worked on, and chat โ€ฆ

May 4, 2024: Today is Free Comic Day, for those who observe

May 1, 2024: It’s like they really see me.

Apr 29, 2024: GWJ 68 Results Honestly, I had convinced myself that I was going to rank higher in Godot Wild Jam #68, at least in the originality category. Being in the top third โ€ฆ

Apr 25, 2024: Here’s footage of gamedev and streamer ObsidianBlk playing The Zummoning!. He’s got some (entirely fair) critical feedback, which I โ€ฆ

Apr 25, 2024: Currently reading: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris ๐Ÿ“š Part 2 comes out next month, and I want to refresh my memory of the characters and โ€ฆ

Apr 25, 2024: Finished Listening: The Sandman Vol. 8: Worlds' End by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š

Apr 21, 2024: Zummoning Redux I’ve made many improvements in the new version of “The Zummoning” submitted to Godot Wild Jam. Unfortunately, the name isn’t โ€ฆ

Apr 19, 2024: More Zummoning I’m cleaning up “The Zummoning” for submission to Godot Wild Jam this weekend (The GWJ folks usually disallow games submitted to โ€ฆ

Apr 16, 2024: If this works, then this blog post was published with Godot!

Apr 16, 2024: Finished Listening: The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š

Apr 15, 2024: “The Zummoning” (which only occurred to me when I realized I had to name the thing) has been submitted to Ludum Dare 55. It needs a TON of โ€ฆ

Apr 14, 2024: I think I’m onto something promising, but I’m not feeling confident that this will actually be a fun game and not look like ass by the jam โ€ฆ

Apr 13, 2024: 19 or so hours into this 72-hour game jam, and I’m only just starting to code. So far, I’ve spent time researching demons, sketching out a โ€ฆ

Apr 13, 2024: What privacy laws only apply to ages 13-15?

Apr 11, 2024: Working on a Godot recreation of Pong Wars. I might write this up as a tutorial?

Apr 9, 2024: I struggle to resist: Monte Cristo on a restaurant menu bread pudding on a restaurant menu audio humblebundles

Apr 7, 2024: Currently reading: Make Your Own Pixel Art by Jennifer Dawe ๐Ÿ“š I’ve started a few video tutorials on pixel art, but didn’t manage to stick โ€ฆ

Apr 6, 2024: Currently listening: The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š

Apr 5, 2024: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a new report on banking in video games and virtual worlds, which might be interesting to gamedev โ€ฆ

Apr 4, 2024: I love that electoral-vote.com basically looks the same as it did in 2000.

Apr 3, 2024: It seems like my schedule is clear enough that I’ll be able to participate in Ludum Dare 55, April 12-15. It was fun last time. My goal on this โ€ฆ

Apr 1, 2024: At the kiddo’s taekwondo class, where it’s “blocking week”. Somehow, it’s never “ducking week” or โ€ฆ

Mar 30, 2024: Achievement unlocked: pirating the Webelos Handbook. (I swear, we have a copy in the house, I just can’t find it)

Mar 30, 2024: We rejoined Netflix this week, and I’m a little surprised by how big the included library of Android games has gotten. Any recommendations? โ€ฆ

Mar 28, 2024: Spoons, Brakes This feels a bit like cheating: but immediately after my last post on the topic, I built a paper prototype of the Spoon Theory game using index cards. โ€ฆ

Mar 28, 2024: Finished Listening: The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š He’s not “taking a bath”, he’s in the bath tub.

Mar 24, 2024: The hardest part is starting I still like my spoon-theory game concept (as amended), though there’s a lingering skepticism over whether the thing I’ve described will โ€ฆ

Mar 22, 2024: I assumed that replacing our aged wireless router (whatever Verizon gave us, 12 or more years ago?) would improve performance, but kind of surprised โ€ฆ

Mar 14, 2024: A Solution Me, a couple of hours ago: Is it possible to take what Iโ€™ve described and actually make it fun and challenging? Or, will the right path (or a right โ€ฆ

Mar 14, 2024: Idea File Found this list of ideas I had posted to Twitter over some number of years. It’s not all gold, but I still like a few of them: a first-in, โ€ฆ

Mar 14, 2024: Spoon theory game: initial concept and prior art Here’s my initial concept for the spoon theory game: Each level/puzzle is a grid, with a starting location and one or more “must do” โ€ฆ

Mar 10, 2024: Finished reading: Game Design Deep Dive: Platformers by Joshua Bycer ๐Ÿ“š

Mar 9, 2024: Currently listening: The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š This is my favorite storyline in the whole Sandman series– probably โ€ฆ

Mar 9, 2024: BuJoBook Finished reading: The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll ๐Ÿ“š I skimmed or skipped some of the more philosophical material (like a chapter on โ€ฆ

Mar 8, 2024: Currently reading: The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll ๐Ÿ“š I’ve been using a bullet journal for a couple of years now, but lately, โ€ฆ

Mar 7, 2024: I was thinking about watching Midsommer, but reading the Wikipedia article was just enough horror for me.

Mar 7, 2024: Finished Listening: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin ๐Ÿ“š

Mar 5, 2024: Spending the evening at Fairfax County Government Center, shuttling election materials between the loading dock (where I found this sign) and offices โ€ฆ

Mar 4, 2024: Currently reading: Game Design Deep Dive: Platformers by Joshua Bycer ๐Ÿ“š

Mar 4, 2024: Finished Listening: The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š

Mar 1, 2024: A jam of my own One thing I’ve learned about myself after participating in a couple of game jams: I like having deadlines. So, I’m going to try setting a โ€ฆ

Feb 29, 2024: Brakes Escape update I’ve done a round of post-jam tweaking on Brakes Escape. The game no longer simply stops generating new platforms (and walls!) once you hit a โ€ฆ

Feb 26, 2024: Currently listening: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin ๐Ÿ“š

Feb 25, 2024: Surprised that, for a published-this-month technical book, Thrift Books had more inventory on hand and a better price than Amazon.

Feb 23, 2024: Results are in– I was hoping for higher scores generally , but I’m pleased with getting #14 in the “fun” category. I am โ€ฆ

Feb 20, 2024: “Flash of light-mode content” is the new flash of unstyled content.

Feb 19, 2024: Godot Wild Jam 66 postmortem Some lessons learned from my recent game jam experience: Don’t wait until the very end of the jam to download the export templates bundle (see โ€ฆ

Feb 18, 2024: Brakes Escape, my submission to Godot Wild Jam #66, is live on itch.io. There are a couple of bugs, half-baked feaures , and other compromises made in โ€ฆ

Feb 18, 2024: Escape game Previously, I posted two ideas for Godot Wild Jam 66. I ended up spending a few days on the first one and realized I didn’t like where it was โ€ฆ

Feb 14, 2024: I’m the PTA volunteer keeping an eye on our elementary school’s “tech club” again this session, and this time they’re โ€ฆ

Feb 14, 2024: I’ve been pretty lazy about static typing in GDScript - but it’s pretty cool to see that there are performance benefits.

Feb 13, 2024: Want to read: My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris ๐Ÿ“š The first book was great, and I’m excited to read what happens next. Maybe โ€ฆ

Feb 10, 2024: Nah I’m good Samsung

Feb 10, 2024: GWJ ideas Current thinking for the jam, either: starting over from scratch on the NS-Tower-inspired game I’ve tinkered with on and off (see a GIF of it โ€ฆ

Feb 9, 2024: Godot Wild Jam #66 I’m signed up for Godot Wild Jam #66, with a theme of “Escape”– which is pretty straightforward, as far as game jam themes go. โ€ฆ

Feb 8, 2024: This post from @manton prompted me to finally try out Bluesky– so far, it feels kind of like the uncanny valley version of Twitter? I’ll โ€ฆ

Feb 7, 2024: Currently listening: The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman ๐Ÿ“š (actually, re-listening to Act I of the Audible adaptation of The โ€ฆ

Feb 3, 2024: Finished reading: Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (A Norton Short) by Ashley Shew ๐Ÿ“š

Feb 3, 2024: #screenshotsaturday My son and I are still making tweaks to the roguelike that resulted from following @selinadev@indiepocalypse.social’s tutorial: a new spell, โ€ฆ

Jan 31, 2024: The lyrics to “Parents Just Donโ€™t Understand” aren’t as lighthearted as I remember.

Jan 28, 2024: Currently reading: Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (A Norton Short) by Ashley Shew ๐Ÿ“š

Jan 25, 2024: One of the more annoying differences between gdscript and Python: that Python capitalizes True and False, and gdscript does not.

Jan 24, 2024: Finished reading: Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith ๐Ÿ“š

Jan 24, 2024: Currently reading: Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith ๐Ÿ“š Checked this out for the kid, but I’m a grown-up and I can read it first if I want to.

Jan 23, 2024: Finished Listening: Story by Robert McKee ๐Ÿ“š

Jan 23, 2024: Screen shake makes pretty much anything better.

Jan 19, 2024: Donelike I did the thing! I finished all 13 parts of Selinadev’s Godot 4 Roguelike tutorial. There were a good number of things that were new to me: โ€ฆ

Jan 15, 2024: I generally don’t care much for professional sports, but I definitely feel some nostalgia for the time before sports betting was everywhere.

Jan 14, 2024: Anti-deliverabity I received a (legit) notice of eligibility for this Verizon settlement in my junk email folder. I know there are best practices and a class of โ€ฆ

Jan 14, 2024: Currently reading: The Treasure of the Black Swan by Paco Roca ๐Ÿ“š

Jan 13, 2024: Finished reading: Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom ๐Ÿ“š Honestly, I skimmed quite a bit– some parts seem more geared to engine โ€ฆ

Jan 13, 2024: #screenshotsaturday I’ve finished part 11 of roguelike tutorial. Now, you can delve deeper into the dungeon, and the player gains experience points and levels. โ€ฆ

Jan 13, 2024: This pepper has a pepper in it!

Jan 12, 2024: This history of gamification within games was more interesting than I expected. These are the game-y things like experience points, levels, and โ€ฆ

Jan 11, 2024: Seeing chatter about a new BBEdit release has me a little nostalgic. I used BBEdit Lite while HTML-ifying recipes for Hershey in the 90’s. โ€ฆ

Jan 6, 2024: #screenshotsaturday I’m up to Part 10 of @selinadev@indiepocalypse.social’s Godot 4 Roguelike tutorial. What’s new? Potions to heal with Scrolls of โ€ฆ

Jan 4, 2024: … and that is the most words I’ve written for public consumption, in quite a long time.

Jan 4, 2024: Blogging retrospective Via CRASH THE ARCADE, I learned of Matt Mullenweg’s birthday wish: I want you to blog. Publish a post. About anything! It can be long or short, โ€ฆ

Jan 1, 2024: Finished Listening: The Twilight World by Werner Herzog ๐Ÿ“š

Jan 1, 2024: Currently listening: The Twilight World by Werner Herzog ๐Ÿ“š I picked this up after finishing Herzog’s memoir, both because the story sounds โ€ฆ

Jan 1, 2024: Gamedev Goals for 2024 In the next year, I’d like to: Watch less YouTube, watch more Udemy, more O’Reilly Learning, more books, more blog posts and independent โ€ฆ

Dec 31, 2023: Ending the year by starting a course of paxlovid…

Dec 31, 2023: Finished reading: Every Man for Himself and God Against All by Werner Herzog ๐Ÿ“š

Dec 30, 2023: I couldn’t stay away– I once again have an account on the gamedev.place mastodon server. The main thing I missed was โ€ฆ

Dec 30, 2023: Roguelike, Part 7 I just finished part 7 of the roguelike tutorial. New stuff: Baddies! … that chase you … and can also die (but you can die too) A user โ€ฆ

Dec 26, 2023: Currently reading: Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers ๐Ÿ“š Christmas present from the kiddo!

Dec 26, 2023: Currently listening: Every Man for Himself and God Against All by Werner Herzog ๐Ÿ“š Forgot to add this, I’m about halfway through. Contains more โ€ฆ

Dec 25, 2023: CBS is missing an opportunity to point out that that they have Drew Carey followed by Mariah Carey

Dec 20, 2023: fixed it I usually don’t consider myself very “handy”, but I’m proud of the job I did today switching which side the refrigerator door โ€ฆ

Dec 19, 2023: I’ve been working through SelinaDev’s Godot 4 roguelike tutorial and I like it so far. I just finished part 4 (of 13). There are no โ€ฆ

Dec 17, 2023: Finished reading: Petrograd by Philip Gelatt ๐Ÿ“š

Dec 14, 2023: Not sure I buy the “dominos falling” theory, but interesting/sad that Firefox might be about to fall under the USWDS 2% threshold for โ€ฆ

Dec 11, 2023: As of yesterday, Doom is 30 years old

Dec 10, 2023: It’s interesting that Newsblur, Pinboard.in, and micro.blog all make bookmark archiving part of their premium offering. Maybe it’s an easy โ€ฆ

Dec 8, 2023: I was a happy Newsblur user for a number of years, but decided to give it a break for while, trying out non-cloud options like Rad Reader. But, none โ€ฆ

Dec 8, 2023: My favorite bit in the new Aesop Rock album might be where he spends a bar explaining the previous line (from ‘100 Feet Tall’, a story โ€ฆ

Dec 4, 2023: twenty thousand milliseconds I’ve submitted twenty thousand milliseconds to the 20 Second Game Jam. I’m not even necessarily sure it qualifies as a game. Maybe โ€ฆ

Dec 1, 2023: Bonus complaint: mastodon polls don’t translate over, they just disappear– compare this to how that conversation appears on micro.blog.

Dec 1, 2023: A month on micro About a month ago, I migrated my mastodon account over to this blog (via micro.blog’s built-in support for ActivityPub). How’s that going? โ€ฆ

Nov 30, 2023: What are your favorite websites that aren’t around anymore?

Nov 27, 2023: I’m not sure we’ll watch Merry Little Batman, but it brings me some joy to see Jingle Bells, Batman Smells in an official DC production.

Nov 27, 2023: Decker I’ve likened Godot to Hypercard before– they aren’t directly comparable, but my experience using Godot brought back a sense of โ€ฆ

Nov 23, 2023: Currently reading: Petrograd by Philip Gelatt ๐Ÿ“š

Nov 22, 2023: My excellent co-worker Adam created this online tuner for community radio stations: www.ldial.org (which is also excellent)

Nov 22, 2023: Troubleshooting before coffee I spent at least 30 minutes trying to figure out why the score in my game wasn’t updating past the first point. It would go from 0 to 1, but โ€ฆ

Nov 22, 2023: This is a good bundle of security books. I can vouch for Threats and Security Culture Playbook being worthwhile, and Software Transparency is on my โ€ฆ

Nov 21, 2023: Testing out Lillihub!

Nov 21, 2023: Currently reading: How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk by Douglas W. Hubbard ๐Ÿ“š Two chapters in, and I really appreciate learning about: The โ€ฆ

Nov 21, 2023: Currently reading: Game Programming Patterns by Robert Nystrom ๐Ÿ“š

Nov 21, 2023: I need to study this some more, but there are some good ideas in this cATO playbook, and the manifesto it links to: โ€ฆ

Nov 21, 2023: Considering learning C#. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Nov 19, 2023: Deadly Class Finished reading: Deadly Class Vol 12: A Fond Farewell, Part Two by Rick Remender ๐Ÿ“š Some of the late-middle volumes were a bit of a drag for me, the โ€ฆ

Nov 15, 2023: Long after I’m dead, there will still be articles using this picture I took in 2004 www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2…

Nov 15, 2023: Personal SEO I’ve been spending some time trying to clean up search results for my name (yeah, kind of douchy, sorry), and one thing that’s been vexing โ€ฆ

Nov 10, 2023: Back to making One week turned into three weeks, but I feel like I’ve worked that particular digital addiction out of my system (and diving in to Snap has โ€ฆ

Nov 6, 2023: Bowling with bumpers is underrated. It’s a little more like billiards.

Nov 1, 2023: DragonRuby, which usually costs $48, is free right now, as part of the 20 Second Game Jam

Oct 30, 2023: 13 years ago we were at the Rally to Restore Sanity. Have we restored the sanity yet?

Oct 28, 2023: I let myself get sucked into Marvel Snap this week, so spent more free time playing games instead making them. I have started experimenting with Godot โ€ฆ

Oct 25, 2023: Currently reading: Deadly Class Vol. 5: Carousel by Rick Remender ๐Ÿ“š The first four volumes were a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a sort of โ€ฆ

Oct 25, 2023: On the same day I learn about this gallery of Internet Artifacts, I also come across this bit about the worlds oldest continuously-seeded bittorrent โ€ฆ

Oct 22, 2023: As part of Space Day the kiddo and I got to check out the observatory at George Mason University. ๐Ÿ“ท ๐Ÿš€

Oct 21, 2023: Probably my last post about Ludum Dare 54 maybe The results are in, and… it’s nothing to brag about. I do like that innovation is my strongest category again. I don’t know exactly โ€ฆ

Oct 21, 2023: I took the plunge– this is now my “home” on the fediverse. I think micro.blog has a healthier vision for social media, and I’m โ€ฆ

Oct 21, 2023: The post-jam, cleaned up version of Don’t Get Crushed is now on itch.io rosskarchner.itch.io/dont-get-…

Oct 19, 2023: Got a flier in the mail from Chris Decarlo for Sherrif, which reminds me of his history of rapping campaign videos: youtube.com/@CDRapper…

Oct 19, 2023: I’m not lazy, I’m just protecting the ecosystem www.nytimes.com/2023/10/1…

Oct 18, 2023: Currently listening: Story by Robert McKee ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 18, 2023: Finished Listening: Think Like a Game Designer by Justin Gary ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 18, 2023: I’ve never really worn sunglasses, and now I’ve got my first prescription pair. Meanwhile my regular glasses are at the optometrist to get โ€ฆ

Oct 18, 2023: Even a “bad” Futurama episode is usually pretty good– but the worst are the ones that try to be relevant for the time they were โ€ฆ

Oct 16, 2023: Currently listening: Think Like a Game Designer by Justin Gary ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 16, 2023: Currently reading: Deadly Class - Regan Youth Media Tie-In by Rick Remender ๐Ÿ“š

Oct 16, 2023: Don't Get Crushed updates ๐ŸŽฎ Here is some weekend progress on Don’t Get Crushed (post-jam version, to be released after the review window closes): Fixed the janky โ€ฆ

Oct 14, 2023: Jumping Game progress ๐ŸŽฎ Not much visible progress since I lasted posted this game, but I have implemented both the spring platforms and the “slam” mechanic (which โ€ฆ

Oct 13, 2023: I temporarily experimented with importing my Mastodon followers to micro.blog. Sorry about the follow-spam!

Oct 13, 2023: From a recent trip to the new LEGO Discovery Center in Springfield, VA ๐Ÿ“ท

Oct 13, 2023: After a couple of days on wordpress.com, I decided it wasn’t for me. So, after a journey in the wilderness, I’m back on micro.blog!

Oct 12, 2023: Morning progress ๐ŸŽฎ So far, I've addressed a few items from the feedback list: There is now a visible score Players can restart the game after dying using the up arrow โ€ฆ

Oct 11, 2023: Ludum Dare 54: Don't Get Crushed Don't Get Crushed was my submission to Ludum Dare 54, my second-ever attempt to enter a game jam. The game didn't end up much like what I was โ€ฆ

Oct 11, 2023: Oh no, not again It's 2023 and I'm starting a blog. Again. Why? I'll write more later, but in the past I've enjoyed have a blog as a sort of public notebook, for โ€ฆ