2018~2021 Archive

August 2nd, 2021:

Got some big news today worthy of a main-page update to the site: Both Super Minesweeper and PixelShips Retro are now FREEWARE! :D

So this has actually been a long time coming, seeing as both games were originally developed in the mid 2000s primarily with Windows 98 as the target hardware, despite XP already being a thing and Vista being right around the corner. As such, they cann be a bit tricky to get working on modern hardware and sometimes will just randomly decide to not work even though they normally work fine, not to mention the whole 256-colour thing is poorly supported at best nowadays. :P

However, my original plan was to wait to do this release until I had another more modern game ready to sell so that there would always be something for sale on the site, but the company that's been handling payment processing and serial key registration since 2005 sent me a message about a month ago basically saying that they will no longer be maintaining relations with anyone selling less than $6,000 a year through their system... They basically became indie-hostile in one fell swoop. :(

Because of the age of the games, because of how tricky they can be to get working, and because of the serial key system embedded in both games being a hinderance to trying to release them elsewhere for sale, I decided "screw it" and spent some time hacking out the serial key systems and adding a few other updates to make them a bit easier to get working right, such as command line arguments for setting alternate colour depths and tweaking how much CPU time the games demand. Ironically, my solution to the serial numbers to ensure no consequences with the protections in place to detect hacking was to just have it manually apply a fixed registraton code any time the check for one comes back invalid or missing! :P

So! If you've never played either game before, or enjoyed the shareware versions moderately but not enough to feel they were worth spending money on... or just never got around to getting them, now's your chance! Or, for those of you who did purchase these games in the past, the new versions may be easier to get working due to the added command line options and while you can TECHNICALLY install them overtop of the existing games without issue, it's better to uninstall the existing versions first just so that both don't show up at the same time if/when you go to uninstall later. Unless you're on Windows 98/ME this should not affect saved games, high scores, or anything like that! :B

As for what's next, I've got a few ideas. I'm versed enough now with the Godot Engine to use it, but have found its 3D capabilities to have too many performance hiccups so will likely use it strictly for 2D ideas. Beyond that, I'm leaning to use the Unreal Engine as I have a couple VR ideas I want to tackle, which yes, will support non-VR play as well if I do pursue them!

September 3rd, 2018:

ANOTHER main page update! Whoa! :O

A couple new things going on here. Firstly, I've got a new "Small Game" uploaded to the appropriate section! It's actually an ASCII Character Editor which can be used to modify the font used by the standard 80x25 text mode! Made it super-quick on a stream so that it can be put to use for an upcoming QuickBASIC game idea I plan to stream the development of!

Also, I have a new section up for any Game Maps I happen to make! I don't map out games very often, but figured it'd be good to share the results when I do! So far all I have up is a world map for Excelsior Phase One: Lysandia, both in a full-resolution form and a much smaller form!

As usual though, most of the action is happening on Twitter, Twitch and YouTube, so if you want to stay up to date on things, those are the best places to check! :P