The Pixel Prophet #06
A request for feedback, updates on gaming news and events, and information on indie games and programming resources.
Originally published on Dec 11, 2023 on Substack
Hello, dear readers!
Before getting into this one, I’d like to ask a favor. Please vote on the the release frequency of The Pixel Prophet. Currently, it releases once a week but I’ve noticed a slight decrease in engagement. We live in busy times and Yet Another Newsletter might be too much, too often for some people—especially if you feel spammed, not delighted.
I am thinking about lowering the publication frequency but pack in more content in each issue. Mind, though, that if it grows too long, it won’t fit fully in an email and could require you to continue reading online. Either way, please post a comment if you have anything to add.
The Pixel Prophet issue #08 is still slated to go live on the 18th of December following the weekly release cycle, what happens next relies upon the results of these polls.
[POLL] Which release frequency would you prefer?
Weekly (no change) - 43%
Bi-Weekly - 46%
Monthly - 11%
28 VOTES · POLL CLOSED
[POLL] When would you like to receive the Prophet?
Early on Monday (no change) - 65%
During the week - 8%
Friday / Start of Weekend - 19%
Sunday / End of Weekend - 8%
26 VOTES · POLL CLOSED
As mentioned, when the newsletter gets too long, some email providers might clip it. Being unconcerned with length, however, would make it possible to include more pictures overall.
[POLL] Would you mind having to view the full version online?
Yes. eMail only, please - 41%
No. I'll continue on Substack - 59%
22 VOTES · POLL CLOSED
Thank you for subscribing, reading, sharing, and hopefully enjoying the Pixel Prophet up this point. You rock!
— Phil
News & Updates
Rockstar Games dropped a 90-second long trailer for GTA VI over which a majority of the usual suspects went apeshit over. If you just learned about GTA VI here, you’ve subscribed to the right newsletter.
Geoff Keighley’s annual The Video Game Awards™ took place last week and was the usual trailer show with frantic speedrunning through the actual awards. No mention of the more uncomfortable issues (e.g. mass layoffs) in the industry throughout and general lack of respect for the people making the games. Obsidian’s Josh Sawyer put it best in his tweet: “This year’s The Game Awards is an embarrassing indictment of a segment of the industry desperate for validation via star power with little respect for the devs it’s supposedly honoring.”
On a brighter note, the second ►Game Dev World virtual conference took place, “featuring 30+ speakers from all over the planet, all talks [were] close-captioned and translate[d] into Arabic, Brazilian-Portuguese, English, French, Hindi, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish.” Think GDC but for the people, not for profit. You can view the VOD on Twitch.
The original ►DOOM (1993) enjoyed its 30th anniversary yesterday. To celebrate the occasion, writer and journalist David L. Craddock talked with creators John Romero and John Carmack about their shooty-game on Romero’s Twitch channel. Here’s that VOD also.
My own stream this week takes place on Sunday, December 17th at 23:00 CET
(► here’s that in your time zone). It’s still DOSember, so I play another DOS adventure game.
Games
Big and small, old, and new, indie and very indie.
1️⃣ INDIE • City Builder — I’m not gonna lie, folks: SimCity 2000 (1993) has its fangs in me once more. If you are looking for a similar experience, developer Yesbox Studios from Vermont one-ups the classic in both style and simulation depth with their upcoming ►Metropolis 1998. You can follow the game’s progress via its roadmap and can expect a demo to hit Steam soon.
2️⃣ INDIE • What the duck? — Many animals have turned to sleuthing as their profession; from Frog Detective (2018), to the feline Inspector Waffles (2021), to Chicken Police (2020). At long last, a duck is to join their ranks in 2024. ►Duck Detective: The Secret Salami by Happy Broccoli Games looks like a charming and intriguing narrative adventure, asking you to “use your powers of de-duck-tion to inspect evidence, fill in the blanks, and bust the case wide open”. That pun was theirs. Honest.
3️⃣ INDIE • Hellish Platformer — Ever felt that a game outright hated you and went out of its way to kill you? This time you might be right: The hilariously devious ►LEVEL DEVIL by developer Unept (Adam Corey) is openly hostile yet paradoxically fair after you’ve accepted the lesson in humility. It’s free, fun, and fiendishly addictive!
4️⃣ INDIE • Hiking Horror — Another little horror game I haven’t tried yet but have heard good things about it is Gemezl’s ►Missing Hiker, “where your brother Ethan went missing while hiking and you need to find him.” It’s not long but the atmosphere seems spot on. Just be aware that there is at least one jump scare. Fun fact: One Steam review doesn’t recommend the game because “the game is not realistic the bmw your driving it doesnt have the real interior.” So your mileage may vary.
Programming & Game Dev
Tools, resources, wisdom, humor.
It can be better to copy a little code than to pull in a big library for one function.
Dependency hygiene trumps code reuse.
— Rob Pyke (via Troy Miles on Twitter)
PUZZLE • Games-Wordle — Can you name a game just from seeing a portion of a screenshot? Then you’ll love ►Quessed by developer Max Meraner. The free browser game “aims to be for gamers what Framed is to movie fans.” Sadly, the game will end with game 500 next week so be sure to make heavy use of the replay button and catch up on previous games.
PICO-8 • Webzine — I’ve mentioned the fantasy console PICO-8 a couple of time already here but maybe that’s not often enough for some. In that case, you’re in luck because Nerdy Teachers started their delightful ►Pico-View webzine in January.
CODE EDITOR • Open Source — Many of us use and love Microsoft’s VS Code but, well, it’s still a Micro$oft product. Oops, sorry for the typo. Anyway, there’s a full open source fork of it on GitHub called ►VS Codium, “a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution.” Here’s a tutorial on how to get it running on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (via Michael K Alber on Mastodon)
GAME PROGRAMMING • Save yourself — Philipp Wittershagen from the now defunct Mimimi ►presents in great and juicy detail their implementation of the save system in their final stealth-tactics game, Shadow Gambit (2023), that incentivizes save scumming with a focus on speed and reliability. Good stuff!
JAVA SCRIPT • The best date yet — If you have been struggling with the Date functionality in JavaScript (especially when it comes to time zones), you might want to ►look into the proposal of the Temporal global object which “brings a modern date/time API to the ECMAScript language.” While technically still being experimental, you can get a polyfill and tinker with it. (via Mika Kasprzak on Twitter)
3D MODELING • Issues in the hole! — Environment artist at Rebellion studios, Peter Dimitrov, shares good advice on Twitter regarding your meshes: “Seal the [geometry] at the bottom of your props, fellow 3D artists. The save in 10 [polygons] isn’t really worth it. UV island you can scale to tiny texel density if it’s texture space you are trying to preserve. I assure you, [environment] artists later will find ways to use the prop seen from below.” Translation: You never know how you will use a digital prop and you want to give artists as many options to place an asset as possible — even/especially that environment artist is yourself. Peter is also on Substack as Game Worlds / Tech Art Worlds*.
[* Editor’s note on Dec 25, 2023: Since Substack doesn’t oppose Nazis and decided to profit off their newsletters, I removed the direct link]
HISTORY • That really whip’s the llama’s ass! — Digital Eclipse who are behind the wonderful Making of Karateka (see issue 02), have announced a big Jeff Minter / Llamasoft anthology including making-of to drop next year titled ►Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter story. Jeff is a true veteran of indie gaming and his wonderfully weird software creations deserve no less. Jeff is a wholesome fellow who lives on a farm in Wales and for the regular sheep content alone you should follow him on Mastodon.
MUSIC MAKING • C64 SID VST — For the uninitiated, we’re talking about a Commodore 64 sound chip plug-in for digital audio workstations (DAWs) i.e. music making software. Plogue Art et Technologie offers a “deep emulation” of the C64’s signature sound chip with ►chipsynth 64 that “[reproduces] no less than 32 different SID chips in excruciating detail”. Personally, I have good experiences with Impact Soundworks’ inSIDious (here’s a song I made with that one), but unlike inSIDious, chipsynth 64 “has a built-in c64 emulator, allowing you to examine and extract sounds from SID tunes and running programs,” legendary chip musician Matt “4-mat” Simmonds said about it on Twitter.
ALTERNATIVE GAME ENGINES • A curated list — While the promise of a turn-key-ready game engine such as Unreal or Unity might be appealing at first, using one means to tie your project(s) to it in whatever direction it might go—ahead, sideways, or under. If hammering out your own engine from scratch might not be possible (you want to release something at some point, after all), zine- and game maker Nathalie Lawhead posted on Game Developer ►a curated list of alternative game engines. If you prefer to do the curation yourself, have a look at the complete Game Engines Database.
Art & Inspiration
Art, science, and other inspirations that left an impression on me
Stunning Shadertoy realtime art by nimitz. ►These shaders will make your eyes grow wide and you GPU break a sweat**.**
“Church in the Snow” by painter Stepan Fedorovitch Kolesnikoff (1879–1955)
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