September 2025
Another monthly update!
Game Dev
I’ve been working on a ‘shoot-em-up’ editor and engine for Dosember Game Jam. The editor runs in DOS, which has made it a little more interesting to work on, but also means progress has been slower than it might have been if I’d targeted contemporary operating systems only. Not much to show yet but I uploaded a demonstration video to mastodon:
There won’t be too much time to work on this over the next few weeks, but the jam runs all the way through to the end of November, so there should be a shooty-dossy game before the end of the year.
After some months presumed lost in the post, ‘68000 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING’ arrived in my mail box. This is fortunate timing because this month I also finally gave in to the urge to buy a:
Broken Amiga 1200
Yeah! I’ve wanted a real Amiga (which uses a 68000 family processor) for ages. But I’ve had perfectly good emulation - especially on the MisterFPGA. However, the USB controller on my Mister board died recently and I’ve been unable to repair it. So finally I gave in and placed a bid on an ‘untested’ A1200 on ebay. ‘Untested’ can mean a lot of different things on online auctions, but it’s best to assume that the item definitely does not work. I won the auction and received an Amiga that turns on, but the composite and RF video sockets do not put out a valid signal:
Instead there’s a rapidly rolling out-of-sync signal with the wrong colours. This is OK though, I wanted a hardware project, and repairing the Amiga is already underway. I’ll document my repair progress in another post soon.
TTGO VGA
Another delayed mail item, a little ESP32 devboard arrived. It’s unusual for having a VGA port for video output, and two PS/2 ports for old style keyboard and mouse connections. I set mine up as a very low power DOS emulator. It draws almost no power, and can only run very old software with modest requirements. It also only cost about AU $15, which is great for a tiny computer.
It needed a case to keep it safe so I took an existing model and designed a deco-inspired grill for it. I’m pleased with how it turned out, but unfortunately I managed to bend the micro-usb connector severely out of shape when unplugging the power cable :(.
Played
This month I finished an ongoing campaign of Carrier Command 2 against some AI fleets.
Carrier Command 2
Really this is a ‘multiplayer first’ game, the single player experience being initially overwhelming and then quickly becoming too easy. The player commands a carrier (surprise!) with limited resources. An archipelago of islands is populated with resources and factories that can be captured to produce additional air, sea and land units with which to combat ambient defences and opposing factions. Fuel and various types of ammunition need to be produced too and delivered to where they’re needed. Your logistics lines are at least as important as your combat units. The land units are fairly redundant though, air units being more useful in almost every situation. However, I found that it’s possible to start the campaign with a limited loadout, where the carrier starts with no aircraft available. This forces you to make use of the land units with naval support for conquering the initial islands, making the starting phases of the game more challenging. Unfortunately the AI players seem to suffer no such limitations, and have access to aircraft and unlimited cruise missiles from the outset. Still a great game regardless.
Beyond All Reason
Toward the end of the month one of my brothers organised a few rounds of ‘Beyond All Reason’, an open source descendent of the real-time-strategy game ‘Total Annihilation’. TA got a lot of play-time in our family home and is definitely one of my preferred RTS - not a mad micromanagement rapid-fire clickfest like Starcraft, but not so slow and long a campaign as to drag a match out all day. It’s an impressive example of open source gaming, cross platform online multiplayer all developed and hosted by the community. My only real complaint has always been the ugly user-interface. Fun to play against a sibling, but I don’t think I’d have much fun in single player.
Other Media
This month I bought ‘Book of Madness (狂気)’ by Onryō. Dark Drum and Bass, a bit minimal but with really good production. The label ‘Zodiac Music’ has a pretty strong musical identity - by which I really mean many of the tracks are very similar to eachother. Case in point: this album initially released with track 3 accidentally replaced by a duplicate of track 2, and I didn’t even notice until they fixed it. I love it regardless, dark dnb is my ‘productivity’ music. I get a lot done when the drums are drumming at 170bpm.