Another circuit completed around the sun, and well... life is chaos, but it's good to be still around. This past year has been fairly quiet on the software front as I spent most of the time working on the second draft of my current novel. One chapter, in particular, took quite a bit of time since it required a massive rewrite (and is much better because of it!). I also posted an old short story "Digital Suicide" as a bit of a nod to the burning circus show which has become Twitter over the past two months. Since the focus of this site has become a lot more gaming-oriented over the past several years, I also wrote up a couple of articles about Quest for Glory V.
Last Year's Plans
A quick look back at how last year's tentative plans shook out:
- Mac AGS ports: I made an update for KQ4 Retold. There is another AGS game I also made a Mac port for, but it hasn't been released yet, so more about that once it is available.
- Updated the Agifier graphics plug-in for Acorn. Ended up doing a ton of research into dithering techniques and color theory.
- Tested a number of games with the Logitech CyberMan, which became tons easier once I obtained a Packard Bell computer. This sidelines my initial plans to write a Mac driver to work with the CyberMan.
- No updates to AGI Studio this year. Potential improvements would involve updating the Qt libraries and making an Apple Silicon build.
- I did create my own custom font using Glyphs Mini, FontStruct, and Caps for the Playdate.
- Completed the second draft of my novel, working on wrapping up some smaller projects and blog posts, next on to the Playdate!
- No real work on Permanent Eraser 3.0.
Plans for 2023
- This will be the Year of the Playdate! This curious handheld gaming device shipped last year, which has generated a lot of interesting ideas across the Playdate developer community. I have a couple of small, Sierra-themed ideas I want to experiment with. I might even bring my old game Psychomancer to Playdate via Pulp!
- There is another very special project I've been assisting with this year that I'll reveal later.
- EdenList 2.3.2 has already been released this year, which follows up on last year's releases for Edenlist 2.3.0 and 2.3.1.
- Start on the 3rd draft of my novel. Considering how much time the 2nd draft took up last year, I don't plan on focusing on this quite as much, but I will do some clean up and find more beta readers.
- Perhaps make an update to King's Quest 1 - Redux. I've already made one small experimental update, so I might add a few more if the fancy strikes me.
- More AGS ports, maybe look into an Apple Silicon build. Fortunately, any of the existing AGS Mac ports I've created seem to work fine on Apple Silicon Macs up to this point (currently macOS Ventura), but eventually Apple will drop support of Intel, just like they did with PowerPC and the Motorola 68K chips in the past (it's inevitable). I'm planning on making a Mac port of the full version of The Crimson Diamond when it is ready.
- If the time and energy is there, perhaps more work on Permanent Eraser 3.0.