I have lived overseas for a non-trivial part of my life. I have experienced a handful of different cultures, both in the anglophile and non-anglophile worlds.
In all that time, I have come to experience a truth: the phrase, “BBQ,” is probably the most universally assumed, but misunderstood of phrases.
What do I mean?
Someone invites you to a BBQ, or to go, “eat BBQ.” There is a very good chance you feel you know what means, and you will most certainly start packing on the assumptions. And there is a good chance that if you are living outside your home country, none of your assumptions will be true.
Yet, it will still be a BBQ.
I am reminded of this on a regular basis when I search for BBQ and never find what I am looking for.
I am building a wordpress-based website. It's the year 2022. I am using some fancy WYSIWYG template editor. It's not bad actually, once you get a hang of it. And yet, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and iOS all display it differently. What. The. Actualy. Fuck.
It's 2022.
I remember doing this years ago. Zen of CSS, Bulletproof Web Design era years ago. When Meyers and Zeldman were twt-ing out tips and tricks, years ago (though they're both still going strong of course!). Why is web design still as terrible now as it was then?!
I have a collection of Raspberries Pi. Spanning generations. I still have a 1B+ and was delighted when I noticed it was still supported by RISC OS. Recently I've taken an interest in 80's computing, and RISC OS, while lesser known, fits into that category.
Coincidentally at the same time I stumbled across Decker by John Earnest. I never used HyperCard, but I am delighted by the idea it is the eptimoe of Simple-but-Powerful software design. “Elegant,” might be a word some choose. Or I might just reading between the lines something which is not actually there....
So I thought, let's install RISC OS and get Decker running on it. A Frankensteinian creation of 80's nostalgia.
Going into this, I am self-imposing at least one limiting factor: I don't want to use a monitor; I want RISC OS running headless.
I did 30 seconds of web searching to verfiy my project on the insanity scale:
1. VNC technically can run on RISC OS
1. SDL2 can technically run on RISC OS
1. C compilers, particularly GCC, seem to exist on RISC OS
So sure, off to the races.
I imaged an SD Card with the RISC OS available using the official Rasberry Pi Imager on my Macbook Pro M1.
I stuck that in a Raspberry Pi v1B+ and plugged it into a hardline ethernet connection
I went over to my Router to see what new IP addresses had been assigned
Remembered reading somewhere the word's “telnet” and “RISC OS” at least on the same webpage... so fired up telnet and tried to open a connection to the designated IP Address: telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
Googled a bit more and determined that trying to run RISC OS Headless, at least from the start, would likely not work...
There have been a few blog posts bubbling to the top of The Orange Site recently about tech writer’s experimenting with DALL-E 2. One theme seems to recur in these posts, which is the notion that you really need to specify your input parameters be because very often the parameters you think will work, don’t.
What annoys me is that in the tech and software engineering spaces, there has always been a complaint that the, “normals,” or, “users,” or, “clients,” really seem to expect people to build magical life changing product with just the vaguest of descriptions or acceptance criteria. Yet, here we are holding the poor algo up to those same unrealistic expectations. Tsk tsk.
The culture of paywalling and gate-keeping that is the USA Tax System is immensely fucked up and broken. How can so many other countries have figured this out, and yet, “The World's #1!” is just ass-backwards.
I am quite skeptical of the inevitable arrival of a metaverse. To me, today, (tomorrow could be different), a metaverse is a VR-first, or maybe just AR-first, virtual environment that attempts to reproduce as many IRL systems as possible using digital equivalents. It's VR Second Life, I guess (side note: I wonder what Linden Lab is up today these days... heads off to Search)...
...and back.
Not only am I skeptical that it will be embraced by consumers en masse, I am also skeptical that it would be beneficial to anyone.
It's why I like the idea of a slow-web. Wordle comes to mind; successful because it's slow. It forces you to disconnect rather than create newer and newer ways to trick you into paying attention. You can play once a day, that's it. It is a not-for-profit in the attention economy.
I wish there were more. Smaller engagements; products and services that create one thing, do it well, and don't attempt to suck you in. The UNIX Philosophy as applied to the modern web.
I hereby coin the terms, “euphe-moji,” and “euphemoji.” Meaning: when an emoji, or sequence of emoji, are used euphemistically. For example, an aubergine/eggplant emoji used to represent a penis.
Pico Lake is a point and click adventure that tells the story of a man looking for his phone. Throughout the game, you will navigate fixed-scene areas and interact with various objects to progress the story. There is no overarching guidance beyond finding your phone.
What I Liked
I felt that the graphics made good use of the palette and the animations were smooth. I enjoyed each of the scenes that you visit in the story, and they had enough detail to encourage interaction. The story also had a bit of humor to it, especially toward the ends.
What I Liked Less
I did feel that too many of the interactions that progressed the story were random. The links between each interaction were strong in some cases, but were weak in too many. I felt that the game required you to revisit a location that most players would have assumed was cleared, for example.
The control scheme for Look, Get, Use, and Talk is also a bit clunky.
Thoughts for Version 2
If the developer were to take a stab at enhancing it, I would recommend adding some ambient music. A, “Walk & Click,” game benefits from immersive atmosphere, so sound effects and ambient music will really help out.
Additionally, I would consider merging the Look, Get, and Use actions into two. When, “Looking,” if the character sees an item of potential importance, maybe just prompt the player to subsequently add that item to inventory, rather than have the player use a second, “get,” action.
I thought I would just share that I love the PICO-8, and the idea of fantasy consoles in general.
If you are not familiar with the idea, a fantasy console is a piece of software that emulates a fake computer. Unlike a virtual machine or other type of hardware emulator, a fantasy console is not trying to mimic a real-life piece of hardware. Instead, it's emulating a fake device that is governed by the creator's vision of, “artful restriction,” (my words). One might consider it the software expression that limitation breeds creativity.
In the case of the PICO-8, the fantasy console is an 8-bit machine similar to a VIC-20, or maybe even a Game Boy Color. It has restrictions in allowed program size, the number of available (16!), the memory size, and even the screen resolution (128x128!). All of these limitations are intentionally made in the spirit of forcing creators to focus on creating, and less on trying to push the boundaries of modern technology.
The PICO-8 comes bundled with its own community and publishing platform in the form of SPLORE. Through the SPLORE built-in application, you can download games made by other developers directly into your fantasy console. It is this built-in community that makes me more attracted to PICO-8 as a development ecosystem compared to other real-life restricted consoles like the Arduboy or ODROID-GO. Sampling games on both of those hardware platforms is an exercise in patience, even for the more technically inclined, and it completely eliminates that feeling of serendipity I get when I am browsing SPLORE and find a game that just transports for, if even for 10 minutes.
The last part of the PICO-8 experience that sets it apart is its built in developer tools. It comes with its own code editor, sprite editor and even a music editor. It's a one-stop shop for all things PICO-8 development, and the tools aren't that half bad. Sure, you could use Aseprite or a more powerful code editor, but there I feel it's more immersive to work in the console itself. Just... get used to the font...
I am thinking to try out doing some PICO-8 game reviews here, once I find out the best way to get it into the site.