orteil42

[orteil42]

wacky chips flavors sound so nice but it's almost always just cycling through the same 5 ingredients. that is not "barbecue ribs" that is onion powder and artificial smoke. that's not "roasted chicken" that's onion powder and rosemary extract

[orteil42]

section on the article for the 1991 Roland SC-55 sound module inexplicably features exclusively British educational children's shows

[orteil42]

been reposting my tumblr posts on bluesky. don't tell those chumps i'm feeding them my leftovers lmao

[orteil42]

learning music theory taking me places i don't feel safe in

[orteil42]

civilization-building games suffer from the player already knowing where they're headed. every tech you research, every culture you meet - you're re-treading known history; there's no surprise in discovery. for such a game to reach its full impact it must first inflict significant brain damage on its player. as such i will work to release the first video game that comes packaged with an orbitoclast

[orteil42]

i should post this on bluesky they'll love it those crazy kids

software is about offering solutions. video games are about offering problems

[orteil42]

software is about offering solutions. video games are about offering problems

[orteil42]

Age of Empires 2 should have a fantasy dlc. just a bunch of ahistorical scenarios adding fantastic medieval units. some existing historic campaigns already feature limited supernatural elements so it's not that much of a stretch, plus mapmakers would love it. i know Age of Mythology is a thing i just want to see little prerendered unicorns. arthurian legends cmon. mesoamerican myths. just put whatever in there. werewolves. pixies. chinese hopping vampires. "my liege, a tarasque is threatening our crops!" kickass. kickass. i am speaking directly into your ear now. one expansion. no holds barred. AoE2: Wizards & Mermaids please and thank you

[orteil42]

this is what we could've had instead of discord servers

[orteil42]

Spore shouldn't have been 1 game with 5 different gameplay segments it should've been 5 separate games that each let you load your save from the previous one.

[orteil42]

the entire internet at our disposal and there's nothing fun to do with it anymore. when was the last time you typed in a url just to see if it existed

[orteil42]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[orteil42]

Have there ever been any frustrating points in programming Cookie Clicker that made you question your choice to become a game dev rather than, say, an elevator inspector?

rarely the game itself but on occasion having to deal with mobile port compilation errors and ever-shifting app store policies had me wishing to retire to the mountains and raise sheep and renounce the use of electricity yes

[orteil42]

is new merch planned at any point?

yeah it's been on the todo list but capitalism scares me

[orteil42]

What inspired you to make the grandmas progressively more scary?

standard french humor

[orteil42]

when writing cc code do you develop it in the browser or the binary steam version

i call my server host and whistle the bytecode directly into the phone

[orteil42]

hmm. bad