Weekly Links #125

Hello, everyone. Having at long last finished with a translation project that took me all spring and then some -- way longer than expected -- I finally had a few days to work on the desktop port for Tomb of the Snake more intensively. And it's also taking longer than expected. Too much, in fact, for a project I won't be able to monetize. At least it's this far along:

It's basically just an interactive mock-up at this point, but the framework is in place to add mouse support next, along with modal overlays like the help screen. I still don't know what the cave levels will look like, or where to get all the icons for the game screen (it should be entirely playable with either mouse or keyboard). As for the inventory screen... more experienced game programmers dread coding them. But you can't make a graphical RPG without knowing this stuff.

It will all have to wait, however. Got another game port in the works that's both smaller and more likely to sell, then the book mentioned above. In the mean time, let's see this week's other news:

As announced three weeks ago, the Bring Out Your Dead game jam started yesterday, and as of this writing there are fifty entries, with nearly as many to come if the number of people subscribed is any indication, so I'll wait until next week to highlight my favorites.

Until then, the same Emily Short just got herself an interactive fiction column in Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and her first article is about parser games with a reduced command set -- a topic myself and others have also covered as of late. This is turning into a trend; hopefully something will come out of it.

Last but not least, it was great to learn that the issue of videogame preservation has now come to the attention of academia, and the article presents not just some issues I hadn't thought about, but also some novel solutions. Tl;dr -- Let's Play videos may be more valuable than you think.

And speaking of game preservation, only yesterday I stumbled upon a site where you can play DOS games right in your web browser. Has it been two years already since DOSBox got an Emscripten port? My, how time flies...

Either way, sometimes living in the future is awesome. See you next time.