iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Colin McInerney @colin.how · 13h

there is only one good way to respond to a long e-mail requesting money for a review

a response email from my studio account, responding to a request for a paid game review. it reads

"Hi [Redacted],

No.

Colin McInerney
Studio Head, Pedalboard Games

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 28/09/2026

living on the east coast in a nutshell

a display of pre-packaged guacamole at a supermarket. there is an abundance of spicy and medium guac, but only 3 mild remaining and a ton of empty space, poetically illustrating the point.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 24/09/2026

we all deserve a cunty little scholar glam his name is durt girthquake btw

my lalafell character in final fantasy 14. he has the stature of a toddler, dark blue hair with subtle red streaks, a quaintrelle hat and ornate coat with a dark blue/wine red color scheme, similarly ornate pants, boots and gloves, gold-rimmed glasses, and a glowy, gamer RGB-ass book

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 21/09/2026

pretty drastically improved the smacking mechanic; previously it was using a full-on collision detection in the prototype, now it's using an Area2D overlap which prevents Sun Jr. from getting displaced by the collision. still needs animation, but the vision's there!

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 20/09/2026

i'm doing a talk next Saturday on leadership at small/indie studios and one of my points is about why making smaller games is the way to go right now. I feel like this point gets proven every fucking day now.

Game studios are failing and doing layoffs left and right. Established studios. Notable indies. Are you better than them? Maybe! Also maybe not. You’re not going to get funding for a moonshot project right now, because they can’t get funding for a regular project.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 17/09/2026

hey @crabdominalpain.bsky.social look what i found tucked into my college copy of neuromancer

a square art print belonging to the tagged artist depicting a cool-ass anubis mech thing

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 14/09/2026

crying shame because these are heat. they remind me of waffle crisp in cookie form.

a package of Chicken & Waffles flavored Oreo cookies

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 12/09/2026

been working on a prototype lately! this is a revisit of an old project that originally had some vampire survivors, but now just has regular bullet hell lacking animations for it rn, but when the ball gets launched real hard, that's gonna be the character (Sun Jr.) swinging a baseball bat at it

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 11/09/2026

happy anniversary to this post

a post from the something awful forums on 9/11/2001 in the thread "the World Trade Center is on fire," user `monkeu` writes: WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 08/09/2026

found an old video game at my parents’ house

a bear beanie baby with wings; its tag shows that it’s name is Halo II

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 04/09/2026

name removed for relative privacy but holy smokes we’re so cooked going to start referring it to as intellectual gatekeeping when i get blocked for having dipshit opinions

a reply to a post of mine from linkedin saying i was going to start removing connections on linkedin for talking about and using AI

“You’re free to dislike AI, but removing people from your network simply because they use it isn’t a principled stand—it’s intellectual gatekeeping. You can reject the technology without pretending everyone who embraces it lacks creativity or judgment.”

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 24/08/2026

i brought a very specific energy to big walk last night

three characters from the game Big Walk; one of them (mine) is holding up a sign that says “repent ye sinners”

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 24/08/2026

i have a job interview today so i opted to walk about a mile to a nearby cafe and enjoy the unseasonably nice weather to start my day off with good vibes and some sunlight

a mocha in a big black coffee cup on a metal patio table; the kind of table with a big umbrella through it.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 22/08/2026

now we're getting somewhere

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 20/08/2026

IN THE SIXTH HOUSE WE BELIEVE

one of those "in this house we believe" signs except it has the speech from Dagoth Ur, the primary antagonist of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, that he delivers during the final encounter

WHAT A FOOL YOU ARE.
I'M A GOD! HOW CAN YOU KILL A GOD?
WHAT A GRAND AND INTOXICATING INNOCENCE.
HOW COULD YOU BE SO NAIVE?
THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
NO RECALL OR INTERVENTION CAN WORK IN THIS PLACE.
COME, LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS, IT IS NOT TOO LATE FOR MY MERCY.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 20/08/2026

multiple choice responses! it's been fun doing so much string manipulation. in this case, i add the normal response to the output then cache the length of the output text before adding the choices. when a choice is selected, i just substring the whole thing from 0 to the cache and add the new line!

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 19/08/2026

finally dove in and wrote some code to get specific TopicInfos based on whatever criteria i pass in. as a proof of concept, this scene loads two different actors (Worldy and Stinky), and they have different responses for "Hello world" based on which Actor they are, their faction, and the quest step

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 18/08/2026

great turnout btw, join your local union

an image of a large group gathered near the zenimax sign outside their corporate hq

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 18/08/2026

bethesda game studios has always meant a lot to me, and is still full of wonderful people. this one’s for you, microsoft. you laid off my friends and the people that gave me my start in the industry while claiming record profits.

my middle finger in the foreground, zenimax hq in the background

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 18/08/2026

and hey, speaking of bethesda stuff, here's a new feature for the morrowind dialogue system: quit-out text. building on the freezing stuff i did previously, if a Topic Info is set to forcequit the player, it will freeze everything except the Goodbye button, and add a clickable response to close out.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 17/08/2026

bedtime update, multiple instances of the same topic in a line are now clickable, and i can now freeze every clickable in the window in prep for making the player respond to things in-line.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 15/08/2026

i can now dynamically add topics to the list, and they automatically sort alphabetically. this is still all data-driven so the setup to link these topics together and spawn new ones is literally just writing the topic name into something. narrative designer friendly!

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 13/08/2026

- topics now get added, rather than replacing all the text - the topic that was clicked also gets added in - if any topic exists in-text, it gets dynamically highlighted and becomes clickable still a few features to add, but the basics are all there now!

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 12/08/2026

i have now successfully populated the text box with an arbitrary string, based on the previously-mentioned pairs of Topics and TopicInfos, so any number of Actors can have this same list of Topics, but say different things based on... whatever i want, really. and it all populates automatically!

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 12/08/2026

So basically: - Generate relations between Topic and TopicInfos ahead of time - Actor has a list of Topics - When the window opens, ask the TopicManager which TopicInfos fit the Actor based on things like Faction, Race, Disposition, etc and return the TopicInfo

a list of golders and resources in godot
>Resources
>>Actors
>>>worldy.tres
>>TopicInfos
>>>goodbye_world_info.tres
>>>hello_world_info2.tres
>>>hello_world_info3.tres
>>Topics
>>>goodbye_world.tres
>>>hello_world.tres

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 12/08/2026

might not look like much, but under the hood i've aped morrowind's conversation data structure, creating data for both Topics and TopicInfos. the TopicManager creates a dictionary of all topics and relevant infos ahead of time, and then an actor can be given specific TopicInfos based on their topics

a rudimentary godot window showing two boxes on the bottom third-ish of the screen, the smaller of the two boxes taking up about 20% of the space on the right side of the screen. inside that box are two text labels, reading "Hello world" and "Goodbye world"

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 09/08/2026

sometimes you just gotta have a wall covered in demonic armaments or plot-relevant documents

a paused screenshot of morrowind showing a hallway in a house where various armors, weapons and paper missives are displayed

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 08/08/2026

ok wait one more gush -- flight is so funny. it's gamebreaking at high levels and a useful tool in your traversal arsenal at low levels, but the high level shit is completely impractical without exploits, which reinforces that high-level telvanni wizards are all wasteful dickheads. it's awesome.

a wizard character in morrowind wearing extravagant gold/orange/brown robes, a cephalopod helmet, wielding a matching golden and ebony staff, and he's levitating.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 08/08/2026

i'm going silent now because i'm going back to morrowind. can't be fucked to find a restore agility potion for some invisible drain debuff.

a morrowind character sheet that generally says i'm a good wizard. sorry to not be more descriptive, i'm playing morrowind.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 08/08/2026

don’t forget the most important one

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 07/08/2026

surprised this didn't get me kicked outta the mages guild

a journal entry (quest log) from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. it reads:

18 Sun's Dusk (Day 95)
I showed Ranis Arthrys my Wizard's Staff.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 23/07/2026

a bug with player cosmetics currently turns all players into naked my dad

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 22/07/2026

started experimenting with variable caps on velocity, and not necessarily capping the player's velocity when they get to a new state. for now, functionally, this means long jumps add speed up to a cap, and that momentum can be maintained somewhat in other states.

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 09/07/2026

my wife sent me this shirt and i thought it was jc denton

a talladega nights shirt showing will ferrell as ricky bobby, sporting sunglasses. red text underneath says DON’T YOU PUT THAT EVIL ON ME, RICKY BOBBY. kinda implying he said that line but he didn’t

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 08/07/2026

ragdoll working as intended

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 04/07/2026

you too can make good-looking unlocks with garbage code, children

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Colin McInerney @colin.how · 04/07/2026

my old mobile game finally got cleaned up my phone, and i can't redownload it, so i wondered what it would take to get it fixed up and reworked for rerelease. started making it in 2018, released it in 2020. this is one script. past colin you animal