iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dan Salvato

Team Salvato @teamsalvato.com · 22/09/2026

Happy birthday to Monika! Where are you headed for your club field trip?

An illustration of the Doki Doki Literature Club characters on a train together. In the front, Monika holds out her phone to show something to Natsuki, with the two sharing a pair of earbuds. In the back, Sayori is excitedly looking out the window, admiring a mountainous landscape, and Yuri is absent-mindedly glancing out the window as well, lost in thought.

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Reposted by Dan Salvato

Serenity Forge @serenityforge.com · 17/09/2026

Doki Doki Literature Club has returned to Android devices via Epic Games Store Mobile! 🩵💜💚🩷 You can once again experience the entire #DDLC story for free on phones and tablets! All of the additional content from DDLC Plus is also available now as a paid add-on. store.epicgames.com/p/doki-doki-...

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 10/09/2026

You know it's the 2020s when Samus' new suit upgrade is a cooking pot

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Reposted by Dan Salvato

Team Salvato @teamsalvato.com · 30/07/2026

It turns out today (July 30th) is Natsuki's birthday! Happy birthday, Natsuki!

An illustration of the Doki Doki Literature Club characters in an arcade. Natsuki and Sayori are on a dance machine, with Natsuki in a confident step, and Sayori exhausted and slumped over the rear support bar. Yuri and Monika are gazing at Natsuki in shock and awe from behind the machine.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 22/07/2026

Baldur's Gate 3 is over 120GB in size, and about 90GB of that is textures. I personally like when games make HD textures an optional download, especially now that handhelds like Steam Deck are quite prevalent. Would save tons of space and likely increase performance (faster data streaming).

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 13/07/2026

Additional counterpoint: He is tall whereas I am basically the size of a small ant

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 13/07/2026

Debunking the "you look like SmallAnt" myth once and for all. It's just the glasses and the nose and the smile and the facial hair and the eyebrows and th

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 02/07/2026

I'm floored that they can so casually use a tool that's basically the complete antithesis of everything that the brand is supposed to stand for. So much for trying to recapture the lost human touch in technology lol

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Reposted by Dan Salvato

Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 10/06/2026

See you at Anime Expo! I'm doing a panel where I talk about how I wrote the characters for DDLC, and how I approach character writing in general.

Anime Expo
Room 403AB
July 2, 2026
12:00pm-12:50pm
Writing the Doki Doki Literature Club Characters, with Dan Salvato

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 23/06/2026

Yeah, the N64 analog stick isn't "bad" in the sense that replacing it with a modern stick makes it strictly better. The N64 stick is already precise and responsive. The "bad" parts are the grip and the potential wear. To me, the OEM stick is a key reason to play on OG hardware and not just emulate.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 23/06/2026

I'm a bit skeptical. I think completely replacing the analog mechanism would throw off the feel of various games. It'd probably go a long way just to attach a little grip to the top of the OEM stick. Can also get metal replacements for stick/bowl, keeping the OEM analog mechanism, but they're pricey

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 19/06/2026

If only the Wii Remote had a gyro built-in from day 1, instead of MotionPlus being too little too late. Imagine the generational impact. No waggle legacy. There would be more inspired hearts. Fewer kids growing up to build datacenters

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 14/06/2026

White Len 22D is the superior cat because its sheer level of uselessness wraps around to inflict psychological damage

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 13/06/2026

Lastly, one of my favorite fun facts about the game: In some levels like Jelly Pipe, with the newspaper on the wall, you can sometimes see the text "pikachu", which is quite funny, since 1) totally different IP, and 2) Pokemon wouldn't even be out in North America for another 6 months!

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 13/06/2026

Out of all 24 stages, only maybe 5 of them have a focus on non-linear traversal, which puts most stages at odds with the goal of collecting 30 fruit to end the stage. Nintendo is VERY good at game design, so the above is the only explanation I can think of for having such a disparity in the design.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 13/06/2026

Another thing I find evident is that the nonlinear structure must have come about because they just ran out of time, so they needed to just make a game out of what they had. Not enough content for a full adventure, so they tried for replayability, though sadly there's a lack of collectibles.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 13/06/2026

Interesting stuff about the 64DD. I remember DYKG concluding that there was no hard evidence to support Yoshi's Story was slated for it, since IGN was the only (second-hand) source. But IMO, the shift in GFX from beta gives it credibility, since the beta GFX do feel inspired by high storage limits.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 12/06/2026

You know how the first ever roguelike was The Binding of Isaac? Well, the first ever indie game was Earthbound

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 10/06/2026

See you at Anime Expo! I'm doing a panel where I talk about how I wrote the characters for DDLC, and how I approach character writing in general.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 03/06/2026

Oh, and if you're fascinated by the blitter, here's an old Magicore-related blog post you might enjoy if you haven't seen it yet: dansalva.to/getting-clev...

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 03/06/2026

Thanks! Recently I've been keeping more stuff under wraps, but if you ever have the chance to stop by one of the GDQ events, I almost always have a playable demo (and talk people's ears off about the technical stuff lol).

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 19/05/2026

AFAIK, if game loop and frame draw are on the same thread, the most you can do is minimize time between digesting OS inputs and finishing draw of the frame they're used on. I think the rest would come down to finessing low-level graphics APIs to time the game loop as late as possible before refresh

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 18/05/2026

The sphere has reappeared

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 14/05/2026

Welp, I caused an integer overflow in Mewgenics. It wasn't enough that I killed my own unit by healing NEGATIVE 744 million health—imagine my confusion when I was awarded the "Bug" item after winning the fight. Took me a moment to process that it was just a ridiculous coincidence

A screenshot from Mewgenics with a tooltip that says "Basalin's Leeches. Drains -744669674 health at the end of Basalin's turn and gives it to Basalin."

A screenshot from Mewgenics of the inventory with a tooltip for the "Bug" item.

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Reposted by Dan Salvato

Team Salvato @teamsalvato.com · 11/05/2026

To celebrate Sayori's birthday, we've decided to reveal that Sayori's birthday is today, May 11th. Happy birthday, Sayori!

An illustration of the characters from Doki Doki Literature Club on a miniature golf course. Sayori is in the foreground, lounging in the grass next to a golf ball which has been sunk into the hole. The other characters are occupied in the background.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 07/05/2026

Nintendo fans waiting for the report on what studio is developing Star Fox so that they can calibrate their confirmation bias subsystems before launch

Screenshot from Star Fox (2026) in which Fox and Peppy are standing over an empty hologram terminal

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 07/05/2026

I love the visuals, but I'm a *little* underwhelmed by the VFX. I think SF64 aged so well in part because of how incredibly satisfying it feels to shoot down ships. I think it's analogous to DK Bananza's "punching stuff" in terms of importance, but I dunno if I'm feeling that same level of care here

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 05/05/2026

Most important, be kind to yourself. "It's easy." "It only takes 5 minutes." "You just have to do it." You may have heard these things a lot throughout life, conditioning you to feel ashamed of shortcomings. It's not easy! Accept yourself when things are hard. We always bounce back from bad months.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 05/05/2026

Thanks so much for your kind words. Your relationship with ADHD will continue to grow and change. You'll have people who support you, empowering you to ask for help when needed (people w/ ADHD can be resistant to accepting help!). And you'll recognize the times ADHD helped you do great things.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 05/05/2026

I love this video. It's so well-edited to hit just right, made me reflect a bit too. The community's lucky to have you, and you deserve the same joy you bring to others! And dangit, I missed VCF East! I've gotta pay more attention to when these things are happening! Seems like such a great time.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 05/05/2026

Ah, makes sense, thank you! I hadn't considered pulse waves.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 05/05/2026

Thanks! Related to this, by any chance would you be able to help me understand LSP's "play without note" command? In what case would it be relevant to set channel pointers without enabling DMA? It's currently going unused in my implementation since I couldn't find a meaningful use for it.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 01/05/2026

LSPX: Converts OpenMPT-supported tracker modules (mod, s3m, xm, it, mptm) to #Amiga LSP (LightSpeed Player) format. github.com/dansalvato/l... Now you can compose for Amiga with modern tracker features, and even with 16-bit 48KHz samples, which LSPX will downsample to a configurable quality target.

github.com

GitHub - dansalvato/lspx: Converts OpenMPT-supported tracker modules (mod, s3m, xm, it, mptm) to Amiga LSP (LightSpeed Player) format.

Converts OpenMPT-supported tracker modules (mod, s3m, xm, it, mptm) to Amiga LSP (LightSpeed Player) format. - dansalvato/lspx

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 19/04/2026

If you're eyeing Arch, you might like to look into Manjaro. I haven't personally used it, but it's an Arch-based distro that specifically aims for stability by putting Arch package updates through a testing window before pushing them out. And it's ready to go out of the box, unlike Arch's DIY model

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 19/04/2026

I always go back to good old Linux Mint as a distro that just gets out of the way if it's a machine I plan on using seriously. I get adventurous with Arch etc. when I specifically feel like tinkering, but Debian-based distros are among the most stable and well-supported, and Mint feels very clean.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 19/04/2026

Did you play the 5-disc version of Riven? When the mag-lev parks and its screeching mechanical noises come to a halt, and then in the silence you get mini-jumpscared by the CD tray opening up by itself. That childhood memory was one of the inspirations for what I wanted to evoke in DDLC's horror

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 17/04/2026

I love old hardware, I've dabbled more than once in trying to set up 90s-era machines for modern work. The part that usually breaks my heart is that they *can* do so much of what we use modern tech for, but even the simplest of tasks today are often walled in by proprietary Web-based services.

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Reposted by Dan Salvato

Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 21/11/2024

The unfortunate thing about The Last of Us getting a gazillion remakes is that it's being forgotten how much of a technical marvel the original PS3 game was. We really got to see the endgame of PS3 where the Cell CPU architecture was pushed to its limit. This is a game console from 2006

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Reposted by Dan Salvato

Serenity Forge @serenityforge.com · 09/04/2026

A statement regarding the removal of DDLC from the Google Play Store:

Yesterday, Google chose to remove Doki Doki Literature Club from the Google Play Store. Their explanation is that the game’s content violates their Terms of Service in its depiction of sensitive themes.

DDLC is widely celebrated for portraying mental health in a way that meaningfully connects deeply with players around the world, helping them feel heard, understood, and less alone on their journey. Managing to achieve that—making a truly meaningful difference by using the power of fiction to connect to others—is what I’m most grateful for. It inspires me every day to keep making cool new things, things that can really reach others, especially those in need of connection.

DDLC is available on many different major platforms, including iOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and more. We’re continuing to do everything we can to find a path forward for getting DDLC reinstated on the Google Play Store. Meanwhile, we’re also looking into potential options for alternate methods of distribution on Android devices.

We worked hard to bring DDLC to Android, and we’ve gotten to see so much love and enthusiasm from passionate Android users over these past few months. Thank you so much to the community for continuing to express your love and support for DDLC through the years. We’ll keep you updated on the future of DDLC for Android.

- Dan Salvato and the Serenity Forge Team

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 06/04/2026

Mostly custom tooling. The role involves brainstorming/designing primarily particle-based effects that work within a set of highly specific technical constraints, emphasis on efficiency. We design in a prototype environment for me to later port the effects' logic/algorithm into a custom game engine.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 06/04/2026

Bluesky-exclusive outreach: I'm looking to contract a technical artist with a specific passion for applying math to create mesmerizing visual effects, e.g. shaders, particle effects, or other demoscene-like displays. Please feel free to spread the word and send portfolios/examples via reply or email

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 18/03/2026

The poor technical artist who spent 1,000 hours getting lighting and materials to work and now has to spend another 1,000 hours wrangling a semblance of visual consistency out of the AI beauty filter that Nvidia paid their boss 5 million dollars to market

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 12/03/2026

I had to go to this party at a bar for like networking or whatever but it's so loud and I just want to play Melee please send foxes

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 10/03/2026

At GDC with a Melee setup, anyone tryna play

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 03/03/2026

Uh actually, as a coffee aficionado the more proper terminology is "Vessel of Joseph"

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 02/03/2026

This is awesome. I'm curious about the wireless linking, if any changes were required or they just emulated it as-is. Given how much physical link cable sucks to emulate due to expecting perfect data integrity, it warms me to imagine their esoteric wireless support staying relevant 20 years later.

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Dan Salvato @dansalva.to · 28/02/2026

Don't give unsolicited advice to neurodivergent folks, it's oftentimes a big trigger of negative feelings due to a lifetime of them enduring people trying to "fix" them with misguided suggestions

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