iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 01/10/2026

Both versions contain the .DSK files playable on a real Oric computer!

Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 30/09/2026

I almost forgot to set-up the itch autumn sale 😅 At this point the number of new units sold is anecdotical, so not that it matters much, but does not hurt doing it!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 29/09/2026

I've no idea what a "Clockwork PicoCalc" is, but apparently it can run an Oric emulator :D

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 28/09/2026

Funny, each time I see this image I have the same "Oh, I did not remember we sent a version to Microids to see if they were interested in publishing our game back then"😅

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 21/09/2026

Close enough, ship it! 🤪

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 21/09/2026

Now with the side view and the level one distance "shape of a text" squigles. Text is important in this game, it contains clues about how to solve puzzles, you don't want to miss them.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 21/09/2026

A WYSISYG editor really helps tweaking things.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 20/09/2026

Trying to get the texts actually shown on the walls instead of just as messages at the bottom!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 19/09/2026

So for the ones wondering, the development is getting slower because the memory is getting very very scarce, like I basically had to implement some kind of "DLL" equivalent for things like the initialization of the game module, inventory management, etc...

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 19/09/2026

Digital downloads are for sure more practical than physical media, but they don't beat having the box of a game you worked on in your shelf!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 19/09/2026

I was watching www.youtube.com/watch?v=41OO... , they mentioned weloveit.io/developers/s... so I checked with my own game numbers, it's not very far from reality, not sure how far these two others are though!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 17/09/2026

I totally believe that my Oric text adventure game is a perfect fit for the "UEL Winter Championship 2026", so I'm totally going to pay the $999 developer participation package! 🤑

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 15/09/2026

During Sommarhack 2025 someone suggested I sent a message to the Retro Adventurers, which I did just after the party. I had forgotten about it so I was very surprised to hear my name this morning when listening to the latest episode! That may explain... youtu.be/abqPdzxhuIo?...

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 14/09/2026

My most memorable puzzle in Dungeon master :)

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 14/09/2026

Looking for a tasty Screamer slice!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 13/09/2026

Good old "oops, switched resolution by mistake because I did not filter the graphics data properly" bug.😅

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 10/09/2026

I knew there was an Oric Atmos in "The IT Crowd" but I never noticed there was an Oric 1 in "Dr Who"!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 09/09/2026

So you end up with defensive code full of boiler plate everywhere just to ensure it's not going to break. ☹️

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 06/09/2026

And another one... That one looks like I had set the wrong size on the book, but that was not visible until the previous version when I added some new items just under it because the purple color actually means "transparent". 🙃

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 06/09/2026

That's why it's important to test a game after a major codebase refactoring. I wanted to push an Encounter bug fix for the "market place glitch", started testing and realized that the bottom of the directional arrow was missing, reason being a zero terminator being black ink.😱

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 04/09/2026

Sure sign you know too much about modern tech: You buy a sewing machine and make sure there's not a single bit of programmable thing inside, fully electro-mechanical, no firmware, no digital display of any kind.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 31/08/2026

And the "level 0" of interaction is "press space in front of the Altar of Rebirth" to resurrect whoever died. Ideally I'll have some animation and sound effect, but the core feature is "dead hero becomes non dead hero"😇

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 31/08/2026

Now we the damage badge and a new "oops" portrait (I guess I should probably clear the stamina and mana bars as well when the character is dead.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 31/08/2026

I'm spending time on trying to get a working layout for the game because contrary to the Atari ST that has more of wider resolution (320x200) the Oric is more square (240x224) so we have more vertical space. So I decided to try to have the portraits always visible!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 30/08/2026

I'm not sure if it's only me, but in the last few weeks Claude Opus 5 and Fable 5 have been consistently overengineering things to the point of being impossible to read/understand. The code on the left was ugly and sometimes failing, but the thing on the right is... why???

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 30/08/2026

Small update with work done on the legs, boots, necklaces, coins, germs and potions. The difficulty is that I can only use one INK color per scanline, with BLACK paper and eventual inverted bit on a 6 pixels cell.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 29/08/2026

Experimenting with items, the 8 fixed colors of the Oric palette does not make it easy!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 24/08/2026

It's now possible to see the stats of the characters when looking at a mirror. The stats are not doing anything at the moment, but at least they are there!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 22/08/2026

Quite far from the original, but that's just the raw import of the original sprite, the hard work starts now :D

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 20/08/2026

Crap, forgot the last image :D

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 20/08/2026

The way to the second floor is almost usable \o/

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 17/08/2026

Today I learnt that ffmpeg can convert the 198x .AVR audio format of the Atari ST. Not that I plan to replay samples on the Oric, but having an easy way to listen to the original sounds makes it easier to reinterpret something close using pure AY sound trickery.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 15/08/2026

The "transparent" doors are bad for the framerate!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 14/08/2026

Someone is porting the BBC game "Spellbinder" to the Oric, figured out I could give a try at converting the original title screen! The Oric can display more colors at the same time, but we have quite harsh proximity constraints, so I had to insert some blank space. 😅

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 13/08/2026

That will never be perfect, but hopefully the characters are recognizable! (and yes, I need to center the text)

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 31/07/2026

And the devlog with the actual system requirements: defenceforce.itch.io/encounter/de... Screenshot: Game Launcher running on CachyOS

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 31/07/2026

Well, I don't know on which distros it will actually run, but there's now a native Linux version of the Encounter Game Launcher and Oricutron. 😅 If that works well, the next step is the Steam version with the SteamAPI to handle cloud saves and achievements.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 30/07/2026

The native launcher now launches a native emulator. I guess technically I should go for a "universal binary" with both Intel and Arm binaries for the launcher and emulator.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 30/07/2026

I got a Mac Mini on loan from work, trying to see how difficult it is to make a Mac (and Linux) native version of the Encounter launcher. An unfortunate side effect is that the Win32 executable has grown from 472KB to about 5MB. 🙁

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 30/07/2026

Après la question c'est: Est-ce que c'est un PDF ou un truc avec DRM qui ne marche qu'avec la "liseuse web ou l'application" et dans 20 ans ca ne marche plus et le document est perdu?

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 29/07/2026

Linux version is perfect, absolutely no bugs!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 29/07/2026

All tests are passing, ship it!

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 29/07/2026

I don't think there's really many things more enjoyable than having people actually use the stuff you build! ❤️‍🔥 Hialmar is working on an epic role playing game on the Oric, and he validated that the OSDK 2.0 + VS Code extension work on his Mac (with some massaging...)

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 29/07/2026

Sometimes people are asking if the Oric ROM is well optimized... well, there are some obvious wastes here and there, like on this sound effect page there are four bytes wasted, all these JSR/RTS could just have been a JMP instead.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 28/07/2026

So there is a Finnish Oric 1 manual! Now just need to find a way to get it scanned, because apparently it's 141 (worn) pages long.

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 26/07/2026

Trying to get OSDK 2.0 out... managed to get a bit more out of our old C compiler! 😅

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Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 24/07/2026

And that was the bug: The player can skip the intro sequence by press space at the very start of the game, but the "skip point" is only reset if it's used, so letting the intro go through does not clear the reset point... so by pressing space we ended up running the skip script⤵️

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