iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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

Well, if you feel like playing a retro adventure game, lovingly crafted in C and 6502 assembler over a period of multiple years before Claude and ChatGPT were a thing, feel free to get the game, it's currently in sales at $2.00 on Steam (without DRM). ⤵️ store.steampowered.com/app/3319780/...

store.steampowered.com

Save 33% on Encounter: A 8-Bit Noir Adventure... on Steam

Race against time to save a kidnapped teen in 2 hours! Play as a cunning PI, diving into a thrilling mystery. Type commands for retro vibes or use arrow keys to pick actions, crafting solutions to con...

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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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Oric Dungeon Master #4 - Teleporters and Wall texts

I'll have to do some optimization, but we now have working teleporters and wall markings. There is no real combat, I just bash space to inflict damage. 😅 www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOLF...

youtube.com

YouTube video by Dbug's stuff

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Close enough, ship it! 🤪

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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 · 20/09/2026

A WYSISYG editor really helps tweaking things.

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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!

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?...

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 · 10/09/2026

Yeah but you can only do that if it's your own codebase and you have control over it, they way Unreal is structured you can't really assume any of that so you have to find workarounds in your own "game plugin" section of the codebase.

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Oric Dungeon Master #3 - Items and portraits

It's now possible to pick-up items, the keys open the locks, the alcove behind the mummy can be opened and the falchion can be taken. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQG5...

youtube.com

YouTube video by Dbug's stuff

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Pretty much all this code is running on the game thread, it's just that because the way the code is structured, you don't know if it's going to be called during the game frame loop, at initialization, during some random export in the editor, etc... so just to be sure, test everything, always😭

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I watched the documentary yesterday, I did not know that military (worldwide) was excluded from all the calculations about pollution/co2 emissions. Recommended, but clearly felt a bit depressed after watching it :-/

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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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I generally design my stuff so you can only reach a specific function, module, state, etc... if all these pre-requisites are guaranteed valid, so the code can directly use all it needs without having to check if any of it is valid: That has been vetted before it was called. ⤵️

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I think the #1 thing I dislike about Unreal Engine game code is that contrarily to the previous engines I worked on, you can't ever assume everything about the state of the application, so all the code, all the time, checks if there is a valid UWorld, valid UActor, etc... ⤵️

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Encounter: A 8-Bit Noir Adventure GOG Dreamlist | GOG.COM

I did try once when I initially released the game, I may try again when I have it 100% finished (there are a few nice to have that may happen before the end of the year). Feel free to vote for it! www.gog.com/dreamlist/ga...

gog.com

Want to see Encounter: A 8-Bit Noir Adventure on GOG? Vote for Encounter: A 8-Bit Noir Adventure and contribute to game preservation!

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". 🙃

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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Quand le marché Atari VCS 2600 (leader sur le marché) américain s'est effondré vers 1983, la majorité des européens utilisaient des micro-ordinateurs style Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, etc... avec une explosion de nouveaux talents, éditeurs, etc...

Dbug @dbug.defence-force.org · 05/09/2026

Le fameux crash mondial universel du jeu vidéo des années 1980 qui en gros n'a touché que les USA?

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

Sure, like the original "jaquard" tapestry machines, or the music boxes :) As long as it's electromechanical, no problem!

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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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"😇

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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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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Yes, it was basically a fresh session.

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???

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

DLSS5 may improve (in some cases) the look of the visuals on a game, but that will just make it more obvious that the rest of the game (collisions, animations, dialogues, physics, scripts, etc...) is janky and feels disconnected from the upgraded visuals.

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

Sympa, en ce moment je regarde "Black Sails" donc c'est pile dans le thème :D