iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by dgbaumgart

Alexander Mosolov @amosolov.bsky.social · 12h

Another batch of patch notes for the upcoming (not yet out) Starsector release: fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.... (Attached: completely unrelated screenshot from recent-ish playtesting)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

(This is quite true, and is why I'm *not* going on a rampage through the dialog. The time for that sort of thing is way earlier in the dev cycle!)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Happy #GoblinFriday! Still stuck in save/load revision boringland. Almost done! Profiles now store completed scenario keys, scenarios store what other scenarios are required to unlock them, and it all works in the UI. Next: just overhaul the in-game save/load modal menu to use the profile model!

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Listening to a middle ages playlist... then I do a double take and see it's titled "middle age". Oh no!

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My friend, that would take but a single line in the conditions block of the dialog rule :D

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

If you choose your loyalty wisely you too can "Do you know who I am?" your way out of a transponder violation while (allegedly) doing a secret mission for the Supreme Executor. (And yes, I do have a job to smuggle 2000 units of metal into Sindria. Um, it's for the war effort, I swear!) #starsector

Starsector screenshot where I say "Do you know who I am?" to a patrol to get them to stop bugging me while I'm trying to do some honest smuggling.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Important progress: a way to give text validation feedback. Also started the "market town" background illustration and y'know I can't *not* make it _that_ reference.

Yeah, it's loosely that one image of Rothenburg that was used in Monkey Island, and I'm going to keep putting it into illustrations for fantasy games until someone forces me to stop.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

#GoblinFriday !! Today we're being BORING. I'm setting up to allow a 'profile' model of saving gamestate so a player's run through a scenario stores meta-scenario data that can change later scenarios accordingly. But I need to redo save/load handling and all save/load related UI. So, yep.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Mm, Warlords! And I feel so bad for not including SMAC now...

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Yes, yes! Darklands almost counts as a 'bad' game for how semi-broken it was, but wow, what a work of art, what a mood, and such scale for '93. And invented BG's combat system 5 years before BG! Ascendancy, what an unbelievably creative game. They must have been doing so many drugs in that office!

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Did the games meme, tried to make it "games of my formative years", though the last couple are rather later than the rest. Missing: Warlords, Maxis catalog, Diablo, CS, left off series like Civ2, MoO2, (arguably) Doom. +some 'bad' games that caught my imagination: Outpost, Ascendancy, Conquest 1086

Quake, Sim City 2000, Warcraft 2, Darklands, Master of Orion, Ultima Online, Civilization, Europa Universalis 2, Half-life

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Felt like mushroomposting so here are some mushrooms I saw over the weekend. (Was in nature, hence a lack of Friday Goblins. Though the mushrooms kinda put me in the mood for 'em.)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

#Starsector rulesmaxxing status update. Running through a spellcheck now, and most - though by no means all - of the new stuff adds up to over 160k words. It's like writing a dang novel! (And feels like it, oof.)

Chart showing the growth, in MB, of the rules CSV data files over time. These contain all the text dialog and dialog-based scripting in the game.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

We thought of putting an IR LED on a stick to do easy motion tracking, but figured that'd be too stupid. The Wii came out like... 2 months *after* we proposed the start of this project, and we were somehow completely unaware of it. Art school, man. It's a different place.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

OK. Fixed it. Whew. (What's neat is to do this I kinda drew upon some recursive algorithm stuff I did in Python 20 years ago to do raster pixel-blob detection from highly processed webcam input for my final project in art school; it never worked well, but the goal was interactive CG visuals.)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Here's what Goblin Navigation has cooked up: Points for getting to the intended destination. Minus points for not actually being the shortest route, and plus goblin points for cheating on the route but somehow making it longer while doing so. (Clearly I've got a hitch in the logic to sort out.)

The map view of my goblin game. This is the route found as the "shortest" from the swamp to the tavern.

Not only is it not the shortest, it is also not quite a valid route. The algorithm did deny an even longer, stupider route, at least.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It is #GoblinFriday ! Observation: Calling things dumb goblin names like "sneek", "oooos" and "kreeee" is funny but also annoying when I keep getting string mismatches due to getting number of letters wrong, or spelling correct. Now, god help me, I am writing a node-map navigation algorithm...

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The problem with writing funny dice check options for very unlikely things is you have to actually come up with, and implement, what happens when a player in fact succeeds. (TBF this is also a bit of a problem when DMing a game. Especially with some of the players I've had...)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Working on scenario 2 wherein Wormsy is trying to free Kreeee from captivity. Poor Kreeee! Wormsy gets a crow friend of negotiable loyalty (this will require payments of Shinies, you see). This means I need to set up Things so the crow can follow Wormsy around the map, and allow them to talk.

A screenshot of my goblin game. Here we see Wormsy at the Mudcrab Beach with a 'friendly' crow who wants to earn shinies. If Wormsy gives the crow shinies, the crow might prove useful helping Wormsy free Kreeee...

(This requires various technical things: I need to be able to set a flag on the crow to make it follow Wormsy around the map. Just wrote this, but haven't tested it *nervous laughter*.

I also need to allow the presence of the crow, and Wormsy [or an arbitrary goblin] to add an interaction button so the goblin can initiate dialog with the crow. The whole crow-goblin relationship should be important to the game, so I gotta do this sooner or later.)

Meanwhile, we see that Kreeee has found himself locked up in a terrible cage! Note that he has a whole pile of negative status effects and limited options. As time passes, some of these status effects will naturally go away which will improve Kreeee's stats - perhaps to the point where he can escape by himself.

Otherwise, he's going to have to wait for Wormsy's help!

Otherwise... Jorten the Fighter is going to try to sell Kreeee to whoever he can find that's willing to pay, which means there's a turn countdown 'til the scenario hits a lose state. (Still implementing this part, but I have a _framework_ in place!)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Happy #GoblinFriday! Today's bug hunt: Kreeee did not know that Kreeee was Kreeee. (I wasn't storing a character's key in their memory. To call a char's memory you need the key: redundant! Nope: you can check $self.key and "self" is replaced w/ active goblin. So $kreeee.key == kreeee was failing.)

Look at this silly goblin! He didn't even know he was him. Which is pretty fitting, all things considered.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

TBF he never remembers who you are either

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Thank you! (And me too; can't wait to get this update out :D )

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

For a fun teaser, here's a glance at the names of some of the (large) pile of QA testing saves; some are mine, some are from our brave testing team of two. (I had to redact a pretty spicy spoiler there, btw.) We're getting there slowly but surely. #Starsector

A screenshot of my save-load dialog in the current dev version of Starsector, mostly involving the names of a lot of Persean League characters.

(One save game description is mostly redacted because it would definitely have given away some Interesting Things.)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I'm not involved fwiw. Gaslamp: got out of most of the fee for breaking the office lease in 2016 by saying the alternative was bankruptcy heh! Myself & one partner kept the books for many years to pay off lingering debts then the third partner agreed to use the company's own assets to buy us out.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Happy #GoblinFriday ! Redid turn handling logic which is Not Interesting (well, it is, but. Moved from using C# async to FSM structure that gave me more discrete control), but then indulged in a tiny bit of work on some of the creepy bits on the eastern side of the map. (Deets in alt text!)

How do you make a location more interesting? Give it a deep implied history!

As I develop the setting of this game, I'm finding what I need to do is 1. make everywhere have something very old and unknown have once been there. And whatever that is will probably never really be fully explored; it draws an intentional void which is filled with implication and imagination.

And 2. animate the inanimate! To goblins, the landscape itself, the forces of nature are animate beings with feelings and grudges and *moods*. (Which makes for a more evocative setting, because in a fantasy world, a cliff or mountain can indeed be actively malevolent! Or merely hungry... for goblins.)

Yeah, you're going to want to be careful here.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I've been sitting on a set of Victorian/Edwardian/Industrial Revolution themed icons for just *ages* and finally decided to package them up for sale (I've got to pay for a new foundation dontcha know). Here they are! Finally! dgbaumgart.itch.io/icons-victor...

dgbaumgart.itch.io

Icons: Victorian & Industrial Revolution by David Baumgart

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Hey, thank you! I remember just adding a little random flavour at first, as an experiment, to the interaction where you fly through an empty gate & it *hit*. So then we went kinda nuts - but I think it's been good, (though there's definitely a type of player that isn't in it to read tons of text.)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Per thread, maps in CE were v. weak due to so much reliance on procgen. Hand-scripted elements eventually helped, but we should have just made a map editor to set up interesting scenarios. Huge missed opportunity! Dredmor had v. easy authoring of rooms/everything via XML- a wildly successful move.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Good thread! Bears with my experience making Dredmor, Clockwork Empires, and even Starsector. The best stuff is always hand-authored, period. Procgen elements can tie it together, but much procgen dev time may have been better spent making tools to make authoring cheaper - especially for CE.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Just today working on my Warlords-inspired unit set. Man oh man that game lodged in my head - especially Warlords 2 Deluxe with the scenario editor

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

(Also, jeez, I'm getting a mouse-freezing thing on Windows 10 that is driving me absolutely batty, and THAT I've already spent a couple hours trying track down. Thought a redo of display drivers caught it, but nope. Might need to update the motherboard bios or some dang thing? ugh.)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Happy #GoblinFriday! Put together some test builds, then dove into 1. making the game camera less terrible, which led me to 2. redoing a portion of player turn time-logic handling (related to camera movement) (ooof). Nothing fun to show for a bit except... some in-progress art for "the high road"!

Background art for my goblin game - a ruined roadway crossing bridges between tall seaside rocks with a cliffy coastline in the distance.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

... what is perhaps key is finding a contractor whose particular brain wiring means their obsessive interest overlaps with fixing your problems and doing it *the right way, dammit*.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Ah, classic experience of the contractor showing up and being like WTAF??? at the work done by some previous contractor. (Apparently our AC system is the cheapest brand yet also overpowered, installed with a different pipe size than the manufacturer says, and every unit is poorly positioned. Neat!)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Guys literally only want one thing and it's disgusting

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Get yourself a man who knows how to handle a swivel gun! You'll need this energy when the English come to burn down your tiny fort. (Port Royal, NS back in July.)

Herein I demonstrate how to wield a 17th century swivel gun while making what one imagines is a fierce "war face" that would certainly have come in handy when the English came and burned down the fort this is a reconstruction of.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Then did some rote stuff like making sure a few tooltips were aligned and more informative was available, fixed a minor save/load issue, drew an icon for an unimplemented status effect... then saw I had an art item outstanding to draw map tokens for all the hooman "heroes". Fun!

Art for my goblin game - these are the hooman "hero" antagonists.
Top row shows their in-dialog portrait, the bottom row shows their on-map board game-like token.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Happy #GoblinFriday! Decided to do a test run through first two scenarios to find if any recent work broke any old content, plus noted any UX things that annoyed me. Figured the first End Turn in the tutorial needed a bouncy arrow (this one is a bit too insistent, I did pull it back!):

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

mister greywind you could have the answer i gave you all the clues

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

#Starsector rulesmaxxing writing update: quantitative data only (I forget if @amosolov.bsky.social mentioned adding the ability to have more than one rules file, but that's a feature. Also: new writing is split between the files; size of new file is not indicative of size of that category of data.)

Showing off the growth of the rules data in Starsector for the next update.

A handy chart showing how the in-game dialog has grown, in megabytes.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

ALSO I did myself a favour and added a dev testing panel to let me add resources, reload rules, dump current memory to a text file, and so on. Very useful, I should have done this ages ago and it only took like 10 minutes. (& Maybe later I'll work on some background illustration.)

A screenshot of my goblin game showing off the (very exciting) dev testing panel that lets me cheat and dump info and so forth.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Doing some silly polish too: - Wormsy's dice reroll power now has a special, more intense visual effect on rerollable dice to signal when you get a free reroll! - I'm spending way too much time getting background transitions working better, ie. switching locations while in dialog. Still not working.

A screenshot of my goblin game with a crop from another image comparing "reroll chaos" effects overlaid on dice that can be rerolled. On the bottom is the Wormsy Special Power effect, though it doesn't quite sell it without the little spiral spinning around (a bit faster for Wormsy's power here.)

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Happy #GoblinFriday! Finished most Troll Bridge dialog. Finnicky bits remain; I had? to add a null memory type for reasons. Copying a memory that doesn't exist should make it "false" - but not just a bool. So this is a universal false for almost all conditionals (vs. int, float, string, bool). Hm.

Screenshot of my goblin game, just a bunch of goblins in the Goblin Swamp ready to move into the world and cause KAOS.

I added shadows under the tokens. That's all I wanted to show off here.

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dgbaumgart @dgbaumgart.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Re last post: It is insane that the Canadian government is interested in funding the efforts of foreign tech companies to infringe upon and destroy our own creative industries. If you're Canadian + in the "cultural sector", I encourage you to tell them you don't want to be sold out by AI lobbyists.

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Reposted by dgbaumgart

Sonja Boon @storiedselves.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Canadian arts and culture folks: the federal government has launched a (methodologically flawed) survey on "the Cultural Sector's readiness for Artificial Intelligence". If you're ready to resist or refuse genAI, here's your chance to let them know. pch.research-recherche.ca/f/s.aspx?lan...

pch.research-recherche.ca

National Survey on the Cultural Sector’s Readiness for Artificial Intelligence

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