iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

This "no 3D API" challenge wouldn't be any fun if I didn't try to make a vast open-world! Gotta have some challenge.

A screenshot of a billboard character standing on the roof of a voxel house looking at a distant low poly castle.

Dri @dreamnoid.com · 29/09/2026

This is entirely rendered using SDL_RenderGeometry, a 2D API. No OpenGL, no Vulkan, no SDL_GPU, no depth buffer, no perspective correction, nothing.

A screenshot of a 3D scene showing a billboard character in a textured voxel castle's hall. There's slight texture distortion.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 29/09/2026

Interestingly, it doesn't have to be aligned on the grid to work. As long as there's no overlap, it's fine:

A screenshot of an interior voxel environment with random perturbations applied to the vertices. It's rendered without a Z-Buffer and yet exhibits no sorting issues.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 29/09/2026

Remember when decompilation projects were all about learning how the game works under the hood rather than scoring a cheap PC port? :')

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 28/09/2026

I've tried quite a few things, but in the end only heightmap-based terrain and voxel meshes offer no-overlap guarantees. They sort just fine, you can't tell there's no z-buffer. Interesting...

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lily valeen @itsmelilyv.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

imo part of "make small games" is really "let yourself make imperfect games" when you stop worrying about being perfect you can let yourself try goofy-ass things and see if they work!! and if they don't it's fine. it's not gonna be your last game, right?

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jazz mickle @queenjazz.gay · 27/09/2026

conventional wisdom for the entire time i've been programming has always been "less code is better". the idea that we must write more code faster is ridiculous. the problem has never been rate of output

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jazz mickle @queenjazz.gay · 27/09/2026

my current focus on writing games specifically for retro systems is partly in response to this, the toolchains im using are all a decade old, long before LLM coding was even thought of. and yet, it will last longer than most software being written right now

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 26/09/2026

Still wish I had a depth buffer... Making the painter's algorithm work is tough. Gotta avoid polygon overlap at all cost

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 28/03/2026

SDL_GPU is super cool but all I really want is a depth buffer to go with SDL_RenderGeometry (+ perspective correct texture mapping). That's it. No shaders, no pipelines. Maybe I should try to write a simple software renderer...

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 24/09/2026

This. Also very frustrating when players treat you, the developer, as a living wiki/walkthrough when your intention was for them to figure it out by communicating with each other. You want to be accessible but still keep some secrets

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 21/09/2026

I'm working on a post-jam update for Starfall Advance. Among the stuff I'm excited about was finding a way to lift the maximum number of tiles. The environments really benefit from the extra tiles! #gbadev #homebrew

A screenshot of Starfall Advance showing the player in a casino.

A screenshot of Starfall Advance showing the player in a spa doubling as a boss arena.

A screenshot of Starfall Advance showing the player in front of a lighthouse.

A screenshot of Starfall Advance showing the player outside of the casino.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 13/09/2026

Starfall Advance, my free monster-catching RPG (inspired by #pokemon) for the Game Boy Advance is out on itch! dreamnoid.itch.io/starfall-adv... #gbadev #homebrew

dreamnoid.itch.io

Starfall Advance by Dreamnoid

An original monster-catching RPG for Game Boy Advance

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BrewOtaku Homebrew Retro Gaming Magazine @brewotaku.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Starfall Advance (2026) by Dreamnoid for Game Boy Advance. Five years after two comets collided, Spirits roam the land. Sign up as a Medium, earn badges from eight Lab Officers, then brave Ground Zero. 🎁 dreamnoid.itch.io/starfall-adv... #homebrew #gba #retro #game #starfalladvance @dreamnoid.com

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 16/09/2026

I'm probably on record somewhere saying I dislike how Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire looks, but I must admit FireRed/LeafGreen are a marked improvement. I still wish the environments were denser, with less empty space on screen, but yeah, way better!

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Kris 🎃 Lorischild @direkris.itch.io · 13/09/2026

Again: it should not be down to a social media campaign for someone at Valve, which takes a 30% cut of every sale, to do their job

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 14/09/2026

A YouTuber did a review of my game The Trespasser, which would have been nice if they didn't AI-generate the thumbnail. The game is unrecognizable. The protagonist now has 3 arms, uses an assault-rifle instead of a sword and the enemies are the most generic designs ever. Why...? So disheartening :(

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 13/09/2026

Have some screenshots:

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 13/09/2026

Starfall Advance, my free monster-catching RPG (inspired by #pokemon) for the Game Boy Advance is out on itch! dreamnoid.itch.io/starfall-adv... #gbadev #homebrew

dreamnoid.itch.io

Starfall Advance by Dreamnoid

An original monster-catching RPG for Game Boy Advance

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Bruno Dias @brunodias.dev · 11/09/2026

I feel like AAA is caught in a vicious cycle where the margins are so tight for big games that they're not allowed to fail, therefore they're made under extreme scrutiny, therefore often large amounts of work gets thrown out, therefore they cost more to make...

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Daniel Alba @daniel.gvg.io · 10/09/2026

Kaori Mizuhashi is the original voice of Navi the fairy, a voice that many of us grew up with. It sounds like she's returning to reprise the role in the Japanese version, nearly 28 years later. Clip of an old promotional video for Ocarina of Time where she guided you, fully voiced.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 09/09/2026

First real test on hardware for my next Game Boy Advance game, Starfall Advance.

A photo of a Nintendo DS Lite showing the title screen of my new GBA homebrew, Starfall Advance.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 09/09/2026

Playing your own game on hardware you grew up with never gets old

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 09/09/2026

First real test on hardware for my next Game Boy Advance game, Starfall Advance.

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Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I've got somewhat mixed, but overall positive, feelings towards the Ocarina remake. I'm excited to play it in November

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 08/09/2026

That may explain why there's only one item button now and the infamous horizontal hotbar. But they insisted during the presentation that these are two very different games, to the point they lampshaded the map transitions. It feels very un-Nintendo to add a jump button if it's not needed

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 08/09/2026

I have no idea what could possibly justify this change for the remake...

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KZ @kzxcellent.live · 10/11/2025

I read a thread about games with terrible UI earlier and this video has been destroying me all day.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 08/09/2026

Still not entirely sold on #Zelda Ocarina of Time Remake's art direction, but it's overall better than I expected. It really seems to be OoT made palatable for a new generation, but that's too tame an ambition to really echo the experience we got in 98

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 05/09/2026

You're *not* hurting anybody. Worst possible typo to make, sorry >_<

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 05/09/2026

Nice touch but the 3D renders don't have half the charm of the early Nomura style portraits

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 05/09/2026

I was a hobbyist on the side of AAA, now trying to make it as an indie in case AAA goes south, and my current observation is that price is not that significant of a factor. People will play what they want to play. Freeware games even get less attention than paid games! You're hurting anybody

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 30/08/2026

If you listen to AI apologists, you would think programmers write a lot of mindless boilerplate code, which is only true if you're very bad at your job

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Jason Cordova @jasoncordova.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The Watchmen show on HBO was so effing good, and I feel like it should be better regarded than it is. They took one of the greatest literary works of all time and made an equally momentous sequel in the form of a show, and we should talk about that more.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 30/08/2026

Same. I sometimes feel like an impostor when I say such and such games are my favorites and super influential on my work and yet I have only played them once or twice, decades ago. But it's not like I can forget how they made me feel, and the moment-to-moment gameplay was only a means to an end.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 26/08/2026

Putting aside the stunning GBA version, I wonder why the 3D remake looks so much worse to me than the 8bit original. Is it simply because I grew up in the GameBoy era or is there more to it?

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Max Nichols @maxnichols.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The more time I've spent studying and analyzing the Zelda series, studying how the devs thought with my project @hyruleinterviews.bsky.social, and taking a longer view... the more clear it is to me that there has never been a "Zelda formula". It's a series defined by a constant push for change

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 21/08/2026

It was pretty easy to move all text to Word for a metroidvania based on items descriptions, codex entries and a few NPC interactions. But my current RPG project has tons of NPCs with a single line of dialog. Half the text is written directly in the level editing tool and the other half in Excel...

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 21/08/2026

I've been changing my tools and workflows to store as much text as possible in Word or Google Docs, to benefit from their autocorrect/Antidote and to make localization possible. But this level of indirection from where you need the text adds real friction so I still find myself inlining some stuff..

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dr. hazel 🕯️ @hazelmonforton.com · 16/08/2026

I love science fantasy. Give me magic in space. Give me glowing crystals that do math. Give me spaceships with psychic powers.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 15/08/2026

The first L in LLM means 'large' and that kind of scale can only be reached by stealing. You can absolutely do ethical machine learning, but ethical LLMs are science-fiction

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Sam Barlow 🔥 @mrsambarlow.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Noki Bay is one of my favorite levels. A real natural wonder of the gaming world

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 14/08/2026

(The entire store was covered with similarly disgusting ads)

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 14/08/2026

Gotta wonder how much Bureau Valley paid for those AI-generated slop ads. Anyway, that's not how books work

A pseudo-cartoonish AI-generated illustration for an ad. A kid(?) is wrapping a school book into plastic wrapper. The book's binding is on the wrong side.

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Tomas Sala @falconeerdev.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I think personally the struggle to make lavish productions but being unable to is the friction I enjoy myself . It's led me to apply my "never use premade textures" rule for a decade now. Shipshaper still doesn't use textures btw.. you can apply your own limitations, and it's worthwhile.

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Tomas Sala @falconeerdev.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

When someone creates Solo rather than in a team , that is not interesting cuz some imagined extraordinary feat. No! it is all the limitations and shortcuts they have to take, to overcome real limits, that lead to interesting creative outcomes. The limitations are the point.

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Dri @dreamnoid.com · 13/08/2026

At least you don't need impossible-to-find glasses to watch the Perseid meteor shower

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