iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

For all the die hard Plogue fans, in about half an hour (11am EST) we're premiering the launch video for Plogue chipsynth OPMZ (on which I did so much work!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2DY...

youtube.com

Emulating the OPZ the HARD way

YouTube video by plgDavid

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My usual interpretation is "not olive oil, also you can't sub with butter".

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

T'es pas la seule... Ça fout le bordel, la majorité du monde aime pas et ça empoisonne l'atmosphère de tout l'internet, ça met un climat de méfiance... En plus qu'on ne parle plus que de ça.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Like Rap and Metal, Country definitely has a regional pattern and tons of very dedicated fans but also has never been for everybody.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

US has min-maxing. People are under no delusion that they won't be squeezed down to the last drop in the hopes of making the number go up just a tiny bit more. If a "90% instead of 100% slavery" vote shows up in senate, we know a Manchin will fold and drag us all down with a cowardly "the deficit".

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

There's 2 reasons to run for office: either you're uniquely competent, inspired and compassionate, or you're there to loop power money and rage into even more power money and rage. Obviously, loopers need their "win buttons" else they'd never win (being incompetent, uninspired and misanthropic).

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The grainy playback (due to the limited cpu time for mixing and 8bit PWM DAC) adds to the experience rather than detracts from it...

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

It's complicated... The original target of the French signage laws were large companies that had the money and resources to do French in Quebec, but just couldn't be bothered unless forced by law. The enforcement might have gotten a little zealous lately admittedly.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

People use "la clim" already yeah!

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

More like a giant ball of every stock portfolio and piece of real estate merged to form a colossal homonculi made out of money.

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Reposted by @madbrain.bsky.social

surasshu @surasshu.com · 07/09/2026

huge!!!

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

My version of spicy tomato eggs. I'm told this called a Shakshouka in North Africa. Very delicious!

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Now I'm half expecting "XLR female" and "XLR male" to show up as fantasy gender options in the fandom.

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

It's like 3 commercials at the same time!

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

I'm trying to figure out why just why it's specifically Saban's Iznogoud.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It's like every vegetable one after the other.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I know the ordinary concept of 'Jouissance', the 'Lacan version' sounds like it's some subtle variation?

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

It was so close to being this full screen texture mapped system 2 years before the PSX, but the blitter just can't rotozoom blit from ram to ram fast. It's like eating every DRAM penalty and taking 10 cycles per pixel, compare to 1 cycle on the PSX.

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

All of the above. It's true, but if you're a particularly creative composer I'm sure you can come up with a happy minor song or a sad major song. And it's shaded by the variant of major/minor (plain, modal, blues, chromatic borrowed chords etc). It goes back to piano lessons when I was a kid.

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

More people need to be reminded of Ernst Röhm's "reward" for his devotion.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I guess what I mean by "professional returns" isn't money per se, more like "the consequences of doing this project isn't just that my free time evaporates and then the system shunts me into working for a cynical corporation doing something asinine like bank databases or geriatric nursing".

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

People tend to judge things on "good" or "bad" but there's an other axis that I would call "intentionality". And that's where AI really hurts confidence and has a built-in bait-and-switch - it's inherently zero intentionality but tries to pass off as high intentionality.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I've been getting away from those projects lately since my attention is kinda too divided already and focus got harder. I have all sorts of ideas for systems like that, but I'd have to make a game to justify it, and the time investment for rather limited professional returns is too much.

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

That's what it might take... The Americans' goldfish political memory is infamous. I'm so much hoping we don't see yet another repeat of the GOP's numbers automagically starting to rise up again for no reason a scant few weeks later.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I'm a fan of Weird Al's 'in style of' songs - Everything you Know is Wrong, Skipper Dan, Virus Alert.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I see! Yeah I figured that there would be a catch of that sort. So unless your game is the guns-in-a-BSP-maze type, and barring a big-occluder situation (which I imagine can be dealt in other ways), that sort of aggressive Carmack-Abrash zero-overdraw algorithm is a net loss. Great to know.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Oh yeah, in that case I guess it would be possible to do something like render front to back with a 1-bit stencil buffer per subpixel, with alpha calculated from the proportion of subpixels that weren't already drawn, or something along those lines... 🤔

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

La musique de la carte de Landstalker 😍

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

It would be doable if going back to polygon depth sorting and giving up on z-buffering but yeah that's kindof a tall ask.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Nan c'est pas correct, il aurait du prendre 13 litres de lait. 🫠

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I feel you could do something good with Populous, but what do I know..

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Americans cannot have public health care because because that would turn the 1 million rice koku feudal domain of Herusu Keea into a 500k koku domain, and Samurai clans like Furisuto and Paajuu and Deratore and Shikureri would be demoted from Maruchpuru Jetto status to the lower Shinguru Jetto rank.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I'm wondering is how you'll avoid the "damage fungibility" issue where someone finds the optimal combination that deals the biggest number for all the common situations.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Synergy has been getting more common as a mechanic overall, what with games like Dicey Dungeons and Wingspan and Super Auto Pets. They kinda barely let you get an "engine" where things grow exponentially as a kind of super-win state with some luck and improvisation, by which point the run ends...

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

- There's a card game where you combine stuff into spells: Epic Spell Wars of The Battle Wizards. - Final Fantasy 7 had a tiny bit of this what with combining a spell materia with a modifier. - A search for spell combining gives Bibidi Bibidi and Spellmasons, no idea how they play. 🤔

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Oof ouain... J'avoue que vraiment personne s'attendrait à ce que Stéphane Dion soit fan de bande dessinée. 😅

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I'd pin it at when both French Postmodernism and Frankfurt School Critical theory make it into the United States and start mixing, which happens around 1980 plus or minus 10 years.

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

A recent short on the subject with an interesting point: www.youtube.com/shorts/6sejM...

youtube.com

How hard should your game be?

YouTube video by candlesan

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

Obviously, and that always leads cynicism and pleading for billionaires and the right, worsening with concentration. But what I'm saying is US media's duplicity is very beyond what's expected for this level of power concentration. Like it's piloted by people on a Signal chat or something.

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

There's something *seriously* wrong with US media.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

There's an ideal "mid difficulty" that you see starting with classic SNES Nintendo games.. The top accomplishment is camouflaging difficulty self-adjust as bonuses, secrets... There's also lots to say about hard difficulty bumps to teach game mechanics, ex: 1st optional boss in Mina the Hollower.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Very different from mine but it looks beautiful!

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The just need whatever will get their flunkies excited for their Two Minutes Hate. It doesn't have to be true or non hypocritical. Their marks can regurgitate the punchy soundbite to wall off any positive discussion of that Emmanuel Goldstein if it comes up when talking with friends or family.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

They just needed an Emmanuel Goldstein for their two minutes hate.

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madbrain.bsky.social @madbrain.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Trump fancies himself as the new Napoleon, but clearly that includes the part where his army dies of starvation and cold somewhere in Russia.

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