iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

After two more afternoons of tinkering I fully fixed it! I hope I won't have to repair a CRT ever again.

Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So I guess I learned a ton about CRTs, how to discharge them (scary!) and actually learning to understand electrical diagrams and notations. And then, finally, I may be able to play old games and watch movies on it like they were meant to be. But maybe it's only about the journey to get there.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

You could play retro games with an emulator and a CRT filter... ...or you can get a CRT, find out that major caps went bad, spend days doing a full recap and hope it won't blow up afterwards. Fingers crossed! Standing on the shoulders of giants who uploaded ancient scanned manuals to archive org.

A CRT showing a test picture deformed into an hourglass shape, showing that some electrical circuits have likely gone bad.

Electrical boards of the CRT with the capacitors replaced.

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Reposted by Lukas

feef @feefal.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Inspired by a recent interaction

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The mistimed cut and the delayed text at 0:20 is quite some attention to detail!

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DekoNSFW 👀👄👀 @dekonsfw.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

There will always be people who appreciate what YOU make, it just might take them a while to find you.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Even the graphics API landscape is a mess today, especially if you want to go cross platform. Software rendering just works everywhere, as inefficient as it may be.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Great tbh. Over the years I grew to just embrace an easier difficulty, so I started and still playing with the 0.5x enemy damage modifier. Looking back, playing with normal damage (so 2x from my point of view) would be pretty hard...

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I just had to give Mina the Hollower a try because it's been praised so much. Yeah, it really is that good. I can't stop playing, help me.

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doctober @docseuss.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Oh, you've made a video game? And you want people to play it? Well, let's talk about how to do that better. How, exactly, can you make sure people care about your game and want to tell other people about it? Check it out here: docseuss.medium.com/its-not-enou...

docseuss.medium.com

it’s not enough to build something, part 1

Some years ago, before I entered the industry, I had a minute disagreement with someone in the comments section of a Kotaku article. I was…

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Panic @panic.com · 02/07/2026

This is your LAST CHANCE to play Big Walk early! We've just opened up 4 FINAL weeks of our Big Walk Preview!! Come to the Panic office, bring some friends, and play an hour of Big Walk. It's very fun. Book now: forms.panic.com/big-walk-pre... Here's a special behind-the-scenes peek at the room:

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Streaming gives you a digital rubber duck as a debugging companion, in a way! It could go either way - some people are even more productive during streaming.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

For many products, the marketing and sales budget easily makes up half or more of the total budget... On the bright side, if you are passionate about your game you at least have the natural desire show your game around! Just need to get used to reserving some time to get the word out regularly.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Remaking OOT is probably a way to probe how people respond to the classic Zelda formula nowadays, as Nintendo needs a new direction for their next 3D main title. There's an entire generation out there who only played the more sandbox style games BOTW, TOTK, Echoes of Wisdom.

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davemakes🔶 @mixolumia.com · 06/06/2026

youtubers, if you stick a playdate on your shelf as set decoration, i am judging you if it's obviously not charged

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

I like getting drip fed lore bits once I got pulled into the world. Immersion, feels like having depth and being alive. Scanning stuff and creatures in Metroid Prime was my jam. Photographing all the things in Zelda: WW and feeding all the fish for additional lore and map entries? Hell yeah.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

I was really looking forward to Valve's new controller. Unfortunately it needs Steam or a 3rd party application to work with anything outside of Steam on Windows i.e. no working controller input in any non-Steam game out of the box. Really bummed out about that one.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Can't do anything nowadays without catching flak from anyone. It's just a game jam created for fun, no need to get out the pitchforks because of a bullet point. Either participate or skip the jam. But I'm not a fan of dumping on someone who has good intentions in public.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

In these times of exploding hardware costs (ram, gpus), software and game complexity I could genuinely imagine a strong counter movement. Low tech hardware would be more accessible and affordable; games would have to get simpler to match the new constraints; production budgets falling again etc.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

People making new games for ancient consoles, today? People are seeking those consoles and games out, even younger people who didn't grow up with them. Dreamcast? N64? C64, given its brand new hardware production? Why? You can't brush it off as simple nostalgia. There's more to it.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Who even pays more than $ 20 for a Windows key, let alone well over $ 100? Doesn't come as a surprise that tinkerers (Framework's audience) are just going to install everything themselves. Happy that the Framework seems to be well received. We need more repairability.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Getting out into an environment feeling completely safe is! No need for jump scares if mind games is what you are going for. Back when I was a boy we played around in "lost places" in my area. Scary and exciting, but I was quite relieved once we left again.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

25 games! I don't even know if I could fill that out myself without duplicating a lot of them.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Big fan of that myself! The player is basically already halfway inside the game. This file selection menu and the game's save rooms share the same music as well.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Turning very basic things into upgrades or purchasable items in metroidvanias: Map pins, position on the map, walking faster, homing coins. They can be neatly used as yet another reward for the player, but how far is too far? Sometimes I'm surprised that they even let me walk left and right.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I love them in Borderlands; most of their flavour dialog in general. It just gets narrated in the background. If you care you can listen intentionally, or you can just continue playing and shooting up bad guys while listening to it in the background. Don't include essential info in that case.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

If the gaming industry shifts to subscription model like this, it'll be the nail in the coffin. Spotify already annihilates small musicians. Yes, you can still buy their music - but only a tiny fraction of people buys music for ownership anymore. It's all subscription based benefiting pop music.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

I don't know a single person who doesn't consider themselves a perfectionist when it comes to their passion field. I didn't ever complete something I deeply cared about by calling "eh, good enough I guess". There's a real skill in identifying the point of "diminishing returns" in a craft.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

What if the pendulum swung back and consoles would stop pushing for next gen tech? Deliberately using less expensive low tech. Targeting lower specs would eventually would make game production less costly and faster, too.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

They already split their player base into Classic and Retail, so they might as well drop classic game legacy from Retail alltogether.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I wouldn't be surprised at all if they just let you start a max level character, dropped all questing and leveling alltogether, and dropped you straight into a dungeon queue to shove a pile of loot onto you 15 minutes later. Gotta go with the time and cater towards the meme-able extraction genre.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Comparing to the top of the top is quite bold! What's inspiring to me about a lot of those indie mega successes is that they just continue doing it. They wouldn't have to financially, for their entire life. But that's just what they wanna do.

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Amano @amanogames.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Devils on the Moon Pinball is out!!!! What a time to be alive!! get it here: play.date/games/devils... Only on @play.date #pinball #indiegames #pixelart #playdate

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

More people should wrap their head around this. This might be a management issue, not being able, or not wanting, to direct your creative people towards making exciting new things? Layoffs suck, but burning creative talent on doing literally nothing sucks, too. Put them on a cool project!

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

A slower paced section to change things up. Testing the limits of the grappling hook a bit (and apparantly the amount of relevant space I can fit into view, too)

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

If you paid that amount of money to live there willingly, you sold out everything. It's all just the same. Empty.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

"We should have clearly disclosed our use of AI". Not only did they "accidentally" leave AI assets in. They also didn't seem to have any intentions disclosing AI usage in the first place, knowing very well that it hurts their reputation. They hoped players wouldn't notice.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Making textures for 3D 1-bit must be so specific. Not only because of the perspective distortion but the effect of lighting on them as well.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

The glorious solo dev title! How dare you to touch it in any way.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Knowing the ending, or part of it, can paradoxically feel even more suspenseful sometimes! I'm sure there's a scientific term desribing it out there. Hits especially hard if you know that the story will end in a dramatic way.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

No better place to practice peak enshittification of games by corporate greed.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Would be funny if you "accidentally" left the debug rooms in the game, and if there also were a mysterious way to access them as an easter egg!

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

And then you will feel pressured into getting and playing a lot of other Switch 2 games, too, because you are already invested. But damn it, all the buzz about Pokopia really makes me want to get my hands on it.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Thank you! I've been pretty quiet about Owlet's Embrace recently because I'm busy with development. I wanted to show more of it once I'm even further down the line, but maybe I should share more work-in-progress sooner rather than later.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

For sure. After all, you will have to look at your own game for weeks and months constantly, might as well make it more pleasant. It can also make you change gears for a bit if you banged your head at programming/design/etc. for weeks already if you are the only person making it. Keeps me fresh.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

It says Diablo on the box, and that's what you get with D4 imo (mostly). On D2R: I don't know what you expect the target audience to be, other than the same audience of D2's primary market decades earlier. Some of the younger generation, too, who now have easy legal access to D2 without piracy.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

JOMO - Joy of missing out

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Important to note that this goes for anything, not just computers (instruments, wood working tools, ...). Just getting the hands on it and getting to work. Entry level tools will do.

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Lukas @strupf.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Lovely blog post. Just messing around with my own computer back then was so important to me in hindsight. Learning to learn, and figuring out what I wanted to do in the future in the first place. No, not consuming, but mostly creating: Trying tools, making bad art, making bad programs, finding out.

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