iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Not only held up to my memory of it but actually exceeded it. I remember it being very juicy, and I love how it absolutely commits to its visual effects being so over the top and cool that it can actually get in the way and it's so much better for it.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Revisited Strike Suit Infinity and was reminded just what a gem this game was. Incredibly polished and stylish and the best Macross game ever released in the west because it features an awesome transforming fighter and a crazy amount of missiles and trails.

The bonus mission which takes place near a black hole and just throws a ton of enemies at you until the timer runs out or you manage to kill everything first.

Same bonus mission, but this time it's in Strike (Robot? Battroid?) mode.

Between missions you can use the credits you've earned to have a bunch of allied ships flying along side you. They look really, really awesome in the fight.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Cool website with screenshots of every ship from X-Tension, the X: Beyond the Frontier sequel that made the game open world and let you fly every ship. www.elite-games.ru/x-tension/sc... The site can be really slow, but the Web Archive version has most of the images: web.archive.org/web/20180706...

Teladi Falcon (suspiciously looks like a Cylon Raider)

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I just realized I never posted what I did with my PHYSICAL copy of the hit 2023 video game, Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines. Before framing it, I made an ISO of the disc to have a backup, because it's really neat actually that it comes with a 100% completely standalone version of the game!

The "box art" poster card for the hit 2023 video game Endless Monday: Dreams and Deadlines with the CD for the game next to it, with a drawing of Miss Whiskey saying "LET'S PARTY!!" in a simple black frame.

1996

Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

If you try to play the benchmark on the Steam version of the game, you won't have music, which is CRITICAL to this whole thing! To restore the music, you need to download the original rolling demo release from 2003. Copy the soundtrack mp3s from there, to Steam's X2 soundtrack folder.

The demo download website from Egosoft's glorious Web 1.0 website.
https://egosoft.com/download/x2/demos_en.php

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

It's been bugging me that there isn't a great version of the X2 rolling demo up on YouTube and it's been a heck of a rabbit hole finding out why. Anyway, look how GREAT this looks! Look at those stencil shadows! The X games aren't exactly good, but I love them anyway. Just incredible vibes.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The fighter has weak thrusters because it's optimized for atmosphere and so doesn't need strong thrusters. The spaceship is a big brick with huge thrusters so even though it's heavier, it's much faster and more nimble in every aspect.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Worked on this some more, and it kind of turned into a Controlled Burn 2. The ship and plane both fly and handle so differently planetside versus in space, but more importantly I ended up adding landing gear because I couldn't help myself and I feel like I've solved every problem I set out to.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

This has driven me crazy for many years. When you create a new object in Blender, or apply an operation, when would you EVER not want to see the window that lets you see and adjust parameters? If you need to hide it 0.01% of the time sure, but why in the world does it DEFAULT to closed?

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Out of curiosity I searched for every space sim that was released on the PS2, and you can fit every game classified with "space flight" on the PS2 on one page.

List of 18 games
Silpheed The Lost Planet
Star Wars Starfighter
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter
Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter
Cho Jiku Yosai Macross
Beyond Good and Evil
Battlestar Galactica
Star Trek Shattered Universe
Galaxy Angle Moonlit Lovers
Star Wars Battlefront
Dora the Explorer Journey to the Purple Planet
Galaxy Angle Eternal Lovers
Star Wars Battlefront II
Star Trek Encounters
Thunderbirds
Star Trek Conquest
Falcone Into the Maelstrom

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

HAWX Assist Off Mode. No game has been brave enough to attempt this since.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Some controllers can hit the corners, but others can't.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I've never seen this version of "CPU is too fast to play this old game" before. If your CPU runs at faster than ~4.29 GHz, something in Independence War 2 integer overflows and it thinks your CPU is actually super slow. This really sucks 😭

So what’s actually happening? the game tracks time using CPU cycles, and somewhere along the way, it casts the frequency into a uint32_t. When the frequency is too high, that value overflows, and the game ends up thinking the CPU is way slower than it actually is. That messes up the internal timing. As a result, the engine compresses too many physical and gameplay events into each tick. And because the CPU is still running fast, everything in-game goes into hyperspeed.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is the golden ratio of off-road trucks.

3 view of the Warthog from Halo CE, i.e. the best version of the Warthog. It's been 30 years since this game came out and no game has even come close to making an offroad truck this good. Bungie did this on an Apple II with a box of Cheerios.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've been busy most of the weekend with real life stuff, so I really only had like, half a day to mess with this, but I did manage to put together this quick little prototype. Spaceship falls like a rock, but can support itself with thrust. Spaceplane flies with wings and only needs thrust for VTOL.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

My Freelancer "Definitive Edition" mod list. I.e. if I was put in charge of doing a Freelancer re-release, this is what I would do.

Early mission in Freelancer with the burning prison liner.

Planet Manhattan with the inventory screen open.

Landing at California Minor in a Startracker

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

1. Freelancer Combined Patch for bugfixes and QOL (for players and modders) 2. flplusplus to push out the LODs and FX draw distances, the only visual upgrade I think FL needs 3. dgVoodoo to add MSAA 4. Tiny mod I made to remove wing trails and add the player engine trails back (personal taste thing)

flplusplus.ini configs for lod draw distance multipliers

[flplusplus]
; Multiplier for maximum render distance and the distance at which LODs are switched.
; The maximum render distances are scaled from the float values which are specified at file offsets 213EC8 and 1C8910 in Freelancer.exe.
; Supports decimal values.
; 1 = use the default values (no scaling)
; 2 = Double render distance & LOD switch threshold
; 3.5 = 3.5x render distance & LOD switch threshold, etc.
; Adjusting asteroid_dist_scale may cause bad performance and other issues; try at your own risk.
lod_scale = 3
pbubble_scale = 10
character_detail_scale = 10
asteroid_dist_scale = 1

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Maybe I should just finish the Freelancer playthrough I started earlier this year. I've had a hankering for a good space sim, but everything I've been trying lately has left me annoyed that it's not like Freelancer and there's an easy solution for that actually.

Blowing up Liberty Rogues in a very early game mission with the prison liner on fire.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I guess while I'm talking space sims, I've been dabbling back in No Man's Sky and Elite, though neither have really grabbed me. No Man's Sky is still cool, and the new updates add some neat stuff. Elite is, basically the same game it always was. It's cool, but I never know what to do.

Hovering over a moon with a way too close, like "I'm surprised Elite even generated this" way too close, planet. Looks awesome though.

A very goofy and not at all well built corvette in No Man's Sky, which is a new feature since I last played. Basically they added the ship building from Starfield to No Man's Sky.

Flying away from a planet with a thin atmosphere in Elite.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Seeing that AI slop garbage next to insanely detailed and awesome models like the ships, or the cool little in-universe ads that feature renders of the game's ships and equipment only makes the AI slop even more baffling in its inclusion.

Ingame ads in the elevator for the noob ship and the mining drone that you start with. They feature just straight up renders of the actual equipment and text with fonts that each of the manufacturers use in their ingame promo material and write on their own ships and stuff with.

Look at these engine bells like holy cow the ship models and their interiors are SO good.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Said BIG asterisk: AI slop art. Which is CRAZY because this game obviously has some seriously talented 3D and 2D artists working on it. I don't know if it's "just placeholder" or what the story behind it is, but either way the art needs to be removed ASAP, or the game needs a Steam AI disclaimer.

Slop generated portrait of Neil Armstrong on what would otherwise be a cute little ingame museum kiosk type thing.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

But yeah the art is incredible (with one, BIG asterisk), and it's surprisingly bug free considering the genuinely impressive scope and scale of what it's already doing. If you want a more detailed breakdown of my thoughts and impressions, I wrote something on the Steam forums about it.

HUD of the Bao looking at the sun while orbiting around the moon.

I can't copy/paste the full thing, but you can visit it here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/3335140/discussions/0/564794068433915943/#c586186803158177971

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It's fully Newtonian and 1:1 scale. Even going all the way back to Frontier Elite 2, I've never really liked this kind of setup because it just makes space feel empty, boring, and pointless, and while that's realistic, it's not what I'm looking for in a game. That's a me problem though.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Got to try out Verse Project, which is best described as "I got annoyed at Star Citizen and Elite, so I made my own," and honestly it's really impressive, though obviously still very early because there's not much to do right now. It has walking around, already multiplayer, already has planets.

Two ads for the noob equipment. The ship on the left is the noob ship, the mining drone on the right is given to you to make some money off the bat.

Flying to the moon, of which your space station was in orbit of.

Extracing regolith and ice from the moon.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

New dark fantasy: Making some kind of arcade flight sim or maybe something vaguely Halo shaped using one of the Quake engines. Air Quake, but like... bigger I guess.

AirQuake mod for Quake 1 featuring an A-10ish thing and really ahead of its time Halo controls for its vehicles.

The mod also had helicopters and tanks you could drive, along with turrets and what you would today call "creeps" in a MOBA.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

So lately I've been wanting to play Elite, but every time I think about playing it, it's the same kind of time and effort and thinking investment that like, DCS has. There's just so much baggage with playing Elite. I want the Freelancer of Elite games, though I'm not really sure that's possible.

A station just above a planet's ring system. This is probably very rare! I remember there being some weird graphics glitches because of this.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Had to go through and fix a few instances of this spread across the ray-squadron code base.

Functions ParticlesClear(void) and ParticlesDraw(void) highlighted as changed because they previously had nothing in the parentheses.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I forgot that foo() is kind of undefined behavior in C, and you should instead be doing foo(void). In C++ foo(void) is just for backwards compatibility and synonymous with foo(), so it's not something think about beyond the occasional "wow they probably write a lot of C" when I see it in the wild.

Nenechi from New Game peeking over a C++ textbook.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Big things are coming for C23.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Reading the C book out of curiosity today, and I'm kinda thinking there should a third edition of this book given how a lot of it feels really C89 level dated. For example, declaring variables at the top of a function, declaring index variables outside of for loops, no single line comments, etc.

$/* print Fahrenheit-Celsius table */ main() { int fahr; for (fahr = 0; fahr <= 300; fahr = fahr + 20) printf("%3d %6.1f\n", fahr, (5.0/9.0)*(fahr-32)); }$

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I hope some day somebody retcons the Y-Wing into being really fast, but not able to turn. Look how big those engines are! That's much more interesting than it just being a big dumb slow target.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Andor was for the people whose favorite scene was the one where all the Imperial top brass are bickering with each other.

Tarkin though this bickering was pointless.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Coldest take on the planet but the X-Wing is one of the best spaceship designs of all time. Big guns, so simple a 5 year old can draw it, and most importantly, space swing wings. You can't stop me from soyfacing every time I see one.

The famous "all wings report in" X-Wing (and Y-Wing) shot

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I don't actually need a new keyboard right now. My current Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard works just fine. The problem is I've been using my mini-PC more lately, which has an old Ducky Skyline that I like quite a lot, and it's reminding me how good mechanical keys feel.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I've been a fan of their ergonomic keyboards for about two decades now, but they stopped making them in the late 00s. In 2019, they FINALLY made a new one (the one above), for a few years, and I bought it instantly at $60 because I didn't know how long it would last. I should have bought a spare.

The same keyboard, that I originally bought for 60 dollars, now $330 😭

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

My dream keyboard is the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard, but mechanical. I've never been able to find anything like it. Every mechanical ergonomic keyboard has some meme layout that gets so far removed from a normal keyboard that it messes games up. Nobody makes just this, but mechanical.

The Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard as they called it, from 2019. They only made this for a few years, but I bought it right away. It's split and I like that, it's comfortable. It also keeps a normal keyboard layout other than the split, plus it has nice macro buttons for volume and media and calculator and stuff! What a great keyboard! Too bad the keys themselves feel mush and not great, but it's the price to pay unfortunately.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I refactored my guns so they aren't hardcoded in the program's main() to the player ship, so now the ships themselves fire bullets, but the enemies now all blow themselves up when they fire their guns 😭

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

That's what I do! Airplanes, Vehicles, Spaceships, and Cameras. Don't forget the cameras! They're just as important as the physics/controllers. I can provide playable samples of everything in these posts for your consideration.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I'm most experienced in Unity, so that's going to be the fastest/cheapest work for me, but I know I can translate that experience to other engines, including custom engines. My professional work experience was all in proprietary C++ engines, and I still for fun sometimes mess around in C/C++.

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Got caught holding the bag on a significant and surprise expense hitting me at a bad time. If anybody needs short term (part time, 3 mo. max?) commission work to write or polish the physics/controllers for arcadish jeeps, planes, spaceships, vehicles, etc. send me a message!

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Having found out that the majority of missions are actually optionally, I'm almost done with GTAIII. The most fun I've had is keeping this map (from GameFAQs of course) open, seeing something kind of unusual or interesting looking, and then wondering what happens if I go there.

GTA 3 map by mechaskrom
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/548931-grand-theft-auto-iii/map/12940-liberty-city-map

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Why485 @why485.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Raylib doesn't store any transformation data once it imports a model, so I'm kinda just recreating it all by hand.

void DrawTurret(Model* model, Turret* turret)
{
Material defaultMaterial = LoadMaterialDefault();

Matrix worldMat = MatrixBuildTransform(
turret->position,
turret->rotation);

Matrix azimuthMat = MatrixBuildTransform(
(Vector3){0, 32, 0},
QuaternionFromAxisAngle((Vector3) { 0, 1, 0 }, turret->azimuth));
Matrix worldAzimuthMat = MatrixMultiply(azimuthMat, worldMat);

Matrix elevationMat = MatrixBuildTransform(
(Vector3){0, 10, 0},
QuaternionFromAxisAngle((Vector3) { 1, 0, 0 }, turret->elevation));
Matrix worldElevationMat = MatrixMultiply(elevationMat, worldAzimuthMat);

DrawMesh(model->meshes[0], defaultMaterial, worldMat);
DrawMesh(model->meshes[1], defaultMaterial, worldAzimuthMat);
DrawMesh(model->meshes[2], defaultMaterial, worldElevationMat);
}

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