Nuclear Monster

  • Matthias Kramm just became a demo scene legend for creating the first Commodore 64 demo that doesn’t run on the Commodore 64. Kramm’s demo, Freespin, runs on the Commodore 1541, that’s the model of the Commodore‘s floppy drive.

    The video and audio are both processed on the floppy drive, and Kramm explains everything on his blog including how he made the floppy drive generate a video signal, generated the music, loaded the demo into the floppy drive, and got around the flickering 50hz output of the C64’s monitor to record the video.

    The global demoscene centers around creating audio and visual demonstrations that are either impressive for what they can do on limited hardware, or go far beyond limitations to do more than could be expected. So in that sense, it is maybe somehow less surprising that this would happen because of course after making demos fit into smaller and smaller amounts of storage or memory and other limitations the demoscene coders would eventually say “screw the C64, I’m going to run the demo on… the floppy drive!”

    To someone who enjoys the demoscene results and will never make a demo, I’m still very impressed.

  • Terra Nil was originally a more pixelated prototype on itch, and is now a more full game with not-pixelated 2D art in development for Steam by the team called Free Lives who previously developed Broforce, but both versions of Terra Nil share a terrific idea the developer calls a “reverse city-builder.” Where you’re helping to restore a barren wasteland and then removing everything man-made in order to leave the environment better than you found it.

    I checked out the free demo available as part of Steam’s E3-ish goings-on called Next Fest (running until the 22nd) where there are a lot of demos for download from upcoming games. This new version of Terra Nil is very interesting. Terra Nil involves a bit of planning ahead to determine the best course of actions in order to restore as much of the procedurally generated map as possible while balancing three different types of biomes. For example, you can place different structures to clean the land to make it arable and then irrigate it with the irrigator structure, but it turned out that you also need some irrigators near streams in order to make the wetland biome. There’s a whole lot of if you’ve done this in Terra Nil, then you can do that. It seemed overwhelming at first but after a bit it became clear that you’re not trying to be perfect, just a bit strategic in advance.

    The natural scenes and sounds of the biomes in Terra Nil are also just very pleasant and relaxing. An almost perfect follow up to a chill Duolingo stream.

    I’m looking forward to seeing where the Steam version of Terra Nil goes. There’s no release date or price yet but the developers say that while the demo is Windows-only they want to make the full game available on Mac and Linux as well. Free Lives have made versions of Terra Nil for all three operating systems with the name-your-price prototype on itch.

  • Lexaloffe’s Zep announced a new fantasy console today, Picotron is the third in their line after the original Pico-8 and the voxel-y goodness of Voxatron. According to the announcement we can expect an early alpha of Picotron in late 2022, and that the system is more focused on being a “practical and flexible development environment.”

  • Apparently there was a contest in South Korea 16 years ago to determine which new Chex flavor to make, Chocolate or Green Onion and green onion won but the local Kellogg’s company determined that the voting was fraudulent and ran with the chocolate variant. People were sort-of upset about the situation, Sangmi Cha & Josh Smith for Reuters have the update:

    It is being hailed as a major win for democracy in South Korea. After 16 years in exile, a president this week triumphantly returned to claim his rightful place – on the front of a box of green onion-flavoured cereal.

    And that’s why there’s the ad above celebrating the product.

    My favorite part of this story though is this review from Jamelle Bouie for Serious Eats. There’s no surprise that the cereal turned out to be offensive to Bouie’s pallet, but it is a very good review especially because it includes a video of an adult in the United States attempting to eat Green Onion Chex with milk and give it a serious review as a breakfast cereal.

    But the end of the Reuters article includes a completely different review from someone in South Korea:

    “I had adult-like taste in food since I was young, so I love local food with garlic, green onion or kimchi,” said food blogger Lee Soo-jeong, 24, who voted for Chaka as a child and was an early taster.

    Her verdict on the long-awaited cereal?

    “The green onion flavour is too mild.”

    Which review is accurate? Both. I love this because it is a fantastic example of different cultures and their respective food palates, and different ways things are judged by different people. I must get a box of Green Onion Chex.

  • As part of some E3 schenanigans a trailer for Battlefield 2042 came out today alongside some details including a release date for the game (October 22, 2021) a date for an actual gameplay trailer (June 13), and an enticement to pre-order for access to a pre-release version of the game (don’t buy games in order to get demos).

    There is a lot going on in this trailer, however as the second release date above hints, this is just pre-rendered nonsense even though it hints at old Battlefield stuff that might be possible in the full game. Battlefield is one of my favorite series even if the last few games have been less entertaining and of course some people at the company have incredibly odd things to say about whatever is going on in 2042 although there won’t be a single-player campaign to even really feature much of a message about what’s going on in the game. There’s also no Battle Royale mode, both the campaign and BR information come via Eurogamer who have more details on Battlefield.