Author: mpklamerus

What I’m Up To (2024-10-02)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Here’s my weekly check in on what I’ve been up to. So far this week has been less bananas than the last couple of weeks, which has been nice, and I’m finally settling into a groove with the kids back in school.

Cohost shut down yesterday and is now read only for the next few months before going down completely. I keep saying I’ll do The Post about the site at some point but hopefully I do make time for that, even if everyone else has already done it and better. It certainly wasn’t perfect but I did like going there and will miss it. I’ve been working on a gigantic blog roll so if you did post there and want your site added, let me know in the comments or social media. Having a giant list of sites to follow in my RSS feed reader has been nice.

Work on the adventure game continues. I’ve made a couple rooms and a character since last week so I’m feeling pretty good about progress. The design of the game’s puzzles is improving too. In theory it’s probably much better and more efficient to design the entire game before doing art for it but I just cannot function like that and it has killed previous projects so I’m sticking with what works for me. But at this rate I feel pretty comfortable about hitting the deadline. Getting better at Adventure Game Studio may be a potential hurdle but people have been very kind about answering my questions about the engine.

The Wall of Buttons continues to grow. It’s been fun doing goofy early internet stuff and then clicking around on other websites.

The Great Album Project (2024-10-01)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

It’s the first day of October. Not a fan! Here are the records I listened to this week. A shorter post this time but that’s alright.

Same Eyes: Desperate Ones (2022, Bandcamp)
I posted about this band before in a previous one of these. This is an Ann Arbor darkwave/new wave band and some other local folks like Warren Defever seem to be involved with the production. It’s good! It’s a little more darkwave than the previous album, which is something I like, but I found the songs to be just slightly less memorable, so they actually sorta rank at about the same level for me. I actually got this one for free when I bought the other album from them on Bandcamp, which was incredibly nice. I guess they have a 3rd album coming out soonish, or they’re at least working on it, so I’ll pick that one up too.

Sad Lovers & Giants: Feeding the Flame (1983, YouTube)
Sad Lovers & Giants is a UK post-punk band that started in 1980. I’m not sure how well known they actually are, but they’re still around today and putting out new music. I don’t know them too well outside of this album and a handful of songs outside of this, but I really enjoy it and should probably listen to more of them. It’s a really strong album that maybe trails off a little towards the end but I’d recommend it to people who liked early 80s post-punk or bands like The Chameleons and Echo & The Bunnymen I guess? It’s probably not the best comparison but it’s what I can think of. I picked this one up at UHF Records in Royal Oak, probably about 12 years ago. For whatever reason I was always there and they seemed to have a great assortment of 80s post punk at the time, before record collecting picked up in popularity again to the state that it is now.

The Cohost Blog Roll

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

I still haven’t made my RIP Cohost post and I’m still not sure what to say about that, but ever since they announced the site was shutting down, I’ve been putting together a giant Google Sheet of folks that have websites and blogs that people can follow. If you were a Cohost user and come across this, please feel free to leave a comment on this post with the relevant info and I’ll add it. Even if you didn’t use Cohost, I think there’s a lot of cool sites here that you can look at and subscribe to on your RSS feed reader of choice.

Computer Store Photo Dump: The Computer Store in Alabama

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Still going through Twitter and Cohost posts for my CompStoreVisuals account and reposting them here since that’s more permanent. I saw that the site for The Computer Store in Mobile, Alabama is down (tcs360.com) and there hasn’t been a facebook post in a few years, so I’m assuming the store is gone now. So I suppose enjoy these pictures of the dog and as a record of a place that’s no longer around.

outside of the store with a basic sign saying The Computer Store and a dog peeking through the door
some older macs in boxes and on a table and a dog laying on a pillow
a sign saying "Ask about our custom built PC Desktops!!! starting at $399.95 only at the computer store" and a picture of a desktop computer
photo of a desk with a mac on it and shelves with computer parts. There's a poster saying "Why Mac?" and bullet points on it

Blog Roundup (2024-09-29)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

I’m not sure when Cohost shuts down posting, other than it being sometime tomorrow, so I’m doing one of these right now before it’s too late. If you enjoy these, please consider doing your own on your blog and subscribing to the blogs you like on your RSS feed reader. Also feel free to leave comments with what you’ve been reading lately.

RobF, of various indie games fame like Death Ray Manta, has started a blog where he reviews the B-movie schlock he’s been watching every night. It’s great. Even as a bad movie enjoyer, I haven’t even heard of most of these.

Meredith Gran, of Octopus Pie and Perfect Tides fame, is doing more posts on her site that give updates on her Perfect Tides sequel and other cool things.

Dante’s post on Star Wars and Star Trek accurately captures my feelings and current relation to both franchises.

erysden has a nice post on the coolness of software rendering

Katherine Morayati talks about a really interesting sounding DOS application from 1991 called lovedos

Priscilla talks about the Conlang they created for the Superbrothers game JETT: The Far Shore

Ben Chandler is working on a new adventure game!

If you’re like me and having second thoughts about using WordPress after all the recent stuff that’s going on with them, this post gives you an option to move to.

Misty has a blog talking about music albums every day and I’ve been discovering cool new stuff to listen to.

Edenwaith talks about how you can implement Steam Achivements in the Mac ports of games made in Adventure Game Student, which may be very relevant to me in the next year.

Wouter has a post on about experiencing old games in new eras.

And here’s some things that I don’t know count as blogs, but are still really cool IMO!

The Imaginary Engine Review has an article about the poetics of endurance and the game OVERWHELM

Paste Magazine has a great article on the underrated Illusion of Gaia

I loved Start Menu’s review of Dread Delusion

Indie Game Roundup (Sept. 27, 2024)

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

Well, this is the last roundup I’m doing before Cohost becomes read-only, so if you’ve enjoyed these consider subscribing to my RSS feed? I’ve still got a backlog of games to post about but if there’s something cool you’ve (or a friend) worked on, please let me know either on social media or in the comments here. Or even just comment on this post with what you’ve been playing lately, indie or not, I always love to hear that too.

purple bug sitting in a floatation device and the text says good night egg bug

With Cohost winding down, some people have started to make games and toys featuring its mascot Eggbug. You can find some in this collection on Itch.io but I’m sure there’s plenty of other games too, like this game and this eggbug creation tool.

Speaking of Cohost, people there keep talking about how great Crypt Worlds (Itch.io) is. I haven’t played it yet but the devs have been making free games for a long time and it sounds like they could really use the support right now, so consider picking it up.

I’m not a racing person but Golden Lap (Steam) seems like a fun management game from the people who brought you Art of Rally.

Parking Garage Rally Circuit (Steam) looks like a Sega Saturn-ish inspired arcade racing game and the reviews for it have been very positive so far.

screenshot of a little purple kobold and a dragon sitting on a nest in a jail cell
Gurk in Trouble

Ramón Wilhelm made a free point-and-click adventure game a while ago that I really enjoyed called Yip Quest, and he’s back at it again with another kobold adventure game called Gurk in Trouble (Itch.io). It’s free and playable in the browser too.

It was part of the $108 Adventure Game Challenge game jam, which got a bunch of entries. Consider checking those out on Itch.

person running in a rundown hallway and there's a text parser
Terminal City

There were also some really interesting adventure games that were made for the PowerJam3 game jam back in August too (see, big backlog of things to post). These games (Itch.io) were made using the PowerQuest plugin for Unity. PowerQuest is a tool just for making point-and-click adventures and kinda sorta feels like Adventure Game Studio from my limited experience with both. The one that seemed to get the most attention was Terminal City, a game that plays like an endless runner but with a text parser, but check them all out.

two people standing in front of a hospital and the man saying "This hospital is strangely silent for a medical facility"
Devil’s Hideout

Devil’s Hideout (Steam/Itch.io) came out earlier this month if you’re looking for horror point-and-click adventures. I’m a big fan of Cosmic Void’s games and this is another great one.

first person view of a gun shooting at some bugs and a big worm
Exophobia

Exophobia (Steam) is a retro-looking FPS that was released back in July that I enjoyed even despite some of my exhaustion of the retro FPS revival that’s happening (partially because they just look and don’t feel retro). This one is kind of a mix of early FPS like Wolfenstein 3D and Catacomb 3D and Metroid-style exploration games.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading!

Random CompUSA Link Dump

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

The process of copying over all my posts from Cohost before the shutdown continues, here’s some more things you might like to look at. You can find more of these posts here.

This blog contains a few photos of a CompUSA store.

Here is a short YouTube video of people buying Windows 95 on launch day at CompUSA and Egghead Software.

And here is a random photo of the kids section at a CompUSA. I think I just grabbed this from a google image search

the kids section of CompUSA that has a sign saying Comp Kids and looks like a short and planet

What I’m Up To (2024-09-25)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Busy week here! After a rough start with the kids getting a cold at the beginning of the week, I’ve actually got a lot done.

The big thing I’ve been annoying about on social media this week is my wall of buttons that link to other pages. People from Cohost have been getting really into having button links since the site shuts down in less than a week and everyone is getting into personal pages since we want to continue long posting but not go to Tumblr, which I had deleted after they got into AI scraping and their CEO has repeatedly screwed up in a variety of ways. It’s been a lot of fun adding them and I encourage everyone to make a button for their site and let me know about it so I can include it.

The other exciting thing, which I can’t really say much about yet, is that Mystery Project is really taking off this week and I’m learning everything I can about Adventure Game Studio so I can make a game in that. I have also started working on art for it. It should be revealed in 2-3 months and is actually a very tiny project, but exciting to me.

The Great Album Project (2024-09-24)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

My journey to listen to every record I have continues!

cover of the album King's Chill vol. 2, featuring an old desktop computer by some music equipment

Dr. Pete Larson: Field Drift 2 (2023, Bandcamp)
For some reason I thought this was going to be field recordings but it’s actually minimalist electronic music. I think it’s pretty great. It was created by Dr. Pete Larson, a local musician in Ann Arbor. I got this one for free when I bought a different record and got this as an unexpected bonus.

Various Artists: Dropchord sountrack (2013, Bandcamp)
Soundtrack for a now unavailable game. I remember enjoying the game and this is a nice soundtrack that fits it. It’s just a solid compilation of noisy, danceable electronic music with maybe a small dubstep influence to it as well since it was published in 2013.

Mint Mile: Roughrider (2024, Bandcamp)
The latest and best (imo) album by them. Tim Midyett’s (most famous for Silkworm) current band. I think they’re great

The Fall: The Frenz Experiment (1988, YouTube)
I don’t actually have that many The Fall records and this was a pickup I got about half a year ago. I really enjoyed this one. The reviews for this one were positive but I saw one or two that think the band went on autopilot for this one. I can maybe see that for one or two of the songs but it also has some of their most well known songs like Victoria and Hit the North, two of my favorites.

Various Artists, produced by Space Quest Historian: King’s Chill Vol. 2 (2021, Bandcamp)
A collection of chill and electronic covers (remixes?) of songs from the King’s Quest series. To be honest, I don’t actually know a lot of songs on this one that well since a lot are from KQ 5 and 8, which I haven’t played in a long time, but I still think it’s pretty great.

Mary Timony: Untame the Tiger (2024, Bandcamp)
I really only know Mary’s stuff in her heavier rock bands like Ex Hex, Wild Flag, and Helium but the songwriting in here is excellent. I’ve have one of her solo albums from 20 years ago, but even that has a very different sound. This almost has more of a country sound in parts. I think it’s cool that all of her bands and solo work are all under the Rock genre but still have very different sounds.

Blog Roundup (2024-09-23)

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

With us now entering the last week of Cohost posting, I’ve been making an effort to follow more blogs and sites through my RSS feed reader. Here are some I would recommend!

Katherine Morayati has bee posting old postcards and the history behind them in postcardposting one and two.

ALOCASIA is a journal queer plant-based writing and issue #10 just came out. They’re free to read but donations are always appreciated.

Ephemeral Enigmas regularly covers older and more obscure video games. This time it’s about Game Boy game Battle Unit Zeoth.

Interactive fiction writer Andrew Plotkin goes into the history of a sea shanty. It’s maybe not safe for work.

I love personal blogs too. This one is a shorter post on the thoughts when getting into blogging.

If you want to see an example of Tosting, posting directly into the RSS feed so the post doesn’t show up on the site, add this site to your RSS feed reader.