scout @scout@merveilles.town

if you tried it out before but only saw a field full of "1" cubes, or if you want to look at the source code and not make fun of me, you can get the new version at https://pup.town/catcubes.html

rebuilt catcubes to be compatible with the new uxn changes. also, the source code has been released under a "don't make fun of me" license. thank you to @RL_Dane, @garvalf, and @neauoire for reminding me to update it!

i think trying to figure out what other data can be "pre-computed" in this way might save me a lot of effort and cycles... it's a new approach for me that i'm excited to explore further

added text wrapping to my "preprocessor" script for this project! i was planning on splitting up all of the text into lines manually so that the game rom wouldn't need to run text wrapping code, but having it done automatically before the game even runs feels neat and will speed things up a lot.

added mouse/touch controls and a "game over" indicator to cat cubes today. it's not active in the new build, but i've also started working on adding a menu to the beginning for options (and now it will take even longer since it needs to support touch controls too, oops!) also was able to set up an emscripten-uxn web page with it, and it works well on my phone with the touch controls but i might need to make a portrait-mode version so that it fits on the screen better.

@helveticablanc "bitty"/"bittified" art came to mind, like bitty as meaning "small" and also like bitty as meaning "composed of bits" (to clarify, i don't think this is an existing term if that's what you're looking for, just my idea of a cute name!)

@klardotsh @neauoire ah i see, that works too! i also have a pi zero w i could use for this, which i'm much more comfortable working with than a microprocessor... i'll give them both some consideration (:

@neauoire @klardotsh thanks both of you! i don't have a pi pico but i do have an esp32 that might be a similar fit. the screen i have for it is even smaller than the vita's, but maybe i'll give it a shot and see what happens. also, i had read that SDL 2 didn't have framebuffer support, so it's good to know that it does!

it's been too long, i need to get back into uxn! i'm tempted to start developing using a machine which has been set up to run uxn as its primary environment. i'm curious, does anyone else use this kind of setup, and if so with what base operating system? i could configure a linux to boot up to uxn's boot.rom in xorg, but it'd be even cooler to just use the framebuffer and get rid of x... i also think it would be cool to use my vita with a bluetooth keyboard, but the screen is a bit small...

@neauoire wow, exciting!

what's a good way to host a server these days? i'm thinking of moving my web site over to gemini (& http mirror), but my current host doesn't allow me to listen on port 1965. is renting a cheap VPS better (ecologically) than trying to set up a raspberry pi? i'm also not sure if i can host a server on my local network, so if i have to set up a proxy for it, it seems like might as well just run the server on whatever's hosting the proxy instead...

@bd @neauoire wow, thanks a ton! works great and definitely a boost to performance on the GBA (:

🤔

i resisted the temptation to use .Screen/auto so that it's compatible with uxngba, which means i can actually play it on my real gba (:
i might see about trying to add the auto byte to uxngba though as i think it would speed things up... and we'll see about music, maybe

taking a break from my more ambitious project to port a puzzle game i made called cat cubes to uxngba! it doesn't look like much in a screenshot but the core gameplay is done, time to add menus and bonuses and such. i always get impatient at this stage and want to just call it finished...