James | CWS 🇨🇦

@coastwide

Game development studio building games for #linux (and other OS's too) using the #bevy engine and #rustlang. #gamedev #indiedev

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James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· 7d

It lives!!! PC is back in action; thankfully only the motherboard burned out & I was able to scrape together enough change for a replacement (helps that old hardware isn't ludicrously expensive). Freckles missed gaming nights as much as I did 😆

The gutted out interior of my PC case, with an extremely messy desk plus kids' artwork in the background

The "new" motherboard, with my old CPU cleaned up & mounted (an old AMD 3950X)

Freckles standing behind me while I reassembled the PC, impatiently waiting for a gaming session beside her spot next to my desk

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· 8d

Guess it's not all bad having my PC out of commission. Still miss having a full sized monitor though, laptop screen real estate is pretty limited for gamedev

A photo of my System76 laptop and mug of coffee outside on a balcony with blue sky and mountains in the background

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· 27d

Been diverted from gamedev with some sysadmin shenanigans lately: the homelab was ailing after a long power outage and I went down a horrific rabbit hole

A photo of a home server rack, with a 4U server pulled out, opened and with its guts spewed out. In the background are some elderly displays

A closeup of the power supply mess. A very old, not modular power supply with an overabundance of the legacy 4 pin molex style cables. Seriously, there are a ton of the things and they're all hardwired in.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Jul 1

Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦

The Heat Retreat promo image adapted for Canada Day with a Canadian flag positioned centrally, and depicting the ubiquitous red 50's pickup truck parked on a dirt road next to a a small camp comprised of an orange tent, campfire and cast iron pan. Surroundings are a forest setting of mostly fir and cedar, with the ocean and coastline in the background. The style is pixel art.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Jun 17

End result is actually not bad, tastes more like a self contained sloppy joe than taco. I shall call it the "unsloppy joe" 🧑‍🍳💋

The taco bun aka "unsloppy joe", unremarkable as a roughly perfect shaped white bun with fork holes on top and a small amount of cheese/sauce leaking at the bottom. It has been stylishly positioned on a plain white plate atop a grey marbled countertop

The "unsloppy joe" cross section, bearing the cheesy beefy innards of the otherwise unremarkable white bun. Still resting on the plain white plate and marbled countertop

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Jun 17

I am a monster: behold the taco bun (making bread, had leftover beef to use up from tacos last night)

A flattened out round of white bread dough with "Taco Sauce" and cheese

A round of white bread down, "Taco Sauce" and cheese with leftover taco ground beef

The taco buns arranged on a baking tray with stylish fork punctures for ventilation

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Jun 11

Very WIP still but made enough progress on the first aid minigame for Heat Retreat to whip up a video of the gameplay in action! There are bugs (like health meter & timer) and tuning/balance to do, and art needs polish, but it's been too long since I've had anything worth showing 😆 #gamedev #bevy

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Jun 4

Uh oh, looks like I walked in on the boss doing a surprise code review; the mini game isn't done yet! I swear I'll clean it up before I merge 😅

Freckles the elderly border collie, caught on the couch in front of my laptop looking at me disapprovingly, with my abandoned coffee cup on an end table beside her.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· May 31

To me it's not worth wasting time fixing an OS that's inherently malicious/broken. But on older hardware you can't go wrong with Linux; my machines are far from new or high performance & Bazzite is so easy to use that my kids (4 & 7 now) use it no problem.

A screenshot of a post by user @brunodias.bsky.social

Microsoft losing the plot to the extent that games running on Linux through a compatibility layer are now not only faster but *assumed to be faster* than games running natively on Windows should be an even bigger story than it already is.

For gaming, Microsoft views steamOS as the benchmark, and is working to optimize the platform so that steamOS and Windows gaming performance are comparable. Within the next year or two, it believes that Windows will be able to truly compete head-to-head with steamOS in gaming performance on identical hardware due to foundational changes that are being made to the platform in coming months.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· May 16

A screen shot from sub reddit /claudecode that reads: "Inherited a 3-month old repo from a Vibe Engineer. Wrote the most satisying PR in my career"

Followed by an embedded capture of their PR line change: "+10,197 -3,618,778" with 4 out of 5 blocks highlighted red

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· May 15

Test results are looking good for the Heat Retreat status system rework! Boss has completed her code review (I am dubious of how thorough she was), so we're good to merge 🎉 All the simulations are running & returning data within expected ranges 💪

Freckles the border collie mix & Chief Napping Officer of CWS stationed at her (my?) laptop running Heat Retreat tests. She is lounging on a grey couch with (theoretically) protective red bedsheet. In the he background are mountains and somewhat gloomy weather working to decide if it'll be a normal storm or thunderstorm today.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· May 14

Even the boss has had enough of listening to me talk through testing/tuning/debugging my new body temperature math for Heat Retreat 😅

Freckles the border collie mix & Chief Napping Officer of CWS, annoyed at being disturbed from her nap by my ranting about unexpected results from my math, resting on a grey couch with her head on an adjacent pillow

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· May 11

Kids were off school on Fri, so made it a long weekend & went camping for a little screen de-tox. Feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work on Heat Retreat getting the status refactor tested, polished & merged

A small, unnamed lake deep in the woods, surrounded by trees (mostly fir) - some water logged & dead - with a few lily pads and driftwood in the foreground.

A red pickup truck with a grey + green trimmed tent erected in the bed. Beside is a small blue tent with orange trim. The camp is set up in a clearing just off an abandoned, derelict forest service road that runs next to a small lake.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 28

Dammit GitLab 🤦 Maybe one day the migration tool will actually work....

A screenshot of GitLab's GitHub migration page, with the following text:
"Import repositories from GitHub

Select the repositories you want to import

Owned
Collaborated
Organization

The more information you select, the longer it will take to import.

To import collaborators, or if your project has Git LFS files, you must use a classic personal access token with read:org scope. Learn more.
Use alternative comments import method

The default method can skip some comments in large projects because of limitations of the GitHub API.
Import Markdown attachments (links)

Import Markdown attachments (links) from repository comments, release posts, issue descriptions, and pull request descriptions. These can include images, text, or binary attachments. If not imported, links in Markdown to attachments break after you remove the attachments from GitHub.
Import collaborators

Import direct repository collaborators who are not outside collaborators. Imported collaborators who aren't members of the group you imported the project into consume seats on your GitLab instance.
No GitHub repositories found"

Selected is the "Organization" tab, frustratingly showing "No GitHub repositories found" in bold text.

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 25

Ending a stressful week of gamedev on a high note

Photo of a beer can in the foreground and hot dog being roasted over a fire. The background is an unkempt yard with a kids playground and trees

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 14

And here's the sprint animation (bsky only lets me do one animation per post it seems 🤷). If you see this while out hunting in Heat Retreat you're in some trouble 😆 #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 14

Going to try posting this again, I made this what feels like ages ago but it didn't upload/display on bsky properly at the time, but was going through my game assets for Heat Retreat & remembered #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 14

Following on getting the new fatigue model in, it's becoming increasingly critical to show some party status info for players while driving (and improve the party management view) 🤔 Considering some sort of fade in/out effect around the edges but not sold on the idea

A screenshot of Heat Retreat's travel scene, depicting an 80's station wagon with headlights on travelling on a dirt road in rainy weather with forests and mountains in the background, done in pixel art. The foreground contains the dashboard UI showing various information to the player: a retro style digital thermometer taped to the dashboard for temperature, vehicle speedometer for speed, odometer for distance travelled, a classy digital calculator watch for time & date, an old smart phone with no reception for distance to next location, and a yellow milk crate showing current food supply.

A screenshot of Heat Retreat's "party management" tab, currently a work in progress, with some markup done in GIMP highlighting the current way health, fatigue & hydration of party members is shown. The art shows a folding chair & sleeping bag around a campfire, but notably no character art shown (because I haven't made it yet). The UI contains tabs along the left edge reading "Roadside", "Party" (currently selected), "Vehicle", "Supplies", and "Leave". In the main view are buttons in a column reading "Rest", "Rations" and "First Aid", with small boxes containing status bars representing party members & their current status levels (not very clearly, hence "work in progress")

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 2

The boss appears content (or bored - all code and no art lately) with today's gamedev progress: character hydration and fatigue handling are done! As far as updating game state & consumers goes; still need to finish the drain systems

Freckles, the black and white border collie and game development supervisor extraordinaire, asleep on a grey couch with her head resting on a blue pillow

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Apr 1

This about sums up the mood here today

Freckles, the border collie mix, "supervising" me doing game development & accounting on a dreary, rainy day

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Mar 22

Found a wild Grogu on our hike earlier 😆

A tiny Grogu taking shelter in the hollow of a fir tree, with ample moss and lichen draping to provide dramatic effect

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Mar 22

Enjoyed some much needed time away away from the screen & gamedev today

Freckles, our border collie mix of some sort, proudly surveying her domain on a trail among cedar and fir trees

Freckles again, ploughing deeper into the cedar & fir, with denser salal and sword fern surrounding her

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Mar 16

Super busy lately, haven't been posting much (not much visually exciting to show) but thought I'd show some iteration progress (NOT done yet) on one of Heat Retreat's mini games Starting from crappy sketches in GIMP to in engine coloured blockouts to minimal functional gameplay #indiedev #gamedev

One of several sketches made in GIMP concepting the look & feel of Heat Retreat's "first aid/triage" mini-game. Using lime green for illegible notes to self, including snippets like "flow rate indicator? RSB -> pressure to change flow rate", "clean antiseptic bandage", "health". At the top as title is "<Name>", with a copy pasted texture of pixel art first aid supplies with text "Qty: 12.8". Other elements include a central "swing meter" style game, on the right in red is the "health meter" showing time until death, and various poorly drawn sketches of possible UI buttons/controls/layout

An early in-engine screenshot of the minigame, visually uninteresting but here I'm' working on UI node size/placement using large filled in colour blocks, with early drafts of the health meter and character name/title (testing game resource access). The character name here is "Paul", and in the top right corner is the game pause/menu UI button, and lower right contains the "back" button (keeping visually consistent with other parts of the game)

Decided that the right-aligned placement was too crowded with the UI buttons, so tested left alignment (super easy to do in Bevy!!!). Includes further work on other game elements that aren't obviously visible here (the text, while simple, represents a lot of UI hierarchy logic additions). The text reads "Paul" as the title stilll, upper center (purple) node "DEBUG: METER NODE BRANCH", lower left (blue) node "DEBUG: SUPPLY NODE BRANCH", lower right (dark blue) node: "DEBUG: BUTTON NODE BRANCH". The health meter is largely unchanged, still bright green but now on the left edge with "16:34" time remaining until death; not a final number, do not expect to have 16+ minutes to save your characters life ;)

Removed the colour in-fill blocks, started adding some textures (with several yellow/black placeholders). The swing meter in the middle upper area is fully functional here, albeit using debug colours, with simple debug text showing the action "quality" (100 shown) as a percentage to the left with resources consumed by the action (0 here) to the right - these are debug primarily & will be made prettier/more readable. The lower left node now shows the first aid supply texture and the current inventory amount, and the right node contains the "action compass" which the player will use to play the minigame. Also visible is the first pass on controller glyphs, with PlayStation D-Pad being tested here (note the debug triangle button floating on the top edge). The "time to death" now shows 3:00 instead of 16 minutes. Other UI elements are unchanged, with the title still "Paul" and the pause menu button in the top right corner/back button in the bottom right

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Mar 3

Evidence, from current crappy old 1080p TV 😂

The back of an old 1080p TV revealing a rats' nest of HDMI, ethernet and USB extender cables. A home brew "smart" TV. Buried in the wiring is an old, retired NUC mini PC

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Feb 8

Set up our very first #gaming LAN party with the kids today! All #foss with a combination of Fedora & Bazzite #Linux on the laptops. Played some SuperTuxKart and a little Rigs of Rods afterward 😄

Three laptops arranged around a dinongnroom table connected to a switch in the center. Visible on the nearest screen is SuperTuxKart, with a dark red DualSense controller set beside it. In the background is a container of maple syrup, because Canada

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Feb 6

Quickly whipped up an alternate engine compartment (and fixed a few bad lines elsewhere), thinking the darker/less detail works a bit better but going to need to think on it a while. Should probably get it in engine to see for sure though, so back to coding for now #pixelart #gamedev #indiedev

A pixel art station wagon, slightly angled and with the hood open revealing the engine. This is one of three vehicle types in Heat Retreat and is intended to be part of the vehicle status check/maintenance view, thus is higher resolution than the usual vehicle assets

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Feb 6

Oh, and here's more of my #NoAI reference images - when the view/angle I'm looking for doesn't exist, make a really shitty mockup in Gimp 😆

A screenshot of Gimp on the left with a butchered mockup of an 80's station wagon, attempting to represent what it looks like with the hood open at a specific angle. On the right are a selection of image search results showing various other angles of the vehicle

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Feb 6

For any #gamedev out there - especially the ones that say Linux is too hard - here's how easy it can be to support Linux, MacOS and Win when you plan ahead: a section of Heat Retreat's Makefile (for #bevy and #rustlang here) To make a release build, I run 1 command and it's done 😎

$A screenshot of Heat Retreat's Makefile, full text exceeds character limits but the key sections contain: linux: @echo "Building Linux executable..." @mkdir -p ./target/release @if command -v podman >/dev/null 2>&1; then \ podman pull quay.io/cws/steam-linux-builder:latest; \ podman run -v .:/src:z -v ./target/release:/output:z -t quay.io/cws/steam-linux-builder:latest release; \ else \ $(CARGO) build --release; \ fi @echo "✓ Linux executable built" win: @echo "Building Windows executable..." @$(CARGO) build --target=x86_64-pc-windows-msvc --release @echo "✓ Windows executable built" mac: @echo "Building macOS universal binary..." @CC=o64-clang CXX=o64-clang++ LIBZ_SYS_STATIC=1 $(CARGO) build --target=aarch64-apple-darwin --release @CC=o64-clang CXX=o64-clang++ LIBZ_SYS_STATIC=1 $(CARGO) build --target=x86_64-apple-darwin --release @echo "✓ macOS executables built"$

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Feb 6

Took a while but here we are on the station wagon "maintenance" texture for Heat Retreat! Not super happy with the engine, will probably iterate on that; looks "noisy" to me compared to the rest of the vehicle but there's lots of stuff going on there so tough to get right 🤔 #pixelart #indiegamedev

James | CWS 🇨🇦@coastwide· Jan 27

Not done yet, but I haven't been posting much lately (cold/flu season hit us hard this year & been focused on #gamedev #indiedev over socials stuff). This one I'm thinking is too big and will probably need to redo it, but also here's a look at my #NoAI bashed together "reference" image 😂 #pixelart