Otto Ojala

@ottoojala.com

Making good old freeware games. 💸 Support me: https://ko-fi.com/ottoojala 🕹️ Play my games: https://ottoojala.itch.io 🤓 Visit my website: https://ottoojala.com

Yesss. Took me about a day to build the PC in the new mATX case and get SteamOS running on it. According to my purchase history, I've only bought 12 games in the past 10 years, so I guess I have a few titles to try...

Do you know of any influential gamedevs or other creatives who promote or host communities on open source messaging platforms, like on Matrix? (Or is everyone just on Discord?) #gamedev

As someone who's thrifty, and considers themself a conscious consumer, I love how they send you this badge of shame with your new GPU purchase. (Is that a fist pumping rainbow eagle?)

A fist pumping eagle badge with strong gamer vibes.

Looks like I added hundreds of lines of copy-paste, single-use spaghetti code to the current project this week. It's not even unusual in my projects, but I've been having more of those days now when my brain can't figure out the simplest for-loops. I wonder if I should give visual scripting a go.

It's been a bit tough, but I'm trying to work on this in the tiniest increments to still make at least some progress. The round over screen is now closer to something that's okayish. Still needs a bit more bling, maybe some confetti even.

Bought the first new part to the gaming PC I'm building, a "TUF gaming" power supply unit, and it looks like something that'd want to protect your children from leftist propaganda or perhaps bomb your country for some oil. I was about to use my old PSU, but the internet said you shouldn't risk it...

You can thank @badgameszip.itch.io for the added no-guides mode and my lazy self for the cramped up menu. Getting any programming done has beed hard lately, but here's some progress: the timer now seeks attention when there's less than 10sec left. Placeholder GameOver view, going to add stats to it.

Been facing a new challenge as my migraine prevention meds have at least for now been making me feel more tired, and I usually do most of my gamedev work while in a flow state of some sort.

I'll be building my own "Steam Machine" anyway, but making it a mATX build, so it'll still be around half the size of my old huge PC, but at least it's going to be repairable/upgradeable. The parts are also cheaper and easier to find good deals on/preowned than for a small form factor build/mITX.

Only minor accessibility updates to the dice game this week: a subtle grid to help see where the dice are on the board, even when using the isometric view, and aiming arrows to accompany the trajectory arcs, for easier aiming.

Never thought I'd be into mobile games again, but I got this game from F-Droid a few weeks ago and I've been playing it more than any other single-player game in weeks. You get 8 tries to guess a number between 1 and 100, and the game tells you if you're over or under. f-droid.org/en/packages/...

I know it's just me getting old, but I don't get the RGB lights in PC parts. To me, they're like the overly juiced-up UIs in games - fun to look at for 20 seconds, and just distracting after that. Bring back the beige! And degaussing, for an actually satisfying button interaction, with a purpose....

Here's the setup I'm trying to make work to get back to PC gaming, IMGA award for scale. I forgot the display is broken, so that's something I have to buy. I don't really have space for the PC other than on the table. A horizontal PC case might solve the space issue, or some magical display mount...

A photo of a big PC and a monitor on a small IKEA table.

Decided not to buy the Steam Machine. Or actually, just forgot about the e-mail and the 3-day purchase period :'--) What a fine way to make decisions.

Progress on the random generated levels (now spawns multiplier zones and holes, too). Also made the slippery blocks look nicer. I know the ice blocks kind of look like the bombs should shatter them now, but I'll let that ...slide.

If you've ever looked at a popular, simple game and thought "I could have made that!", what you probably mean is "I could replicate parts of this". What you can do is put effort into your own projects, use whatever motivates you, and get stuff done.

 1. Make games
 2. Release them
 3. ? 4. PROFIT

Spent hours this week making levels for the game and none felt better than the default square shape, so I started working on simple, random generated levels instead. It can only add pegs and ice blocks at the moment but it feels fun so I think I'll go with this approach. #ScreenshotSaturday #SoloDev

Every "Steam Machine but for $200 less" video on Youtube: "We're not going to as small as the Steam Machine but we can get pretty close". And then you look at the specs and the thing is 4,9 times the size of the SM... A mini itx build still looks interesting, but the local prices aren't too good.