R. Fred Williams

UK co-development house Sumo Digital announces redundancies Tencent-owned firm says it has to "adapt to ongoing instability" following recent pivot to co-development

<Bowl-of-petunias line>
Grief, the state of this industry…
www.gamesindustry.biz/uk-co-develo...
I’m not in the “at risk” list this time, but a lot of good folks are.

By the time I got involved with Speccy games ('89), the joystick-FUDLR (fire up down left right) reading code was copy-pasted from game to game in pure faith, because we didn't actually have the hardware to test it. I'd guess 3 was "Fuller".

Looking at assorted Speccy control-method menu code, I'm guessing "Fuller".

Technically a doggy-paddle (or even a "wind the bobbin up") gesture was enough was enough to register as front crawl, but awarenesss of that was on the low side.
Two-player breaststroke, though, was a "high risk of punching your friend in the face' exercise.

Patience :)
This'll probably be made public. Also the Speccy Wacky Triv prototype (assuming it recovers), and the Speccy reference copy of Diz564 (assuming it's even there, & recovers). The bulk of this set is disk versions of stuff that's readily available already.

CJ's was written on PC using PDS, so 5.25" - I've got the speccy source archived on CD (& the HD of the mac I'm typing this on)

One of my enduring memories was getting to an Acorn show during setup, and seeing a vendor filling boxes of 5.25" "lifetime guaranteed" disks. 40T, 80T, 80TDD. All sourced from the same box under the desk. Only difference was the price :)

See also: Sutton Coldfield (There can't be many places whose full name has six words)

(It's under "Settings->Languages", BTW)

NikkiJay (right) is a giant woman.

Barely visible garden/drive/road. Plenty of settled snow, which has stopped.

Sunset over snowy fields. Big tree in foreground

Complicated tree geometry, snow, iron-age hill-fort ramparts.

Ensnowment 2026 - 5 inches Friday morning, today all sorts of compacted ice rather than actual thawing/slush.

2026 beginning of the year cleaning up files on my PC and found this one a friend send me when working on some code.

Every developer can relate.

#solodev #indiedev #development

AI (proper AI, not this GenAI crap) is what makes games fun.
Plz stop confusing them.

So I taught the NPCs to cope with that combat situation.
And I also taught them that basecamp strat.
And might have made it a bit too much of a priority.
Because QA hated getting beaten all the time by the stategy they suggested.
So I toned it down a bit :)

It's a minigame where you have to collect caniters that drop into the level, and take them to your base for points.
And Microsoft QA said "Hey, if we basecamp, beat up the AI guys, and take their stuff to our base, we win. Hah!"

Ugh, there are far too many people (including videogames people who should know better) conflating AI (good fun thing) with GenAI (evil bad art stealy thing)
So let's recap the story (which I'm pretty sure I've told to lots of youse already) about Fuzion Frenzy's fireworks game.

(& I worked on the Typing OTD Overkill version, which came scarily close to being vapourware)

Video Gaming Report 2026: How Platforms Are Colliding and Why This Will Spark the Next Era of Growth As it enters 2026, the video game industry is poised for a new era of growth. Our global gamer research shows how platform convergence will drive innovation across the entire gaming ecosystem.

The actual report that folks are posting GI.Biz's take on:-
www.bcg.com/publications...

Right at the start, its first "key takeaway":

"Generative AI will power innovative gaming experiences."

Whch suggests that they don't know what GenAI is.

(In this case, in a loft conversion (rather than just a loft), but exposed to dust & the like for those that weren't boxed/cased)

Looks like pad 31 at Baikonur (Where Soyuz/Progress rockets head off to the ISS from these days) has had a bit of a catastrophe. (Okay, Russia = baddies at the mo, but space cooperation's one of the remaining good things)

Final Fantasy VII characters in Lego form

Departing collegue's asked for a boost for one of his Lego Ideas things, & it'd be rude not to give it a vote, really...
beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

Ah, memories :)
(Digs out old source)
TMUL_ABA: SRA A
LD L,B
SRA L
SUB L
LD L,A
ADD B
LD E,(HL)
LD L,A
LD A,(HL)
SUB E
RET

Removing Twitter 2FA gets you an email from "Twitter" (verify@x.com). Adding it again gets you an email from "X" (same addy)

For whatever reason, the Switch asked for a 2FA code, and made me realise "perhaps I'd better move those onto the new phone" (I'd only shifted the work one when I got it).

Interesting pair of emails from the other place (I guess the guys who knew how to find-in-files were among those let go)

Yes - "Don't Panic" calls out "lolly"->"popsicle", "wop"->"whop", and "f..k"->"belgium" in Life, the Universe, and Everything.

(+g)

Day in Cambride at @computinghistory.org.uk 's gaming event - Included a nice natter with @kevedwardsretro.bsky.social & @breakintoprogram.co.uk about 3" disk recovery, Tatung Einstein as a dev machine, and the general 1990's Manchester dev scene :)

*Programmed*, yes, four of 'em. But since you're looking for publishers, that'd be Namco Bandai, Atlus, and THQ.

Deliberately obfuscated "PhartyFuckBorlz" IIRC

Bravo on getting the original poet (as in not Paula Nancy Milstone Jennings). The other one's Bloody Martin Smith from Croydon.

Okay, let's do the pub quiz question: Name a real-world person who's name-checked in the original broadcast. Bonus points for getting both :)