r/thisweekinretro

Source - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7495321215083905025/

Full text here for folks to read:

Let me cut right to the chase. I'm retiring from game development. At least I think so. I've been here before and changed my mind but this time I'm pretty sure I mean it.

I've had a great career. Wouldn't change a thing even if I could. But the reasons to retire are simple: I'm a month away from my 44th year as a developer. I've had the chance to work on tabletop roleplaying games and boardgames. I've worked on more digital games than I can remember -- 17 full games, I think, and 9 or so add-on packs. Gratifyingly, some of those games are still being played 15... 20... 30 years later. And most of them have been in a genre that has had influence beyond what I or anyone else expected. I've run teams as small as a dozen and as big as 800. I've worked for big companies and done startups. I like to think I've helped some insanely talented people along in their careers. (That last is the most important.)

With all that behind me and with age and health (my business) catching up with me I'm feeling like I've done what I set out to do. It's time to write some books, do a lot of reading, do some lecturing, maybe do some consulting. (Feel free to get in touch about those last two.) Also there's a keyboard here just waiting for me to get my piano chops back.

I definitely have mixed feelings about this. I mean there are three games in particular I'd still like to make. (One is very big... one is very small... and one I don't know how to make which scares me.) But the game business has changed and it's just not as much fun for me anymore. Plus there's a new generation of developers coming up who deserve their time in the sun.

To all of you reading this I want you to remember that games are not a solved problem yet -- there is, I hope, plenty of experimentation and innovation to come. And to all you young developers out there, I've said it before and I'll say it again, your job is to make people forget people like me ever existed.

Will I come back? Never say never. But I think it's time to ride off into the sunset.

Now stop reading and make great games.

As seen on Facebook just now.

They had quite a few nice looking vintage machines sitting around. 😄

I didn't like any Jellyfin front ends and was getting frustrated with the Android TV hardware options, so I decided to build a front end for my HTPC. And if I could control the experience completely, it was going to be a recreation of my childhood.

Live demo (no login, synthetic library): https://halcyon-video.github.io/halcyon-video

45-second tour: https://youtu.be/TCkEpeL8Y3w

It's been our daily driver for months, it has to survive being left on for weeks and cost nothing while nobody's touching it — the render loop literally stops.

My goal is to make this thing as accurate all obtainable \*references\* as possible over time while still being functional and performant.

The search terminal is a CRT behind the counter you physically dock to. The settings live on the manager's terminal. Renting locks the tape in your room until you return it through the tape return. Lots of stuff. Please try it out. Happy to answer anything. Some parts are rough, but this is my passion project.

This was vibe coded; in case anyone cares.

The YouTube channel The Index Page asks the question "Can you use old batteries?". It turns out the chap on the video found some Ever Ready Silver Seal batteries manufactured in 1989 still sealed and wondered if after all these years if they would hold any charge.

Brought back some fond memories of using them in my Alba personal stereo back in the day, I much preferred them to the "Blue Seal" batteries which I found would often leak.

I won't spoil the video, it's only a few minutes and was a bit of a nostalgia hit for me 😀

You can find the 4 minute video here.

Was surprised with the selection at the Story Museum Oxford. Had great fun, was gutted The Hobbit was broken but enjoyed the other games.The Mrs spent ages on Monkey Island.

As of yesterday, Amigo cleared App Review and is live on the App Store — free, no ads, no IAP, GPL-2 open source.

Quick recap for anyone who missed the beta thread: it's a port of current upstream WinUAE — 68000–68060, OCS/ECS/AGA, RTG (Picasso96), HDF/RDB hard drives, WHDLoad, bsdsocket networking. iPad extras: 1:1 touch mouse, Apple Pencil (hover = pointer, squeeze = click), full hardware keyboard/mouse/trackpad support, TV out via USB-C or AirPlay, save states. Boots the open-source AROS ROM out of the box; bring your own Kickstarts for the real thing.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/amigo-amiga-emulator/id6792285150
Source: https://github.com/thomas-luebker/iPadUAE

Thanks again to the testers — and to Toni Wilen and everyone behind WinUAE/UAE. If you find bugs, I want them: report here or on GitHub.