📜 Writing about games and code

So much of game development has little to do with polygons, or even pixels

What's even more fun than making your own games and seeing your imagination come to life? Writing down what you've learned so that others may follow in your footsteps. Here is some of my own, picked so it will be meaningful on a tilde server:

Making text-based games with Python and curses

Roguelike coding advice (new!)

And because I like to tinker with languages, pointless as it may seem:

Tiny scripting engines for everyone

More about tiny scripting engines

Another tiny scripting engine family

Last but not least, a little humor, dreaming and philosophy:

Videogames versus other arts

Retro-futuristic computing

Story, context, theme (new!)

Old game designs

These are a couple of game designs I never got around to using. The original timestamps have been lost, but they're from 2017 at most. Maybe you'll find them inspirational.

Citypunk: a cyberpunk trading game

Ruler of Andromeda: a space opera game of ship battles

Long form

Gamebooks & Goonies

• a rule system for choice-based adventures;
• a hack of Tunnel Goons, by Nate Treme;
• fairly complete 2d6 rules in 1000 words.

Battles&Balances

• a rule system for computer RPGs, designed and presented as a tabletop game
• developed as part of real, completed games (not very successful)
• uses real dice throughout and tries to stay grounded

Interactive fiction writing

• Twenty articles written over ten years, between 2011 and 2020
• About one third of a book, and then some that never made it
• Free and open source under the Free Art License 1.3

More to come! Thanks for sticking with me!

No Time To Play homepage

Games for Linux and such

Small things without a better home

Last modified on 22 September 2021.