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  Things that (shh) may have happened this week include converting the scripted 'baddies' to world space for their movement and collision, converting the 'bouncies' to world space including spawning logic etc, converting the mole to world space (Charlie can be standing in a logically different room while the mole munches on a wall in an adjacent room), and fixing jump passability for all rooms to compensate for the scrolling camera. And I may have done some work o...

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  Chapter 16 is up! Financially, 1990 was a miserable year in the UK. Mortgage interest rates hit 15%, and the housing market was in a brutal crash. I didn't escape unscathed, and after giving up my house, I needed a new place to live. And so it was that I made the acquaintance of a contemptible fellow on the tough streets of Liverpool 6. A shorter chapter this time, a 700-word snack between courses. https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-16-the-twat #Memoir #GameDevelopment #...

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  Here is some random gameplay from the work-in-progress version of Nodes of Yesod on the Spectrum Next. Still many rough edges, but the core game is pretty much there. This isn't meant to be a polished video by any means, as you can tell, since I keep forgetting where the munchable walls are. :) Things currently in the build but not evident from the video: - Edge jumping. Back in 1985, it was kind of expected that platform games would require pixel-perfect jump timing. And 1985 me was O...

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  I'm 16 chapters in on the scribblings I am calling my memoir. Closing in on the first 10 years of my career (and the 20 that came before). I am about 4 chapters out from that point, with a few ups and downs still to come. Granted, my games industry story has another 30-plus years after that. If you're interested in what the games industry was like in those halcyon days of the 1980s, you're more than welcome to drop by and read for free. Even better, subscribe to my Subst...

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  For some reason, I forgot to include this photo in my recollections of the 1990s-era Eldritch The Cat. Pictured here (left to right) are Dave Collins, Mark McCubbin, Stefan Walker, Marc Wilding, and me. I'll fix this omission in the book version. I am clearly, obviously, having a real phone conversation with a real person on our very real fancy phone system that we paid for and that evidently needed to be a character in this scene. While drinking a coffee, while posing for a photo. We...

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  I took some time off from working on (shh) Nodes of Yesod for the Spectrum Next to see what I could do with Projectyle. Using the complete Atari ST and Amiga disassemblies I produced earlier with Claude Code, I used Codex Astra to build this Spectrum Next version. It’s fully playable, with working AI and all eight arenas, including parallax. It uses the Next’s hardware tilemap, with a scrolling play area of 304 × 208 pixels, and runs at 25 fps. The original ST sound-effect bank has been ported,...

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  One thing I struggled with in this (shh) Spectrum Next version of Nodes (not getting anyone's hopes up, etc.) is the vertical transitions between floors and ceilings, which were never expected to be visible next to their neighbors as the camera now scrolls over them. I've experimented with redrawing the art and various overlay approaches (pipes, chains, etc.), but all of it either i) may as well make a new art set for the game or ii) is hokey-looking. I've landed on an approach tha...

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  Chapter 11 of my serialized memoir drops Sunday. It’s 1987. Odin is gone, and I’m broke. Colin Grunes and I throw in with Firebird to build Crosswize, the sequel to Sidewize. What could possibly go wrong? That September, two things happen. First, I meet the woman I’ll marry. She has a VIC-20. Second, I visit the USA for the first time and interview at MicroProse in Baltimore. Subscribe free to get it in your inbox. Paid support is optional. https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-11-so...

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  Not seen in Yorkshire. #Humor #Yorkshire

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  Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it's knowing when to stop. Chapter 11 of my serialized memoir is up! https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-11-sometimes-the-magic-works?utm_source=mastodon I picked up this hand-painted shirt at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, near Annapolis, during my first visit to the USA in 1987. It was my favorite shirt for years, and the slogan came to mean something to me then, and even more in retrospect. Photo taken in Baltimore's Inner...

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  I recently came across this stitched panorama, which I took in 1999 while visiting the site of Odin Computer Graphics’ former offices at Canning Place, opposite Liverpool’s Albert Dock. The pile of rubble on the left, where the yellow machinery is working, is roughly where our first office in Steers House stood. Mulberry House would have been above the platform visible on the right. I’ve written about my time at Odin in my serialized memoir: https://stevewetherill.substack.com I found this p...

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  Crosswize shipped for the ZX Spectrum in 1988. I talk about its development in Chapter 11 of my ongoing serialized memoir. The link’s in my bio. It’s always free to read, with a paid option. Evidently, I was keen on space shrimps during this period. :) Crosswize was the last game I developed for the Speccy, though not quite the last outing for the technology behind it. Chapter 12 will cover my fairly disastrous stint at Denton Designs. I’ll start blabbing about that next week. #RetroGaming...

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  It's early 1988, and I start work at Denton Designs, a period of personal, professional, and financial tumult. Fired by Dentons, losing my cat, working on three games at once, all of this chaos would lead to new horizons. Chapter 12 is live today for paid subscribers, with a free sneak peek for everyone else. The full chapter unlocks free for all this Sunday. Subscribe (free or paid) to get it in your inbox. https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-12-the-confrontation-and-the-cat...

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  I happened upon the website of David Rowe, one of the defining illustrators of the golden age of British video games, who created memorable cover art for titles including Ant Attack, The Way of the Exploding Fist, and Populous. He also created the atmospheric backgrounds for the cult TV series Knightmare. His work helped shape the visual identity of an era when the artwork on the box was often as memorable as the game inside. He also did the Crosswize cover art, linked here. :) David is sellin...

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  Sidewize features in chapter 10 of my serialized memoir. You can read it here: https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-10-the-future-that-never-was Note for nerds: The video here is captured at 25 fps, and since the game itself runs at 50 fps, the flicker visible here is due to quantization of the multiplexed weapon rendering (player weapons/enemy weapons were rendered on alternate frames). Also, in the video, depending on which frames were dropped by the 25 fps capture, some weapons wi...

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  Heartland features in chapter 9 of my serialized memoir. https://open.substack.com/pub/stevewetherill/p/chapter-9-the-firebird-factory #RetroGaming #GameDevelopment #Memoir

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  Read about astronauts, ne'er-do-wells, business trousers, and other things in Chapter 7 of my ongoing serialized memoir. In this one I write mostly about Nodes of Yesod, Odin Computer Graphics, and 1980s Liverpool. https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-7-the-astronaut-and-the-sleeping #RetroGaming #Memoir #NodesOfYesod #SinclairSpectrum #ZXSpectrum #Liverpool #OdinComputerGraphics

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  Seemed rude not to stop. Somewhere in the High Rock Canyon Wilderness near Black Rock Desert Nevada.

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  Angine de Poitrine. IYKYK

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  My other life. Here exploring abandoned Nightingale Tungsten ore (Scheelite) mine in remote north west Nevada. The mine was opened in 1917 and closed in 1956 after the demands of the Korean War subsided. Apparently Tungsten is used for armor piercing munitions. https://youtube.com/shorts/uCK3M25BuwA #explorenevada #overlanding

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  Chapter 8: The Clone, The Flan, and The Forest drops Sunday! #Memoir #SubStack #RetroGaming

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  Chapter 6 of my serialized memoir is live, “The Holt Road Heist”. https://open.substack.com/pub/stevewetherill/p/chapter-6-the-holt-road-heist #Memoir #GameDevelopment #1980s #RetroGaming

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  Some of you know me from Command & Conquer and the Westwood years. Others from much earlier 8-bit games like Nodes of Yesod. I’ve just published Chapter 1 of a memoir I’m serializing. It’s the prequel to all of that: council estates in Yorkshire, class and accents, coal fires, and a school chemistry experiment involving an extremely unstable compound. This is the “whence.” How it all came to pass, long before any of it was obvious. https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-1-the-d...

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  @douglasvb I paid the dealership to do a brake flush, a coolant flush, and a transmission pan drop and refill last week. Not cheap, but I didn't want to mess with those myself. I am planning to do engine oil and filter, transfer case fluid, both diffs, and grease all the zerk fittings I can find, before my big trip to Oregon next weekend. Diffs don't have a drain plug, but I'm hopeful I can pump them out through the filler hole. 🤞🏻

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  @douglasvb it's the RAM truck. Locking front and rear diffs, IDK if that is why, but drain plugs there ain't!

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  @douglasvb yeah my transfer case does, and engine oil.

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  In my serialized memoir (at https://stevewetherill.substack.com) I have used a mixture of real and AI generated images to try and set the scene and tell my story. I chose to do this mostly because I don’t have photos for every anecdote and incident, which let’s face it, go back up to 63 years at this point. Generally I’ve called them out as such when they are used within the body of each chapter. So here’s a poll, what are people’s opinions on use of AI images?

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  Quick post to note that there will be a new post on my Substack soon. I was away on a trip last week. I am aiming for the weekend, and if not, then soon after. The title of the next post is, “The Holt Road Heist”.

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  Chapter 6 of my serialized memoir, covering the transition from Software Projects to Odin Computer Graphics in 1985, is now live. In this chapter, I find myself in hot water with the police for stealing my own trousers. And a routine car park handoff triggers something nobody expected. https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-6-the-holt-road-heist #RetroGaming #SoftwareProjects #OdinComputerGraphics #Memoir #GameDevelopment

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  I was told I was “on the chopping block” in my first job in games. Chapter 5 of my memoir is now live. This continues my time at Software Projects in 1984, with no real idea what I was doing and nobody there to tell me otherwise, learning fast as I went. It includes a wiped Tatung Einstein boot disk and porting *Manic Miner* and *Jet Set Willy* without the original source code. It also marks a turning point. Getting those first games shipped, and realizing I could actually do this. Posting...