@mtrc@mastodon.social

Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Jul 02, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

I'm still working on expanding support for Magpie! But this'll get you started for now: ⭐️ A quick start tutorial: https://illomens.itch.io/magpie/devlog/1326628/introduction-to-magpie ⭐️ Online documentation (new): https://www.possibilityspace.org/magpie/docs/ ⭐️ More videos of Magpie from me: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH4PauaeAUddWIMm_2oGITw ⭐️ A little Magpie zine! https://www.possibilityspace.org/magpie/intro-to-magpie.pdf

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Jul 02, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

What is Magpie for? It's a digital art tool - you write code to draw cool things on the screen. But it's designed for livecoding, to help you write things faster, make a bigger mess, and show people your code while you do it. Here's a recent set I did with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRlsKQxmH-o

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Jul 01, 2026

New Release: Magpie (v0.2 - Joy). Magpie is a visual livecoding tool made in Picotron! Some changes in 0.2: 🔮 Dive into past code with Code Explorer 🎨 Lots of new functions to call and play with 🙋 Improved controls and help text 📚 Documentation website! Get it here: https://illomens.itch.io/magpie

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 20, 2026

Livecoding w/ pipipri at Algotrance 2026, London

https://youtu.be/vRlsKQxmH-o

#picotron #magpie

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 18, 2026

RE: @TodePond@mas.to

i'm performing tomorrow with so, so many lovely london livecoders and a couple famous people also i guess. will try and record my set!

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 18, 2026

Ok, getting really mixed messages about sprite import into #picotron - two apps are on the BBS both over 18 months old and neither seem to work. Are people able to import pngs/aseprite files into picotron as .gfx?

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 18, 2026

Replying to @wrench@wandering.shop

@wrench@wandering.shop Much less clever than it seems! A cloud of circles that lerp to new locations, and lines between them that are drawn using fillp() :)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 17, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 15, 2026

#magpie #picotron (very much flashing warning)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 13, 2026

Alright that's probably enough picotron for today.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 13, 2026

RE: @wrench@wandering.shop

new roguelike definition just dropped (ho ho ho)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 07, 2026

Replying to @lemoncosmos@peoplemaking.games

@lemoncosmos@peoplemaking.games Haha it's like that thing about promoting your game, no matter how much you think you're spamming it there's still people to reach! Yes it's exciting! Thanks for all your contributions to the space+community over the years <3

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 07, 2026

Next Level is out! People are reading it! I will stop posting about it now I promise, but I did want to say that I put a little supplementary site online for the book which includes, among other things, the source code for illustrations from the book: https://www.possibilityspace.org/nextlevel/. I thought some of you might enjoy! They're not super fancy but it's nice to share how I made them. Thank you for all the support the last few months - I hope you enjoy the book!

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

You can still order Next Level and get it by launch! It's in local bookshops, and online in lots of places too. You can also get it on Amazon if you can suffer huge corporations and want to boost us on an arbitrary chart: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Next-Level-Making-Games-Themselves/dp/1399423398 Thanks to everyone for their support! 💜🙏

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

I love both of these games so much, but their creators are also so important too, in terms of their contributions to the communities and also how they acted as inspirations for so many more people to do research and design around procedural generation, too. That's what the book is about, really.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

Caves of Qud's histories are divine visions from gods that don't exist, written in a dead language on mouldy papers, of which you find a handful every week or so stuffed inside some market stall. It's impossible to tell what is original text and what is annotation on most of them. You don't care.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

To very lazily paraphrase both the book and the games: to me, Dwarf Fortress is a mechanical world of clockwork cause and effect, and its histories are similarly huge artefacts of immense intricacy, wrought by vast factories of systems that can be clambered into and poked with a stick.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

'Simulation' isn't always thought of as a procedural technique, but it drives both the unpredictability of these games and their complexity. I talk quite a bit about how history emerges in both games, and how they approach worldbuilding in their own ways, thematically appropriate for each game.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

The chapter preceding both is about simulation. In games we think of the word as referring to accurate depictions of real-world systems, which is true for both DF and Qud, definitely. But it's also about the magical complexity of small systems, like cellular automata, and how complexity emerges.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

When sketching out the book contents it felt at first like I might have to choose between Caves of Qud and Dwarf Fortress, but this felt like an actual crime, there just isn't any way to talk about one and not the other, so they both found their own chapter in the end (to my relief).

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · May 04, 2026

Next Level is out in just three days - some people already have their preorder copies, which is scary and cool! I'm doing a few threads this week about some of the stuff I cover in the book, today let me tell you about two very special games.

(Pre/order it here: https://linktr.ee/next_level)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Apr 29, 2026

Replying to @xorgrox@mastodon.social

@xorgrox@mastodon.social I think you can get it as an ebook, but not as a PDF exactly. Although I'm sure other ways will exist...

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Apr 28, 2026

RE: @mtrc@mastodon.social

This comes out in just a week or so! Very excited to have people get their hands on it. If you want to help with the launch, preorders are great I think, but there should be cheaper ways to buy it in the future too :) No audiobook version, for those asking, but maybe once we sell a million copies haha.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Apr 07, 2026

April 1st Algorhythm performance w/ @bornach@fosstodon.org: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViHCotzWLDU

(Rickroll begins to kick in around the 12:00 mark, you can just about hear the crowd singing along!)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Apr 05, 2026

New Blog: Let Games Die

"Let Code Die is rooted in a trust that if we have code that we like and we lose it, we can write it again. What would it mean to trust ourselves as game developers, designers, critics and players in the same way?"

https://www.possibilityspace.org/blog/posts/let-games-die/

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 29, 2026

sunday magpie hacking some new features #picotron #pico8

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 16, 2026

I've written a book! Next Level: Making Games That Make Themselves is the story of procedural generation - the tech behind games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. It's about how it works, the games that use it, and the art and magic behind it.

Out May 7th, in bookshops: https://linktr.ee/next_level 🎲🔮

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @exquisitecorp@merveilles.town

@exquisitecorp@merveilles.town this is amazing! thanks for playing with it and showing me what you made :)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @exquisitecorp@merveilles.town

@exquisitecorp@merveilles.town great, yeah, that's something i should also reset after for sure. or perhaps only on shift+control+c? hmm.

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 07, 2026

Replying to @exquisitecorp@merveilles.town

@exquisitecorp@merveilles.town you can use almost all of the api, but some things need extra support - for example, I don't reset the camera after running user code, but I can add that in a patch maybe :)

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 06, 2026

Replying to @mtrc@mastodon.social

To go along with the release today, here's a screen recording of my Algorhythms set last Wednesday, supporting @beewebb@mastodon.me.uk! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUIVjdUi2Dk

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Mike Cook @mtrc@mastodon.social · Mar 06, 2026

New Release: Magpie (v0.1 - Sorrow)

Magpie is a visual livecoding tool made in Picotron! Make little art performances in crunchy 480x270 resolution, by writing Picotron code. It runs in the web, on desktops, and on #Picotron itself. This is an early release.

Get it here: https://illomens.itch.io/magpie

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