Status Update, February 2025

Overview

• Shinmera: released cl-mixed/pipewire

• Shinmera: uploaded historical kandria releases

• Shinmera: released PromptFont 1.8

• Shinmera: work on the grant pitch

• Shinmera: make Trial work on Clozure CL

• Shinmera: make Trial and associated libraries work better on the NX

• Shinmera: implement a virtual keyboard in Alloy

• Shinmera: various gameplay improvements for Weiss

• Karlosz: Fix GC for the NX

• Karlosz: Implement callbacks on the NX

Some Details

What a month, huh! Let's start with all the news about the SBCL/Trial port to the NX/Switch. Charles got back to work this month and just blasted through everything, fixing the remaining GC issue on his first day, and then quickly also tackling foreign callbacks. This clears all the remaining features needed to run arbitrary Trial games!

https://mastodon.tymoon.eu/@shinmera/113946964183800584

I also did work to make gamepad input, sound output, system info querying, etc. work better on the NX. Unfortunately there's still a lot left to be done in terms of improving performance, and especially audio right now is just a complete garble. I'm not sure if that's me doing something wrong, or the system just running way too slow the way I'm driving it right now.

Charles and I also finished our paper submission for the European Lisp Symposium this year that is about the port, so if you want to learn more about the nitty gritty details about it all, I hope you look forward to that (assuming we get accepted, of course).

For Weiss I spent a fair bit improving the general game feel by adding a nice directional dash/dodge move, and a lot of effects flair around that. I also implemented an extensive photo mode, so that I could take nicely dynamic screenshots. Turns out, I was completely right in thinking that it's a lot easier to take interesting screenshots in a 3D game than a 2D one!

 I also spent a bunch of time agonising over level design again. I tried out Trenchbroom (which turns out I can't use at all with Blender) and also Sketchup. The latter is super intuitive for basic things, but once I tried making actual levels in anger I very quickly got very annoyed. I still don't have a good idea on what to do for that. I'll probably give blender another shot, but honestly the fact that its bool modifier is so terrible just makes me extremely reluctant.

I really wanted to build a much nicer level to show off for the grant pitch, but I couldn't get it done, and I feel like a real failure for that.

In the remaining week before the deadline I got my hands full with a "trailer" video and finishing some character designs though, so I doubt I'll get it done. Oh well....

Anyway, I didn't take my usual week break this month, so I'll be forcing myself to two weeks off next month. We'll see how much I get done in that time.

I also did my taxes for last year this month, and I gotta say, while I knew I'd be in the red, I never expected that big of a difference between game sale revenue and .... well, everything that's thanks to you all!

Thank you again so much for your continued support. I definitely could not be doing all of this without you!

— Love, Shinmera ❤️