Pin Eight is the personal web site of Damian Yerrick. You may be interested in one or more of his projects:
 Thwaite
(NES) |
 Concentration Room
(NES) |
 Luminesweeper
(GBA) |
 TOD
(GBA) |
 LJ65
(NES) |
 LOCKJAW
(PC, GBA, DS) |
Posted on December 8, 2011
Thwaite is out. It may be the first NES game to support a Super NES Mouse.
Posted on September 19, 2010
I've been migrating the RAnT section to use MediaWiki software. Once this finishes, it will become a redirect to the new location. (But why "shut up"?)
Posted on August 22, 2010
Off and on for the past several decades, Hasbro's Playskool division has made Weebles, a brand of roly-poly toy that rights itself when tipped over. But Playskool never makes these for more than a couple years at a time. It appears that Playskool makes Weebles toys, then stops making them, then rinse and repeat. And every time Playskool relaunches the Weebles brand, it switches from egg-shaped figures to figures with molded faces and hands or back.
I first discovered Weebles in 1996, after the brand had gone into rest after a molded phase. Then came another egg phase before they disappeared again from toy store shelves. Then from 2004 to 2006, Playskool made the "Weebleville" and "Storybook World" lines of molded Weebles figures and playsets, which I collected. Playskool stopped making Weebles for several years after this. But in 2010, Weebles are back, and they're eggs again. Yuck. I don't feel like collecting egg-shaped Weebles because their abstract appearance makes it harder to role-play with my little cousin. I guess it's time for me to give up my attachment to the Weebles brand if it won't stick to one style or the other. Might the most recent switch have something to do with a YouTube video called "Bumpus can has birthday", which compared scenes from an animated Weebleville DVD to scenes from (safe-for-work) DHD/DAK amputee documentaries?
My 1996 encounter with Weebles led me to create a race called Polis, which look like humans from the waist up but are plump like Weebles and walk like DAK amputees on their hands and bottom. See some pictures I've been making in Blender. I guess Playskool's switch back to eggs will help me completely divorce Polis from the Weebles that spawned them.
Posted on July 21, 2010
A battery is expensive; a password is not. That's why so many NES games used password save. Now you can use the same technique in your own homebrew games with this library.
Posted on July 18, 2010
I have a new artist on my team. She drew five characters for Concentration Room and wrote their dialogue. I'm pleased to announce Concentration Room 0.02, which incorporates her work.
Posted on July 4, 2010
Instead of doing something American this Independence Day, I decided to do something Russian. Because The Tetris Company is still having U.S. Customs seize handheld brick games on phony copyright claims, I didn't feel like pushing out another LJ65 release. So instead, I made a Zapper game for the NES: Russian Roulette.
And via nesdev.com/bbs: Someone made a faithful port of the entirety of Super Mario Bros. to Sega Genesis (YouTube video). It's not often you get to see the Genesis doing what Nintendoes instead of what Nintendon't. I guess you really can't spell GeNESis without NES.
Posted on March 27, 2010
I Can Remember sucked. Concentration Room for NES sucks less.
Posted on November 12, 2009
Last night, I had a dream that I was back in school, tutoring the actress who played Loonette on YTV's The Big Comfy Couch after the end of class. "Algebra means running math backwards. You see a letter on one side of the equal sign, and you do the opposite of what's being done to the letter. For example, if x + 5 = 7, do the opposite of plus 5 on both sides, and you end up with x = 2." The trouble is that I couldn't get her name right (and no, it wasn't "Alyson Court" in the dream or even "Clarissa Quimby"; it was something like Tyra with a double-barreled last name), so I ended up just calling her Loonette.
But now there's another clown on TV, and his name is Billo. Let's hope he can do the math better than freshmen at City University of New York.
Posted on October 29, 2009
As of GNOME Games 2.29, the GNOME Games project has renamed Gnometris to "Quadrapassel" to distance it from the Tetris trademark. At the same time, Same GNOME became Swell Foop because "GNOME" in app titles has become deprecated anyway. I guess nobody told them about Quadra.
In other news, Ubuntu 9.10, a popular GNU/Linux operating system distribution based on Debian, is out now.
Posted on October 3, 2009
People accuse me of building most of my portfolio from clones of commercial falling block puzzle games. But each clone has a specific purpose derived from a particular disappointment with one of these games. I made Tetanus On Drugs for PC because MS-DOS was dying, and I was disappointed with Windows' inability to run Tetripz correctly. I ported TOD to GBA after feeling how laggy the GBA port of Tetris Worlds was. (Little did I know at the time that the lag I felt was due in part to other growing problems in the Tetris franchise, such as the broken infinite spin mechanic.) I made Luminesweeper because I was disappointed with Q Entertainment's choice of Sony's PSP, a new and expensive handheld system, as the exclusive platform for a falling block game. I made LOCKJAW Tetromino Game for two reasons: to demonstrate how The Tetris Company was destroying what some felt to be the challenge of the game and to fix Tetris DS's lack of specialized training modes.
But now I'm disappointed in Nintendo's attempt to block individual developers from pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. I ranted on this earlier, but since then, Nintendo released Wii Menu 4.2, the first update to specifically attack homebrew rather than illegally copied commercial games. The cat-and-mouse game on the Wii isn't quite as intense as Sony's was in the first years of the PSP, but Nintendo's intent is clear: only corporations established in the mainstream video game industry are allowed to develop for its hardware.
Even apart from the persecution of homebrew, the rise of HDTV has made PC platforms (Windows and Mac OS X) start to look more attractive. Virtually all new LCD TVs sold in major United States retail chains have inputs for VGA and HDMI signals from computers. I understand that a lot of people don't know about this, which is why I've written Cable finder, a guide explaining how to connect your PC and your TV.
Posted on September 24, 2009
I'm tired of game consoles. They have three advantages over a typical PC: small size (as opposed to a typical ATX mid-tower), compatibility with standard-definition TVs (as opposed to PCs with only a VGA port, which need an HDTV), and a guarantee of sufficient graphics performance (as opposed to Intel GMA). These allow for multiplayer with one console and one large monitor, which is cheaper than four PCs and four smaller monitors. But their big disadvantage is overhead on the developer's side. Console makers such as Nintendo expect developers to have a "secure office" and "industry experience", but a team of part-time developers with day jobs outside the video game industry is unlikely to have the cash to lease an office or to take internships with a major video game developer in another state. So instead, I bought a Mac mini: it's roughly the size of a Wii, Apple sells an SDTV adapter, and it has NVIDIA graphics.
I'm also tired of having to put up with The Tetris Company's threats. I've put LOCKJAW Tetromino Game in a code freeze until I feel like converting it into a more general engine that can cover other falling block game types like Dr. Mario, Columns, and Puyo Pop. That might not come very soon because I'm working on other projects.
Finally, I'm tired of illiteracy, and I'm doing something about it. More to come.
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