I’m working on a small test project with Godot. The last, and only, time that I did anything significant with Godot was a game jam back in 2019. Safe to say that it’s been a while. Also, safe to say that Godot has changed a lot in that time.

Best Games - Driver : You are the Wheelman Driver is filthy. It looks filthy. It sounds filthy. The slap base, funk soundtrack is filthy. The 70s exploitation storyline is filthy.

I’m currently getting a story ready for submission. I haven’t sold any stories recently, but I have gotten a couple of holds and a couple more personal rejections. I’m not completely numb to rejection yet, but I have to tell you, anything you do a lot of, you get better at. I have a large collection of rejection letters, so I suppose I’m getting better at that.

I went back and counted. The graphics tablet I use, nearly daily, is the fifth I’ve owned and the seventh I’ve used. If I don’t count the iPad. Actually, come to think of it, I think I have to count the iPad now. I can’t use it with Blender or Krita or the desktop version of Affinity Designer, at least not easily, and all three of those are go to apps for me, but I do use the iPad to draw and paint pretty regularly. So, eight. The number of graphics tablets I have used is eight. That seems like a lot.

There is a particular look that some old games have that I love. I’ve been chasing it for ages, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to achieve it.

Best Games - Final Fight There were side scrolling beat ‘em up games before Final Fight. Capcom didn’t invent the genre. That honor should probably go to Technos and the Kunio-kun series. The Technos game Double Dragon may have even been the first game to truly nail walking right and punching. Those games are great too, and I will probably get to them at some point, but this write up is about Final Fight.

While I can’t post the stories that came out of the writing jam thing I did for the last six weeks, I can put up my postmortem wrap up on how the whole thing went for me. I’ve done a few edits to remove spoilers and such.

A few times on here, I have taken a little time to point out some graphics tools I like. Recently, it’s just been a bunch of different ways to use Blender. I started using Blender for some stuff that I don’t think it was really intended for, but it doesn’t seem to care. Just chews right through those graphics.

So, five weeks of writing flash stories, and I now have at least 3 good starts to stories I might be able to sell. I don’t think any of them work the way I want in the form they are in now, but writing sellable flash stories was never my intent. I sort of just wanted to see if I could do it. If a few extra stories fall out the other end, well that would be nice too.

Best Games - Choplifter! The best early 8-bit computer games did a lot with a little. They were written for computers built around MOS 6502 or Zilog Z80 processors. Moderately powerful chips at the time, but still absolutely dwarfed by the comparatively monstrous boards and chips in most arcade machines.

Okay. Three weeks. Three stories under 1000 words. While I don’t think that it’s getting any easier to write these things, I think, at least the last one, is a bit better than the others.

Best Games Albums - Geddon Dangerous by Doublegeddon Normally this is the place for games, best games even. I’m just going to drop a link here. If you are going to read this, you should at least have a listen to one of the best albums of last year.

I just tried writing my first flash fiction. Flash is a story that is typically under 1000 words, but I have read that some people consider anything under 2500 words flash fiction. A while ago I tried writing a drabble, that’s a story exactly 100 words in length. Here’s something that might seem counterintuitive. Writing short is very hard.

Are you supposed to make resolutions for the new year? I don’t really do that. I haven’t done that since I was a kid. I don’t really see the point.